Corporate Stock Manipulation is driving JOBS OVERSEAS!!

http://www.alternet.org/economy/plan-build-stop-outsourcing-movement?akid=14984.294211.XIGfMs&rd=1&src=newsletter1068520&t=20

Donald Trump inadvertently has opened the door to building a massive national movement to stop the outsourcing of jobs to low wage countries. While 800 to 1000 jobs have been given a reprieve at Carrier, there are tens of thousands of other jobs that are slated to move to low wage areas abroad—manufacturing and service jobs alike. The wide-spread destruction of decent paying jobs creates an enormous opportunity for the labor movement, the Sanders forces and other progressive allies to organize a powerful response.

Outsourcing is not an act of God. It does not blindly flow from the mechanical forces of global competition. In fact, these days it has very little at all to do with international competition. Instead, Wall Street elites and top corporate executives consciously press for plant relocations in order to extract more wealth for themselves. The weapon of choice is stock buybacks—buying back the shares of their own company in order to boost the share price.(Reducing the number of shares spreads earnings over fewer shares and therefore raises their price.)

In Carrier for example, United Technologies, the parent company, recently instituted a $10 billion stock buyback plan (and $2 billion more in dividends) that put millions of dollars into the pockets of hedge fund investors and top corporate executives. They want to ship jobs to Mexico in order to help finance these stock repurchases, thereby inflating the value of their own stock.

As Bernie Sanders recently reported:

“In 2014, United Technologies gave its former CEO Louis Chenevert a golden parachute worth over $172 million. Last year, the company’s five highest paid executives made over $50 million. The firm also spent $12 billion to inflate its stock price instead of using that money to invest in new plants and workers."

Over the past decade 93 percent of compensation the top United Technologies executives received came from stock incentives, reported Matt Hopkins, research associate at University of Massachusetts, Lowell in a personal communication on Dec. 2.