Labor & Employment Law

BCTGM Members Protest American Capital?s Greed

By James Parks

The company is famous for making little colored candy hearts with messages like ?True Love? and ?Tweet Me? that children?and some adults?exchange on Valentine?s Day. But the purchase of the New England Confectionery Co. (NECCO) by a leveraged buyout firm is sending a bitter-tasting message to workers.

Members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) rallied this morning outside the shareholder meeting of American Capital in downtown Washington, D.C., to protest the company?s investment strategy of leveraged buyouts of businesses like NECCO.

In 2007, American Capital purchased NECCO where workers had made concessions to help keep the company afloat. While American Capital invested only $100,000 in equity in NECCO Holdings, it has saddled the company with nearly $10 million in debt.  The union believes this high debt level threatens NECCO?s financial stability and the company?s future in these tight economic times.    

Inside the shareholders? meeting, BCTGM Secretary-Treasurer David Durkee delivered a letter from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to American Capital Chairman and CEO Malon Wilkus. In the letter, Trumka strongly urged the company to:

develop a new approach to financing its companies that will strengthen, not weaken, our country?s economy.

You can read Trumka?s letter here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 15, 2010 (boomark / email).