If you're still blaming unions for the Hostess collapse,
you're either fucking stupid or you're a liar.
John Nichols lays out the facts. And Travis Waldron notes that Hostess asked a bankrupcy judge yesterday to approve a plan that would "pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of its executives" - even as it demonized its unions as the cause of its destruction.
Michael Furtado in ThinkProgress comments:Under the plan, bonuses ranging from $7,400 to $130,500 will be paid to 19 executives. The company argues the bonuses are below market rates for such payments. Really - what is the "market rate" for bonus payments to executives of bankrupt corporations? I'd argue that there should be no 'bonus' for job performance that contributed to the corporation going bankrupt and the shareholders and employees being left holding the bag.
So much for the alleged "smarts" it takes to be put in charge of a big corporation, the excuse I've heard from neocon and lolbertarian dupes and shills for years.
According to John Carney of CNBC, "The forces most responsible" for Hostess's liquidation "were two hedge funds that control hundreds of millions of Hostess debt and which have finally decided they won't squeeze any more filling into the Twinkie." David A. Kaplan at Fortune magazine also blames private equity funds. I can't really begrudge Kaplan his swipe at the Teamsters union, too, given their history of corruption and violence, but ... again, power differentials. No American union today has a shadow of the power it had 30 or 40 years ago.
As Kaplan writes, Hostess had been in and out of bankrupcy for years. Its previous CEO, Nabisco veteran Brian Driscoll, took over during one such crisis in June 2010, promising to turn the company around. He "departed suddenly and without explanation" in March 2012, after Hostess asked the bankrupcy judge to guarantee hima base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and "long-term incentive" compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he'd still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.
This infuriated Ken Hall, secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters. Note also that Hostess had "temporarily" ceased contributing to union pensions in August, which breached a collective-bargaining agreement (and is a common way executives have enriched themselves at workers' expense while crying that unions are "squeezing" them). So much for what Hall calls Driscoll's "happy talk" about "shared sacrifice." He called up Driscoll and said, "If you don't withdraw this motion, these negotiations are done."
A few weeks later, Hostess withdrew the motion, and Driscoll made way for Greg Rayburn, a man with "29 years’ experience gutting companies, and 10 months experience running a company that, in theory, produces food." Hostess had hired Rayburn as a consultant only nine days before. He became Hostess's sixth, and final, CEO in a decade.
I agree with Laura Clawson and with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: The Hostess story is a microcosm of what’s wrong with this country in general. As Clawson says, chiding middle-class "liberals" who mindlessly repeat anti-labor shibboleths: "You don't get to complain about income inequality and the obscene wealth of the top 1 percent and say that it's unreasonable for industrial bakers and truck drivers to send their kids to college and retire before their bodies are completely broken."
Here's the scenario again, playing out on a smaller scale in my region:A financially-struggling Boston-based gourmet pizza parlor chain has closed most of its restaurants and let go 140 workers as it seeks a cash infusion to stave off a permanent shutdown.
A trustee overseeing Upper Crust’s bankruptcy said at a hearing Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court that the chain closed restaurants [on Nov. 13] because it had just four days of supplies and only $14,000 in cash after company executives paid themselves a month’s salary in advance.
A Globe article from a week before said that Upper Crust owes its employees about $850,000 in back wages and damages, plus $37,000 in civil penalties (and, I'll note, at least $3.4 million to creditors). The company exploited its "steady pipeline of immigrant workers" from one impoverished Brazilian village, repeatedly violating minimum-wage and overtime laws, then retaliated against them for reporting the abuses to the Department of Labor.
Laura Clawson's observation is why I support Wal-Mart strikers and you should too.As these sorts of jobs increasingly dominate our workforce, we’ll be forced more and more to ask not just how many jobs the economy is adding, but what kind of jobs. If Walmart and its ilk supply most of them, families will have little money to rely on, few benefits and chaotic work schedules.
On the other hand, raising retail wages would stimulate the economy, giving employees more money to spend and necessitating the most negligible of price increases.
And, as one striker says, "If you leave this job, you’re going to face retaliation in some form somewhere else… If you change Walmart, and you change corporate America, it can really better a lot of people’s lives.”
Mall-Wart is of course fighting back against the planned strike for this Friday, "Black Friday," so called because the holiday shopping that happens on that day often puts retailers "in the black" financially. They know that protests and strikes lead to wage increases, and they're nervous.
Their tactics have included filing an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union to get the strike shut down, opening at 8 p.m. on "Black Thursday Night" (Thanksgiving), and calling the cops to have a union worker and former Mall-Wart employer detained.
Unions such as United Auto Workers have expressed solidarity with Wal-Mart workers. If you'd like to as well, you can visit Corporate Action Network's Wal-Mart page and find a way to help.
ETA: CNN confronts a Mall-Wart mouthpiece over what have been called the "disturbingly low wages" of the company's workers. Note that he mentions only "full-time" employees, who he claims average $12.40 per hour. The majority of their workers are part-time; per PBS, they average $6.00 to $7.50 per hour.
Two rays of hope: Mike Hummell, a receiving clerk at Hostess and Bakers' union member, writes at DailyKos that mediation is "proof we are winning. As our story gets out it seems to become almost impossible to defend the company. The more people know our story, the more we are winning. This has gotten out of the boards and CEO Rayburn's control. We are playing on our home court now."
Also, check out the story of Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, who is divesting his entire company into the hands of his 209 employees. “It’s the only business decision that I could make. I don’t think there’s anybody worthy to run this company but the people who built it. I have employees with me right now that have been with me for 30 years. They just were committed to staying with me now and they’re going to own the company.”
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1925418.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
John Nichols lays out the facts. And Travis Waldron notes that Hostess asked a bankrupcy judge yesterday to approve a plan that would "pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of its executives" - even as it demonized its unions as the cause of its destruction.
Michael Furtado in ThinkProgress comments:Under the plan, bonuses ranging from $7,400 to $130,500 will be paid to 19 executives. The company argues the bonuses are below market rates for such payments. Really - what is the "market rate" for bonus payments to executives of bankrupt corporations? I'd argue that there should be no 'bonus' for job performance that contributed to the corporation going bankrupt and the shareholders and employees being left holding the bag.
So much for the alleged "smarts" it takes to be put in charge of a big corporation, the excuse I've heard from neocon and lolbertarian dupes and shills for years.
According to John Carney of CNBC, "The forces most responsible" for Hostess's liquidation "were two hedge funds that control hundreds of millions of Hostess debt and which have finally decided they won't squeeze any more filling into the Twinkie." David A. Kaplan at Fortune magazine also blames private equity funds. I can't really begrudge Kaplan his swipe at the Teamsters union, too, given their history of corruption and violence, but ... again, power differentials. No American union today has a shadow of the power it had 30 or 40 years ago.
As Kaplan writes, Hostess had been in and out of bankrupcy for years. Its previous CEO, Nabisco veteran Brian Driscoll, took over during one such crisis in June 2010, promising to turn the company around. He "departed suddenly and without explanation" in March 2012, after Hostess asked the bankrupcy judge to guarantee hima base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and "long-term incentive" compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he'd still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.
This infuriated Ken Hall, secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters. Note also that Hostess had "temporarily" ceased contributing to union pensions in August, which breached a collective-bargaining agreement (and is a common way executives have enriched themselves at workers' expense while crying that unions are "squeezing" them). So much for what Hall calls Driscoll's "happy talk" about "shared sacrifice." He called up Driscoll and said, "If you don't withdraw this motion, these negotiations are done."
A few weeks later, Hostess withdrew the motion, and Driscoll made way for Greg Rayburn, a man with "29 years’ experience gutting companies, and 10 months experience running a company that, in theory, produces food." Hostess had hired Rayburn as a consultant only nine days before. He became Hostess's sixth, and final, CEO in a decade.
I agree with Laura Clawson and with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: The Hostess story is a microcosm of what’s wrong with this country in general. As Clawson says, chiding middle-class "liberals" who mindlessly repeat anti-labor shibboleths: "You don't get to complain about income inequality and the obscene wealth of the top 1 percent and say that it's unreasonable for industrial bakers and truck drivers to send their kids to college and retire before their bodies are completely broken."
Here's the scenario again, playing out on a smaller scale in my region:A financially-struggling Boston-based gourmet pizza parlor chain has closed most of its restaurants and let go 140 workers as it seeks a cash infusion to stave off a permanent shutdown.
A trustee overseeing Upper Crust’s bankruptcy said at a hearing Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court that the chain closed restaurants [on Nov. 13] because it had just four days of supplies and only $14,000 in cash after company executives paid themselves a month’s salary in advance.
A Globe article from a week before said that Upper Crust owes its employees about $850,000 in back wages and damages, plus $37,000 in civil penalties (and, I'll note, at least $3.4 million to creditors). The company exploited its "steady pipeline of immigrant workers" from one impoverished Brazilian village, repeatedly violating minimum-wage and overtime laws, then retaliated against them for reporting the abuses to the Department of Labor.
Laura Clawson's observation is why I support Wal-Mart strikers and you should too.As these sorts of jobs increasingly dominate our workforce, we’ll be forced more and more to ask not just how many jobs the economy is adding, but what kind of jobs. If Walmart and its ilk supply most of them, families will have little money to rely on, few benefits and chaotic work schedules.
On the other hand, raising retail wages would stimulate the economy, giving employees more money to spend and necessitating the most negligible of price increases.
And, as one striker says, "If you leave this job, you’re going to face retaliation in some form somewhere else… If you change Walmart, and you change corporate America, it can really better a lot of people’s lives.”
Mall-Wart is of course fighting back against the planned strike for this Friday, "Black Friday," so called because the holiday shopping that happens on that day often puts retailers "in the black" financially. They know that protests and strikes lead to wage increases, and they're nervous.
Their tactics have included filing an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union to get the strike shut down, opening at 8 p.m. on "Black Thursday Night" (Thanksgiving), and calling the cops to have a union worker and former Mall-Wart employer detained.
Unions such as United Auto Workers have expressed solidarity with Wal-Mart workers. If you'd like to as well, you can visit Corporate Action Network's Wal-Mart page and find a way to help.
ETA: CNN confronts a Mall-Wart mouthpiece over what have been called the "disturbingly low wages" of the company's workers. Note that he mentions only "full-time" employees, who he claims average $12.40 per hour. The majority of their workers are part-time; per PBS, they average $6.00 to $7.50 per hour.
Two rays of hope: Mike Hummell, a receiving clerk at Hostess and Bakers' union member, writes at DailyKos that mediation is "proof we are winning. As our story gets out it seems to become almost impossible to defend the company. The more people know our story, the more we are winning. This has gotten out of the boards and CEO Rayburn's control. We are playing on our home court now."
Also, check out the story of Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, who is divesting his entire company into the hands of his 209 employees. “It’s the only business decision that I could make. I don’t think there’s anybody worthy to run this company but the people who built it. I have employees with me right now that have been with me for 30 years. They just were committed to staying with me now and they’re going to own the company.”
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1925418.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.