Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Second to the Right and...

There's no time. No time to lurk as much as I'd like to on facebook, no time to fart around and watch silly YT vids, no time to sit and stare at a screen while I think up the next line for a blogpost. It's early this year but it's undeniably here. I speak, of course, of the holiday season.

First of all fb. I've been in touch with many peep I haven't talked to in years. It's wonderful, time consuming, very annoying, really funny and a total pain in the ass. There's too much stuff coming at you all the time. I can see how peep would end up spending all their time on there, just trying to keep up. But it's also very useful. Like any tool it can be misused, like any power it can be used for evil. It's only as much as you make of it. Though rest assured that everything you do is tracked and used for marketing purposes. My search results have changed significantly to reflect things I've looked at on fb.

Aside from the morning rush to get the food to the other radio station, today was a tangle of can't do-s. Typical of the pre-holiday prepping. Where'd all the tape go? Are there any gift tags left from last year? What pots and pans and dishes for what foods on Thanksgiving? Where are the lights and what about that broken light, can Brown and Roberts fix that? On it goes, as it always has and probably always will be.

And then there's the Really Big News. That is that my former place of employment is a union shop now. My old coworker called and told me, it was a 65% majority. I congratulated him and he apologized that it didn't happen while I was there. But it's okay. At least a couple of us from the first drive made it to being union workers. And yeah, I cried. Hey, Norma Rae didn't get to join when the union came into her former workplace either. Sometimes it's enough to see it happen at all.

Now we head into a big chill. That's fine too, because the weather's been too warm for this time of year. On we go.
Straight on til morning.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad they got the union in....good for them.
I haven't gone over to Facebook yet...still holding out.

Geo. said...

Good news, good progress. Unions have been forcing discussion here too. Democracy can be forced back to ground level, but not further.

Pearl said...

Well, it's STILL too warm here in Mpls. Upper 40s in November? It's wrong, and the plants seem confused...

Pearl

klahanie said...

Hi Laura,

Ah yes, a union. Glad to hear it. I tried to get a union in a non-union warehouse where the workers were being exploited. I recall going to the vote for getting the union in. At the meeting to get the union voted in at a 'secret' location, several members of the company's executive attended, pretending to be workers. The workers at the union meeting were so scared that the union never got in.

And 'Farcebook', Delores is missing out on my um vital to your life, profile updates! :)

Gary
x

Optimistic Existentialist said...

Great news about the union. And GREAT blog!! I found you through Geo^

May I become a follower?

Austan said...

Lawless- Yeah, hopefully this will turn the place around. 2 of the folks in the photo I posted a couple weeks back are still there. They made it. :)
Take your time, I think fb's gonna be around for a while!

Austan said...

Geo.- I think it's safe to say that organizing is becoming a "trend". A trend, I'll add, that I'm very damn happy to see, for once.

Austan said...

Pearl- I dunno what we did to the jet stream but things are well f'ed up with the weather. I suppose all the crap we've done to the planet and atmosphere is coming back to bite us. Mother Nature gets the last laugh, always.

Austan said...

Gary- Hail fellow organizer! Good for you, it's a brave and tiring thing to do. And something else we have in common. The first drive we did, nearly 9 years ago now, was full of unionbusting tactics. People caved to the fear and toadied up to management. I'll never understand why peep will act against their own best interests. Yes, Lawless is missing a lot of important things on fb, like your posts! :)

Austan said...

OE- Thank you. It's fantastic news for this area, which has been impoverished and low-paid forever. If more people organize, watch the economy improve.

Of course; you don't need my permission! Welcome to Austanspace. :)

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

Congrats on the union. You should feel really good, because you helped set the ball in motion, even if you left the field before the team scored the touchdown.