November 23rd / 25th, 2007
"Hanesbrands Needs One More Lay-off"
I promised my friends that I would try and stop obsessing about the
devastation wrought by Hanesbrands’ CEO Richard Noll. After all, no one in my
immediate family was affected by Noll’s massive lay-offs. Nor did anyone in my
extended family lose their subsidized medical benefits.
The problem is that each week, Noll seems to find yet another way to rub
salt in the wounds of those he has wounded, and that compels me to jump back
into the fray.
Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, resolved to not writing about
Hanesbrands ever again, when three things happened in rapid succession.
First I received a video tape and press release from Hanesbrands’ Public
Relations folks, bragging about how the company had struck a deal with Disney to
supply t-shirts and such to Uncle Walt’s theme parks. The problem is that
those t-shirts aren’t made by anyone who watches my TV show or reads my
newspaper column. Noll’s t-shirt makers live in Asia, Mexico, and the Dominican
Republic.
Yet we here in the Triad are supposed to be excited for Noll when his press
release gleefully states the Disney deal is worth “tens of millions of dollars”!!!
To who? Certainly not to the folks Noll displaced. What is his PR
guy smoking?
Second, Hanesbrands last week announced it had donated $100,000 in aid to
some of its 7,800 employees affected by a recent storm. The problem is that
those employees are in the Dominican Republic instead of on Stratford road,
and the storm aid wouldn’t have been necessary if Noll paid the Domincans what
he had been paying the 12,000 Americans whose jobs they took. Chew on that
multi-layered irony for a moment.
And third, I’ve been receiving feedback from former Hanesbrands employees
who thanked me for standing up for them, and asked that I continue to do so.
Given these three recent developments, I had no choice but to give another
wedgie to the greedy underwear maker.
Clearly any CEO who continues to demonstrate a total lack of sensitivity to
the thousands of families he disrupted, should be replaced by his board. It’s
OK to be an insensitive bean counter behind the scenes, but the man at the
top should at least feign compassion and concern.
Noll is ultimately to blame for the hardships he has created, but I also
think he hasn’t been well served by his public relations folks, be they internal
or outsourced, or both.
Newsflash, laying off 12,000 American workers is nothing to brag about.
Eliminating retiree’s subsidized medical benefits at Christmas time is
nothing to brag about.
A jump in your stock price is nothing to brag about considering that your
earnings only increased because you slashed thousands of jobs here at home, and
eliminated the aforementioned benefits.
Transferring U.S. jobs to Asia, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic where you
pay slave wages in order to make more profit, is nothing to brag about.
Signing an exclusive deal with Disney to sell t-shirts made by low wage
foreigners is nothing to brag about.
And, donating $100,000 to Dominican employees affected by a storm is nothing
to brag about in the wake of laying off 12,000 Americans who face a storm of
their own.
Wall Street types like to defend Noll by saying he was forced to send jobs
out of the country due to global competition. Oh yeah? I don’t recall Noll
suffering financially from paying a decent wage to Americans. Hansebrands
just wanted to make more profit, and that’s no reason to order massive lay-offs
and bring hardship to thousands of U.S. workers and their families.
Well, now it’s time for Noll to be laid off. Until then, the Chamber of
Commerce should censure Hanesbrands, and the rest of us should boycott their
products.
The name Hanes used to stand for community need, not corporate greed. It’s
time to restore the jobs and the name.
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