r i ' I H U' »'i-; munities really having a say in what's going on. What responsibility does a corporation have to the community in which it exists? I think that's the crucial question that faces us for the '80s. Our needs are real basic. We need shelter, we need food, we need clothing, we need education, we need "quality of life." They need profits. Sometimes these can work hand in hand, but I think we're seeing too many cases where they don't. That private motivation for accumulating capital interferes with the needs of working people and the community. RAIN: What does it mean, in terms of community self-reliance, to have substantial amounts of our capital tied up outside the region? In particular, what does it mean for us that Georgia-Pacific and LoMisiana-Pacific control Northwest lumber? Or that the Fred Meyer department store chain may be sold to a New York firm? Baugh: A lot of people are starting to ask questions. For instance, does it make sense for the Port Commission to be building a K-Mart in The Dalles? The local people said, "Wait a minute! This is going to destroy the downtown area! Is this the way to spend our public funds that we pay for with our taxes?" It went to a referendum and was defeated, but this is one of the public uses of capital that has happened, sometimes to the detriment of existing businesses and facilities in the community. In the forest industry, the big companies have chosen to export 20 percent of everything they cut. Now sawmilling creates 2V2 times more jobs than log exports. Plywood manufacture creates four times as many jobs as log exports. I sit here and look around and I see all these wood products mills closing, people thrown out of work, causing tremendous human suffering and social consequences, and it costs the state money—for the people who end up in jail because they turn to crime, for the people who become mentally ill and end up in hospitals for the drug abuse, the child abuse. We pay for that, but we don't have that in the social ledger. That's a question that's got to be raised. Weyerhauser and Georgia-Pacific, they'll export the product, the log, then close a mill here and say "gee, we don't have any timber supply." Well, to me it's a question of how you utilize the existing supply as much as how much supply you have in the long run. They're 58 choosing to do that. What do they do with the profits? They don't spend them here. They've reinvested the profits they made here in plants overseas and in the South . . . Weyerhauser is not just "the tree growing people," they're "the tree growing people all over the world." They've got property in Indonesia, in South America, it's just incredible how much stuff they own. Same with Georgia-Pacific, Lousiana-Pacific and the others. Why is U.S. Steel closing all its mills? Last year when they closed 14 mills, 12 of them were making money. But 50 percent of their capital and an increasing proportion is now invested in petrochemicals, because they make a 25 percent return every year. Monopoly. Monopoly with diversification. And so what do they do? They drain the assets off one side of the corporation, or refuse to reinvest in a needed technology to keep up, and invest it somewhere else where they're going to make a bigger buck. If I was a business manager for the United States I'd say that's bad investment policy for the long run, the long- range objective, which should be the viability of our society and economy as a whole. And that's bad investment policy. But we don't have a business manager for the United States, and the government refuses to take the role. I think it's a perfectly legitimate question for us to say: "How should we be spending our money?" Should the state spend its pension fund to buy Fred Meyer? Real good question. Or should it go into securing mortages for low- and moderate- income people so they can build homes? Or should it be going into transportation? Or the development of alternative energy? Real legitimate questions. There's a crisis of capital; there isn't enough, and the government and pension funds are major sources for the capital that exists. The question is, how do you spend it? RAIN: What happens when plants close? What is the real impact on society? Baugh: Who put in the sewers and paid for them, for a major manufacturing facility in the community? We did, the taxpayers. The company didn't. They're not going to pay off the property taxes. Who's going to pay off those general obligation bonds after they're gone, and they're not even there as a tax base to help pay for it? We still are, we're still held liable. I think that's where the role of the trade union comes in. Two aspects. One is that you represent the people in those mills, so from that perspective you work through collective bargaining, etc., to protect the interests of the people you represent. But the trade union movement represents people who work, not just people who are organized. It's that simple. I think we're in a period right now where we're going through a tremendous transition, in society, in the economy, and in the trade union movement. It has a lot to do with demographics. The people who came back from the Second World War, our parents, are approaching retirement. We're like the big pig in the middle of the snake coming through the system, people our age, between 25 and 35, and you're beginning to see changes taking place as people from that group move up and take leadership roles. In the trade union movement, there's all kinds of new people that are becoming officers. Just look in the state of Oregon, all new faces, new ideas. They're going to be making their own way. I guess I'm a reflection of that. Tm 32, and I've just been elected officer of a state-wide organization, AFL-CIO. We grew up in the '60s and '70s like everyone else around here, and questioned the system, and now we're it! We are the system in many respects! What do you do with it? How does it work? Does it meet our needs? And these same kinds of people are also starting to take a longer look ahead. They may be buying homes, may be starting to raise families, just in that age where all of a sudden my job is becoming what I'm going to do for the next 10 years, it's my security and stability. How stable am I for the coming years, and how do I ensure that? Do I like what the government is doing? Do I like our economic policy? And if I don't, what do I think we ought to do? 'Cause it's going to affect me. I think we're going to move back from the "me-generation" to the "we-genera- tion" in the next few years. I sure hope so. More and more people are raising those questions: who has the right to invest capital? And for what? We have needs to meet in this society, and I think we should approach it rationally, and cautiously, and take long, hard looks and make good decisions, and we don't do that. We have the most irrational system for making decisions in this
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