How NOT to Go Out of Business

So, apparently it’s not a great time to be in the baked goods industry.

Hostess has filed for Chapter 11 for a second time in 10 years. And last month the locally-renowned bakery Rolf’s Patisserie shuttered its doors permanently.

It’s obviously not fair to compare a multinational food product manufacturer with a micro-regional fancy-cake-maker, but I’m going to do it anyway, because it’s an easy way to make a point.

Both of the news stories surrounding these companies center on employment issues. Almost immediately after it filed for bankruptcy, Hostess cited its pension liability and rigid work rules as the principal issue in restructuring the company; it needs to get out of its current collective bargaining agreements and start over, it says. The Teamsters disagreed, of course, but the correlation was there. Even though the unions are going to take it on the chin, the message turned out all collaborative and warm. The company that brought us Twinkies and other delicacies was fighting for its life, and it just needs the union’s help to stay afloat. The union obviously held a press conference of its own, but the tone was already set. Hostess, for PR purposes, at least, was playing nice.

Dear Everyone In Charge: Get to #@$ Work

So, President Obama used the (possible) Senate recess to fill the necessary positions at the NLRB again.

(Hi, everybody. I’m back)

Yes, I said again. Because he did this last time, too. Craig Becker, whose appointment just expired, was a recess appointment as well. Both times, incensed Republicans have unloaded a magazine of PR soundbites about the President circumventing the Constitutional role of the Senate, and creating some kind of rogue bureaucracy that’s equal parts fascist dictatorship and Marxist, wealth-sharing, Soviet state.

Meanwhile, a couple of news stories later, the Indiana Democratic minority is walking out of session again because the Republican majority is insisting on introducing legislation that would make Indiana the 23rd right-to-work state in the nation. That’s right, I said again. Again. Indiana Dems spent several weeks in a motel in Urbana-Champaign to keep the bill off the floor in 2010. Ground the whole legislative session to a halt.

Two labor issues, two stalemates among legislatures. Look, I know the ideology behind organized labor is deeply-rooted and not going anywhere any time soon. But that actually speaks to my point here. These are not new issues. The political lines between unions and company owners were drawn before the ones separating the modern parties. And still, Presidents appointed NRLB members who actually got confirmed, and minorities showed up on the first day of session.

The obvious question is why, all of the sudden, these historical fissures are causing such caustic stalemates. But, to be honest, I don’t really care what the question is. And whether you’re a unionized worker or a business owner, Republican or Democrat, neither do you.

Every day I wake up with items from yesterday’s to-do list. Every day I work too much, fight harder, and every night go to sleep too late with half a to-do list still to be done. We all are. Welcome to The Recovery. And that’s fine. That’s how we do it here in America. We work hard.

What we don’t need – worker and business owner alike – is for the entire legislative session or regulatory schema to get rutted by the pissing contest that has replaced political discourse, wondering if Hot-Button-Issue A is going to kill our company’s profit for the year. And (not to wax too grandiose) I’m not working this hard to live in a country that can’t suck it up and cooperate with people they don’t like. Even if it means taking the uppercut to the chin, voting “no” for the bill or the person you don’t like, and fighting to get a majority the next time around so you can win some fights.

Honestly, for three years now the economy’s been slowly clawing its way out of the toilet, and every economic pundit I’ve heard during that time has said the #1 thing holding us back is fear. Uncertainty. Employers need to know what’s going to happen a year from now to know whether it makes sense to hire someone. Employees can’t spend any money until they know they’re going to have a job in 6 months. We can’t know what the markets will do tomorrow, but we’re supposed to be able to forecast what the political climate will look like a year from now.

I don’t think the whole country is looking for a single answer to the economic problem. What we’d like, if anyone elected to anything is listening, is any movement at all. Just one time, for someone to say “well, they got us this time, we’ll get ‘em next time” and let us move on.

And yet, with approval ratings further down the crapper than their economy, Congresspeople and Senators from every seat on the political seesaw still pull this “I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home” garbage. It’s petty and weak. Learn how to lose, folks. The rest of us need to get some work done.

You know, if I’d hired a team that produced results this bad, I’d fire them all and start over. Man, if only I’d hired them. If only…

NLRB Postpones Poster Requirement

The National Labor Relations Board has moved the date its new posters must be up in most businesses to January 31, 2012.

According to the official press release, the NLRB’s reason is that there’s confusion from business owners about which companies are under the Board’s jurisdiction, and they want to spend some time educating the business community about the issue.

Eric Meyer over at the Employer Handbook calls bulls— on the PR explanation for the delay, and I completely agree. Eric notes that the Board made quite a big deal out of the FAQ they released with the final regulations, so there’s not that much educating left to do. Also, figuring out if you’re covered by the NLRB’s jurisdiction is not that hard. Seriously, we do hard things here; this is not one of them….

I think most employer-side attorneys would tell you the real reason for the postponement has something to do with the stream of lawsuits that have been filed challenging not just the poster requirement, but the NLRB’s ability to enact regulations at all.

The new date will pose some logistical problems, though. Many employers buy new laminated breakroom posters around the new year, and the companies that make them have been busy redesigning the 2012 models to fit the NLRB info in. Now that the Board’s regulation is up-in-the-air, poster companies (and the employers that buy those posters) are going to have to decide whether to print them with the info or not.

At any rate, no need to hang the new poster next month like we expected.