Go back to Words & Wit pageI didn't want to join the Newspaper Guild. I do not believe that journalists, as professionals, should be in a union. But when Carl Hall asked me to be the shop steward for the columnists, I quickly said yes. I believe that if you're going to be a member of a union, you should be involved in it.
More importantly, I had become disillusioned with management. While buy-outs were a generous way -- much preferable to layoffs -- for the paper to scale down, the many new hires that followed means the paper probably didn't save a dime.
Why is it forgivable for management to make mistakes and waste money, but not rank and file? Newspapers have a way of throwing good workers in a corner. Often, they just write people off. It's a shameful waste of human potential.
On this much I am clear: Like Saddam Hussein, management miscalculated. Its refusal to make a good-faith offer before the strike was unconscionable. Wasteful. And the cause of widespread, unnecessary pain. The blame for this episode lies clearly with management's decision to hire King and Ballow. As leaders of the community -- who, I might add, feel free to editorialize in favor of social justice and against greed and dishonesty -- the newspapers had an obligation to work for an equitable settlement.
If there is one area in which I have turned to the left over the past few years, it is in this question about the quality of life. If employers continue to cut pay and benefits for its workers, exempting only the ambitious and the educated, what kind of community will be left? One in which yuppies like me sit cozy high on the hills, while everyone else can settle for an apartment. To this I say, no thank you.
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