Is “corporate ethics” an oxymoron? Do you have to be a jerk to be a successful CEO? Is exploitation the only path to profit?

The good news is that many companies, big and small, in the food economy are blazing a different path through Wall Street’s jungle of greed, demonstrating that money and morality can be compatible. Texas supermarket chain HEB, for example, has drawn an intensely loyal customer base by (1) investing in good wages and benefits for employees, (2) showing up in such emergencies as pandemics, hurricanes, freezes, etc. to give essential supplies and hands-on help, and (3) being an involved and supportive neighbor to the hundreds of unique communities it serves.

Also, Maine Grains is “relocalizing” the business of milling grain by working with local farmers who’d been abandoned by global grain marketers like Ardent and Gold Medal. They’re producing nutrient-rich flours from heritage grains, boosting the local economy in the process. Then there’s Bob’s Red Mill, which also artfully mills its products from diverse, natural grains–and it’s 100% employee-owned.

These are part of a rising business alternative to the selfish, profiteering ethic of Fortune 500 titans. Called certified B Corporations, they definitely exist to make a profit, but they are equally focused on having a positive social impact, prioritizing fair wages, environmental protections, and healthy communities as core elements of their missions, even making those goals legal requirements of their corporate charter.

Ben & Jerry’s, Amy’s Kitchen, King Arthur Baking, and New Belgium Brewery are just a few more of some 3,800 other businesses now organized as B Corps. Though not pretending to be perfect, they’re at least striving to be more than money grubbers, instead trying to contribute to the Common Good. For more information on the products and practices of B Corps, go to BCorporation.net.

We’ve got the Academy Awards, the Emmy’s, and GRAMMYs… but what should we call the award for the most extraordinary performance by a corporate profiteer? How about the “Sleazy,” with winners getting a solid gold sculpture of a middle finger? There were so many worthy contenders, but one corporation exhibited uncommon callousness, so the 2021 Sleazy goes to … Tyson Foods!

The meatpacking giant has regularly run roughshod over workers, farmers, communities, and the environment – not to mention the millions of animals it fattens and slaughters. But the coronavirus pulled out the worst in Tyson’s corporate ethic. Last April, its billionaire chair, John Tyson, ranted that health officials who were closing-down several of his slaughterhouses that had become hotbeds of contagion were creating another crisis: A national meat shortage!

Responding instantly, our corporate-compassionate, burger-gobbling president decreed that meatpacking plants were crucial to America’s national security and must be kept open at all cost. Trump’s edict required workers to return to their jobs or be fired. Only there was no meat shortage. Not only did Americans have an excess of cheeseburgers, pork chops, and chicken nuggets, but Tyson and other giants actually increased their meat exports to China last year. Meanwhile, Covid rampaged through Tyson’s factories. In its Waterloo, Iowa facility alone, a third of the processing workers – low wage, mostly people of color – were infected. At least six died.

Which brings us to the corporate play that cinched this year’s Sleazy for Tyson. Waterloo slaughterhouse supervisors actually knew that the back-to-work order would sicken hundreds, but not exactly how many. So, managers organized a winner-take-all betting pool on the percent of employees who would test positive. “It was simply something fun,” said one – “kind of a morale boost.”

The virus infected more than a third of 2,800 workers in the plant. Some fun huh?

“Those in the know,” say that We the People should forget any progressive fantasy that – at long last – Washington might finally produce the kind of bold FDR-style agenda that America needs. They smugly lecture us that recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, not to mention a swarm of corporate lobbyists, are opposed to progressive change, so who could get it passed?

Here’s an idea: Try the people themselves. Those in the know don’t seem to know it (or don’t want us to know it), but big majorities across grassroots America are strongly in favor of the fundamental changes that Washington elites are rejecting. For example:

Two-thirds of America (including a majority of moderate Republicans) say “Yes!” to doubling the minimum wage.

72 percent of the people, including 46 percent of professed Republicans, shout their approval for Medicare for all.

Eight out of 10 Americans, including strong majorities of Republicans, support a paid family leave program like every other developed nation provides for their people.

What about increasing taxes on the rich, expanding Medicaid for poor families, raising teacher pay, spending more for early childhood education? Yes, yes, yes, yes say majorities, not just in blue states, but also in GOP strongholds like Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah.

These are not just poll numbers, but solid ideas embraced last year by a broad cross-section of voters in ballot elections across the country. For example, Florida voters enacted a constitutional initiative to up the state’s minimum pay to $15, with “yeas” topping “nays” by a whopping margin of more than 20 points – making it more popular than either Trump or Biden.

Instead of fearing the people, Democratic leaders need to get out of Washington and join them. Let’s rally and organize the power of outsiders to produce transformative policies of, by, and for the people.

The past year proves that a lot of conventional economic wisdom is neither true nor wise. For example:

“We don’t have the money.” The power elites tell us it would be nice to do the big-ticket reforms America needs, but the money just isn’t there. Then a pandemic slammed into America, and suddenly trillions of dollars gushed out of Washington for everything from subsidizing meatpackers to developing vaccines, revealing that the money is there.

“We can’t increase the federal debt!” Yet, Trump and the Republican Congress didn’t hesitate to shove the national debt through the roof in 2017 to let a few corporations and billionaires pocket a trillion-dollar tax giveaway. So, if those drunken spenders can use federal borrowing to make the likes of Amazon and Zuckerberg richer, we can borrow funds for such productive national needs as infrastructure investment and quality education for all.

“The rich are the ‘makers’ who contribute the most to society.” This silly myth quickly melted right in front of us as soon as Señor Coronavirus arrived, making plain that the most valuable people are nurses, grocery clerks, teachers, postal employees, and millions of other mostly-low-wage people. So, let’s capitalize on the moment to demand policies that reward these grassroots makers instead of Wall Street’s billionaire takers.

“Tax cuts drive economic growth for all.” They always claim that freeing corporations from the “burden” of taxes will encourage CEOs to invest in worker productivity and – voila – wages will miraculously rise. This scam has never worked for anyone but the scammers, and it’s now obvious to the great majority of workers that the way to increase wages – Hello – is to increase wages! Enact a $15 minimum wage, restore collective bargaining, etc. and workers will pocket more, spend more, and the economy will rise.

Percolate-up economics works – trickle-down does not.

Corporate acolytes and right-wing moralists constantly preach to laboring stiffs about the uplifting dignity of work.

Of course, that’s “dignity” as defined and controlled by corporate elites, not by workers, and the reward for it frequently includes on-the-job injuries… and death. Not that CEOs and well-heeled investors intend to sicken, maim, and kill thousands of laborers every year – but they certainly do put them in positions that assure such unhappy results. For example, they demand that farmworkers go sunrise to sunset picking crops in California’s 105° desert heat, and that construction crews toil in the muggy, dog days of Florida summers tarring condo roofs. Low-paid, powerless workers die, but no one in the corporate hierarchy did the deed, right? Heat was the killer.

But wait, not only are aloof, air-cooled bosses the ones who knowingly subject subordinates to deadly heat, but they’re also the ones who hire squads of lobbyists and lawyers to kill simple, inexpensive rules to stop these deaths – such rules as requiring  ample water at work sites; ensuring paid rest breaks in cool spaces; training on-site managers and employees to detect and react to signs of heat stress; requiring good ventilation and proper clothing; establishing emergency response procedures; fostering a safety-first culture; and imposing serious punishments for violators.

Such sensible steps have repeatedly been proposed as official workplace policy for at least the last 50 years – but intense industry lobbying has killed the adoption of all attempts to prevent what amounts to workplace murder by corporate profiteers. Instead, the US government pretends to “protect” workers by printing posters admonishing employees to beware of heat, basically telling them, “Goodbye and Good Luck.”

But at last, a real proposal has been put on the table by more than 110 grassroots groups. See it – and join it – by contacting Public Citizen: Citizen.org.

Here’s a hot topic for Labor Day: Heat.

It’s been a hell of a hot summer, exploding the top off thermometers with triple-digit readings across the country. As we’re learning, week after week of this debilitating heat intensifies wildfires, causes electric grids to fail, kills millions of wild animals (including fish!), burns up crops, and concentrates toxic air.

But there’s another impact that draws little notice: Heat kills workers. Indeed, searing days of 95-100-110 degrees are killing and injuring more US workers each year than all the floods, hurricanes, and tornados combined. Those toiling outdoors – including farmworkers, roofers and carpenters, airport ground crews, landscapers, road and street repairers, letter carriers, and trash collectors – are in the direct line of fire for this invisible, insidious killer. But working indoors is no better if there’s no AC, for metal and stone warehouses and manufacturing plants become ovens.

Then, welcome to climate change – 20 of the last 21 years gave us the hottest temperatures on record. Unsurprisingly, the yearly number of worker heat deaths in that period doubled. Also, researchers have determined that extreme workplace heat is causing about 170,000 people a year to suffer injuries on the job. The impact of heat is poorly understood, even by workers. A sudden heat stroke is not the only worry, for rising body temperatures can quickly fuzz the mind, weaken muscles, numb concentration. So, workers fall, their hands get caught in machinery, they touch the wrong wire, etc.

America’s power elites – sitting in climate-controlled executive suites, distant legislative chambers, and comfortable editorial offices – literally don’t feel the intensity of this heat, so the richest country in the history of the world continues to subject millions of its people to senseless suffering and death, not even talking about this embarrassment, much less stopping it.

As a writer, I get stuck every so often straining for the right words to tell my story. Over the years, though, I’ve learned when to quit tying myself into mental knots over sentence construction, instead stepping back and rethinking where my story is going.

This process is essentially what millions of American working families are going through this year as record numbers of them are shocking bosses, politicians, and economists by stepping back and declaring: “We quit!” Most of the quits are tied to very real abuses that have become ingrained in our workplaces over the past couple of decades – poverty paychecks, no health care, unpredictable schedules, no child care, understaffing, forced overtime, unsafe jobs, sexist and racist managers, tolerance of aggressively-rude customers, and so awful much more.

Specific grievances abound, but at the core of each is a deep, inherently-destructive executive-suite malignancy: Disrespect. The corporate system has cheapened employees from valuable human assets worthy of being nurtured and advanced to a bookkeeping expense that must be steadily eliminated. It’s not just about paychecks, it’s about feeling valued, feeling that the hierarchy gives a damn about the people doing the work.

Yet, corporate America is going out of its way to show that it doesn’t care – and, of course, workers notice. So, unionization is booming, millions who were laid off by the pandemic are refusing to rush back to the same old grind, and now millions who have jobs are quitting. This is much more than an unusual unemployment stat – it’s a sea change in people’s attitude about work itself... and life.

People are rethinking where their story is going and how they can take it in a better direction. Yes, nearly everyone will eventually return to work, but workers themselves have begun redefining the job and rebalancing it with life.

Corporate bosses across America have been sputtering in outrage at you working stiffs this summer, spewing expletives about the fact that while the US economy has been coming back... you haven’t!

“Labor shortage,” they squeal, lazily accusing the workforce of mass laziness. They charge insultingly that millions of workers got used to laying around during the pandemic. Noting that there is now an abundance of jobs open for everything from restaurant workers to nurses, the bosses and their political dogs bark that you people need to get back in the old harness and start pulling again.

Adding a nasty bite to their bark, several GOP governors cut off unemployment benefits to people, hoping to force them to work. Other businesses have proffered signing bonuses, free dinner coupons, and other lures, while such notoriously mingy outfits as McDonald’s and Walmart have even upped their wage scale in an effort to draw workers.

Yet... no go. In fact, to the astonishment of the economic elite, the employment flow this year is going the other way! Record numbers of current workers in all sorts of jobs in every section of the country are voluntarily walking away. There’s even an official economic measurement of this phenomenon called the “Quits Rate,” and it is surging beyond anything our economy has experienced in modern memory – in April, 4 million workers quit; in May, another 3.6 million left, in June, 3.9 million said adios! The “Quits” are so unexpected and so widespread that pundits have started dubbing this year “The Great Resignation.”

What’s wrong with people, why are such staggering numbers of Americans failing to do their jobs? But, wait – maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the corporate system’s “jobs” are failing the people. Consider this: The most common comment by those who’re walking out is, “I hate my job.”

At least since the invention of the wheel, people have fixed, tinkered with, and improved every device they’ve possessed. It’s been a human right.

But after several thousand years, suddenly legal clauses are being tucked in purchase agreements saying that today’s owners of products MUST NOT even peek, much less poke inside the inner workings of our devices. Makers of anything with a computer chip in it (everything from your car to your toothbrush) have been especially vehement about this, rewriting human nature by outlawing our right to repair. Yes, they assert, you own the thing, but we own the intangible ideas that make it work, so if the product malfunctions, you must return it to us – and pay us a premium – to repair it. Plus, they prattle, you could hurt yourself trying to do-it-yourself, so trust us.

Bovine Excrement, barks Steve Wozniak: Companies inhibit your rights so they can have “power, control, over everything.” Is he, some consumer radical? No, Wozniak is the co-founder of Apple, the multibillion-dollar global goliath that is the world’s biggest producer of consumer electronics. He’s appalled that Apple has now become a fierce opponent of self-repair. He says “We wouldn’t have had an Apple” except that early innovators like him grew up “in a very open technology world.” From the start, Wozniak point out, openness helped spread innovation and consumer demand.

“So, why stop... the self-repair community,” he asks? Two big reasons: Besides letting corporations lock in monopoly profits from the repair industry, it also dissuades customers from bothering with repairs – just throw the thing away and buy a new one!

If you wonder where such massive, deadly levels of pollution by bead, mercury, plastic, etc. come from, look to the gross throw-away ethic of big tech profiteers like Apple.

America’s economic and political inequality has led workaday Americans to exclaim: “The system is broken. Let’s fix it!”

But there’s another version of this protest that I’m hearing more frequently these days: “The system is fixed. Let’s break it!” That certainly applies to such rigged systems as money in politics and voter suppression, but it’s also relevant to seemingly mundane matters that restrain our personal freedoms.

One of the insidious “fixes” we need to break is the claim by brand-name corporations that we consumers must be banned by law from repairing the products they sell to us! The weak battery in your cell phone, the fuel sensor in a farmer’s tractor, some gizmo in the toaster you bought, a fuse in your business’ delivery truck – you could fix all of these yourself or, with little hassle, take the problem to a local repair shop.

But, no, such manufacturing powerhouses as Apple, John Deere, and Panasonic assert that only their corporate technicians are authorized to open the product – which you own! – to make it work again. So, you are expected to deliver it to their distant facility, wait however-many days or weeks they tell you, and pay an inflated price. They’ve literally fixed the “fix” for consumer products. They impose their control by making the products as needlessly complicated as possible, then claiming that the complexity is their patented proprietary product. Thus, they say they don’t have to provide repair manuals or sell repair tools to consumers or independent shops. Gotcha.

To give their closed profiteering system the force of law, the giants have deployed armies of lobbyists and lawyers to legislatures and courts, arguing that self-repair people really are scoundrels trying to circumvent safety and environmental rules.

This is Jim Hightower saying... For information and action, go to the US Public Interest Research Group: USpirg.org.