Labor front back

The eternal truths are always topical, and, if you track current events, the haunting loss of childhood innocence is rich in renewable content.

Kids who viewed Sesame Street's debut and befriended Big Bird and Cookie Monster are now queuing for pacemakers and running out the clock on their lives and hips. Except for Jagger and McCartney, most surviving rock stars of the era are caricatures of cruel dotage, relieved that their adult diapers are secure and grateful for strangers' archaic expressions of deference.

The Sesame Street puppets outlived the puppets of the Vietnam perfidy, such as General William Westmoreland and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. After 55 seasons, it's clear that nurturers of childhood innocence are as indefatigable as war profiteers. One says, "never say die," the others say death goes with the territory.

Sesame Street taught kids and largely persuaded them of the ideals of harmony among human relationships through all challenges, despite disillusionments and stumbling blocks. That demanded artistic ingenuity. In trendy parlance, it was their "mission,” a dopey word filched from the military.

Sesame Workshop, formerly the Children's Television Workshop, is the nonprofit producer of the iconic show. Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO has decided not to extend its distribution arrangement. They cite a "drastically changing media landscape." That's hygienic language for a fecal business model.

In early March, around 200 staff members, concerned about job security, fair pay and reduction of benefits, announced their intention to form a union with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153.

One hour later there was retaliation.

Management chose to cut workers down to size by cutting workforce size. The corporate guillotine was readied for the heads of around 20 percent of the staffers. Even as the Workshop remains "poised to continue to deliver on its mission.” More template verbiage for serial abuse.

To be fair, though, it's undeniable that cable networks like Nickelodeon and Disney have lost a higher percentage of its targeted audience to YouTube than Ukraine has ceded territory to Russia.

In a profound sense, Sesame Street has been a cultural treasure. Other such institutions, such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, have also shown by example that "culture" does not necessarily put them on a higher spiritual plane, removed from the coldhearted real world of business models.

They are both laying off essential staff. By dealing these workers lemons, management made lemonade for themselves. In the case of Brooklyn College, only seven non-unionized workers got  axed. Management had targeted 47 others, but District Council 37 members and UAW Local 2110 were spared, but not out of the "goodness of management's heart." 

They were offered a "separation package" if they retired voluntarily, consisting of a letter of reference and some money and insurance coverage extensions. The Brooklyn Museum emphasized that their dire financial straits haven't changed, but the agreement will at least bide and buy some time from potential yet phantom funding sources.

Of course there's always a rationale. There always is. There's a compendium of pretexts to choose from. They blame their alleged financial malaise on the decline of international tourism. They see it as an opportunity to reorganize the "internal working structure.” Perhaps they averted creative solutions by choice.

This is the Guggenheim's third cycle of layoffs in five years. The sacrificed victims have a union, which reportedly was not even given the courtesy of prior notification. In their appetite, management is not content to be ravenous, they must be insatiable.

But the labor front's back! Sometimes hackneyed phrases are the most on point: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” 

Two years of tenacious organizing culminated this month with the unionization of three of the five Barnes & Nobles stories in the city: in Union Square, the Upper West Side and in Park Slope. Each store has its own contract and benefits vary slightly, but their pay is the same.

Around 200 sales clerks, baristas, maintenance and other workers are now represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Outside NYC, staff at an additional four Barnes & Noble stores have achieved collective bargaining rights. B & N operates around 600 stores nationally.

Workers will still be underpaid, relative to their worth, though not according to what the market will bear, which is what generally prevails. The union successfully negotiated significant gains to protect worker safety and comfort. Improving the status and circumstances of workers also fuels the prospects of Barnes & Noble's impressive comeback after years of precipitous decline.

Be glad the bookstore chain is finally turning the page. I'd like to see some new displays: like a section dedicated to some of the great authors who were prisoners in jail for every imaginable offense, including crimes of humanism, political courage, intractable piety defying royal authority, sexual nonconformity, benign vagrancy, satiric criticism, refusal to reveal confidential sources and theft of a typewriter. 

Readers of The Chief who wish the culprits specifically identified should contact the editor.

While the incarcerated O. Henry was correcting his short story manuscripts, were the officers of correction dutifully eyeing the author's cell?

Had he been serving his sentence in New York State a month ago, the answer would have been "no," because members of the correction officers union went on an unauthorized "wildcat" strike at 25 facilities, even though their organization hadn't sanctioned it. Since around 90 percent of them participated, dare not call them rogue. 

During those weeks, seven inmates died, one may surmise needlessly, while under the supervision of National Guard troops that Kathy Hochul had deployed as legally vindicable scabs.

All lives matter, and the officers can't be blamed for looking out for their own. They were pushed to the breaking point. Social justice activists might not agree, but specialists in sleep-deprivation would grasp. Mandated 24-hour overtime shifts imposed on officers inevitably put inmates' and their own lives at risk because of compromised reflexes and judgment during sudden but inevitable flashpoint situations.

Striking officers denounced 2021’s "HALT" law for allegedly spurring a deterioration of prisoner discipline and escalating violence against systemically unsupported officers. It severely curtailed the length of time an inmate could be held in solitary confinement, which undermined their authority and removed a useful tool of control and motivation.

Climate change in prison is as daunting as in meteorology. And there is no purely academic pathway to insight.

The strike settlement  (actually more a deal than a settlement, the difference being worthwhile to parse) includes changing overtime and shift assignments to make them comport better with the natural limits of human endurance, and reinstatement as applicable, of strikers' benefits without managerial vengeance, provided they returned to work by the deadline of March 10. Around 2,000 stayed out and were fired. The exponential pay confiscation provision of the tyrannous "Taylor Law," which forbids strikes by public employees, was not invoked.

A vendor will also be contracted for the enhanced screening of inmates' mail to interdict drugs without reviewing the contents of legal mail.

Strikes by aggrieved workers are commonly in the public interest, despite the temporary inconvenience they may cause. Occasionally, even the threat of a strike can achieve victory, as illustrated recently by the Federation of Nurses UFT. These 1,000 nurses are led by UFT Anne Goldman, who celebrated the new agreement's provisions to improve staffing, recruitment, retention and economic equity.

Wage increases will be a compounded 15.8 percent over the next year, and base pay will exceed $125,000 by the end of the contract. Nurses working understaffed shifts will receive additional compensation, there will be a sizable retention bonus, premium-free health care will be maintained and employer-paid pension guaranteed.

"The nurses forced the hospital to start paying the competitive salaries they deserve, and they forced management to drop the excuses and acknowledge that it is their responsibility to correctly staff the hospital," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew.

There's been some tainting historical misappropriated meanings of the term "labor front.” But in the context of furthering workers' human rights in our nation today, it has grandly revived and is growing as a force of honor and unity. 

The Labor Front's back.