No Contract, No Cookies: Is This the Way a Country Crumbles?

[marmar]

from Eating Liberally:




No Contract, No Cookies: Is This the Way a Country Crumbles?
Submitted by KAT on Wed, 07/06/2011 - 2:25pm.


Isn't a 'jobless recovery' as preposterous as a fetus-less pregnancy? We've got a bloody pile-up at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, where reality collides with such corporate conceits. And it's the workers who wind up on life support, while the suits speed away from the wreckage undented and undaunted. Back to the bat cave, to plot the next leveraged buyout!

The new HBO documentary, "No Contract No Cookies: The Stella D’Oro Strike," premiering on HBO2 tonight at 8pm, tells the story of a beloved Bronx bakery, founded by Italian immigrants in 1932, that now lies shuttered, like so many factories all over America. The saga of how the company went from a thriving family-owned enterprise to a gutted equity fund acquisition is a success story only if you're rooting for our modern day robber barons. For the dwindling middle class and the unwashed masses, it's an American tragedy that's being repeated all over the country.

"No Contract No Cookies" puts a poignant face--or 138 faces, to be precise--on the massacre of manufacturing jobs that CEOs routinely commit in the name of prosperity. At the Stella D'Oro factory, folks from 22 different countries worked convivially alongside New York natives and gained a foothold in the American middle class, only to be kicked off the ladder when Brynwood Partners, a private equity fund, bought the company. In 2008, when the workers' contract expired, Brynwood demanded a 30% pay cut.

......(snip)......

But with our economy now founded on fictitious, bubble-based fortunes and sleazy sleights of hand, those who actually make--or in this case, bake--anything, are expected to accept stagnating or even declining wages even while the affluent few do better than ever. Middle class workers who banked on promised pensions and health care are now portrayed as pariahs and parasites, while the fraudsters who crashed our economy continue to call all the shots, as Frank Rich laments in his scathing New York debut. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://livingliberally.org/eating/blog/No-Contract-No-Cookies-Way-Country-Crumbles