Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is running as the multimillionaire investor who can get America back to work.
Yet it’s hard to see how his background helps him relate to lower and middle class Americans living paycheck to paycheck. His net worth is estimated at as much as $250 million.
But we aren’t here to judge a man by his checkbook. Instead, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite things Romney has said and done relating to labor. Some of them were during his 15 years as the cief executive of Bain Capital, the investment company he cofounded. There he established a business model where investment firms can buy existing companies and then try to flip them for a profit.
1 The Washington Post reported companies Bain Capital owned during Romney’s ten- ure “were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components.” Not exactly a good record of job creation.
2 Romney’s Bain Capital didn’t always ship off jobs to other countries. Sometimes it simply destroys jobs, leading to massive layoffs in its newly acquired companies. For example, Bain-owned electronics company DDi Corp. filed bankruptcy in 2003, but not before Bain sold shares. The company went bust but Bain made a tidy $85.5 mil- lion profit from stock, plus $10 million in management fees.
3 Clearly Romney is more than willing to destroy or outsource jobs when there’s profit for shareholders. More than that he enjoys it, saying, “I like being able to fire people” when their job performance displeases him. But for all his merry-go-lucky firing, Romney hasn’t lost his respect for work. He believes everyone should work if they want to receive any form of state help, such as feeding a young child. He was quoted saying, “even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work.” Why, you ask, can’t that mother receive state help to raise her child regardless of her employment status? Because Romney wants everyone to have the “dignity of work.”
4. The Huffington Post reported at a speech in Michigan, Romney claimed President Barack Obama” takeshis marching orders” from unions. Interesting idea coming from a man whose campaign receives millions in donations and support from banks such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, as well asshady millionaires such as casino owner Sheldon Adelson.
5. Romney, notorious for flip-flopping, said in the same speech that unions “too often contributed to disappearing companies, disappearing industries, and disappearing jobs.” However, Romney has also been quoted saying, “labor unions play an important role in our society.” But he did also say he is against union bosses and supports right-to-work legislation decimating union membership. To summarize, Romney is for unions, except for when he’s against them.
