If you work for a company in America, you probably are not living in a democracy. If you work for a company, chances are you are living in a dictatorship. In all states but Montana, employment is at will. This means that you can be fired any time for any reason or no reason. You have no protection unless you have a union or are a civil service employee. However, recently, even civil service employees were fired in mass.

No one cares if you lose your house or apartment, go bankrupt, lose your health care, or starve to death. Thus, if you are an employee, there is a huge chance that you are not living in a democracy unless your employer is an exception.

The laws are made in favor of employers because they are the major donors to Congress. They decide who they want to keep and who they want to get rid of. In fact, certain populations are beneficial to them such as ex-convicts, veterans, disabled, minorities, poverty victims, and long term unemployed because companies can join government programs such as WOTC, that will pay all or most of the salaries for these groups. Therefore, if you are not in one of these groups or your benefits run out, you are in danger of losing your job or not even being hired in the first place. If you are not on the government’s payroll and someone comes along who is qualified to be on it, your job may be in danger and you may be harassed to resign or fired for any made-up reason, even criminal accusations.

Companies want to make money and not pay employees or pay them as little as possible. Greed is their creed and religion. Therefore, in this environment, a college graduate is less valuable to them than a convicted criminal.

Most companies use arbitration for employee disputes and they pay the arbitrator, so that is intimidating to former employees that have been fired unjustly or have been so harassed that they were forced to quit. However, what most people do not know is that these companies do not want to pay the arbitration fee of around $30,999 dollars and take the chance that the case will go against them and will owe more in a judgment. So, if you file a demand for arbitration, your case will probably be settled internally before going to formal arbitration, and you will get a settlement quickly.

Congress must act to take power away from the corporations and put it in the workers’ hands because there are more workers than employers and the majority is supposed to rule in a democracy.

Laws should be enacted to stop large corporate donations to congress and give the right of employees to sue in a court of law. Until this happens, we are not living in a democracy and probably have never been.

All workers should have representation and protection from a union, including office and retail employees. Think about this as we celebrate 250 years of America this July 4th.