Apparently I Am the Unwitting Tool

Of a vast Chicago Tribune/Asshole Boss syndicate that doesn't want you to Know the Truth about the manufacturing labor market.

Well OK then.

First, all kinds of factors go into local labor rates as well as the vitality of the local economy as a whole.  And second, imputing to an entire economic sector the experience of one anecdote or one company (however true that one example many be) is a mug's game, whether that company is run by an angel who will pick up the tab for sending her people to college (I know several such) or a vulture who will churn and burn his people without mercy to make an extra nickle (I have run across plenty of them too.)

Instead, here is a link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Your tax dollars at work!  

I haven't seen the BLS at any of our recent Chicago Tribune/Asshole Boss syndicate luncheons, so have a look for yourself and decide for yourself.  

All of This Has Happened Before

All of this will happen again

Now that Hostess has been gutted and left for dead by by vulture capitalists (and now that it's asphyxiation is predictably being transformed by the Magical Power of Conservative Doublethink into another chance to demonize unions), I thought a rebroadcast of this 2007 post about the remarkably similar destruction of another flagship American brand at the hands of a remarkably similar vulture capitalist would be appropriate:

They’re Blowing Up


Tim Riley’s Bar.

In case you never saw it, the title refers to this famous episode of the “Night Gallery”, of which the above is the 7th and final clip (sorry that the sound is a little out of sync.)

It is offered in service of this short, Labor Day parable.

Once upon a time there was a company called Brach’s...

(Photo from here)

They made candy.

Now candy is a very...intimate...product.

It costs a few pennies, you put it in your mouth, and your toes curl up. You give it as a gift to the people you love. On long car trips, Ma Driftglass’ plan to make it across a American west without bloodshed included a thermos of hot coffee, a tea-towel to drape over her sunward arm, a stock of sing-alongs, car games, and a strategic hard-candy reserve.

Brach’s made that kind of candy.

Another thing Brach’s made was a Middle Class: by employing thousands of workers at good wages in all kinds of jobs, Brach’s created an engine of prosperity on Chicago’s West Side.

It was also key to making Chicago the Candy Capital of the Universe. (Oh yes we were!) Because once you reach a critical mass of skilled tradesmen in a particular field, you start to attract other companies – startups and relocators – because they know they can reasonably expect to find enough local talent to make their businesses viable.

And then along came a spider:

Klaus Jacobs of Jacob Suchard.

Who bought this venerable, viable company and proceeded to destroy it (emphasis added).

Wrecked the management:

…
Management styles and goals clashed, and Jacobs quickly fired Brach's top officers and gutted the leadership of its sales, marketing, production, and finance departments as well. Some of these positions were filled with executives from Suchard's European operations; other positions, including a large percentage of Brach's sales and marketing department, were staffed by people with little experience in the candy industry.

Refused to be bothered to understand their own customers:

…
To make matters worse, the Suchard-led company did not recognize the U.S. candy market's purchase pattern—in that the bulk of sales are made surrounding Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas—and failed to promote and, at times, even produce the specialized holiday candies.

Fucked with the geese that were laying the golden eggs:

…
Brach faltered through a series of poor decisions. One of these involved the scaling back of Brach's line, which had reached 1,700 different candies and packaging types and sizes, to only 300 SKUs. This proved disastrous for Brach, because the bulk of its sales continued to be made at the grocery stores and through other vendors that required the flexibility of Brach's former range to realize the highest profit margins.

Ruined one of the world’s most recognized brand names:

…
Finally, Suchard changed Brach's name, which enjoyed recognition by as much as 77 percent of the U.S. candy-buying public, to Jacobs Suchard Inc.”

Until it was abandoned by its oldest clientèle:

...
Brach's customers, including major chains such as Walgreens, deserted the company for its competitors. Sales dropped, and the company began posting losses, reaching $50 million in operating losses in 1988, and more than $200 million over the next several years

And they did all of this while aggressively disinvesting in their own people and their own company’s future.

This foreign billionaire wrecked the place, fired workers en masse, blew an economically crippling hole in the neighborhood, sold it at remaindered prices, and slithered away.

And unlike, say, buggy-whip or slide-rule makers who really have outlived their marketplace viability, the extermination of Brach’s was entirely preventable.

So, for reasons of vanity and profit -- arrogance and ignorance pulling in harness with great wealth and complete indifference to the lives of working people -- the brigands who bought the place chose to butcher it.

Sound

familiar?

And for a long time, the deserted hulk of the crowned jewel in Chicago’s confectionery empire sat abandoned.

Rotting.

Rat-infested.

Until last week when it was finally blown up for the "Batman" sequel.

Here’s the video:




And here’s the story.

THAT'S A WRAP
This 'Boom!' bittersweet

On the old Brach's Candy factory property, 'Batman' filmmakers destroy office building

By Kristen Kridel and Monique Garcia, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Gary Washburn contributed to this report

August 30, 2007

A ball of fire, a plume of smoke and almost all of Gotham General Hospital was gone.

A wave of heat swept over about 150 people who had camped out at the corner of Cicero Avenue and Ferdinand Street to watch the pyrotechnics go off for a scene in the upcoming "Batman" sequel, "The Dark Knight."

Hollywood came to the West Side Wednesday afternoon to blow up the five-story administration building that Brach's Candy abandoned with the rest of its sprawling complex in 2003.
…

Now that much of the city's candy industry has melted away, remnants like the Brach's factory are left as nothing more than props.

The plant was once an anchor for Austin, at its height employing more than 4,500 workers. Started more than 100 years ago by a German immigrant, Brach's outgrew its first small storefront and moved into the Cicero Avenue facility in 1923. The factory churned out everything from peanut and hard candies to coconut nougat and marshmallow confections.

…

Brach's abandoned plant quickly took on a derelict look, which made Wednesday's demolition no less troubling for Matt Hancock, director of the Food and Candy Institute.

"On one hand it's an indication of the way our society unfortunately has come to view manufacturing, that it's a relic and quaint and nostalgic and looks good in a movie," Hancock said. "But that's out of sync with the reality of today's high tech and sophisticated manufacturing, and what it means to a community in terms of economic benefit."
…

Blown up.

As a prop.

For a movie about a fictional industrialist…

…who works in secret...

…to save his dying city.

Thus endeth the parable.

Listen Up You Ignorant Meatbags

There is one set of rules for rich people.
There is another set of rules for ignorant meatbags.
This is how capitalism works.
This is how America works.
Fucking deal with it.

-- #1 on Willard Romney's list of things he wishes he  

could just finally say out loud and be done with it.

Lest We Forget

The last steaming pile of Wealth-Worshiping Capitalist Superhero glory that Randite ideology left on our national doorstep.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Ayn Rand oeuvre, here is a short primer.

The AOL Comeback Plan

Step 1: Give a high-profile aggregator of other people's stuff that nice Davos Lady

an assload of dough. She's the one in the middle with her arm around Newt Gingrich.


Step 2: Fire an assload of people as clumsily as possible.

The "Disgusting" Way AOL Supposedly Fired People Yesterday

Nicholas Carlson

An ex-AOLer reached us this morning to say he thought it was "disgusting" the way AOL handled layoffs yesterday.

According to this guy, people got fired in groups of 20 to 30.

Source:

Managers had no clue if anyone on their teams were getting laid off. They were called into a separate meeting as a diversion, and then those being laid off were called into another and axed in a big group setting.

They pulled 20-30 people into a conference room and told them they "Don't have roles at aol anymore." [Severance is] 1 week for every year worked.

It's really quite appalling.

Step 3: Issue a a memo apparently written by robots programmed with nothing but Buzzspeak Bingo vocabulary that speaks inspiringly about branding and hyperlocality but fails to mention the massive fucking layoffs that are happening at that exact moment and are (I'm just guessing here) going to be the complete front-and-center focus of every actual living human at AOL, except by noting obliquely and fleetingly that management sorta regrets having to feed so many people to the rats (all emphasis added by me.)

From: Armstrong, Tim
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 5:46 PM
To: Armstrong, Tim
Subject: AOL's Next Step

AOLers -

Today is the next critical step on the comeback trail for AOL. We are creating a next generation hyper-local, national and global media company, and every action we've taken since AOL became an independent company has taken us further down that path. Our strategy remains clear: create high quality content experiences for consumers, at scale. As the digital landscape quickly evolves, so must our business, and we must continue to transform our organizational structure to one that works for today’s Internet.

Today, we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth. The structure will also impact areas of our team -- making the decision to reduce staff levels is a necessary part of rebalancing our workforce...

...
AOL is a global brand and a global opportunity and we are doing the hard work that will once again make the company an industry leader.
...

There are three important aspects to the structural changes we are making today. ... The third is our shift from India being a business process center to India being a consumer products group focused on the APAC market.

New Structure: Investing in our Brand Portfolio

AOL’s brand portfolio...

...an AOL brand architecture...

...build best-in-class brands...

AOL’s brands are measured with a consistent set of criteria...

...will continue the brand refinement process over time...

AOL will have four areas of significant brands...

We have a clear path to brand success...

...turbo-charged with the addition of the Huffington Post to our brand portfolio...

(driftglass aside/ In my head, this was the precise point where that thing happen when you have repeated a common word over and over to the point where it momentarily becomes complete meaninglessness and I started to ask myself, "Wait a minute, is 'brand' even a word?" Because by now it has started to sound so weird -- "Brand"..."Brand"..."Brand" -- that I worry that it is really some sort of trance-inducing, semi-subliminal, thought-clouding incantation and I have been cleverly ensorcelled into thinking that "Brand" was once-upon-a-time, in fact, a word with a definition and an origin and everything when is instead obviously just a dead, empty syllable banging against the window in the wind. Corporate glossolalia. "Brand"..."Brand"..."Brand". See what I mean? Just fucking gibberish. Which, I suspect, was sort of the point./ End driftglass aside.)

We have an AOL brand that enjoys 99% brand awareness...

...our commitment to reinvigorating the AOL Brand...

...begin to shift brand perception of AOL...

...named as one of the top 50 brands...

...continue to invest in the AOL Brand...

...support best-in-class brands...

It goes on...and on, but I haven't the heart.
Step 4 (Still top-secret and TBA): Reset the every clock in the world to 1994.

Step 5: Sit back and watch the underpants gnomes poop out one million ingots of solid WIN!

More HuffingJoy consolidated here.

Capitalist Blue-Bloods Green-Wash Red Money

As the price of buying elections goes up, America's ultra-right wing super-capitalists announce that the "Patriotic Duty-Free Shop" is open for business.

From ThinkProgress:

Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.’ Chamber Of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads

The largest attack campaign against Democrats this fall is being waged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a trade association organized as a 501(c)(6) that can raise and spend unlimited funds without ever disclosing any of its donors. The Chamber has promised to spend an unprecedented $75 million to defeat candidates like Jack Conway, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), and Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). As of Sept. 15th, the Chamber had aired more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone, according to a study from the Wesleyan Media Project. The Chamber’s spending has dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending. A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. According to legal experts consulted by ThinkProgress, the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections. In recent years, the Chamber has become very aggressive with its fundraising, opening offices abroad and helping to found foreign chapters (known as Business Councils or “AmChams”). While many of these foreign operations include American businesses with interests overseas, the Chamber has also spearheaded an effort to raise money from foreign corporations, including ones controlled by foreign governments.
...

Previously, it has been reported that foreign firms like BP, Shell Oil, and Siemens are active members of the Chamber. But on a larger scale, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce appears to rely heavily on fundraising from firms all over the world, including China, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia, and many other places. Of course, because the Chamber successfully lobbied to kill campaign finance reforms aimed at establishing transparency, the Chamber does not have to reveal any of the funding for its ad campaigns. Dues-paying members of the Chamber could potentially be sending additional funds this year to help air more attack ads against Democrats.
...

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin