FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“The example of the red state strikes are a prime indicator that even when you have very conservative people in power…workers have an ability to use their workplace leverage and their community leverage to win.”
Crushing Starbucks workers’ attempts to work together is against the law—but it’s not the sort of crime elite media seem able to identify.
As best I can tell, the labor battle in Wisconsin is a big story–and maybe the biggest labor story in years. But as Amanda Terkel reported at the Huffington Post, that doesn’t mean you’re going to see union advocates on the Sunday chat shows. Terkel noted: A union official told the Huffington Post that when […]
As Josh Marshall noted recently, one of the assumptions in the media discussion about Wisconsin is that Republican politicians are playing on public outrage over the perks given to public workers. That assumption took a hit after a new Gallup Poll, reported on the front page of USA Today, found this: Americans strongly oppose laws […]
Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher (7/21/09) is reporting that newspaper union representatives claim a victory of sorts in the Boston Newspaper Guild’s refusal to accept a deal that “called for smaller benefit cuts and a furlough, but a higher 8.3 percent salary reduction.” The Boston Globe eventually agreed instead to “a 5.94 percent salary […]
Jessica Heslam of the Boston Herald gives ample space (6/12/09) to New York Times chief Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to proclaim he had “no alternative other than to proceed with the wage reduction” of 23 percent at the Boston Globe, because the Globe union’s “Guild leaders made [agreement] impossible,” and even quotes the Newspaper Guild president […]
If you’ve ever wondered why the New York Times‘ labor coverage is just so bad, a lot can be learned by looking at the company’s treatment of its own workers. Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten has published an open letter (6/3/09) about how the Boston Globe-owning Times has chosen to “behave in a highly challenging […]
Washington Monthly contributing editor Art Levine has a piece for In These Times (5/31/09) reporting on economist Anne Layne-Farrar’s recent congressional appearance in which she warned about the horrendous impact of the Employee Free Choice Act. Its potential to increase union membership from between five and 10 percent, she said, ‘would result in an increase […]
Spotting a May 31 Washington Post column “that blamed the United Auto Workers for the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM,” Dean Baker declares (Beat the Press, 5/31/09) that the D.C. daily “showed yet again why it is known as “Fox on 15th Street”: So what if Toyota has managed to profitably run a plant in […]
Asking “Can We Get Reporters to Stop Saying That EFCA Takes Away the Secret Ballot?” Dean Baker bluntly states (Beat the Press, 5/7/09) that “it’s not true.” Even though this is one of the “most often repeated lines of the opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act”–“that it will deny workers the right to vote […]
Writing that someone needs to “Tell the WSJ: Workers Can Already Unionize Without a Secret Ballot Election” (Beat the Press, 3/10/09), Dean Baker details how big media still gets this wrong: Okay, let’s see if we can teach the Wall Street Journal something this morning. In an article reporting on the prospects for the Employee […]
