Halloween bonus: Cutest mail carrier ever?
Much, much less cute: Workers in union organizing drives are often pulled into captive audience meetings or interrogated one on one by anti-union bosses. That's something we talk about a lot in describing the barriers workers face when they want to unionize, but it's a lot rarer we get to hear what that actually sounds like. Now, a worker at Iron Mountain, a records management and storage company, has
recorded a captive audience meeting held as workers in Georgia try to organize and join the Teamsters. He also recorded as he was
interrogated about his union activity.
Oh, and surprise! This worker was fired. Which would be illegal if he was fired for union activity, but I bet the company would say he was just coincidentally fired for having coincidentally done something wrong coincidentally right around the time he was participating in union organizing.
And more:
- Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) explains why and how he's pushing for improved manufacturing policy.
- College professor makes laughable arguments about how college professors don't need unions. Erik Loomis takes him to the woodshed:
Right…. Senior administrators totally share the values of the faculty, such as eliminating the German, French, and Philosophy departments, replacing tenure-track faculty with adjuncts, reducing budgets, and generally squeezing the faculty while padding administration with more positions and six-figure salaries. And the administration oh so much cares about faculty feedback to their bad ideas. I mean, in my 7 years as a faculty member, I’ve seen nothing but respect and positive responses to feedback from faculty. In my fantasy world, I’ve seen administrators realize their ideas were bad, restore funding for departments, take the humanities and social sciences seriously, reinforce the values of a liberal arts education, support professor free speech, and respect the traditional role of a higher education in shaping a new generation and exposing them to new ideas. It’s a fantasy world because the real world of academia is mostly terrible. Which is why we need unions.
- Don't worry, though! Gender discrimination isn't really a thing!
Women are more likely to be asked to do favors or help out their coworkers, but when they do they are less appreciated for it than men, according to research from business school professor Frank Flynn.
- This actually really is good news. Target will no longer have questions about criminal history on job applications, removing a key barrier to people re-entering the workforce after prison.