The Bonus Boondoggle
By Phil Mattera for the Dirt
Diggers Digest
Home Depot is the latest company to
join the bonus bandwagon, announcing that it will give hourly employees
one-time payments of up to $1,000 as a “reward to our associates for continuing
to deliver outstanding customer service.”
CEO Craig Menear added: “This
incremental investment in our associates was made possible by the new tax
reform bill.”
No one should begrudge a few more
bucks to underpaid retail workers, but the bonuses should be regarded with a
skeptical eye.
It’s clear, to begin with, that the
companies making these announcements are doing so to curry favor with the Trump
Administration and Congressional Republicans.
And the amounts being offered to
employees represent a small portion of the financial benefits the corporations
will enjoy from the tax giveaway. At Bank of America that portion was reported
to be about 5 percent.
There’s also a problem with the way
the payments are being made. The fact that many of the workers are being given
one-time bonuses rather than increases in their base pay means that the impact
will be fleeting and do little to address the ongoing problem of wage
stagnation.
But perhaps worst of all is that employers are taking these steps on their own rather than negotiating with their workers. That’s possible because they are in almost all cases non-union.
Some such as Walmart have a notorious
history of anti-union animus, while others like Starbucks have resisted
organizing drives in more subtle ways.
There are a few exceptions. For
example, AT&T, which is extensively unionized, discussed its bonuses with
the Communications Workers of America before making the announcement.
Nonetheless, the CWA, which had called
on telecommunications companies to provide the $4,000 wage increase Republicans
claimed would result from the tax bill, vowed to negotiate for more than the
$1,000 payments AT&T said it would provide.
While AT&T maneuvered to downplay
the role of the CWA, most of the bonus givers need not take such steps. They
can present their payments purely as an act of corporate benevolence.
They are also an affirmation of the
lop-sided balance of power in non-union companies.
Management gets to decide whether and
how to share the tax windfall in the same way it makes all other decisions that
affect the lives of their workers.
This is seen in the fact that
companies such as Walmart and Comcast announced their bonuses around the same
time they were carrying out substantial layoffs.
Large companies are adopting the
Trumpian practice of pretending to act in the interest of workers without
actually empowering them.
If Corporate America really wanted to
help their employees, they would drop their opposition to unions and let
workers bargain for real gains rather than handouts.
