Mr. Ayme's smile

I haven't written anything here about the Writers Guild strike. That's odd, since I've been reading about it obsessively, but I wasn't sure I had anything unique to add to the conversation.

I suppose I could offer this paraphrase of James 5:4:

Look! The [residuals] you failed to pay the workmen who [provided the scripts for your downloadable and streaming online content] are crying out against you. The cries of the [screenwriters] have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

That's actually a pretty good description of the AMPTP's untenable position. And the next verse from James doesn't need any paraphrasing to serve as a description of the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers:

You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourself in the day of slaughter.

But since I have nothing much in particular to add to the conversation, I'll just do what we bloggers do best in such situations -- toss out a bunch of links:

• The United Hollywood blog is a timely and entertaining source for up-to-the-minute strike news.

• Miss The Daily Show? Here's the strike version.

• Miss The Colbert Report? Here's the strike version.

• Miss The Office? (Well, not yet obviously, since NBC hasn't yet run out of original episodes so the strike hasn't yet forced the show into reruns, but you get the idea.) Here's the strike version.

• Ask a Ninja on the writers strike (via John Rogers -- a card-carrying member of the Writers Guild Dragon Claw Fire Horde who explains the strike in one word: "Tiger.")

• Joss Whedon 1 and Joss Whedon 2 (both via Patrick)

- - - - - - - - -

Here's a lovely profile of Hal Taussig, one of my neighbors here in Everybody's Hometown.

Taussig founded the Untours travel company. Since 1999, the company has made more than $5 million, and Taussig has given all of it away through his Untours Foundation.

- - - - - - - - -

"Just a glance, down here on Magic Street"

- - - - - - - - -

Dave Neiwert links to this lovely and fascinating (if dismayingly uncredited) photo essay, One Week's Worth of Food Around Our Planet.

- - - - - - - - -

Carl O. sent this link ages ago and it's about time I shared it with the rest of the class -- "Motorhead Messiah":

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80 percent, and double the horsepower. ...

Goodwin's experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered -- the poor man's version of a Goodwin conversion -- he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50 percent less fuel and produce 80 percent fewer emissions. On a full-size gas-guzzler, he figures the kit earns its money back in about a year -- or, on a regular car, two -- while hitting an emissions target from the outset that's more stringent than any regulation we're likely to see in our lifetime. ...

Goodwin is doing precisely what the big American automakers have always insisted is impossible. They have long argued that fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars are a hard sell because they're too cramped and meek for our market. They've lobbied aggressively against raising fuel-efficiency and emissions standards, insisting that either would doom the domestic industry. ...

Goodwin's work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that's also clean, well, he's there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. "They could do all this stuff if they wanted to," he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder.

Here's Goodwin's company, SAE Energy.

Comments

[Jesurgislac]

I am a fourth-generation union worker - my father, both his parents, and his father's father, were all union members. (Indeed, my dad claims with a straight face to have been conceived because of the General Strike: he was born February 1927, nine months after my grandfather had lots of time on his hands.)

I have never understood the reflexive way in which people condemn unions and union membership: it seems absolutely straightforward to me, that without the right to group together and negotiate with the power of individual workers multiplied up, we working plebs get only what our patrician overlords choose to let us have. It's obvious why McDonalds or Wal-Mart hate unions: less obvious why the majority of people who are not stockholders or corporate barons do.

It is ironic - leading back to other current news - that had Republicans been less reflexively opposed to trade unionism, they could have made a better fist of the occupation. The trade unions of Iraq, banned by Saddam Hussein, were anxious to cooperate and would have been extremely useful had the Bush administration really been interested in a large-scale reconstruction programme: but public-sector trade unions - which includes all the nationalized industries, the largest single sector in Iraq - are still legally banned in Iraq. Still.

[Jesurgislac]

Just watched "Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer" - it was fantastic. Thanks for sharing...

[Rick]

About three hours ago the company I work for sent out a "press release".

The relevant newspapers, TV current affairs networks and so on were warned in advance that it would be coming, and have been primed with interview questions, talking points, "scientific research", names of third parties (well, they'd be third parties if you overlook where they get their consultancy fees) for verification and so on. Later today there will be news items covering the amazing, even miraculous thing we've done, which was engineered at a cost of presumably (finger in the air) some millions of dollars. They will interview our CEO, who will be treated as an "expert" on the subject. The company name will appear in the newspaper articles, and briefly on-screen in TV interviews. The more commercially minded outfits will leave opportunities for the CEO to also mention the company several times in answering questions, while "public interest" people will try to avoid that so that they seem independent and high minded.

Goodwin's PR people have done a very good job. He's got a hot topic (the PR people assure me this really helps, our topic is only semi-hot, so we'd get bumped back a day or two if there was a big political story today, his story would survive anything except a major terrorist attack or unexpected death of a political leader). But, it's just PR, like ours. No-one went out and found this guy, his investors are selling him to you, and they know a "News story" is a more acceptable way to do that than a series of full-page adverts, and often it's cheaper too.

Oh, and if this doesn't already make it obvious let me spell it out - practically everything Fred told you about the separation between the advertiser and the journalist is bullshit. Journalists wish they were independent, but most are bullshitting themselves. You need to get stories, there are people who are paid to provide you with stories and those people are, though they're reluctant to admit it, advertisers. Going out and finding stories yourself is difficult, sometimes dangerous and frequently ineffective. So journalists who actually do that are about one in a million, statistically irrelevant. If you're lucky the story you're reading was at least written by someone who'd phoned the number written on the bottom of the press release and taken some notes, if you're unlucky it's a badly re-phrased version of a story copied from a foreign news agency two days ago.

[MikhailBorg]

I have never understood the reflexive way in which people condemn unions and union membership.

There are many horror stories about the power of unions being used against people who want an honest job as well as for them. Mike Jittlov's "The Wizard of Speed and Time" includes a satirical example which is supposedly based on his own experience.

Having said that, I support the Guild on this one. Unions can be a powerful force to protect their members, and the writers deserve that percentage as much as anyone.

[Jesurgislac]

Mikhail: There are many horror stories about the power of unions being used against people who want an honest job as well as for them.

Most of those I have read are not "horror stories": they're anecdotes from people who did not want to join a union and comply with the obligations, but did want a job at a unionized workplace with all the benefits that this entailed, and resented this.

A union can be a powerful force. Any powerful force can have bad stories associated with it. I've never understood the reflexive horror of unions based on this or on the anecdotes from people as above.

(Of course, if people tend to read only the union stories with the corporate spin - like the way the story of the woman who was badly burned by McDonald's scalding coffee was spun - that could explain it.)

[Rosina]

Jesurgislac:I have never understood the reflexive way in which people condemn unions and union membership: it seems absolutely straightforward to me, that without the right to group together and negotiate with the power of individual workers multiplied up, we working plebs get only what our patrician overlords choose to let us have.

As a good conservative, I sometimes thought (back in the bad old days) that unions were a pain in the neck, and needed a bit more common sense. As a good civil servant, however, I joined my trade union when I was recruited (it was part of the induction package - here's your security pass, here's the Civil Service Union form, fill it up now and we'll send it on). I walked out in support of GSHQ. I worked with the unions on staffing problems, usually against higher management.

My husband, who is a Labour supporter (but no donations, in his name or anyone else's) is probably far more right wing than I am, and has never belonged to a trade union. Possibly because the Tranport and General Workers were never really interested in haulage work, or lorry drivers aren't collectivable. So whenever he complains about the conditions, I suggest that someone ought to get onto the union, and he says it wouldn't work. Part of the problem is the lack of solidarity - or as many of the new drivers would say: "Solidarność".

But basically - I'm with Jesu on the principle of the thing, though we'd probably disagree about details.

[Jesurgislac]

Rosina, my great-aunt (my mother's side of the family, a thorough-going conservative in the best old-fashioned style - was strongly in favor of unions, so long as they didn't go on strike. (Admittedly, she was just old enough to remember the General Strike of 1926, where her older brother, my grandfather, drove a tram as a strike-breaker...) She was a Civil Service union member all her life.

But basically - I'm with Jesu on the principle of the thing, though we'd probably disagree about details.

Oh, indubitably. There are always details to be disagreed with. It's the reflex "Unions bad!" that I find incomprehensible. Individual union actions may well be bad, wrong, misguided, silly, lacking in common sense... but the principle of unionized labor is just, goddammit, practical.

My husband, who is a Labour supporter (but no donations, in his name or anyone else's)

Hee.

[Rosina]

Unions as a pain in the neck - I am particularly thinking of the Rail Unions which used to take it in turns to go on strike, and which - in 1970 or so - suddenly had the brilliant idea of calling a 24 hour strike to start at 5 o'clock in the evening. As far as I know, without prior notice. Being at Charing Cross with no trains home from there or anywhere else qualified that union action as rather worse than 'a pain in the neck'. Some strikes I can live with, on the other hand. On the other other hand, though, if it doesn't worry me (or people like me) it probably isn't working.

[Jesurgislac]

which - in 1970 or so - suddenly had the brilliant idea of calling a 24 hour strike to start at 5 o'clock in the evening.

Ah. I was 3 at the time. ;-) I would say that's stupid all ways - strategically, it accomplishes nothing except to prove they can do it. It even means their own union members are going to have trouble getting home that night...

Contrariwise, when I was a regular commuter by train, the train company for that area was constantly scheduling trains it didn't have the staff to run, then demanding that staff work hours over and above their regular shifts to cover them, and if the staff wouldn't/couldn't (health and safety regs to stop tired drivers taking one more train are important to a passenger's health, thank you) canceling the train at very short notice, leaving me standing on a platform in the cold and rain. When the union went on strike to protest this, I cheered. (And wrote to the newspaper, the union, and the train company, to say I completely supported the strike action, and why.)

[Chuchundra]

While I support unions and I believe that more workers here in the US should be unionized, I have to say that my own personal experience with unions has been almost uniformly negative.

Back in the day I was a state hospital worker and a member of a government employees union. The union leadership was useless as tits on a bull. The chronic whiners and complainers got attention but the average Joe like me got nothing. When my supervisor changed my shift without the proper notice as specified in our union, a visit to the union hall garnered me nothing more than a shoulder shrug and a quick blow off. In retrospect, I should have insisted that they file a grievance and jumped up and down until they took action, but I was a young kid and had no idea how these things worked. I thought that it was the union leadership's job to help me out. My mistake.

In my current job, we have a mix of union and non-union workers. The technical staff (like myself) are non-union and the trade and craft workers (electricians, carpenters, porters, custodians) are unionized. This creates some friction. There are things that we technical staff aren't allowed to do because it's union work.

For example, I'm not supposed to run a piece of Coax cable more than ten feet long without calling an electrician. We ordered some pre-made lockers and we weren't allowed to put them together, we had to call the carpenter. The union guys are always on the look out for this sort of violation so that they can file a grievance. The best example of this was one old tech moved some cabinets and benches around to reorganize his work area. That's a porter's job. Someone found out and filed a grievance. The best part is that this job which took an old man with a heart condition two hours to do was grieved as a two-man, eight hour job.

[McJulie]

There are always details to be disagreed with. It's the reflex "Unions bad!" that I find incomprehensible.

I think unions might be a bit like taxes: people complain about them and think they're a pain, and they don't always do what they're supposed to do, but nobody really wants to live in a world without them. No, not even those tax-revolt Scottists out there. They just fail to make the connection between the world they do want to live in -- good wages, clean water, etc. -- and their hated tax or trade union.

Also, if you have never actually worked in an early 20th century meat-packing plant, it's easy to romanticize a world without trade unions.

Plus, I think something was happening in the 70s & 80s -- I think Republicans/big business started a negative public-relations campaign against trade unions, which was effective in part because of the decline of the sorts of industrial employment that had been so effectively unionized. So you could take these non-unionized white collar or technical or service workers and get them with the "hey, what's a union ever done for me?" line. Also, I think I recall a general zeitgeist of auto manufacturers blaming unions for plant closures and financial troubles.

But all of that could only be effective in a world where so many things the unions fought for had been won so long ago that people forgot they weren't natural and inevitable.

[Jesurgislac]

Chuchundra: I have to say that my own personal experience with unions has been almost uniformly negative.

And my personal experience with non-unionized industries (IT, mostly) has been almost uniformly negative. For example, the time management ordered a bunch of flat-pack desks - as we'd requested - which arrived and then had to be put together by the clerical staff. (I was not one of them, and shamefacedly left at 5pm.) Clerical staff, doubtless wishing to hell they worked in a unionized industry where they could just summon someone whose union job it was to put them together, did the flat-pack desks in the evening, on ordinary overtime rates - not a lot, frankly. While theoretically voluntary, it was clear to all concerned that any clerical staff who said they wouldn't stay and help unless they had an acceptable excuse (the two women who had childcare responsibilities left at their usual time) were going to be going on the piglist.

For example, I'm not supposed to run a piece of Coax cable more than ten feet long without calling an electrician. We ordered some pre-made lockers and we weren't allowed to put them together, we had to call the carpenter.

You know, on the whole: that sounds good to me. Would you rather putting together the lockers and running cables wherever was regarded as part of your job? Obviously there's a problem if not being able to do it yourself holds you up...

The best example of this was one old tech moved some cabinets and benches around to reorganize his work area. That's a porter's job. Someone found out and filed a grievance. The best part is that this job which took an old man with a heart condition two hours to do was grieved as a two-man, eight hour job.

What if he'd wanted to reorganize his work area, tried to do it himself, put his back out (or had a heart attack)? I mean, great, it was a nice light job and he could do it himself: does that mean he should have to, if he wants it done at all?

The best part is that this job which took an old man with a heart condition two hours to do was grieved as a two-man, eight hour job

Yeah, well, that part sounds like someone describing to someone who described it to someone and getting the job bigger each time to make the grievance sound more serious. Which is not defensible. But it doesn't sound like a "uniformly negative" position to me...

[Jesurgislac]

McJulie: I think Republicans/big business started a negative public-relations campaign against trade unions

I think there's been a negative public-relations campaign going on against trade unions for a lot longer than that. I've read fulminations against unions written over the past 150 years, and sometimes you actually have to remind yourself that the awful evil organizations these people are screaming about... are just unions. Not the Mafia, not bloodthirsty lunatics, just ordinary workers getting together to negotiate.

[cjmr's husband]

just unions. Not the Mafia

Umm, it's probably only part of the PR campaign, but it's Received Wisdom in the US that the major unions are in fact associated with the Mafia.

(and the Communists, but that actually has some ancient history behind it)

[Rosina]

For those of us who lived through the short period of the late 60s and early 70s, unions did seem to be getting above themselves. And stunts like starting a rail strike in the evening, leaving refuse all over the place, bodies stacked like firewood, cutting people's gas off and blaming it on Ted Heath*, did get up a lot of people's nose in real life (it wasn't just a public relations exercise by the Right Wing Government). And that flexing of their muscles did lead to all the ills we now have - excessive privatisation, out-sourcing, PFI - all of which I hate for being against the interests of the average person - whether as tax-payer, worker, customer. They (actually a succession of 'theys') would not have got away with it so easily if there hadn't initially been a sense of "There! that'll teach them to strand me in the snow!" I did think that BT seemed to improve immediately after privatisation (odd, since only the financial set-up had changed), but that's about the only service that did.

*some of these are real, because I experienced them. The dead bodies may be media hype.

[cjmr]

it's Received Wisdom in the US that the major unions are in fact associated with the Mafia.

I think that's at least in part because they never found Hoffa's body. Actually there's fairly decent circumstantial evidence that the Hoffa family was associated with the Mafia, whether or not the Teamsters' Union was.

[twig]

<3 Joss Whedon. Especially that second post.

The MBTA in Boston is having a fun time with workers right now, they're unionized and it still isn't doing much good. The front-page of the free local has been a pip to read lately.

First story: New train line opens up
Second story (maybe a week later): All trains mega-delayed
Third story (the next day): New train line not responsible for delay, says some guy who probably lies a lot
Fourth story (the day after that): Workers admit to a 'working strike' - i.e. not going the extra mile for the job until certain issues are settled - the usual underworked/overstaffed crap and there being like, 1 bathroom for 300 workers.

What I love are the entitled douches who never stop bitching about their late trains, who think that having a service job means those workers are expected to jump and smile and go the extra mile while being stomped on by their employers, instead of realizing that - if things were actually fair - they would probably be on a REAL strike and the trains wouldn't be running at all.

[Mabus]

Y'know...I think it's envy.

Obviously not among the white-collar conservatives--and I admit I have no experience there, so I don't really know their beef--but among blue-collar conservatives who are in non-unionized workplaces or jobs.

Consider the guy in a non-union workplace. He doesn't have a lot of benefits, and his pay is somewhat lower. But he's getting by. Quite possibly he doesn't have any preconceived notions about what his pay ought to be, beyond survivability. From his perspective, he makes "enough".

Then he looks at the unionized jobs--including several that are well-paid, or that (like screenwriting) he assumes are well-paid--and he sees the unions demanding much more than he makes, or benefits that he doesn't think are appropriate (some such people see paid vacation as "money for no work", for instance). And at the same time, those unions interfere with his ability to get things done (like getting to work on the subway) or enjoy such leisure time as he has (like watching TV). As far as he's concerned, what he's seeing is greed, just as certainly as the big corporations are greedy. People who have enough shouldn't want more.

[NewsCat]

re: Dave Neiwert and One Week's Worth of Food Around Our Planet.

I also posted the link on my blog and followed a couple of other links to a flikr account where someone says they are scanned in from a book. Which book I wish I knew.

[cjmr]

I think it's this one:

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

[A Texan in Bavaria]

Looking at the German family's weekly purchases: holy freaking crap is that a lot of alcohol! 4 bottles of wine, 30 bottles of beer... guess that's how Germany manages to average 12 liters of pure alcohol consumption per capita per year.

[Lauren]

I think it's envy, too.

Unions get caught in the same trap that lawyers do. Both groups seem to be relatively well off, which makes them fair targets. And both are adversarial, which means they reap a short-term benefit from asking for more than they think they are going recieve, and offering less than they think they are going to have to give. Acting like greedy jerks, in other words.

Of course, while both lawyers and unions get no respect in the abstract, most of the people who tell the lawyer and union jokes have plenty of respect for virtuous individual lawyers/unions.

I don't think envy is necessarily limited to non-union blue-collar workers, either. My first job out of college was as a non-union lab tech in a unionized dairy. The (union) guy at the end of the production line who stacked 40-lb. cases of butter day in and day out, and who was as dumb as bricks, made twice as much as my college-educated self, and at the time I thought that was grossly unfair. What did I go to college for 4 years for if a guy who barely graduated high school was making more than I was? Now, I have a little more sympathy for letting somebody who does a thankless job make a living wage, but it took a while to grow into it.

Jesu: What if he'd wanted to reorganize his work area, tried to do it himself, put his back out (or had a heart attack)? I mean, great, it was a nice light job and he could do it himself: does that mean he should have to, if he wants it done at all?

I don't understand why a union is necessary for this. My employer has a safety program without any unions. While workplace safety may have originated under union pressure, I see no reason why it couldn't have come from the courts, legislatively, or through pressure from liabiliy insurance.

[Jesurgislac]

Lauren: I don't understand why a union is necessary for this. My employer has a safety program without any unions. While workplace safety may have originated under union pressure, I see no reason why it couldn't have come from the courts, legislatively, or through pressure from liabiliy insurance.

Concern for workplace safety has multiple origins. But in general, the drive to ensure workers aren't required to do things that endanger their health and safety even if it's cheaper for their employers to pay off the odd liability case rather than have a proper safety program, does come from workers, rather than from employers.

I watched Schindler's List on TV the other night, and went looking for information on the historical Schindler: it struck me very much that about the only thing he's quoted as saying about why he saved his factory workers was that if people work for you, you treat them like human beings. It's not everyone who would have risked his life and lost his fortune to save his employees as Schindler did, but I can think of individual examples that stand out, over and over again, of people who provided good working conditions for their workers just because of that simple principle. And often, these employers were the very ones most strong against unions, because they felt they took care of their workers and their workers should trust them, and they saw workers unionizing as a betrayal of that trust. But, decent treatment of employees shouldn't depend on having an employer who's a good person.

These days, in industries where health and safety is an accepted principle, in countries where health and safety for workers is accepted as a standard, a worker bringing a court case against an employer might even succeed. But a single individual bringing a liability case against a corporation is not fighting on equal ground. The corporation can and will afford to offer the worker just enough to keep the worker quiet, while pointing out that if the worker decides to fight it in court, the corporation has much more money and much better lawyers, and the worker may be penniless and crippled for years and get nothing. What organization is likely to support the worker and agree to back the case?

Probably the union...

[Mabus]

Jesu: What if he'd wanted to reorganize his work area, tried to do it himself, put his back out (or had a heart attack)? I mean, great, it was a nice light job and he could do it himself: does that mean he should have to, if he wants it done at all?

Surely there is a middle ground between having to do these things yourself and being punished for doing them? *curious*

[Jesurgislac]

Surely there is a middle ground between having to do these things yourself and being punished for doing them? *curious*

Of course there is! A person should be able to decide they can perfectly well move a few light things themselves if they want to. My point was: the stories from unionized workplaces come across (in general) as irritating at worst. It would be very irritating to be told I couldn't do some furniture re-arranging if I wanted to, because "that's a porter's job". The stories from un-unionized workplaces are, at worst, lethal - and at best, irritating. If I had to choose between having rigid demarcation - being required to call a porter to move a table from one side of the room to the other: and having a workplace where if an employee wasn't physically fit to move a table, they'd be dependent on the kindness of co-workers or just deal with it where it was - then I go for the former. Obviously this is a tediously simplistic way of looking at it, and the real issues are in general much more complicated. I'm not attempting to say "Unions perfect under all circumstances!" but "Unions a damned good idea, don't reflexively condemn!"

[Zzyzx]

There are frequent attempts for IT workers to unionize. Personally I think it's a great idea, but it'll never happen because 2/3 of programmers think they're among the top 1%. Anything that might promote stability is perceived as horrible because they want the dead weight gone so they can get more money. They never think that others might call them the useless members.

[Lee Ratner]

IT people are also unlikely to unionize because many of them are libertarians or lean towards that direction and
most libertarians are very anti-union.

[Mabus]

Lee Ratner: IT people are also unlikely to unionize because many of them are libertarians or lean towards that direction and most libertarians are very anti-union.

So I have heard. It's a terribly baffling way of looking at things. I spent my early life in a period when unions kept reaching for more than seemed to be fair and seemed to be getting in the way of their workers' well-being, so it is no surprise if I reflexively distrust them. But I don't make an ideology of it.

Even Lipscomb, who distrusted all human authority higher than the individual, and who has recently come to the attention of libertarians, acknowledged that unions were roughly the equivalent of corporations and a necessary counterbalance to them, so that as long as either existed the other ought to as well.

[jbrandt]

Yeah, "Hungry Planet" is the book those photos were scanned from. I think there were excerpts on the web, too, but that looks like most of the book right there.

[BugHunter]

The experiences of the 70's and early 80's pretty well poisoned peoples attitudes towards unions in this country (and yes, they were stacking up the bodies in Liverpool rather than burying them). For a long time unions were seen (and to a large degree rightly so) as obstacles to modernization and productivity at a time when the UK couldn't afford not to be productive. The pendulum has swung too far to the other side though... I don't know what its like in the US but the British worker is now the most 'flexible' (read: disposable) in western europe and has far too little protection or job security... from the all union shop floor the UK has become the land of the temporary worker, and its not really clear this is a good thing.

[Jesurgislac]

Zzyzx: it'll never happen because 2/3 of programmers think they're among the top 1%. Anything that might promote stability is perceived as horrible because they want the dead weight gone so they can get more money. They never think that others might call them the useless members.

LOL. Too true.

I also have to agree with Lee Ratner that a lot of programmers have succumbed to the delusion of libertarianism. Not nearly as many as the "I'm in the top 1%!" delusion, though, IME.

BugHunter: The experiences of the 70's and early 80's pretty well poisoned peoples attitudes towards unions in this country (and yes, they were stacking up the bodies in Liverpool rather than burying them).

Never heard of that one: Tabloid story?

One problem the unions had in the 1980s was the Conservative government privatizing - sometimes usefully, sometimes not: another consistent problem through the 70s and 80s was the media bias. (Police attacks on picket lines tended to be full of passive voice: "A miner was struck over the head and died later in hospital" kind of thing, contrasted with "A striker hit a policeman and broke his nose".) It was rare to see any in-depth explanation of why the strike was happening.

Some strikes which I recall from direct experience, I found out the causes of only years after the event: and the contrast between the media view of the strike and the inner causes could be so drastic that the media had done what amounted to lying by suppression of information.

I mentioned the train driver's strike above: if I'd relied only on the free tabloid newspaper to tell me about it, all I would have known was that the drivers wanted more money and the rail company were saying they couldn't afford it and that commuters were suffering because of the strike. Because I was a commuter (and had asked before why trains kept being canceled) I knew that while the drivers were asking for a pay rise, this was motivated not only by wanting more money, but because the extreme shortage of drivers was caused by drivers leaving that train company and working elsewhere, because that train company paid the lowest rates in the UK, and any qualified driver could get a good raise by moving - and the trainers were getting sick of training people to see them leave. But this wasn't a tabloid soundbite.

And while I - a commuter - did mind the strike, I minded a lot more the rail company deciding their share profits were more important than my safety, and sending out tired drivers to drive one more train rather than raising wages to retain trained drivers.

[Ryan Ferneau]

some such people see paid vacation as "money for no work"

You mean it's not? How do you describe paid vacation, then?

[ako]

There are frequent attempts for IT workers to unionize. Personally I think it's a great idea, but it'll never happen because 2/3 of programmers think they're among the top 1%. Anything that might promote stability is perceived as horrible because they want the dead weight gone so they can get more money.

Yeah, my mom works in IT, and she's definitely an exception; she's happy with a reasonably good salary, very big on wanting benefits, really doesn't want to work an insane number of hours, and strongly favors employers who allow flexible hours. So she's spent nearly her entire career in the public sector where she's been part of a union, and got all that. And she's continuously getting job offers from people who assume that of course she'd want to give all of that up, move, and work insane numbers of hours for the chance to make a big pile of cash.

[Francis]

You mean it's not? How do you describe paid vacation, then?

A good investment by the company in the stability and well-being of the workforces. In much the same way that encouraging workers to work less than 60 hours a week on average improves their total productivity - meaning that the incentives should be set up that way round.

[Rosina]

BugHunter: The experiences of the 70's and early 80's pretty well poisoned peoples attitudes towards unions in this country (and yes, they were stacking up the bodies in Liverpool rather than burying them).

Jesurgislac: Never heard of that one: Tabloid story?

No - I thought that at first, but the Socialist Party website thinks it was unfair to pick on the gravediggers "The ruling class attempted to denigrate the strikers by seizing on the refusal of gravediggers in Liverpool to "bury the dead"."

Another view (though I'm not sure quite who the sponsor is) refers to the possibility of burial at sea.

So neither we nor the media are making it up.

I remember the Bread Strike. I worked in the Prison Service with people who had connections (say no more) and we bought bread from the prison bakeries. I remember meeting my father to give him a loaf that had been brought in from Bedford. What would John Bunyan have thought of it?

[Jesurgislac]

No - I thought that at first, but the Socialist Party website thinks it was unfair to pick on the gravediggers "The ruling class attempted to denigrate the strikers by seizing on the refusal of gravediggers in Liverpool to "bury the dead"."

Thanks. I did google, but couldn't find a link.

[Jesurgislac]

Have to admit it, though: if you're going to have a short gravedigger's strike, end of January is probably the best time for it. Cold weather...

It must have been awful for the people whose relatives had died and who had to wait to schedule the funeral if they wanted the body buried.

But I would hesitate to argue that no group of workers should go on strike, no matter what their working conditions. And I would want to know what working conditions were like for gravediggers in Liverpool - and what their payscale amounted to - before I agreed the strike wasn't justified.

[Rosina]

But I would hesitate to argue that no group of workers should go on strike, no matter what their working conditions. And I would want to know what working conditions were like for gravediggers in Liverpool - and what their payscale amounted to - before I agreed the strike wasn't justified.

I think Jesurgislac meant that she would not suggest that any group of workers should not go on strike. But as I remember it, the problem was that while the gravediggers were striking for more money (or perhaps better promotion prospects to First Gravedigger, with its additional lines), there were others cheering them on and saying that all these strikes were the Socialist Revolution. Most people didn't want a socialist revolution, honestly. And while improved pay for everyone was a good thing (because it would have included me) it only led to massive inflation (which was also in the end 'a good thing' because once wages caught up, the mortgage was miniscule). And the 'socialist revolution', as it was being trumpeted by various union leaders, would not have meant power for the ordinary man or woman, but only for those in the powerful unions.

As I said, the backlash could have been predicted (and was no doubt welcomed) but from it we get a labour party that seems to have lost all ties with 'the workers', even with nice well-behaved workers. In my litany of things I hate, the excess use of casual workers is in there, along with outsourcing and privatisation - and 'consultants'. Make them grateful that they've got a job, and eager to do anything to keep it, but make sure that any chance of improvement is snaffled by someone under contract, either through an agency which makes donations to your party or a firm whose partners include your friends and wife.

[Jesurgislac]

105% agreement on all of the above, Rosina.

(110% agreement on opposing people who talk up "the socialist revolution!"...)

[Rosina]

This is the strangest Thursday Flame War Jesurgislac and I have ever fought.

[Jesurgislac]

I agree with that, too. ;-)

[hagsrus]

(Police attacks on picket lines tended to be full of passive voice: "A miner was struck over the head and died later in hospital" kind of thing, contrasted with "A striker hit a policeman and broke his nose".)

Remembered from childhood (I think it must have been a joke): A man was charged with assaulting a police horse by striking its hoof with his knee.

I was involved in the first strike against Foyle's bookstore in London. Exhausting, depressing experience.

[Jeff]

lorry drivers aren't collectivable

Tell that to the Teamsters! (Better not; they're a rough crowd...)

[Lee Ratner]

Mabus: So I have heard. It's a terribly baffling way of looking at things. I spent my early life in a period when unions kept reaching for more than seemed to be fair and seemed to be getting in the way of their workers' well-being, so it is no surprise if I reflexively distrust them. But I don't make an ideology of it.

Even Lipscomb, who distrusted all human authority higher than the individual, and who has recently come to the attention of libertarians, acknowledged that unions were roughly the equivalent of corporations and a necessary counterbalance to them, so that as long as either existed the other ought to as well.

Many libertarans fantasize about the unrestricted free market because they feel they would thrive under it and because they might genuinely believe it will produce the best results for humans. They tend to hate anything that would restrict the wealth creation of the unlimited free market and view unions as one of the worst enemies of the free market. They also tend to be individualists who do not recognize the need for collective bargaining for certain types of jobs.

By the way, who is Lipscomb?

[Mabus]

Lee Ratner> Sorry...I sometimes lose track of who I've spoken to here before. "Lipscomb" is David Lipscomb, a prominent figure in my church (the Churches of Christ). It's not easily possible to classify him on a modern political spectrum--he was something of an anarcho-pacifist. His writings aren't really connected to libertarians, but they seem to have discovered him recently (early this year I encountered a study of his short book "Civil Government" on a libertarian site, despite its extremely secular leanings). He doesn't seem to have believed in any kind of organization whatsoever, except the church, and that as decentralized and localized as possible.

Most people in the Churches of Christ have at least vaguely libertarian leanings (the pacifism has mostly dropped out), in the sense that they want the government to stay out of their way, but not many are really ideological about it. It's hard to name any single cause, but the strict religious requirement of obedience to the government and paying of taxes seems to prompt a lot of us to try and keep those requirements from becoming any more onerous than absolutely necessary. ("Since I must obey the law, make sure the things I want to do are legal.")

[Lee Ratner]

Most people in the Churches of Christ have at least vaguely libertarian leanings (the pacifism has mostly dropped out), in the sense that they want the government to stay out of their way, but not many are really ideological about it. It's hard to name any single cause, but the strict religious requirement of obedience to the government and paying of taxes seems to prompt a lot of us to try and keep those requirements from becoming any more onerous than absolutely necessary. ("Since I must obey the law, make sure the things I want to do are legal.")

In my readings about evangelicals, I've learned that many of them are romantically attracted to the idea of limited government. Many American evangelicals seem to idealize the early American republic, roughly the period between the inaugeration of George Washington to the end of the 1830s (before mass Catholic and Jewish immigration). I think they romanticize government for reasons that are mainly to do with enforcing patriarchal families. There are of couse Jews who are found of limited government but not really for religious reasons. The closest equivalent would be the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose ideal government would be one that forces Jews into ghettos but otherwise leaves Jews alone.*

*I am not very fond of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. I think its a distortation of Judaism.

[Mabus]

In my readings about evangelicals, I've learned that many of them are romantically attracted to the idea of limited government. Many American evangelicals seem to idealize the early American republic, roughly the period between the inaugeration of George Washington to the end of the 1830s (before mass Catholic and Jewish immigration). I think they romanticize government for reasons that are mainly to do with enforcing patriarchal families.

While I can't rule that out, at least in my church the attraction has a very long pedigree, dating all the way back to the period supposedly being romanticized. Lipscomb's ideas seem to have been in place by the time of the Civil War, for instance. On the other hand, modern Churches of Christ developed more or less in tandem with the early republic and were in a position to have been influenced by it; some of our early leaders were influenced by the same philosophers (John Locke, especially) and a few even knew some of the younger Founding Fathers personally. My best understanding of the writings in question, and of our history, suggests that we've always tended to see any large organization, governmental or otherwise, as a threat to personal freedoms. Whether there are other motives beneath that, I can't say.

[Gravity]

Oh, good, something I can help with. The photo essay is from the Time Magazine article "What the World Eats" which was based on the book "Hungry Planet".
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519_1373664,00.html

[lightning]

OK. Union stories.

Father of a friend criticized the Teamster's leadership at a Union meeting. Got doused with lighter fluid afterwards. They'd have set him on fire if they could've caught him.

PGE-1 nuclear reactor. Wiring was union all the way. PG&E paid top dollar to get the Union's best. Featherbedded up the yinyang, and so badly done that it all had to be ripped out and redone. Source -- the guy who was in charge of inspection.

A friend was working on a line packing ice cream when one of the other guys lost part of a finger in the machinery. Union -- tough bananas. Later, my friend was "laid off" without notice -- contra Union contract. Sorry, not a member for long enough to file a grievance, and no, you can't have your dues back.

I'm not particularly anti-union, but a lot of the problems with unions are considerably beyond "inconvenience". I'll also note that a lot of the problems with unions from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s were connected with organized crime, and it has been pretty much boiled out of them.

"How many union workers does it take to change a light bulb?"

"Forty seven. You gotta problem wit dat?"

[cjmr]

"Since I must obey the law, make sure the things I want to do are legal."

You know, Mabus, if I hang around and listen to you long enough, I may start to understand my CofC step-father. Your explanations are much clearer than his have ever been.