The story of the financial collapse of Enron - a collapse that cost 5,000 workers their jobs and all Enron's workers all their pension money - is still unfolding.

Investigations abound, reporters are digging, lawmakers are subpoenaing officials and even the GOP-run Justice Department has been prodded into action. More - much more - is likely to emerge in coming weeks.

But even at this early date, we can draw preliminary lessons from the biggest U.S. corporate bankruptcy ever:

Good laws are worthless if they're not enforced. Congress approved the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act in 1974, after steel companies fired longtime workers six months before they became pension-eligible. ERISA is supposed to prevent workers from losing their pensions, and their shirts, in corporate collapses.

But corporate fraud cost Enron's workers their pensions. Company executives lied about its financial status, shifted its billions in losses to dummy corporations they controlled, bid up its stock price by citing the remaining "paper" profits, got out before the crash--and prevented workers from doing the same.

They also lied about Enron's finances to their workers. Their lies persuaded workers to invest their pensions in Enron.When Enron stock crashed from $90 a share to 90 cents (or less), their pensions were worthless.

Where were the securities regulators? Looking the other way. Enron's auditors conspired with the company executives on the financial fraud. Regulatory agencies did nothing.

Political influence-peddling pays off. How did Enron get so big--and its crash so damaging? One way: Buying politicians.

Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, who walked away with $40 million in stock sale profits alone, was the biggest corporate contributor to GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush's corporate-financed primary campaign. Enron and Lay each anted up $100,000 for Bush's high-flying inaugural festivities a year ago.

What did Enron buy with millions in campaign contributions to Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, many other GOPers and several Democrats? Access. Influence. Closed-door deals.Favorable decisions deregulating its energy business. Favorable tax treatment through a Gramm amendment.

Workers can't match corporate political bribes. Enron's payola is a great argument for campaign finance reform.

Deregulation helps the big boys and hurts the rest of us. Enron is only the latest example of how pro-big business deregulation helps the rich and hurts the rest.

Ask the Teamsters about the tired drivers and cutthroat competition trucking deregulation produced. Ask airline workers about the financially wobbly carriers and about Frank Lorenzo, who flew in the wake of airline deregulation.

Ask Californians about who benefited from their energy crisis last year: Enron, among others. Ask IBEW who benefits - executives - and who gets hurt--workers and consumers - from electricity deregulation, which Enron pushes.

The solution will not be quick, or equitable. Enron workers and stockholders - including workers' pension funds nationwide - now have to slog their way through the courts to try to recoup some of their losses. That may take years, and they may not get anything.

Meanwhile, Lay and other Enron honchos walk away with their ill-gotten gains. And when was the last time you saw a corporate bigwig go to jail for financial fraud?

This will happen again. Unless the widespread systemic failures the Enron collapse exposes are fixed - by tougher enforcement, tighter regulation, elimination of money in politics, quick, huge fines for corporate wrongdoers and jail for crooked executives - we will see Enron again and again and again.

How to stop it? That's a good question. Labor has never challenged the basic premises of the corporate and political systems, but argued workers must get their fair share of the profits and that political action protects their rights.

But Enron raises, again, questions labor should seriously consider: Are the systems rigged? Will their very natures pro-duce Enrons? If so, how should we change them? Should we - not literally - blow them up? And if so, what should replace them?

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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