HOSTESS - an American nutrition icon - is trying to slide out from under its labor contracts and its pension obligations to its workers. This is becoming a familiar American story, isn't it? (Once G.M. gets to do it, everyone should be able to, right?) A company neglects to provide the pension program it promised years ago and now finds the time has come to make good --- and it can't.
I suspect that saving 125 million as HOSTESS hopes to do in cutting pension obligations/contributions at this point, will mean excellent bonuses for the management class, which is to say, the pigs sitting around the table with the neighborhood farmers on Animal Farm.
Most of this pension business was a self-inflicted wound by the management of these corporations. It began a generation or two ago when the responsibility to develop an adequate program was shirked. I believe the business class refers to this as "kicking the can down the road."
Someone's cans should be kicked. I think I know which ones, and they aren't wearing the workers' caps in the HOSTESS factories.
2 comments:
I read about this a few weeks ago. Makes me feel sick. It's stealing, isn't it?
In the 1970s the bakery company (Farm Crest - remember those little pies and the delicious spice cake?)my father-in-law worked for as a delivery man closed up shop and walked off with employee pensions.
There's nothing new under the sun.
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