Oregon Public Employees & Corrections Corporation of America

By: Robert F. Abbott, author of Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? the book that explains the connection between the retirement income of the middle class and the profits of big business

Thursday, February 13, 2014

When Corrections Corporation of America (symbol CXW) announced its fourth quarter and full year 2013 results yesterday, Oregon's public employees were among those with a stake in the news.

The Oregon Public Employees’ Retirement Fund owned 24,654 shares of Corrections Corporation, at the close of trading on September 30, 2013, according to nasdaq.com data.

The company is the USA's largest private prison provider, and describes itself this way in its earnings news release:

"We currently own or control 53 correctional and detention facilities and manage 13 additional facilities owned by our government partners, with a total design capacity of approximately 86,000 beds in 20 states and the District of Columbia. CCA specializes in owning, operating and managing prisons and other correctional facilities and providing inmate residential, community re-entry and prisoner transportation services for governmental agencies."

Last year, Corrections Corporation converted itself into a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT).

The Bigger Picture:

Will Profits from Big Macs Add to Your Retirement Income?

In 1948, the McDonald brothers redesigned and remodelled their drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Taking inspiration from Henry Ford's assembly-line, they created the fast food revolution, with the quick service and low prices we now take for granted.

In that same year, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board ruled unions could include pension issues in contract negotiations. That ignited a massive expansion of pension plans.

In the 1950s, pension funds started buying stocks, rather than just bonds or their equivalents; in addition mutual funds came of age. With these two developments working, middle class people became owners of big business. At first, their stakes were modest, but steadily growing.

And in just a few decades, they gained controlling interests in many large corporations through their funds. Management guru Peter Drucker has called it, "...one of the most startling power shifts in economic history."

Now, working people reap the benefits of those investments, collecting much of the profit distributed by McDonald's and other big corporations.

Discover how the pieces fit together. In Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? - a new booklet -(about 25-pages), you will:

• learn more about the McDonald's transformation and its implications for the future
  
• find out how McDonald's makes its profits (and it involves more than selling Quarter Pounders)
  
• meet some of the working people who get McDonald's profits through their pension and mutual funds
  
• find out how low wages became embedded in the fast food industry
  
• hear accusations from critics of McDonald's wages, and
  
• learn who has the ultimate say on fast food wages (the answer may surprise you).

You may not be among the owners of McDonald's. But if you belong to any pension plan, or contribute to a mutual fund or whole life insurance policy, you likely own pieces of some big corporations.

More importantly, though, your retirement income will be bigger and grow more dependably than you would otherwise expect.

Big Macs & Our Pensions: Who Gets McDonald's Profits? is now available at Amazon.com