In this "Great Recession," a certain publicly traded company still managed to pull in $183 million in profit its last reporting quarter. This is after making a cool $89 million the quarter before that.
The CEO should be happy. He's talking about how his company is seeing gains, even though the down economy is putting more pressure on his business than he'd like. But hey, in this climate, $183 million is nothing to scoff at, and a tribute to his leadership.
So why isn't this a happy story?
On May 23, more than 300 workers of Mott's, a division of Dr Pepper Snapple, went on strike following the company's plans to cut wages by about $3,000 a year, freeze pensions for current workers and end them for new hires, increase health-care costs and reduce the contributions it makes to 401(k)'s. Musician and Grammy winner Steve Earle, a known lover of Dr Pepper, said he is boycotting the company until Dr Pepper Snapple negotiates a fair contract with the Mott's workers, who continue to picket more than three months after walking out.
Once more, a wildly profitable company (during the "Great Recession," even!) is trying to squeeze hardworking Americans of their wages and dignity, all in the name of fellating Wall Street and filling the pocketbooks of executives, including CEO Larry Young, who pulled in a cool $6.5 million in compensation last year.
How does Dr. Pepper Snapple respond to accusations such as mine?
ROBERT CALLAN, Senior Vice President: The Williamson employees have enjoyed wages that exceed 50 percent of the market for a very long time. The best example I can give you is, one of our forklift drivers at the Williamson facility makes $20 an hour. Local market in the Williamson area, a forklift driver will make $9.90 an hour.
The dichotomy is striking. These same fuckers that point out that wages have been way too high for a long time and thus need to come down to more manageable levels are the same fucker that tell us that corporate taxes and income tax levels on the rich, which have been way too low for a long time and thus need to rise to more manageable levels, must remain in the basement indefinitely.
Profits and growth, built on the backs of American workers as they yet get stabbed repeatedly. And they just took away all the Icy Hot.
The whole story can be watched below. It's too infuriating for me to talk about further:
On 10/2/10, Americans of all ages, races, religions, and socioeconomic statuses will march on Washington to demand a new way of doing business. Where good-paying jobs with good benefits are not a pipe dream for the common man, but readily available to those that are willing to put in the hard work that has made America the greatest country in the world.
The right wing, the corporate Democrats, and their Wall Street enablers and puppetmasters are trying to wrap our minds around anything other than our own well being. The rising Islamophobia, the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, the astroturf Tea Party "movement." All focusing on bogeymen that have nothing to do with our daily lives, and yet they're distractions that work.
We cannot allow these and other distractions to keep us wallowing in the muck, sliding slowly, yet surely back into the world of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
We must keep the real enemy within our proverbial crosshairs. That's not the dude who wants a larger place to worship because his mosque is overcrowded. It's people like Larry Young. And on 10/2/10, we must make sure that the American people see who the real enemy is, and we begin to fight back.