“My personal belief is that Enron stock is an incredible bargain at current prices and we will look back a couple of years from now and see the great opportunity that we currently have" -- Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay September 26th 2001

Because of the biggest bankruptcy in American history courtesy of Enron,  working Americans are taking a hard look at their company stock purchase programs.

As one former Enron employee put it "I'll never trust a company again".   While that may be a bit extreme, all companies should face the scrutiny of it's workers, but that's not happening.

Workers are told by management every day on how to work, how to act and how to talk.  Their rights, whatever they may be, have been slowly chipped away throughout the years by these corporations and their strong political ties in Washington.

The situation has been going on for years but has only recently been put in the spotlight by the Enron collapse.  For example the company I work for, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (the world's largest retailer), secretly donated money to the "Right to work" campaign in Oklahoma last year, allowed a Judge who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in Wal-Mart stock to rule on a matter that pertained to them and used an Republican Arkansas Senator to introduce legislation to help restrict access to it's property by labor organizations.

No matter what your views are on any of these issues, it only goes to point out that corporations are yielding more power than they deserve.  It's only in recent history that Corporations have been given 'individual' status by the Supreme Court (where one Justice later said he didn't believe in the decision and that is should not have become law).  In the past Corporations had to hold themselves accountable to the people (just like the Government) and the Government had the power to revoke Corporate chartership. 

Even our own founding fathers believed that Corporations should be watched and controlled just as closely as our own Government.  Now, the two seem almost indistinguishable.