The Morning Joe crew was bashing on unions this morning, when the NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin, a guest, declared:
"Name a successful unionized company. Think. You're going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that's the problem."At that point, I expected the union workers in the studio to drop a rack of lights on the cast. Was the rest of the cast's acquiescence in Sorkin's broadside a concession that NBC is not a successful company? Poor Jeff Zucker.
So I throw it out to readers. Can you give us examples of major successful unionized companies? And for purposes of clarity, let's define "successful" as turned a profit in 2008. That's a pretty high standard since 2008 was such a dismal year. But not an unreachable standard, I don't think. Send us your examples, preferably with links.
Late Update: Media Matters is already on the case and offers UPS as a prime example. It's biggest union is ... horror of horrors ... the Teamsters. We'll be listing reader examples here.
Later Update: Reader email deluge in response. You can see the growing list here. But please try to include links in your email to the company's 2008 profitability and to the fact of its unionization.
- Marshall: Jarring Ignorance
As you've seen, this morning on Morning Joe, The New York Times Andrew Ross Sorkin suggested that few if any unionized companies are successful and profitable -- a demonstrably false claim. And David Kurtz and our news team are on the case, reporting the story out and compiling a list of companies that belie this claim.
Now, it's no secret to you that TPM has an editorial outlook that is broadly sympathetic to the union movement. But what strikes me about this comment is that it's not some random chat show yakker like Hannity or Scarborough. This is one of the Times top business reporters. He runs their markets and finance blog -- Dealbook, which is actually quite good and a sign, I think, that the Times is very much in the new media, iterative journalism chase. So quite apart from the politics of it, this is just a jarring level of ignorance about corporate America from someone in that position.
- Benen: UNION-BASHING GONE AWRY...
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" featured quite a discussion this morning about the problems facing unionized companies. Perhaps "discussion" is too generous -- the show featured foolish commentary premised on union-bashing.
The NYT's Andrew Sorkin challenged the panel, "Name a successful unionized company. Think. You're going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that's the problem." Mika Brzezinski, who has clearly been influenced a little too much by Joe Scarborough, added, "[Unions] cripple the system that makes a company work."
Pressed to name a "successful" unionized company, the "Morning Joe" crew, which included Jim Cramer, came up blank.
Now, my first response was to wonder whether the folks behind the cameras, filming the media personalities, are union members. And the employees who installed and operate the on-set lights. And the folks who built the "Morning Joe" set.
But perhaps those unions don't count, since Brzezinski and others are specifically interested in unionized companies that "work" and are "successful."
Jamison Foser noted UPS's $3 billion in corporate profits last year, before connecting the issue directly to the "Morning Joe" team.
GE is one of the world's largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations. The company made more than $18 billion in 2008 -- again, billion with a b, and again, those are profits, not revenue. All that despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that 13 different unions represent GE workers.
Oh, and GE owns NBC-Universal, which owns MSNBC, which pays Joe Scarborough a handsome salary (and the unionized workers who help get his show on the air considerably less).
Does Joe Scarborough think NBC and GE are not "successful" companies? Does Mika Brzezinski think the unionized workers she no doubt interacts with every day are crippling her ability to do her job, or her employer's ability to be successful?
I'd love to hear "Morning Joe" revisit this, but I suspect that's unlikely.
- Beutler (TPM) Hoffa: Sorkin and Morning Joe Show Complete Failure To Understand
New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin went on MSNBC this morning and set off the entire labor movement.
"Name a successful unionized company. Think. You're going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that's the problem," he said before a room full of unionized NBC employees.
Unions are aghast. "Sorkin and the Morning Joe crew just showed their complete failure to understand how unions contribute to the success of the American economy by blindly assuming that unionized companies haven't been profitable in the last year," said James Hoffa, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in a statement to TPMDC.
Off the top of my head I can give you several Teamster-represented companies who continue to thrive, despite the economic downturn, but there are thousands more: UPS, Eight O'Clock Coffee, Coca-Cola Enterprises, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. The Morning Joe team really should be embarrassed for showing their lack of knowledge on the subject.
And that's just on the record.
Off the record, an irritated union organizer told me to "ask [Sorkin] if he's received any packages from UPS in the past five years or so, or flown on Southwestern Airlines during that time?
And is he aware that, in using those companies, like millions of others, he was a customer of two of the most innovative and successful unionized companies in the world? You could ask him how the American supermarket industries survives, given that it's about 80% unionized? You could ask him how the rest of the advanced capitalist world manages to compete with the U.S. given that the unionization rate in every advanced capitalist country in the world is greater, often far greater than ours---and that that is reflected in their unionization density of their respective transnational corporations.
I've placed a call to Sorkin for comment, and will let you know if and how he responds.
- Beuter (TPM): SEIU's Stern: Contra Sorkin, 'Unionized Companies Are Driving Force In Our Economy'
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union has answers Andrew Ross Sorkin's question with a question of his own. "Unionized companies are a driving force in our economy, from Kaiser Permanente to Securitas," Stern said in a statement to TPMDC.
The bigger question this country is really asking right now is how do we define a successful company? Is it a company that turns a profit by driving down employee wages successful? Is cutting off benefits or putting people out of work to improve the bottom line for shareholders a business model we as Americans want to embrace? Are we going to embrace the Wal-Mart model as the standard of success, or are we going to raise the bar and rebuild the middle class in this country?
We think it's time to have a serious national discussion about what we want the future of our economy to look like--and the voices of women and men who work are critical to that conversation. That's why we're supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to help create an economy in which companies succeed based on the quality of their services, not on their willingness to exploit or silence workers.
Beutler (TPM): Sorkin: I Apologize For 'Flip,' 'Unscripted' CommentsI've just heard back from New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin by phone and email. In a prepared statement, he walked back his comments on MSNBC considerably. "Boy did I touch the third rail! My off-handed comment was admittedly flip. I apologize for that. It was meant to provoke a conversation."
I did not mean to suggest that there are literally no successful companies that employ union workers. Of course there are! Your readers have provided a good list (though I might quibble with some of the names.)
I made the unscripted comment with my financial columnist hat on in the context of the problems at GM. That's what the discussion was about on the program. And when you look at some of the once great iconic American industries that have faltered -- automobiles, airlines, steel, apparel, etc -- there is a fair question worth asking about whether those industries were helped or hurt by their unions. But let's leave that debate for another day.
Not sure if that will placate his critics, who were pretty livid about the whole episode, but I guess we'll see.
Regarding the similarity between the question he posed the hosts of Morning Joe and a question former General Electric CEO Jack Welch posed to economist Joseph Stiglitz during a panel discussion Sorkin moderated, he said, "I'm afraid to say I hadn't remembered it until you sent me your post."
Sorkin said he hadn't expected such a strong response and even suggested he was sympathetic to the very people who were most upset by his words.
- Kurtz (TPM): A Narrative Frozen in Amber
TPM Reader HW:
Sorkin's comments on media bias are one component of a reigning narrative about economic policy in America that we've been stuck with for a very long time that has always betrayed a very specific class bias among journalists. It's a story that many of us have heard from our upper middle class baby boomer Dads over and over again and inevitably goes something like this:
Liberalism in the 60's and '70s were well-intentioned and of course the civil rights movement was necessary, but "interest groups" (read: unions and minorities) "went too far" and the government tried to do "too much." Government over-regulated and over-taxed and spent too much on programs that didn't work. Unions choked our competitiveness. Liberals didn't properly account for unintended consequences of government programs and the degree to which the government would interfere with the free market and it screwed up the economy. Plus, the social programs alienated "mainstream Americans" (read: white Christians). It turned out we needed Reagan to cut taxes, break the unions (ie air traffic controllers), and deregulate to fix things again.
Whether some of that is true or not is beside the point (based on my recent reading of Matusow's "Unraveling of America," its not all untrue). But I was seven in 1980, Sorkin was three. This view of the world is frozen in an era that's been gone for three decades. Its as if nothing has happened since, like a major opening in the wealth inequality gap, the rise in competition from heavily unionized Western Europe, the failure of supply side economics, or the shift in the economy from heavy manufacturing of goods to the provision of services.
To marry yourself to this narrative for all time no matter what happens in the world seems to be, well, pretty bad journalism for starters. It was kind of understandable, if not excusable, when it resulted from the fact that mainstream journalists themselves came of age through the era of the '60s and '70s that manifested this narrative. But when it results from their privileged children recycling the narrative, it makes me wonder why those children, who are supposed to be journalists, aren't formulating their own views of the world based on the three decades since the '70s in which they themselves have lived.
What does the New York Times pay Andrew Ross Sorkin for if he hasn't formed a view of unions in America based on events that have occurred in his lifetime? Couldn't we just keep paying Cokie Roberts to come on morning shows if all we wanted was recycled, conventional baby boomers wisdom devoid of any observation or original thought?
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