(^34) Best columns: Business
The invitation-only app Clubhouse reveals a “stark
cultural divide between journalists and tech people,”
said Megan McArdle. I would describe Clubhouse as
“the world’s first all-audio crowdsourced convention
hall, where users can create open ‘rooms’ to discuss”
topics or listen to high-profile panels. It was sup-
posed to be off the record, but of course journalists
have found their way in, and their complaints about
Clubhouse have erupted into “semipublic feuds.”
There’s a pattern here. Journalists “come across as
reflexively negative,” while the tech entrepreneurs
who populate Clubhouse focus on the positive.
That’s not surprising. If entrepreneurs saw mainly
risks, they would have stayed at salaried jobs. But
West Coast–centric entrepreneurs can be oblivious to
a culture that is “positive-bordering-on-grandiose.”
Tech founders shouldn’t be surprised if people tally
up the cost of their success when they’re unwilling
to recognize it themselves. It’s hard for both sides
to admit their faults when conflicting interests are
at stake: Many of Silicon Valley’s products have put
journalists out of work, and frequently journalists
want to return the favor. Yet society needs both sides
to succeed. I hope we can become “partners in build-
ing a smarter, better-informed society, instead of cut-
throat rivals for control of it.”
“The days of simply selling a company to the high-
est bidder regardless of the consequences” might be
over, said William Cohan. Since the 1980s, so-called
leveraged buyouts have fueled the success of private-
equity giants like Blackstone and Apollo. The idea is
simple: “They use a whole lot of borrowed money
and as little equity as possible to buy companies,”
with the intention to flip them at a big profit. That’s
how buyout expert Steve Schwarzman managed to
amass $23 billion. A little-noticed court ruling in
December, however, carries major ramifications for
this practice. The case involved a failed 2014 lever-
aged buyout of Jones Group, then a publicly traded
apparel company with brands such as Nine West,
Anne Klein, and Gloria Vanderbilt. Jones’ board
voted to sell the company for $2.2 billion to a buy-
out firm called Sycamore Partners, which loaded the
newly formed company, Nine West Holdings, with
debt. Predictably, Nine West went bankrupt in 2018.
It sued the former Jones Group directors for “failing
to anticipate” the problems. Judge Jed Rakoff sided
with Nine West, ruling that Jones Group’s board
members could be held liable for approving a reckless
sale. He wrote that “officers and directors had better
think twice before agreeing” to such deals. That’s a
“shot across the bow of the buyout juggernaut.” Ge
tty
The press has
invaded the
Clubhouse
Megan McArdle
The Washington Post
An overdue
warning for
buyout kings
William Cohan
The New York Times
A union organizing effort at an Amazon
warehouse in Alabama has received
a presidential stamp of approval, said
Ken Thomas and Sebastian Herrera
in The Wall Street Journal. Without
mentioning Amazon by name, President
Biden last week threw his weight behind
the union drive in a video expressing
his support for “workers in Alabama”
who are “voting on whether to organize
a union at their workplace.” About
5,800 Amazon employees at the facility
in Bessemer, Ala., are deciding on union-
ization this month, and the e-commerce
giant has been strenuously fighting the effort, trying to convince
employees that unions wouldn’t improve their pay and benefits.
Biden’s video “might have seemed a little vague,” but labor advo-
cates are calling it “the most pro-union statement a president has
ever made,” said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. His
support is especially significant for the workers at Amazon, “one
of the emblematic companies of our age.”
It may seem surprising that one of the largest and most aggres-
sive unionization efforts in recent memory is welling up in Ala-
bama, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. But the state
has a “rich history of resistance,” going back to Union Leagues
established by emancipated slaves in the 1880s. An estimated
85 percent of the workers at the Amazon facility are black, and
their desire to unionize grew partly out of the Black Lives Matter
movement last summer. It is a “reminder of the ways in which
the fight for racial equality has historically been one for the
dignity of labor as well.” Whatever its outcome, the size, scope,
and sophistication of this union drive
“complicates commonly held ideas of
Alabama and the Deep South.”
We started talking about unionizing
during one of our two 30-minute
breaks during a 10-hour shift, said
Jennifer Bates, a Bessemer worker, in
Elle. “My co-workers and I were all
limping from climbing up and down
stairs in the four-floor building,” and
we weren’t allowed to use the elevator.
One guy had to unload entire trucks
by himself “when they used to have
two or three people do it.” There was an especially “nonchalant
attitude from HR” about Covid-19 protocols. I just hope “we’ll
finally have a level playing field” and we can talk to someone at
HR “without being dismissed.”
It’s still a long shot, said Jordyn Holman and Spencer Soper in
Bloomberg.com. While the campaign has drawn national atten-
tion, a rally last month by the Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union (RWDSU) that wants to represent the Amazon
workers drew a small crowd of “about 50, including activists,
out-of-towners, and media.” Many workers “point out that few
other local employers offer similar pay and benefits” in Alabama,
where $15 an hour—Amazon’s starting wage—goes a lot further
than it does in coastal cities. The RWDSU is counting on the fact
that Bessemer had a “union history during its manufacturing hey-
day.” But the jobs at the old train-car maker Pullman-Standard
and other steel and manufacturing facilities “started going away a
half-century ago, and the unions could do nothing to stop that.”
Amazon: A union takes on the retail Goliath
5,800 Amazon workers are voting on unionization.
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