From Season 8 of Seinfeld, the episode "The Muffin Tops", incompetent schemer George Costanza relays the details of his new job and the disposition of his old one:
Jerry: Oh right, the new job, how is it?
George: I love it. New office, new salary. I'm the new Wilhelm.
Jerry: So who's the new you?
George: They got a new intern from Francis Louis High. His name is Keith. He comes in Mondays after school.
From Editor and Publisher, details on the Toledo Blade's attempts to replace disgruntled union laborers and the disposition of their former jobs:
One day after locking out some 200 non-editorial employees in three bargaining units, the general manager of The Blade in Toledo, Ohio says the paper is operating fine, and with less than half the number of workers who were kept out.
Joseph Zerbey, vice president and general manager of The Blade, says only 50 to 60 temporaries were needed to replace the locked-out employees that were barred from entry on Sunday. Those included members of the Teamsters Local 20, Toledo Typographical Local 63, and Toledo Mailers Local 1135, according to the paper.
How in the world does a company survive replacing 200 full-time employees with one-quarter as many temps?
Because of the untenable work rules here, we don't need to replace everyone," Zerbey said. "We brought in a lot fewer people than we locked out." He declined to elaborate on the work rules, but said they require more people on certain jobs than he believes are necessary. "There are rules in there that a normal general manager would never do," he said about the locked-out unions' contracts. "There are restrictions in there that don't allow us to do our job, [and institute] manning requirements."
An interesting example of the destructive stranglehold union contracts have over the operations of most American newspapers. Other examples of a more local nature include those eloquently presented in these fine Internet postings.
It almost makes you feel sorry for them. But given these same newspapers' advocacy for all things collectivist and anti-corporate in nature, it's hard to feel sympathy over someone reaping what they so cavalierly sow.
Speaking of which, believe it or not, there are some potentially very powerful people out there who'd like to mandate the efficiency of the Toledo Blade's former employment contracts for a municipality near you:
... more than the rest, however, [Keith Ellison] emphasizes the role of unions. "We need to talk affirmatively, not defensively, about labor," he says. "What brought the working class into the middle class?
Hard work? Ingenuity? Not paying one's parking tickets or taxes? No!
The union movement. And what is returning the middle class back to the working class? The absence of the union movement. I believe you can't just have a critique of the system without a vision of how to fix it. One way I know labor is part of this is by how much the corporatist types take aim at labor. When they see having the right equipment so you and I don't get cancer as being too expensive, as cutting into their profits, well, my goodness! Labor has to be part of the fix, even as we negotiate international contracts."
Even with that Cynthia McKinney like non-sequitur at the end, any guess which candidate the Star Tribune would endorse come general election time?
No comments:
Post a Comment