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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 23, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Profit system: hazardous to your health

By Deirdre Griswold

Television ads show a world where big corporations set the trend in sensitivity, innovation and a forward-looking spirit. Whether the field is chemicals or computers or medicine, the message is pro gress for people—that’s the corporate way.

In this never-never land, unions aren’t even mentioned and any government or community intervention is considered suffocating to good order and bold ideas. Employees come from diverse backgrounds and love their jobs, where they are appreciated and rewarded—not just financially, but by knowing they are changing the world for the better.

Yes, big companies are freer to do what they want to these days, and what are they doing? Well, Ochs Industries in Houston just fired 15 workers because they spoke to each other in languages other than English. The computer-parts manufacturer, a supplier to Compaq, made all 200 full- and part-time workers sign a statement that they would speak only English during working hours. Those who refused were fired or quit. While the company has had to abandon this policy because of the "negative reaction," it‘s not hiring the 15 back.

Then there are the hospitals around this country—29 last year—that have stopped providing contraceptive counseling, abortions, tubal ligations, vasectomies, in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. Why? Because although they are secular, they have merged with Catholic hospitals for financial reasons and have agreed to follow Catholic doctrine as it applies to medical procedures. "It makes business sense," said Anthony Marmo, chief executive of Kingston Hospital in New York.

So businesses, whether they’re hospitals or computer parts makers, are focusing on doing what comes naturally: making money. The workers and the public be damned. The process of making profit under capitalism doesn’t drive society in a progressive direction, as the ads imply. Quite the opposite. It streng th ens racism, sexism, gay oppression and reaction in general. The struggle for progress and enlightenment is the struggle against big business.

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