Michael Moore's New Film Puts Spotlight on Petaluma Company
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://tinyurl.com/ybqz57s
Michael Moore's new film puts spotlight on Petaluma company
By JEREMY HAY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 5:18 p.m.
For an American company, coming square into the sights of pugnacious
populist filmmaker Michael Moore is usually not cause for celebration.
But for Petaluma's Alvarado Street Bakery, being featured in Moore's new
film, �Capitalism: A Love Story,� is an affirmation of decades of doing
business differently.
�It's newfound notoriety for something we've been doing for 30 years,�
said Michael Girkout, president of the worker-owned cooperative that
started in Santa Rosa and is now a nationwide leader in the organic
whole grain bread market.
True to its egalitarian ethic, the company used three tickets Moore gave
it to the film's Sept. 17 Hollywood premiere to send production workers
Sara Romero, Ronnie Bell and Custodio Quiroz.
Romero said that after the birth of her children, the red carpet affair,
during which Moore sported an Alvarado Street Bakery cap, was �one of
the best experiences of my life.�
�Somebody like me, we don't have those opportunities, and to be in a
movie like this is something I really, really enjoyed,� the Santa Rosa
resident said.
Part of the thrill, Romero said, was the chance to �represent Alvarado
Street as another option to the (dominant economic) system.�
In �Capitalism: A Love Story,� which opens today around the country,
Moore takes aim at what he characterizes as a capitalist culture run amok.
He holds up the bakery � with 117 employees and $24 million in annual
revenues � as an example of a successful capitalist alternative, where
workers are as powerful as executives, profits are shared equally and
workers are valued for more than their labor.
�This could be potentially a new model,� said Cory Fisher, a field
producer and researcher for Moore. �A way for workers to feel engaged
and not marginalized, and that they have a stake in their future.�
Fisher helped choose the bakery as a subject for the film and directed
the segment that focused on it.
�They stood out,� she said. �They're successful, their workers are able
to make a living wage, they seem empowered and happy and you just start
to look around and wonder, �Why aren't other companies doing this?�
Thursday, on a plant floor richly scented with caraway seeds, Romero,
who spent years previously in the more traditionally corporate food
production industry, said: �I'm going to tell you something, I'm a very
dedicated worker and to me, it seems that if you plant something like
this, and you see it grow up, it makes me very proud.�
Capitalism: A Love Story� opens tonight in Santa Rosa at the Rialto
Cinemas Lakeside and Petaluma Boulevard Cinemas. The owner/employees of
Alvarado Street Bakery � from the production floor to the executive
suite � have rented the Rialto's 250-seat cinema for a special showing
Tuesday.
�It's to celebrate the worker democracy and the cooperative business
model,� said Girkout, who described the company as �wildly profitable,�
although he wouldn't disclose precise figures.
In practical terms, Alvarado Street Bakery is run with each employee, or
�member� of the cooperative, given one share a year in the company. That
share grants the employee � from the CEO on down � a right to an equal
vote on matters ranging from reinvesting profits to salaries to health
and other benefits.
�Because we are they,� said Girkout, �we tend to give ourselves the best
benefits possible.�
All employees relinquish their share at the end of the year and are
granted a new one, and each gets only one.
�There's no big I's and little You's,� said Ronnie Bell, a bread line
quality control supervisor and one of those who attended the film's
opening. �Everything is shared.�
Girkout � and Moore, in his film � said that model has built a company
that ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, where the average worker
earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, where production workers earn
between $18 and $22 an hour, and the ratio of executive to worker
compensation is less than three to one.
The majority of employees have been with the company for more than 15
years, Girkout said.
�They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point
to and that people study,� said Melissa Hoover, executive director of
the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based
industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives among
its 55 members.
The bakery ranks first among the group's members in terms of total
worker compensation, and third in terms of gross sales and number of
workers, Hoover said.
The bakery deserves its spotlight, said Petaluma Chamber of Commerce CEO
Onita Pellegrini: �We are proud of Alvarado Street Bakery � they should
be held up as an example.�
Still, in a testimony to the raw divides that Moore likes to plumb,
Pellegrini was dubious about the film.
�I don't have much nice to say,� about Moore's critique of capitalism,
she said. �But that's his point of view and he's entitled to it. That's
the American way.�
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_