NET-workers

Last week I met some friends at a local bar and a recurring problem popped up that I've been meaning to share with the blog-o-sphere. I met a friend of mine and her coworkers, and the topic of unions came up (as it always seems to with me). Two twenty-something guys I was with each said something like, oh, I don't support unions.

Now, one of these men admitted that he was a former hospital executive, so I guess his anti-union attitude is easy to explain (and ultimately, to dismiss). But the other is a young, progressive guy, who works on international development, is from a union-friendly place (Philadelphia) and even had family members who belonged to a union. And he's not alone - I meet people just like him probably weekly who just don't like unions.

So there are really two issues that come to mind for me here. First, why is this guy anti-union? This is clearly an important question, but I am going to leave it aside for now (primarily because I don't know the answer yet!). But the second issue is also perplexing: why is it politically correct in 2005 to openly say that you are anti-union? There are many progressive causes that have won the battle of political correctness (as least in progressive circles). It's not acceptable (almost regardless of your true feelings) to publicly state that 'I hate women,' or 'I hate gay people,' or 'I don't support civil rights." So, why is it ok for this generation of young progressives to run around saying they are anti-union?

One interesting thing to note, I think, is that people obviously differentiate between "union" and "worker." I doubt that even these progressive folks would say that they don't support the working class, or that they don't support workers, but they seem to feel fine saying that they don't support unions.

I'm not saying that the fight for political correctness is the most important fight of the day for labor, but I do think that have union-support among progressive people is really the baseline that we need to start building from. What do others think?

Those of us who live in and around DC have likely seen the new red buses, the Circulators, that travel a downtown loop from Union Station to Georgetown. My first impression was that this was a neat idea by metro to expand service and encourage the barrage of tourists to use our public transporation system.

Sadly, I learned this weekend (thanks to t.func) that there is a sad sad story behind these cute red buses. Even though you can use your smarttrip pass on the buses, these are not WMATA buses. In fact, this is the latest example of government contracting out services to private, anti-union, anti-worker businesses. In this case, these 29 buses are operated by FirstStudent of the UK. Yes, this is the same FirstStudent that is the target of SEIU and the UK Transport and General Workers Union joint campaign.

There are a lot of bad things about FirstStudent... here are just a few facts from the SEIU and TGW website:

-In a recent SEIU survey of First Student employees around the United States, 95 percent said that the company's health care plan was unaffordable, or poor and in need of improvement.
-In Florida, First Student recently sent to employees three letters denigrating unions and encouraging workers to refuse to sign a union card if asked to do so by co-workers or union organizers.
-First Student recently held a training session in Florida in which company managers were encouraged to stop unionization among their employees. One document given to First Student managers stated: "Unions no longer serve any useful purpose. Their time has passed."

So, what do we do? As a DC resident, I am certainly not going to recommend anyone use the Circulator. And we should all let the DC government know that we don't want cheaper services in exchange for lower standards. I think more public transport is a good idea, but I don't want private anti-worker companies providing these services. I guess that I don't really know what to do about this, but I'll start by telling everyone I know who is really providing these bus services, and at what cost.