Socialist Viewpoint

Two stories appeared recently that together illustrate the double standard that capitalists and their Democratic and Republican henchmen employ when enforcing the punishment for crimes. While they refer to corporate fraud as “shenanigans” and jail no one, an employee that steals a few dollars from the till is considered a hardened criminal and receives four years in prison.

A story that appeared in the OP-ED section of the New York Times, Sunday, June 30 by Barbara Ehrenreich, called “Two-Tiered Morality,” tells about what justice is like if you’re a Wal-Mart employee. And a Sunday morning TV news program, “This Week” on ABC, which aired July 7, tells how the Enron, Adelphia, ImClone, WorldCom, et al., exposés, debacles, and outright robberies have gone unpunished.

In her “Two-Tiered Morality” article in the Times, Ehrenreich shares her experience applying for and getting a job at a Wal-Mart in Charlottesville, Virginia. She describes the rigors of meeting all the qualifications, including drug testing, to land this low level job.

Not only was there drug testing but there was a detailed “personality test,” that, “probes the job applicant’s horror of theft and willingness to turn in an erring co-worker.” She also had to attend, “… an eight-hour orientation session all new ‘associates’ are required to attend,” which includes, “a video on ‘associate honesty’ that showed a cashier being caught on videotape as he pocketed some bills from the cash register. Drums beat ominously as he was led away in handcuffs and sentenced to four years in prison.”

Ehrenreich points out, however, that at this time, “Present and former Wal-Mart employees in 28 states are suing the company for failure to pay overtime.” She goes on to say, “that Wal-Mart management doesn’t hold itself to the same standard of rectitude it expects from its low-paid employees.” (What a surprise!) In fact, she said, “My first inkling of this came in the form of a warning from a co-worker not to let myself be persuaded to work overtime because, she explained, Wal-Mart doesn’t pay overtime.” Further, she says, “I should have known better. We had been apprised, during orientation, that even after punching out, associates were required to wait on any customer who might approach them.” (Please note that Wal-Mart is one of Fortune 500’s top ten!)

In the Sunday ABC TV show, “This Week”, there was a worried debate about exposed and hidden corporate fraud and what the government should do about it. The “debate” centered on whether there should be jail sentences for the “few bad apples” of corporate crime or whether this fraud and robbery is endemic to the system. Lou Dobbs of CNN Money Line was interviewed. He claimed that “in the last ten years, six trillion1 dollars disappeared from the stock market.” During the broadcast Woody Guthrie’s song was quoted, “Some men rob you with a gun and some with a fountain pen.” It is evident that some—the capitalists—rob you with both!

1 One million = One thousand thousand
One billion = One thousand million, and
One trillion = One million million