Hostess to Pay $1.75 Million in Executive Bonuses After Blaming Unions for Bankruptcy (thinkprogress.org)
Black Friday’s Labor Strike May Hit Wal-Mart Where It Hurts (AOL DailyFinance)

It can be quite bracing to see all the attention paid by most Americans to the Hostess bankruptcy compared to, say, the recent spate of bombings in the Middle East. Perhaps it would be more tolerable if these people were focused on the political issues surrounding the Hostess bankruptcy, but let’s face it; most people are just worried about how to satiate their Twinkie fix. Still, coming on the heels of such a heated election, especially in my relatively highly-unionized part of the country, it’s hard not to wonder what recent developments at both Hostess and Walmart will mean for the future of the working and middle classes. Besides, Twinkies have lard in them, as do nearly everything Hostess sells, so the loss of their food from supermarket shelves is no big deal for a vegetarian like me.

The story of the Hostess bankruptcy itself, tragic as it is, is unfortunately not as uncommon as most of us would like to think. What’s been most galling to me. and many others, has been the media’s treatment of the particulars surrounding Hostess and how they came to this point. Too many media outlets are towing the Hostess company line and saying that workers “caused” this bankruptcy, leaving out key details like the concessions Hostess workers had already made over the past ten years, the bad business decisions that a string of Hostess executives made, and how those executives kept giving themselves pay raises. Performing poorly at your job, then turning around and giving yourself a raise while expecting those who work under you to pay the price for your mismanagement should be either the definition of stupidity or chutzpah; instead, it’s business as usual here in America, and too many people laud this as an example of how business should be conducted here. With so many of our news outlets owned by huge media companies, they have a rooting interest in keeping those details out of their consumers’ ears in case they too have to do something similar when their executives mess up, so most of the talking heads they put on radio and television either put all the blame for the Hostess bankruptcy at the feet of  workers, or else they just don’t mention the story except in passing (if at all).

It shocks me how surprised some people get when they hear Hostess workers say that they’d rather not work at all than continue to give in to the cuts that executives were demanding from them. This was hardly the first time in recent memory they’d been asked for cuts while executives gave themselves raises; how could workers be expected to believe that there would ever be an end to this cycle? If not for national minimum wage laws, could they have expected any other possible end to how much would be asked of them? This is not a problem Hostess workers alone have endured; the same pattern of executive pay increasing and worker pay being cut, regardless of business activity or broader financial and economic conditions, has been endemic across this country for far too long now.Given the stories that came out about his business career during his presidential campaign, it’s hard not to believe that Mitt Romney would have done the exact same thing to America as a whole had he been elected president, and the fact that nearly sixty million people still voted for him is positively spine-chilling.

There is no greater example of this phenomenon than what Walmart has been doing for far too long now. I have boycotted Walmart my entire life with two exceptions, one of which was a bona fide emergency that would have otherwise left me stranded in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. I’d boycott them just for what my friends who’ve worked there have had to suffer through, but their lack of respect for their wage slaves — let’s not give into the corporate nonsense of referring to them as “associates” — and the “race to the bottom” effect their stores have in their communities, and the country as a whole, is a cancer on this country, if not the world. I’ve witnessed it firsthand since Walmart came to Toledo and installed one of their gaudy big box stores a mile south of my house; all those stories you hear about how the areas surrounding a Walmart start to wither and decay are at least true here in my neck of the woods.

I wish I could say that I had great hopes for this current strike planned for Black Friday. I think it should be called Black Thursday now with so many stores, like Walmart, opening on Thanksgiving evening. I’ve never been a fan of the holiday season to start with, except for the puerile pleasure of gift-exchanging (obligatory link to my Amazon.com wishlist and request that you buy me stuff), but this past September when I saw Christmas advertisements in a Kroger circular — literally while it was still summer — I just about flipped my lid. Regardless, given how we are still coming out of a very difficult financial patch and jobs are still relatively scarce, I doubt that this current Walmart protest will amount to too much. Still, this is the first time that workers at different Walmarts have hit the picket line for a common cause, so in that respect it is already a success. Just like misanthropic CEOs want to keep chipping away at worker wages and benefits and rights bit by bit, conscientious Americans have to keep chipping away until real reform can come.

Even if Romney lost this month’s election, though, the Democratic Party is nearly as bad as Republicans when it comes to being in bed with big business. As with too many things, President Obama talks a good game when it comes to workers’ rights, but his track record is just a notch above abysmal. If he wants to help then he can push for restoring union rights in the next congress, and tie tax incentives for small businesses with paying employees a living wage. We need to rid this country of this notion that “success” is measured simply by how much you have, instead of the good you do for others. I am beyond nauseous at this idea that those of us who advocate for the rich to pay a fairer share of taxes are somehow “jealous” of the “success” they’ve had by lowering wages and quality just so they can pocket a few extra bucks. If that is success, then I hope I’m a miserable failure for the rest of my life.

Business clearly will not regulate itself — how much better would we have been as a country if companies had invested their money in raising wages and improving product quality instead of throwing it at losing Republican candidates this year? — and if government will not step up, then it is up to us as private citizens to do what we can. Perhaps what these super-rich executives are doing isn’t illegal, but it’s certainly immoral, and we need to do a better job of educating the public about the horrible effects these business practices have on those who aren’t at the very top. A more centralized source of information on which companies pay their workers poorly, or intimidate them when they try to unionize, or don’t respect diversity, would be a good start, as would more emphasis on how the minimum wage has failed to keep up with the cost of living. These are not easy things — I admit I could do a lot more in terms of shopping locally and not giving questionable companies my business — but if we don’t start somewhere then more and more of us will find ourselves in the position of workers at Hostess and Walmart who’d rather not have a job than work for companies that systematically disempower workers.