#StagehandView: Buying (sort of) American Made

Everybody got the run-off election results, right? Thanks again to Sister Miller for keeping on what’s seeming to be an endless process. Anyway, the results in case you haven’t heard: Treasure, Rita Kelso; BA, Lupe Perez; Convention Delegate, Rachel Magee (with one more to be determined at the April meeting). Congratulations to all and thank you for your continuing service to the local.

So I had to go buy new general use “tennis” shoes yesterday. I went to Academy and was surprised to notice they actually had some of New Balance’s (sort of) American made lines of walking and running shoes. I went ahead and paid the premium to wear shoes with the flag under their tongues.

The whole experience left me feeling wildly conflicted. On the one hand, I was happy to be able to buy a (sort of) American made product at a semi-big box store, even if that product was significantly more expensive than its Indonesian and Chinese made counterparts. But on the other hand, I kind of hated the fact that New Balance only keeps a token level of production in the U.S. (five factories) to take advantage of suckers like me.

The shoes actually came with a little micro-pamphlet highlighting the company’s so-called commitment to the American worker. It opened by congratulating me on buying “a pair of shoes that were made or assembled” in the U.S. Literally, the first word is “congratulations.”

I don’t exactly feel cheated. Just baldly and blatantly manipulated. After all, the vast majority of the New Balance shoes sold in the world are not made in the U.S., or anywhere in the Global North. Like most so-called American companies, for the most part, only their upper management remains on this continent. While its marginally better than nothing, what New Balance is doing with its (sort of) American made shoes is really just marketing. It’s kind of like a carnie showing the crowd ahead of time that the two headed cow isn’t actually alive, that none of the freaks or wonders inside the tent are real. And I’m the rube who smiled and handed over my money anyway.

And all of that might be okay if the damn shoes weren’t so hideous to look at. They’re mostly black with neon orange highlights. Even though I’ve been assured they’re quite fashionable, I find them downright distracting. They’re just so bright. But they sure are comfy. Again, major internal conflicts.

That’s it. Except to say that it’s not looking like there’s any need for me to write that story I had talked about doing on the Atlantic City casino stagehands and their fight for fair wages. But you can get involved by joining their Facebook group at IA917.

#StagehandView: IA917 Atlantic City Update

3/9/14

4:19 p.m.

Yesterday’s Facebook action for the Atlantic City casino workers’ union, Spread the Word Saturday, seems to have gone well. I ended up figuring out to work my phone enough to finally start copying and pasting into casino pages by the second show. But some folks really went to town until they got blocked from posting comments. Here’s how Michael Barnes summed up on the IA917 page:

The casinos changed the settings on their Facebook Page to delete and block our message. This a win for workers as it demonstrates we have motivated activists and the casinos are sensitive to the message. First mission can be ruled a success.

We will be launching a second wave of messages this week using secondary targets, beautiful faces, Twitter and from a suggestion today, Yelp.

Thanks to everyone for their help today. It’s Miller Time.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read yesterday’s Stagehand View.

Otherwise, I’m happy to report that I’ve been in contact with both Michael Barnes and Darrell Stark (see his comment on yesterday’s post). Anyone reading this should feel free to slap me on the back of the hand when you see me for my mistakes in the previous #StagehandView. I have corrected the piece.

But enough of that. It looks like Vice President Barnes is interested in talking to me for an article that I will write and submit to Labor Notes. Hopefully they’ll publish it and spread the word a little wider. At the very least, you’ll be able to read it here.

That’s it. Now I’ve got to go eat and do the final Austin show of Wicked … until the next time.

Don’t forget to join the IA917 Facebook page. The casino workers can’t participate in these kinds of actions without risking their jobs. That’s why it’s up to the rest of the union to do it for them.

#StagehandView: Call for Help from Local 917

This post has been corrected. The original contained factual errors. I apologize. In my haste to move at the pace of unfolding events I failed to figure out some rather important details about the major players. Again, I apologize.

March 8, 2014

9:17 a.m.

I recently and belatedly joined the You Know You’re a Stagehand If group on Facebook. I was almost immediately sucked into a cool little cyber campaign recently started by 1st International VP Michael Barnes on behalf of the IATSE local 917 in  Atlantic City. He is asking people to cut and paste a message about how the casinos in his town have double crossed union workers. I can tell you that local 917 doesn’t have anything about the Facebook group IA917 or Barnes’s claims about a “sleazy” double cross by the casinos in Atlantic City. I think it’s only fair to mention that, as far as I could tell, Local 917 doesn’t really have much of a web presence at all. After hitting that dead end I did a couple of preliminary – i.e. very fast and un-thorough – Google searches which didn’t mention anything about the local having a beef with the casinos, either. However, I did find a couple of December, 2013, newspaper articles talking about a casino bankruptcy and an executive bonus judgement from the courts. These stories corroborated at least part of Vice President Barnes’s story.

None of which means much of anything, of course.

Granted, my bias inclines to believe his claims about the double-dealing casinos. Here’s what he wrote and asked members of the IA917 group to share on various casino Facebook pages:

WORKERS DOUBLECROSSED BY SLEAZY CASINO GAMES; The Atlantic City Stagehands Local 917 was chartered in 1978. Our mission is to represent the people working in the entertainment departments at the Atlantic City Casinos. In 2011, our union like many other unions in Atlantic City were asked to roll back cost to get Atlantic City back on track. The members of Local 917 agreed to a 20% roll back in wages and a three year wage freeze. The casinos asked and we agreed to take this step back to allow us to move forward. We were told we were in this together. We were gamed. The casinos took our roll back and immediately distributed management bonuses. The non represented workers in the casinos were given raises and in some cases now earn 25% more than the represented workers. Help us spread the message. Share and Tweet this post.

I went ahead and joined his IA917 page and shared his message on some casino Facebook pages.

Okay, I admit it; it’s my first time. I’ve never done this kind of cyber-activism before. I only shared his message twice, at Harrah’s Atlantic City and Trump Tower Las Vegas. I was nervous and almost chickened out. But then I pushed Post. After the second time I did lose my nerve and went and had breakfast. It’s been about a half hour and my computer has not caught fire. Nor has my Facebook page fallen victim to some massive and irrecoverable hack. In fact, nothing’s happened. … I think I might be a little disappointed.

Two performances of Wicked today. The plan is to do some more posting of Brother Barnes’s “Double Cross” message between half-hour and top-of-show. I honestly don’t know if this kind of thing – Am I ‘”trolling?” – works or not. But it seems like it might. If anybody else does it, let me know how it goes.

9:51 a.m.

I can tell you that my posts at both Harrah’s and Trump have been removed. Though I just liked about a half dozen postings of it on the Harrah’s AC page. According to Barnes, there are at least 200 people working on this action.

Like I said, I have no idea what the result of this will be. But it’s kind of fun.

Next up, I’ll reach out to Vice President Barnes and see what he has to say. If you join in, let me know by commenting here. Or not. That’s cool, too.

#StagehandView: The Rumors of Labor’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

For those who don’t know, the UAW is appealing the Chattanooga VW election. The auto workers’ union is claiming (in my opinion, rightly so) that the anti-union campaigns mounted by Tennessee’s public officials crossed a line into voter coercion and intimidation. I retweeted a blog post from The Nation the other day (@bpwilsonlit is my handle) which does a really nice job of explaining why the UAW’s appeal is important to the larger union vs. anti-union debate. Here’s a link.
But today I want to talk about Wisconsin. You remember Wisconsin, right? Where the people occupied their state capitol in 2011?
Governor Scott WalkerWhat’s happening in Wisconsin is emblematic of a big reason why U.S. labor is on the defensive. Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 eviscerated the public sector unions, taking away their ability to negotiate over pretty much anything but wage levels. It also outlawed automatic paycheck deductions for union dues. Correction, Act 10 eviscerated all but two public sector unions. The two unions that endorsed Walker in his initial bid for governor, the firefighters and the police, somehow managed to avoid the gutting.Jay Gould
Jay Gould, one of the original robber barons, put it best when he boasted in 1886 “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Sad commentary that over a century later unions are still being divided and conquered so easily. But I have to admit I find it hard to argue with at least one of Governor Walker’s critiques of organized labor: when unions get entrenched and powerful, the leadership does tend to become reactionary and inflexible. Though, it is only fair to point that unions are just acting like every other hierarchical grouping of human beings in the history of the universe. It’s nothing new for the leadership of any established institution to prioritize short-term self-preservation over all else.
The problem for unions is they have let that their flaws become the main focus of the public discourse. The Radical Right’s been framing the debate since the Carter Administration. Worse, the mainstream unions have let their detractors create the very language society uses to critique organized labor. Think ‘right-to-work’ or ‘labor boss.’
At this point the only way for big labor to get back into the fight is to nullify the very labels they’ve allowed to Right to pin on them. And the only way for them to do that is to stop acting like  calcified sphincters. And I’m not just talking about the police and firefighter unions selling out the rest of the Wisconsin public sector unions. That kind of breakdown in solidarity is a huge and constant problem, don’t get me wrong. But I’m talking about a fundamental, completely self-created and almost universal issue: the leaders of organized labor need to stop thinking of the membership as their clientele. Conversely, the rank and file need to stop seeing themselves as mere consumers of services. And both groups need to stop kidding themselves into thinking they aren’t in the same exact boat as the vast majority of non-union workers in this country.
Unions are not a group of like-minded businesses, we are a social movement. What we are seeing right now in American labor is the result of workers letting their unions become the very thing they organized to stand against in the first place, conservative institutions that only react from a position of immediate self-interest.
A February New York Times article (in the business section) called “The Wisconsin Legacy” by Steven Greenhouse focuses on the despondent executive director of the State Employees union’s and his take on post-Act 10 Wisconsin. The man has a right to be angry and frustrated; his budget has dropped by two thirds and so has his membership. It’s also understandable if he doesn’t really have a plan for how to respond. Towards the end of the piece Greenhouse quotes the executive director as saying that “Now 99 percent of what the staff does is organize.”
It’s a sad irony that he was bemoaning what he can only see as a hopeless situation. Because unions should be organizing and, more importantly, reorganizing. Unfortunately, I think that guy’s depression is indicative of how most of big labor’s leaders are feeling. I don’t blame them. I’d probably be shocked and depressed, too. And I wish there was time to give them the chance to work through the process of completely changing their views of the world. Because I think most of them are honestly doing their best. But the American worker just doesn’t have time to wait for them to catch up with a situation that passed them by long ago. We need leaders who will see this crisis as an opportunity for organized labor to become a movement again.
If you’re wondering where these leaders will come from, you should read publications like Labor Notes. Then you’d know they’re are already mobilized and working hard. They just need the rest of us to support them.