Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. CEO-As-Hero on CBS (Labor Notes)Excellent piece from Labor Notes. The best bit is about how the CEO blathers on this "reality" TV show about his commitment to safety, while in reality at this union-free company, "workers are three times more likely to get killed on the job than firemen, and 60 percent more likely than police officers," and one worker "was cut in half two years ago by a malfunctioning hydraulic arm on a garbage truck." Get out the pitchforks.Reality TV Gives Corporate America a Big Wet Kiss by Mark Brenner | Thu, 02/11/2010 - 4:26pm Want to know what chutzpah means? Look no further than TV's newest reality show, "Undercover Boss." Apparently the titans of industry aren't satisfied that they burned our economy to the ground and got nothing but a slap on the wrist from Washington. They want us to like them, too. "Undercover Boss," which debuted on CBS after Sunday's Superbowl, is a corporate charm offensive. For one week the CEO of a major company goes "undercover," performing a variety of jobs at the bottom of the corporate ladder. CEO-AS-HERO Over the course of an hour we discover that the CEO is really a nice guy. We see just how ready top brass is to reward hard-working employees and to clean up problems on the front lines. It's a blast from the Reagan-era past: CEO-as-hero. The first episode features Larry O'Donnell, president of Waste Management, the nation's largest trash and recycling company. In fine superhero tradition, O'Donnell adopts an alter ego (that sounds strangely like a porn star)—Randy Lawrence—and spends a day each doing various jobs at Waste Management: sorting recycling; picking up trash at a landfill; cleaning port-a-potties in an amusement park; shadowing the manager of a landfill; and riding shotgun on a residential garbage truck route. Read the rest of the article. Labels: Labor Notes, Larry O'Donnell, Mark Brenner, Undercover Boss, unions, Waste Management Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). A Financial Meltdown 30 Years in the MakingThis is from the fantastic Labor Notes:By Mark Brenner They break it, and we're stuck with the bill. In less than two weeks Congress lined up $700 billion to bail out the nation's bankers, leaving millions of homeowners on the sidelines, facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, or both. Somehow the argument that "it may seem unfair, but it was necessary" just doesn't cut it. It’s no wonder that the most popular sign at labor's September 25 protest on Wall Street said "Bailout = Bullsh*t." For union members, it sounds all too familiar. Management's perennial argument for concessions—take the cuts or say goodbye to your job—hasn't exactly saved U.S. manufacturing, whether in the 1980s or today. In past recessions, it's been each union for itself, and the companies always came out ahead. Corporations are already using the deep hole they've dug for themselves to demand even more from workers. Teamsters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune bucked the trend, refusing mid-contract concessions on September 10 and prompting newspaper executives to suspend a $9 million payment to their creditors. "The company is asking us to slash our own throats to save their profits," said Kevin Bialon, a 27-year pressman who served on the bargaining committee. "Management made the mistakes and they want workers to pay for it." Read the rest of the article. Labels: bailout, financial crisis, Labor Notes, Mark Brenner Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
