Can We Still Have Fair Reporting in an Age Without Twinkies?

To the dismay of snack-lovers and pre-diabetics everywhere, Hostess will be shutting its doors for good.  The maker of such treasured staples as the Twinkie and Snowball announced on Friday that it will close its 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers, laying off over 18,000 employees in the process.  

The company has gone through rough patches in the past years, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice and shuffling through 7 different management teams over the past 10 years.  Despite these facts, the company has placed sole blame for the closings on a strike by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.  Hostess CEO, Gregory Rayborn, released a statement declaring "We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike."

Trumpeting the headline, “Hostess to close, lay off 18,500 after 'crippling' union fight,” Fox News has readily endorsed this version of events.  Throughout their article, which appeared on Friday soon after the announcement, Fox intentionally created a heavily one-sided narrative that pits the beloved, well-intentioned folks at Hostess at the mercy of cut-throat, greedy unions.  

If you don't believe this is a biased account of events, take a closer look:

Is Time Really Money: Work Time, Motivation, and Productivity

While conversations over the domestic economy tend to focus on the macro-level (tax cuts, outsourcing, policies that impact small business), we often neglect to look at the equally critical goings-on within the workplace.  We forget that the unique relationships among employers, employees, culture, and structure occurring daily in the office directly impacts the amount and quality of work being done there.  Therefore, on par with any macro-economic policy touted by our presidential hopefuls, these micro-level dynamics are fundamentally indicative of the nation’s economic productivity.

So the question is: what creates the most productive workplace?  

Harvard Business School lecturer, Robert C. Pozen, argues that for too long the answer has been time.  It is an antiquated and specious notion that equates longer working hours with greater effort and success.  

Where-Oh-Where Did the Working Class Go?

Regarding the gubernatorial re-call election last week, many expressed shock that Wisconsin's working class did not overwhelmingly oppose Governor Scott "Unions-Are-the-Plague-of-the-Earth" Walker.  The man who once described collective bargaining as an "expensive entitlement" walked away last Tuesday with 38% of the working class vote, and 61% of the white working-class vote.  To me, these numbers do not demonstrate that the labor movement has drastically changed its agenda, but rather signify the decline of the working class as a unified political identity, altogether.

There are several explanations for this trend.  Psychology professor, Jonathan Haidt, proposes that economic interest is not the unifying force in electoral decision-making that people assume.  In his research into political decision-making, Haidt found that “When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest.” Contrary to popular opinion, he explained, people vote in accordance with their moral value-systems rather than  economic interest.  While liberals are more concerned with “care,” as a moral value (thus often advancing policy related to social welfare), conservatives tend to value more respect for authority, group loyalty, and sanctity.  Haidt suggests that in the wake of the financial crisis and looming uncertainty, American citizens are more likely to vote for the order and national cohesion that conservative values and candidates offer.

(S)He Works Hard for the Money

Men are increasingly entering traditionally female-dominated professions, according to recent analysis. Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff reveal that

An analysis of census data by The New York Times shows that from 2000 to 2010, occupations that are more than 70 percent female accounted for almost a third of all job growth for men, double the share of the previous decade.

Dewan and Gebeloff offer a variety of plausible explanations for this trend, including “financial concerns, quality-of-life issues, and a gradual erosion of stereotypes.” They hypothesize that the stigma of entering female-dominated professions is lessoning, while, at the same time, the stability of female dominated professions compared to male-dominated professions is increasingly attractive in the current economy.

Whatever the reason, I believe this trend has interesting implications for not only the gender segregation of labor, but the value of such labor.

Since the rise of wage-labor during the Industrial Revolution, women's labor has consistently been devalued relative to men's labor.* This was the subject of my first blog post, in which I argued that the “caring professions,” including nursing, teaching, and social work, are specifically devalued due to being female-dominated professions.

The introduction of men into the “pink collar” professions may change all this. With more men entering these professions, it is possible that the segregation of labor may slowly begin to erode. Consequently, as both men and women are represented proportionally in various professions, the formerly-female-dominated jobs will no longer be stigmatized as “female,” and will presumably demand a more equitable salary based on merit, rather than gender.

This is a promising idea, but it also troubles me for several reasons: