Alex Griswold at The Washington Free Beacon relayed that The Huffington Post -- a bit notorious on the Left for not paying writers for content -- published a piece from a Washington Post reporter criticizing Post owner Jeffrey Bezos for underpaying workers and "petty theft" of their benefits.
"Jeff Bezos Wants to Give More Money to Charity. He Should Pay His Workers First," wrote Fredrick Kunkle, who is also a co-chair of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild's bargaining unit at the Post.
Everyone here — including me — is grateful Bezos moved the Post into a new building and hired dozens of reporters. The Post’s renaissance has been good for the news media and good for American democracy — as our new motto, adopted under Bezos, won’t let anyone forget. ["Democracy Dies in Darkness"!]
Everyone at the Post wants it to succeed and prosper. But we want our employees to succeed and prosper, too.
Two years ago, however, Bezos slashed retirement benefits. For reasons that remain unclear, he froze a pension plan that was awash in so much money that neither he nor the company would possibly have faced additional liabilities. He also spurned the sort of compromise plan The New York Times Co. had pioneered ― an adjustable pension plan that would have ensured the Post would never encounter a problem funding it....
Bezos’ decision on retirement benefits had nothing to do with the balance sheet and, arguably, everything to do with ideology. And it almost overshadowed Bezos’ demand for the right to cancel everyone’s health insurance and his push to take it away from part-time employees.
Only by making sacrifices was the Post’s union able to maintain health insurance for part-timers — whose cost of coverage was about what the Post spent to send its publisher to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Kunkle sounded like a liberal union leader in conclusion:
Bezos has shown that he views his employees as parts in a high-tech machine, that income inequality is someone else's problem, and that modern corporations owe little more to their employees than a paycheck.
He seems to be enjoying his newfound acclaim as the Post’s savior while displaying a laissez faire attitude to the financial well-being of its employees — especially those who do not have a famous byline but who make its journalism possible by copy-editing stories, driving circulation trucks, mining social media or selling ads.
Bezos, as a lover and purveyor of books, is no doubt familiar with Honoré de Balzac’s saying that, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” In this case, it’s more like petty theft from the people who work for him. He owes them better.
It certainly seems like Bezos dodges the usual lefty brickbats due to his "savior" status. For example, the CNN Media Unit's newsletter under Brian Stelter carried nothing on this article on Friday night. Instead it linked to Glenn Beck laying off employees at The Blaze, and this nugget of WashPost news:
-- The WashPost is expanding its use of Heliograf, an in-house automated storytelling technology, to automate write-ups on high school football games in the DC-area... (WashPost)
