Stella D'Oro Blog Preview

I'm very excited about this article in this week's New Yorker, "Out of the Bronx - Private equity and the cookie factory" by Ian Frazier (subscription required). As the article (ever so briefly) recounts, the Stella D'Oro labor dispute was the subject of a NLRB case out of my office. Plus, the entire story concerns what happens when a once-upon-a-time-family-owned-business is bought and sold by a private equity firm. Private equity, also an important meme of January 2012. (See, e.g., this insightful article at TPM about the significance of the media confusing Romney's former firm as "venture capital" rather than "private equity".) I think the Stella case is an interesting look at the import/impact/significance of labor laws. This is a case that the employer lost, but I'm not sure that in the grand scheme of things the employees won much (I hope to be proved wrong that). So here's a preview: I'm going to finish reading the New Yorker article, then read the NLRB decision, and go from there with anything else that catches my attention, and then I'll share my reactions.