[Excerpt] When corporate mergers and takeovers create massively debt-ridden new entities, with the resulting pressures to sell off assets, reduce costs (especially wages) and close marginal operations, it is the company\u27s workers and their communities who suffer. And, when corporate managers accept, and even encourage, huge levels of waste, or ignore obvious opportunities because they aren\u27t profitable enough, workers and their communities end up paying for the resulting inefficiencies and lost potential. I believe that a hallmark of the new economic era we seem to be entering will be that workers and unions will be forced to actively concern themselves with all aspects of an employer\u27s business — with the intricate details of c...