Linda McMahon has a new ad, touting her jobs for Connecticut plan, which is mostly a non-plan looking to stifle any government action.
But let’s look at Linda’s own jobs planning experience:
McMahon Laid of Large Percentages of Her Workforce on Multiple Occasions.
On a number of occasions, World Wrestling Entertainment has laid off a large percentage of its workforce: In January of 2009, World Wrestling Entertainment announced that it would cut sixty jobs, or ten percent of its workforce, as part of a “cost reduction plan.” In November of 2001, World Wrestling announced that it would fire 39 people, or nine percent of its workforce. Linda McMahon claimed that the layoffs would reduce the company’s costs by approximately $9 million. In 2001, World Wrestling Entertainment and NBC abandoned their joint venture, the Extreme Football League (XFL), laying off 56 employees in Stamford. The WWE claimed to have reduced its work force by 3 percent in August of 2002. In 1995, Linda McMahon announced WWF was laying-off thirty to forty employees. In 1991, the Wrestling Observer reported that Titan Sports had released ten percent of its front office staff. In a follow-up the next week, they reported that twenty-six employees had been fired. [AP, 1/09/09, 11/09/01, 8/21/02; CT Labor Department; Dayton Daily News, 1/16/95; Wrestling Observer, 10/07/91]
And accordining to McMahon, WWE performers do not even have jobs as such. They are are independent contractors. [Washington Post, 2/22/10] Dawn Marie Psaltis, a former WWE “diva” who has founded a nonprofit organization to help aging wrestlers with their healthcare expenses, explained that wrestlers gain surprisingly little benefit from their large salaries, as the cost of their health insurance is typically quadruple that of normal individuals. She said his death highlights the struggles wrestlers face as independent contractors who don’t receive the benefits of athletes or professional actors. [CNN.com, 12/05/09]
Jesse Ventura complained about Linda McMahon on an ESPN radio show by calling the WWE “a joke” and questioning his WWE contractor classification, which prevented him for being entitled to health benefits or could unionize. “How can you be an independent contractor when you’re told when to wrestle, who to wrestle and you can’t wrestle for another promotion?” he said. [The Washington Times, 12/9/2009]
