Shaun Richman

January 26, 2008July 17, 2023

An Encouraging Labor Statistic

For the first time in 25 years the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a union has increased. A report from Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research attributes the increase to large membership gains in California – over 200,000 of the 310,000 new union members were organized there – and more modest gains in northeastern states like New York and New Jersey, which were able to offset the continued decline of unionized manufacturing jobs.

The slight uptick in the unionized percentage, to 12.1% from 12.0%, was the first recorded since the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting figures in 1983, and, as the report’s authors caution, may reflect a statistical variation. The actual number of unionized workers has, after all, increased in most years since John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO on a call for a greater commitment to new organizing. However, those gains in membership could not keep pace with the new jobs added to the overall economy, causing declining percentages of union membership. But now as we slouch towards a recession, the economy is adding significantly fewer new jobs, so that union membership could actually gain as a percentage of the workforce.

But that’s only part of the story. These membership increases reflect a shift in organizing strategy to consolidate our gains in states and industries where we are relatively strong. Tens of thousands of those new union members were public sector home child care providers. Many thousands more were teachers and clerical and administrative employees in states like Kansas and New Mexico, where public sector employees recently regained the right to form unions. In the private sector, gains were made in health care and construction, where strong unions used their leverage to compel employers to recognize and deal with newly organized workers outside of the increasingly hostile and anti-union National Labor Relations Board.

This strategic shift leaves huge swaths of workers – in the South and Midwest, in private sector white collar occupations, etc. – unrepresented and with little hope of organizing. It is, however, a plan to survive and fight another day. Every newly organized workplace that wins a good contract is an object lesson to friends, family and neighbors that we can organize and win. It means more financial resources for international unions and the AFL-CIO and Change To Win to commit to organizing elsewhere. And it’s more union voters to elect a government that will reform the union-busting laws. It helps ensure that there will continue to be a union movement, for now.

January 11, 2008July 17, 2023

There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis is pure, foreboding menace in “There Will Be Blood.” Although, when he finally unleashes the full force of his menace, it is not entirely what is expected. Nor, likewise, is the blood alluded to in the title precisely what one would expect from the cleverly edited promotional trailers, although plenty of the red stuff flows.

Based upon the Upton Sinclair novel, “Oil!,” the film could easily have been mere anti-capitalist propaganda, but director Paul Thomas Anderson focuses more on themes of family, ambition and envy. Anderson doesn’t make short films and “Blood” is no exception, clocking in at nearly three hours. But whereas previous movies featured a large, Altman-esque cast of characters, Day-Lewis is the sole, scene-chewing focus of nearly every frame of “There Will Be Blood.” It’s one of those performances that shouts, give me my fucking Oscar or I’ll cut your fucking throat. Or bash your head in with a bowling pin 17 years from now. It’s a mesmerizing performance, and easily worth a six and a half dollars matinee ticket.

December 31, 2007July 17, 2023

Late Night Labor Wars

Thank goodness for the Hollywood unions for providing a little basic trade union education for the American public. It’s been so rare to see aggressive, proactive union activity that most people clearly don’t understand how this stuff is supposed to work. The fact that most late-night talk show hosts are crossing picket lines to return to the air without their writers, while David Letterman gets to go back with his writers and their union’s blessing is inexplicably confusing to some. Apparently even some producers don’t understand. One anonymous weasel (presumably from NBC) whined, “Regardless of who technically owns what, they are now intentionally putting us at a competitive disadvantage.” That’s how this works, sweetheart. If the striking Writers Guild was affecting everyone’s business equally, how would that compel the producers to settle?

I’ve written about “me-too” agreements before. These are contracts wherein an employer agrees in advance to the terms of an industrywide agreement and buys its way out of a labor dispute. Whatever the other guys agree to, we’ll do the same. Just please don’t strike us. That is precisely the kind of contract that Letterman’s Worldwide Pants company, independently of the major networks, has signed with the Writers Guild. The other late night guys whine that Letterman’s getting off on a technicality (Letterman negotiated to own his own show when he moved to CBS, while Leno pushed Letterman out of the way to take over Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” on NBC’s penurious terms). Do not let them obscure the fact that they planned to put Letterman at a competitive disadvantage by crossing the picket lines to return to the air, while Letterman held out for his writers.

And why? Jay Leno is retiring in a few years, and could have stood his ground, except I suspect that he secretly hates unions. Carson Daly, who enthusiastically went back on the air first, is the kind of unprincipled, talentless careerist who cynically calculated that by being the only host presenting new programs that people might finally watch his dreck. And Conan O’Brien, I can only assume, was worried that NBC might take the promised “Tonight Show” away from him if he stayed out with his writers.

If all of the late night programs had stayed in reruns, they would have maintained their audience share. Yes, I’m sure there are less viewers overall for reruns, but the proportion of viewers would remain the same, so that all of the shows would lose revenue equally, and thus, in a way, not really lose out at all. But now David Letterman gets to go back with fresh, scripted material and access to all of Hollywood’s stars, while Leno, who is painfully unfunny even with his team of writers, has to vamp and ad-lib for an hour each night with only the help of his own wit and whatever college professor or book author he can scrounge up. If it does place not only Leno and Conan, but all of NBC at a competitive disadvantage, then it places pressure on the NBC-Universal corporate ownership structure to settle the damn contract. Which is exactly the trade union purpose of a “me too” agreement.

December 25, 2007July 17, 2023

Wonderful Absinthe

All in all, absinthe’s a bit of a disappointment. In case it escaped your attention, the green fairy, which has been illegal in the United States for most of the 20th century for its supposed hallucinogenic and psychopathic effects, is now legal. It turns out, in fact, that it’s been legal since Prohibition’s repeal but nobody noticed. Since that time, absinthe has been banned from the U.S. for containing a chemical compound that determined European importers have recently proven never existed in the wormwood-derived liqueur. So what of absinthe’s reputation for murder, mayhem and gothic artistic inspiration? Guilt by association, it turns out. It’s kinda like blaming bourbon for country music or Colt 45 for drive-by shootings.

That sober analysis takes much of the fun out of drinking absinthe, which can now be found in select liquor stores and bars in one of three brands, with more (supposedly) on the way. I’ve been sampling a bottle of the French Lucid today, which tastes like a mix of sambuca and liquid Tylenol. Forget Victorian romance, or Vincent Van Gogh’s missing ear, my favorite absinthe story can be found in Dave Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir, “The Mayor of MacDougal Street.” In the collection of anecdotes from NYC’s late-fifties folk scene, Van Ronk tells of some sailor friends who smuggled several dozen cases of absinthe out of Japan on the even of its prohibition there, hoping to make an underground score back home. When the mob wouldn’t touch it, the sailors were reduced to bartering their illicit booze for places to sleep. I’ll let comrade Van Ronk pick up the story:

As a general rule, I tried to avoid getting mixed up in this kind of convoluted skullduggery, but ever since I was a teenager, I had been reading about Lautrec and absinthe, Modigliani and absinthe, Swinburne and absinthe – naturally I was dying to find out about Van Ronk and absinthe. Also, there was the sheer joy of conspiracy for its own sake. What can I say? I have always been a hopeless romantic…

The next day my two smugglers dropped by Judy’s place, and over glasses of guess what, I got the discouraging word: my guy had bought a few cases for himself and his friends, but basically his position was, “Look – you know what it is and I know what it is, but nobody else ever heard of the stuff. Who are we going to sell it to?”

“Gee,” I said, “the Mafia sure is hard on honest crooks.”

By way of consolation, I took five more bottles off their hands. Hell, they were selling it cheaper than Irish Whiskey. For the next few weeks, the nabe was awash in absinthe. Everybody I knew must have picked up a few jugs. Then it was gone…

It must have been about ten years down the line that I happened to be doing a gig in Provincetown, and a publican in Wellfleet invited Paul Geremia (the world’s best blues guitarist and singer) and me to a high-class bash at his Victorian Gothic “cottage.” Paul and I were sitting there jamming, when our host approached us with two glasses of a familiar-looking opalescent fluid…

“I’ll bet you guys’ll never guess what this is,” our host said, as he handed me a glass.

I took a sip, ostentatiously rolled it around my tongue and replied, “It tastes very much like Japanese absinthe.”

“Jesus, how could you tell?”

I arched my eyebrows in my very best William F. Buckley imitation. “To the truly sophisticated palate,” I intoned, “there are no mysteries.”

Now, that is exactly the kind of absinthe experience I was hoping for! Not necessarily a hallucination, but at least some good old-fashioned conspiracy. But now that everything is twice as legal and half as fun, I can only hope that the humorless American commissars, who are supposedly seething at this subversion of their authority, will find a way to make absinthe illegal once again. Then my bottle of French absinthe would take on some illicit quality, and comrades could gather around my liquor cabinet for some rarified naughtiness. In the meantime, if you’re curious what all the fuss is about, but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for your own bottle, you’re welcome over to the Kew, comrade, to sample some of mine.