The NLRB's toothless response to cheating presented an easy equation for corrupt, union-hating bosses: if fines amount to less than the total, lifetime costs of paying a fair wage and offering fair labor conditions, you should cheat - hell, it's practically a #FiduciaryDuty:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468061

Enter the *Cemex* ruling: once a majority of workers have signed a union card, *any* #UnfairLaborPractice by their employer triggers immediate, automatic recognition of the union.

4/

@HeatherH @geobeck @QasimRashid Sadly, it is a law. #FiduciaryDuty

The issue is, *somebody* has to decide what the right course is for a company. We call people who have the right to make that determination "shareholders" or "owners". These folks can only be counted on to make decisions in their own best interest. (Altruism exists, but try asking a random person on the street for money and you'll quickly learn it's far from universal.) So the law is designed to work within that constraint.

If you really want companies to do right by the average worker or consumer, the owners/shareholders of those companies have to be the workers or consumers, not third parties. Then the shareholders screwing the workers or consumers becomes the shareholders screwing themselves, and nobody will be on board for that. Like magic, making the oppressed and the oppressors be the same group makes the oppression cease.

#Capitalism is a perversion of a #MaketBasedEconomy. Aristocrats using their money to manipulate the system into giving them more money. They justify it as payment for the risks they take. Of course it's risky to set up a massive scam!

Every for-profit company is designed from the ground up to extract resources from the interactions between workers and customers, on behalf of a third party. It's enshrined in our very laws. (#FiduciaryDuty) That is their sole reason for existence. And that's why workers so often feel underpaid and customers so often feel overcharged. It's all a game, stacked in the house's favor.

If you want a fair business in a free market, find a #cooperative.

@CWilbur The legal purpose of a corporation (#FiduciaryDuty) is literally to extract money from workers and customers on behalf of investors/shareholders, whose only contribution is the funding to set up the money extraction machinery.

Of course we are taught to see this as a good thing. Never mind that cooperatives and other non-profit and not-for-profit business models exist.

#Capitalism *literally* sucks. Publicly traded companies are required by law to look out for their #shareholders' interests at the expense of everyone else. (The technical term is #FiduciaryDuty.) In other words, their very reason for existence is to suck money out of other people's pockets (customers and workers) and put it into the pockets of shareholders. Does it ever feel like companies, including the one you work for, are out to screw you over? That's because it's their very purpose. Now you know why rich people get richer, and everyone else gets poorer. The whole system is set up to do that.

Bizarre things happen when ESG meets BSAU in the US Senate.

(I see four options. What do you see?)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sowhat-happens-when-esg-meets-bsau-us-senate-gil-friend/?published=t

#ESG #BSAU #ImpactInvestment #SustainableBusiness #climatecrisis #finance #FiduciaryDuty

@gwagner @FinancialTimes

Yikes. It is getting twisty.

I'm not a fan of the B-corp idea anyway bevause it accepts unfair fights. All companies should be accountable to stakeholders, including the environment, not just to shareholders. If only certain companies do this, their competitors have a market advantage so the odds of B-corp survival are poor. If it's a successful market strategy to care about the environment you don't need to be a B-corp to do it.

As I read it, a B-corp is authorization to spend, even lose, shareholder money doing good for the world and not have your stockholders sue you for breach of fiduciary duty. Indeed I'd think they should be able to sue you for not doing well by the social benefit promises you've made.

However here I see FT characterizing it as a "movement" as including "thousands of companies around the world who are certified as 'a force for good'.' This does not mesh with my understanding of their role.

Wikipefia says of B-corps that they
Include "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals, in that the definition of "best interest of the corporation" is specified to include those impacts".

My reading of them is that they aren't, or shouldn't be,, "blessed as good" but rather that they open themselves to criticism-with-teeth if they fail to make good on their promises of good.

People differ on what ethics is, but my personal definition of ethics isn't that there is a specific set of rules you comply with. That's just law and compliance is not ethics at all in my book. Ethics, to me, is a living process of continually asking hard questions of yourself, starting with "am I today right now ethical, and what makes me sure I've not drifted?" The answer to that can never be "I was blessed at birth as ethical."

To me, any notion that B-corps are blessed as ethical or that any one agency can certify unambiguously that someone is ethical is suspect. Organizations can perform independent audits and offer opinions, but that ought not end all discussion. Anyone founding a B-corp has asked for any stakeholder to challenge them.

We should be asking hard questions of the auditors as well.

#BCorps #capitalism #corporations
#StakeholderTheory #StakeholderCapitalism
#ShareholderTheory #ShareholderCapitalism
#ethics #compliance #law #FiduciaryDuty
#environment #labor

#Singapore case - Ok Tedi Fly River Development Foundation Ltd & Ors v PNG Sustainable Development Program Ltd where the Court of Appeal affirmed the decision of the High Court to strike out a claim for breach of fiduciary duties by representatives of communities in Papua New Guinea against a special purpose vehicle set up to promote sustainable development in PNG.

https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/2022_SGCA_76

#fiduciaryduty #environment #papuanewguinea #mining #litigation #law

Commissioner Kristin Johnson, Post Crypto-Crises: Considering Pathways for Protecting Customers and Preserving Market Integrity, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, February 8, 2023

— Available here: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesTestimony/opajohnson3

#cryptoassets #digitalassets #riskmanagement #compliance #internalcontrol #regulation #investorprotection #consumerprotection #financialservices #commodities #futures #standardofcare #financialstability #duediligence #disclosure #fiduciaryduty #CFTC

Layer1 CEO alleges co-founder is using majority power to 'ransack' company - The plaintiffs claim the Dolic and Ebel began to conduct unauthor... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/layer1-ceo-alleges-co-founder-is-using-majority-power-to-ransack-company #judicialintervention #layer1technologies #corporatestructure #dgfinvestments #fiduciaryduty #boardmember #jakovdolic #tobiasebel #johnharney #lawsuit #enigma #filing #equity #stake

Girardi Thefts A Tough Lift For Client Restitution Funds

#Law #LawFedi #Crime #Restitution #FiduciaryDuty #California #NCPO

https://www.law360.com/articles/1572596

@explorergrace @idanoo @pablo

Oh, they know it's real. Certainly, their actuaries do - hence rising premiums, more houses on coasts etc being uninsurable, etc.

But yeah, hopefully they behave well now. Somehow thinking they won't.
#maximiseprofitforshareholders #fiduciaryduty #needtofixthemarket

@LaNaehForaday

Thus far, he really has not had much in the way if negative outcome.

Would love to see the reaction if a female leader tries to act this way.

#WhereIsTheTeslaBoard
#FiduciaryDuty

"[#GFANZ members, question] if climate commitments would run afoul of firms’ fiduciary duties (by steering investors away from profitable-but-polluting investments), and if they would be able to abide by the United Nations’ #climate targets."

It's time for an update on the definition of #FiduciaryDuty to include the safeguarding of the future: after all, a lot of these moneys are held by #pension funds to ensure a comfortable future when people retire.

https://grist.org/economics/vanguard-asset-managers-net-zero-esg/

"[#GFANZ members, question] if climate commitments would run afoul of firms’ fiduciary duties (by steering investors away from profitable-but-polluting investments), and if they would be able to abide by the United Nations’ #climate targets."

It's time for an update on the definition of #FiduciaryDuty to include the safeguarding of the future: after all, a lot of these moneys are held by #pension funds to ensure a comfortable future when people retire.

https://grist.org/economics/vanguard-asset-managers-net-zero-esg/