Judging from the breakdown of comments I'm getting, the results are in: people like it when I write about sex and don't like it when I write about labor. Oh well.
The NY Times sole labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, published a really scary piece on unionizing a pork plant on Monday:
In 1997, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union lost a unionization election at the sprawling plant, built in this rural town 75 miles south of Raleigh. But it was not until 2004 that the National Labor Relations Board upheld an administrative law judge's decision that threw out the election results.
The labor board found that the Smithfield Packing Company not only had prevented a fair election by illegally intimidating, firing, threatening and spying on workers but also had a union supporter beaten up the night of the vote count.
You have to read this piece if you have ever wondered whether organized labor is still relevant to American workers. It's like Gotham City out there folks! Or, more like Sudan, as the president of the union described it. In this pork plant, about 65 percent of the plant workers are Hispanic, 25 percent are black, and the remaining 10 percent are white or American Indian. Ever wonder why we used to care about unions and we don't anymore? Ever wonder why unions were considered such a central part of American life 60 years ago? You need look no further than those numbers.
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