Perhaps My Greatest Honor

Celebrated on the first Monday of September, Labor Day is the nation’s homage to the achievements of its workers.  A sentiment lost on Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz, who celebrated the day by reminding store managers to reduce employees hours so that working the holiday will not make them eligible for overtime.  Miserly even by Petz’s standards, who should allow the poor sods stuck working summer’s last day to make the extra buck. 

But Heidi saves them all for herself, stuffing her pockets with more than $14,000,000 in Sherwin’s gelt just this year.  After Petz takes her cut, she uses gaudy profits to enrich her friends on the top floors in Cleveland, while scheming to reduce worker pay.  On the holiday intended to celebrate them, an astounding pettiness which explains why her employees have so much disdain for Petz.  Which they continue to express to me in great numbers, from the stores to the top floors in Sherwin’s new Global Headquarters.  An enmity spreading faster than the cancer in Rochester, which Petz is also responsible for. 

Making paint’s latest folly her belief that she’s in charge at Sherwin-Williams, rather than that the company continues on inertia.  As it will until Petz is replaced, a countdown I hope to hasten.  Behavior which has landed me on Sherwin’s BOLO list, perhaps my greatest honor.   

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The United States president placed a 50% tariff on a wide range of products imported from Canada, “shutting down” cross-border trade according to one senior executive I spoke with last week at an American paint applicator manufacturer.  A statement which likely applies to all applicator manufacturers, if they had any cross-border business left after the last round of tariffs.

In response Canada placed tariffs on more than 700 items imported from the US, with rates ranging from 15% to 50%.  Including the corrugated boxes crucial to moving paint, which will now be taxed at 25%.  A discount as compared to steel paint cans, which from quarts to fives will garner a 50% tariff rate.  As will plastic pails, ensuring inflation in the price of liquid paint on both sides of the border, though finished goods were exempted from tariffs in this round. 

Executives in both countries are lamenting the current circumstances, which hurt both sides with no gain possible that justifies the damage done.  The end of the world’s longest open and (mostly) free border, which both sides will now police at enormous expense.  The price of letting the pool guy negotiate your trade deals, and we’ll all have to pay it.  Making a double-digit rate of inflation in coatings for the coming year more likely, considering the aforementioned and the rising price of diesel.  A rate which may even be accelerated by concerns for the US bond market, which continues to forecast gravely for the United States economy.  With stagflation more likely as the dollar adjusts to its new reality, despite the appearance of stasis.  Like a tsunami gathered on the ocean which has yet to reach the shore. 

I’m Sure it Was Gross

Charles Gassenheimer is back in the news wearing the same cloak and carrying the same scythe as he did at Kelly-Moore, while serving as the president of Omnis Fuel Technologies. Gassenheimer filed a lawsuit to regain control of the Pleasants Power Plant in Belmont, West Virginia recently, which he lost when investors accused him of “gross financial mismanagement.”  Including diverting state-funded loans into speculative hydrogen and cryptocurrency ventures, which Gassenheimer admitted he did in an act of candor I did not know him for.  To settle the claim Gassenheimer offered to return more than $75 million to investors including self-help guru Tony Robbins, who refused the payment and chose instead to sue Gassenheimer for $240 million—over $114 million of which stemmed from fabricated and suspect invoices Gassenheimer’s ordered the utility to pay while he was in control.

I put Gassenheimer and Petz in the same category, applying different business models but equally predatory.  With Gassenheimer scavenging for his prey while Petz hunts hers, with both employing the same ethos of dollars before decency. 

A repugnant greed we have already suffered.  And now must suffer again.