The “Story”
Before we get into the meaty stuff, let’s get this out of the way: Tom Cruise has broken up with Penelope Cruz, adding fuel to the already raging “is he gay or not” fire and giving further hope to the millions of gay men for whom Cruise remains an enormous blip on their Gaydar.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s head into the weekend with “news” from the workplace.

Los Angeles police have charged Hooters manager Juan Aponte with videotaping 82 women while they changed into uniforms during job interviews. As if the Cruise/Cruz story wasn’t enough, 3N is shocked (shocked!) to learn of this kind of behavior from such a reputable chain.

The women, aged 17-25, were among some 180 video files police found on Aponte’s computer. The Hooters chain has not been implicated in any way, so far, and spokesmen for the company are trying to downplay the incident.

"In our 21-year history we've never seen anything like this before,” a spokesman told Reuters. “We're very concerned about it and we're doing everything we can to cooperate." No shit.

In other corporate news, seems the working man (and woman) just can’t get a break in this country anymore. We all bitch about Wal-Mart and its shoddy treatment of its employees, but now one company is being criticized for being too nice to its help.

According to The Wall Street Journal, investors may be shying away from Costco because its stock is under-performing, and it’s all due to being too good to its employees. From above-average hourly wages to an impressive benefits package, seems all that good will is hurting the bottom line. Wall Street analysts say that if Costco intends to keep pace with rivals such as Wal-Mart, it’s got to tone down employee benefits.

“From the perspective of investors, Costco is overly generous," says Bill Dreher, a retail analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities. "Public companies need to care for shareholders first.” Is this a great country we live in or what? Costco president and CEO Jim Sinegal took the news in stride, however.

“I happen to believe that in order to reward the shareholder in the long term, you have to please your customers and workers,” Sinegal told the WSJ. Costco shares currently trade at 20 times projected 2004 earnings whereas Wal-Mart stock trades at 24.

A quick comparison of the two companies reveals striking differences in how they treat their employees. Costco provides insurance coverage for 82 percent of its employees while Wal-Mart covers just 48. As for monthly premiums, if you work at Costco the company will pick up 92 percent of the tab compared to Wal-Mart’s 67. Not surprisingly, the annual turnover rate at Wal-Mart is 50 percent compared to just 24 percent at Costco.
Now you can only screw the American public and workforce for so long before they revolt. Wal-Mart may sell on the cheap but they also are generating huge amounts of ill will from the buying public at large. In the end, consumers will take care of the retail outlets that take care of them. That said, let’s talk about these shareholders that corporate America is beholden to.

The News
When we’re talking about stock, as with everything in America these days, the rich basically own it all. The wealthy class will point to employee 401k packages where the average American holds stock, but those numbers are absolutely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Let’s examine the best data currently available, the Survey of Consumer Finances 1998, prepared by the Federal Reserve Board.

The top 1 percent of Americans own 42 percent of all stock in this country. The top 5 percent own 67 percent of all stock, the top 10 percent owns 78 percent and the top 20 percent owns a whopping 89 percent of all stock in the U.S. The bottom 80 percent of Americans owns just 11 percent of all stock among them. So exactly who are these shareholders Costco ought to be groveling to?

Going further, in terms of overall wealth, the top 1 percent of Americans holds 38 percent of all wealth in this country. What about you and me? We in the bottom 40 percent are all fighting for just two-tenths of 1 percent. Typically, the media chooses to ignore this aspect of the story. For more info, check out United for a Fair Economy at www.ufenet.org.

If all this pisses you off, it should. Question is—what are you going to do about it? You’ve got all weekend to figure it. 3N plans to get drunk.