The union that represents the newsroom employees at Banker & Tradesman is unusually strong, especially given the week-kneed performance by the guys at the Boston Globe, who apparently would rather give up their union souls to The Man, for the sake of a paper or a job or something.
At B&T, we wear our union label on our foreheads. We don’t cave in the face of pressure from the goons at the top. When they tried to switch us from quill pens to ballpoints, we marched out front of the office tower, singing country songs about workin’ in the coal mine.
When the editor said, “Oh, Larry, could you work through lunch and stay ‘til midnight to finish up that little piece on the impact of the International Monetary Fund on Massachusetts biotechs, compared to the demand curve for Florida oranges, if the peso drops in reaction to the rate of inflation,” I slapped him with a grievance faster than the deadline for a page-one story. You can’t just arbitrarily speed up the news assembly line, as if we were some kind of non-union drones.
For bankers and tradesmen and journalists and people like that, The Man will try to tell them about “at will” employment, which means that if the boss eats pepperoni pizza late at night and wakes up with a tummy ache and comes to work all cranky, he can just fire you all willy-nilly; “at will,” in some Libertarian paradise, where I am also free to leave, “at will,” to go to work at, oh, I don’t know, maybe the Boston Globe or the local Chrysler dealership.
The boss will try to tell you that union work rules (columnist rum barrels will be refilled, on request, with sliced lime) curb his flexibility and boss-like ability to compete with nonunion newspapers in New Hampshire, where the stories are written by robots designed by non-union lab technicians at MIT.
But just the other day, the publisher told stockholders that “our employees are our most important asset.” They never mean that when they say it, but at least our union can help him pretend that we are very, very important assets, to be cherished and respected.
Wake-Up Call
Anyway, if you have any doubts about the value of unions, consider the plight of the poor MBTA bus and trolley and subway and covered wagon operators, who are living under a new, authoritarian regime that says they will be fired if they bring their cell phones or other electronic stuff in an MBTA vehicle. You can’t even have your cell phone in your purse. You can’t even be texting your pal about his upcoming wedding while operating an MBTA vehicle. I mean, where do these bosses get off, curbing the First Amendment tweeting rights of the working men and women who make America great?
Just because one 24-year-old Green Line operator apparently trashed three trolleys and injured a bunch of passengers, while texting, does that give The Man power to establish harsh rules that calls for 10-day suspensions for first offenses and possible dismissal for second offenses?
The Boston Carmen’s Union, which I think publishes a newspaper called Banker & Carmen, has taken up the cause and filed a grievance to head off this injustice against phone-carrying working men. I mean, come on, you’re shuffling these spoiled, white-collar babies hither and yon – and The Man is going to suspend you for calling home and seeing if your wife wants Chinese takeout for dinner?
Sure, the bosses are going to argue that unions should focus on fine-tuning salary and benefits, not seek to block common-sense public safety work rules. That’s what the publisher of this paper said when I was ordered to crawl inside the printing press and pull out a wrinkled piece of newsprint…while the press was still operating. I filed a grievance.
OK, I made that up. Even the public-sector unions are occasionally capable of restraint, at least to pretty up their public image. The cell phone grievance? It makes the union look irresponsible, incapable of at least pretending that “public service” is a part of public service.
I have to stop writing now. My cell phone is ringing. Oops.
