[lbo-talk] When is private property NOT?

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Jun 28 15:01:17 PDT 2005



>[lbo-talk] When is private property NOT?
>John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net
>Tue Jun 28 13:01:42 PDT 2005
<snip>
>Just a few years ago we used the threat of eminent domain to keep a
>factory open in Pittsburgh. This was only a partial success for a
>lot of reasons I won't go into, but it at least meant we had the
>option.

In order to exercise eminent domain to socialize a factory or simply use a threat of it to keep it open, workers do not need Kelo v. New London, for, in that case, eminent domain would mean the taking of a private property for public ownership. The pre-Kelo meaning of "public use" would suffice for that purpose.

Kelo doesn't make it easier for workers to benefit from eminent domain either. What blocks a public takeover of a factory and the like is the lack of money to pay "a fair market value" for it and then operate it to at least break even -- the obstacle that Kelo doesn't remove:

<blockquote>A quarter-century ago, between 1977 and 1986, steelworkers and their allies began laying the road not taken, organizing for community/worker control of the mills. They formed the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley in Youngstown and the TriState Conference on Steel in Pittsburgh. In Youngstown, according to the activist and attorney Staughton Lynd, who argued in court for a community property right to industrial sites marked for abandonment, people were at the beginning of a learning curve, "and the USWA was to the right of the Catholic Church and the [conservative] Youngstown Vindicator...actively bad-talking what we were trying to do." In Pittsburgh, according to Charlie McCollester and Mike Stout, who were leaders in the TriState Conference, organizing communities around the possibilities of eminent domain, the USWA International softened its attitude but didn't make their work a priority. It gave lip service to universal healthcare--a natural issue, considering that health insurance is a major operating cost, with each active steelworker producing to support health and pension benefits of four retirees--but retreated from the demand along with the rest of organized labor in 1992-93. It has experimented piecemeal with employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, with varying degrees of success (for an interesting assessment of the record in Ohio, see The Real World of Employee Ownership, by John Logue and Jacquelyn Yates). But there has been no comprehensive vision, no long-range coordinated strategy.

Lynd points out that eminent domain efforts ground to a halt in the mid-1980s because while communities could demonstrate a public interest, they could never meet the other requirement of the law: to pay a fair market price for the property. But there is an argument, he says, for not paying compensation. "One can calculate that the corporation owes so many kinds of debt to so many people and entities that you're doing it a favor by taking the plant for free. In seeking to acquire a plant without compensation, the taker of course expresses, on other grounds, the deep feeling of workers that those are 'our' jobs, in 'our' plant, which the company never owned outright in the first place." Of course, Lynd cautions, "this strategy would only get you to second base," because operating capital would still be necessary. (Joann Wypijewski, "Whose Steel?" <http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020715&s=wypijewski>, 15 Jul. 2002]</blockquote>
>
>preserve the principle of eminent domain

The best way to preserve the principle of eminent domain is to make people love it enough to fight for it. Kelo does the opposite. -- Yoshie

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