Posts
COLORADO SPRINGS- The nation turned its attention back to Colorado Springs this week as the city’s Sunshine Doughnuts bakery became the focal point of another economic furor. Sunshine Doughnuts, which received extensive scrutiny in October for raising the price of its day-old doughnuts from $0.20 to $0.25, has begun to feel the effects of the price change. While the 25% price increase on day-olds created windfall profits for owner Tom Shleby and his family, but with great power comes great responsibility, and Shelby’s growing business has created labor strife on a scale which Sunshine Doughnuts have never experienced before.
Tensions came to a head this week when Sunshine Doughnuts night manager Darren Phillips rounded up all of the store’s part-time employees and persuaded them to demand higher wages in response to the business’ growing revenues. “The situation we have here is that these corporate fat cats are getting rich off of our blood, sweat, and tears and we’re not seeing our share of the profits!” Phillips railed at the rowdy rabble of Sunshine bakers, consisting of six students from the community college, a burnout who got fired from the post office, and two Guatemalans who work off the books. “It’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not right! Obama promised us change, but if he’s not going to give it to us, then we’re going to have to get it ourselves! We’ve got bills to pay, and mouths to feed, and the Shelbys are making all this extra money, and we don’t have a penny to show for it.”
Phillips pointed to the Shelbys’ recent vacation to Fort Lauderdale as an example of the new regime of corporate largesse that has overtaken Sunshine Doughnuts. According to Phillips, the Shelbys all flew first class across country on the trip, and when the airline lost their luggage, every member of the family bought a new wardrobe rather than waiting one day for the luggage to arrive. He claims to have obtained this information by following Tom’s wife Dana on Twitter, where she posted updates and pictures from the vacation.
Tom Shelby was evasive when questioned about his company’s conflicts with its fledgling union. “Has Darren been watching Michael Moore movies again? Every so often, he gets an idea in his head from something he saw on TV and starts thinking he’s some revolutionary. He’s like one of those Sarah Palin activists who talks about her fresh views and knows three catchphrases, but literally understands nothing about politics, except he’s the idiot who stumbled into being a liberal,” Shelby explained in a half-hearted attempt to excuse his own greed. “The thing about our vacation is totally bogus. Dana got upgraded to first class because the airline lost our luggage; we didn’t have to pay for it. And we didn’t buy a new wardrobe, we just got T-shirts from one of those cheap souvenir shops to wear until the airline got our luggage back,” was the only pathetic excuse the green-eyed devil could marshal in his favor. He went on to say, “I
think we have literally made about $30 off of the increased price on day-olds. He needs to calm down.”[RIGHT- Local protesters stand in solidarity with the oppressed working class of the Sunshine Doughnuts empire. Police were called to use tear gas to pacify the lynch mob.]
The possibility of calming down seems slim with the fiery rhetoric coming out of the union camp. Phillips has enlisted prominent Denver labor attorney Jerry Jackson to represent the Sunshine workers in negotiations, which have yet to be scheduled. “I don’t care what Shelby does as long as cuts the check, but until he cuts the check, I don’t want to hear his excuses,” Jackson told reporters at a press conference Monday. “There’s three things in the world that we care about right now, and they’re cash, credit, and checks. We speak the language of the dollar, and we are fed up management’s avarice and selfishness.”
While the labor movement has a strong moral basis for their position, they must be careful not to antagonize the business tycoons into compromising their product with replacement bakers. Further complicating matters is the fact that the labor group is seeking what they call a fair share of future profits from probable sales through a possible Sunshine Doughnuts online ordering feature. They claim that online orders will exponentially increase profits by allowing groups to pre-order breakfasts and snacks, and that the revenue should be distributed to those who have worked on the baked goods. On the other hand, Shelby points out that the website has not even been completed, and any profit calculation would be highly speculative, so much so that the contractual terms would almost certainly be too vague to enforce.
One factor to take into consideration in the doughnut imbroglio is the effect of outside pressures on ownership. National opinion polls show 2:1 support for the Sunshine Doughnuts employees, and a hard-line approach to negotiations could cost Shelby his company’s good reputation. Phillips ended his press conference by quoting Golden Globe winner Jeff Bridges from his award-winning educational exposition of the Hyundai Assurance program by saying, “Remember, the economy has not truly gotten better for any of us, until it has gotten better for all of us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment