EMINENT DOMAIN: UNUSED TOOL FOR AMERICAN LABOR?

In: Working USA: the journal of labor & society, Band 10, Heft 2, S. 193-208

Abstract

The deindustrialization of America with the concomitant loss of decent paying jobs, the rise of unemployment, and the increasing poverty among the working class requires a novel response. The challenges of "free trade," globalization and international competition and technological change are all threatening the viability of the labor movement in the U.S. The use of eminent domain offers a meaningful tool that can be implemented to counter this trend. Eminent domain has been legally used and constitutionally sanctioned for community, infrastructure, and development purposes. The time is ripe for a broad‐based coalition of legislatures, community interests, labor unions, and social movements to promote the use of eminent domain to expropriate with compensation enterprises in danger of being abandoned and moved offshore by their owners. Decisions by the owners of enterprises have repercussions and societal externalities that legitimize the rights to regulate them by way of eminent domain on behalf of the public interest. Workers in cooperatives in both the U.S. and throughout the world have shown that they can run factories and enterprises without owners and managers if given the necessary financial and legal wherewithal.