He Gave Expectations

Should lawmakers be permitted to confer merely expectations? ...

The news brings a familiar story of another corporate bankruptcy, this time of Hostess Brands, the maker of the iconic Twinkies, Sno Balls and Wonder Bread.  The company is hoping to cut costs, working to reach a voluntary agreement with its unions to modify collective bargaining agreements.

In a simplistic view, many ordinary citizens say “It’s all the union’s fault.”  Period.  End of conversation.  The feelings of these ordinary citizens seem to develop on the basis of quick sound bites and talking points picked up on morning television.

How many ordinary citizens understand just how bad things were for industrial workers in America in the days before unions?  Do we know why unions are even necessary, or all the good they have done, and do?  While this is not the time to consider the pros and cons of unions, enough to safely say there are mostly pros.

This ordinary citizen is reminded of a story about the early life of Benjamin Franklin.  Pennsylvania’s governor had promised to lend young Ben money to open his own printing shop.  He was 18 at the time.  The governor further suggested that young Ben travel to London to buy printing materials and arrange for supplies on letters of credit also promised by the governor.

On the strength of these promises, Franklin set off for London, a sea voyage which would take a full 50 days.  But arriving in London, Franklin quickly learned that he had been duped by the governor, who had no credit to give, and summed up the situation thus:

But what shall we think of a Governor’s playing such pitiful Tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant Boy!  It was a Habit he had acquired.  He wish’d to please every body; and having little to give, he gave expectations.

Here was a young man who, even at such a tender age, had an extraordinary awareness of the tendencies of human nature.  He would require every morsel to survive in a foreign land.  But not only did Franklin survive, he flourished.  He quickly found work in his field as a printer, working in London for two years.  He knew that it would improve him such that, upon returning to America, he would be able to set up to greater advantage.

His instinct had been correct, and his career subsequently took off.  By age 24, he was named the official printer for Pennsylvania.  And at age 26 came the first publication of his popular Poor Richard’s Almanac, which he considered “a proper Vehicle for conveying Instruction among the common People, who bought scarce any other book.”

Unions obtain their benefits from corporate boardrooms.  After upper management takes a healthy cut up front, it then cares little for the long term.  Give the unions whatever they want.  There’ll never be money to pay down the road anyway.  It is illusory.  On closer inspection, hasn’t management conveyed just expectations?  The same with legislatures and the perks given to so called public sector unions.  Sadly, nothing more than expectations given.

Perhaps unions are but a symptom of the larger problem.  Both corporate boards and legislatures seek increasingly to abdicate responsibility for their own inept conduct.  They look elsewhere other than upon themselves, to unions in this instance, for a ready scapegoat.  It is another familiar lesson of human nature.

Perhaps corporate boards need public governance and legislatures insulation from special interests which tend to corrupt them at plain cost to ordinary citizens.  Should it be unlawful that neither be permitted to give merely expectations?

-Michael D’Angelo