Union Schmunion

Michael Douglas’ infamous character in the movie “Wall Street” (Gordon Gekko) said, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Then, I was pretty sure that this was empty-headed, bovine, fecal matter. Twenty years later, I am that much more certain. It is wonderful that more and more of us are beginning to see endless growth and non-sustainable business practices for what they are … a lie.

I know the people I work with and they know me. We live under a system of shared misery. I work for a living under circumstances remarkably similar to those of a worker. I do not own a house. I do not have a retirement fund. I am not rich. I do not take six-week ski vacations in the Alps. In fact, I rarely take vacations of any sort at all nor do I have time to ski.

I cannot afford many of the “finer things” in life nor do I wish to. I live simply. Like the majority of my workers, I do not have health insurance nor any other reasonable safety net. We are all in the same boat together and there is a mutual respect in that which helps us all to weather whatever conditions the world may throw at us. People often casually label me a “businessman” but I tell them that the term “empowered worker” is a far more accurate description of who I am.

The Times Union’s management undoubtedly has many decent people in it who truly care about the people who work under them but there’s a very important distinction to be made between having someone work under you and working with someone. The corporate “ladder” is used as a motivational tool to maintain healthy profit margins. What happens when the business model changes and the corporate template fails to deliver elevation of the few at the expense of the many is something we are all beginning to understand (some of us firsthand).

There are very few major daily newspapers that do not see themselves, first and foremost, as businesses. The corporate structure allows them to create, print, market and distribute massive quantities of newsprint that smaller media outlets could not even begin to contemplate. While efficiencies of production allow a relatively small number of workers to elevate themselves solidly into our dwindling middle class, the process of big volume and centralization of resource necessarily excludes many workers from said elevation.

In fact, in order to maintain profitability at margins acceptable to the ever-hungry shareholder, the corporate business model has to shake the tree on a fairly regular basis. It has to grind up and spit out a few workers every now and then in order to cut expenses and motivate those who are retained to even higher levels of efficiency and productivity. This creates an “us versus them” culture of loss and competition in the workplace. Our society has steeled itself to these losses and often turns a blind eye to those who are cast away.

It is strange to me, given this cycle of loss that so many workers seem to resent unions and union workers. Basically, unions are the only mechanism that has ever protected workers or attempted to limit the whims of corporations that seek to purge, grind and squeeze us. Why would we, their fellow workers, ever begrudge our fellow workers the right to organize and fight for things like a safe workplace, seniority, a living wage, health insurance, and paid vacations? We all must know that we all benefit by having that bar set higher. Every single one of us.

How any worker could be upset that some of their fellow workers have decided to stand up for their rights and demand a better share of the immodest proceeds of the corporate model (which, in its essence, seems designed specifically to get rid of as many of us as it can)? Why are union workers viewed with scorn by so many? Jealousy is perhaps the answer, but I think it runs even deeper than that. I think the mainstream media has given us all a terribly false picture of unions and the workers who have endured through a struggle that is, ultimately, the very history of our country.

The Time Union, for all intents and purposes, just canceled its union contract in April. It looks like this was a pretty purposeful move to rid itself of The Newspaper Guild once and for all. Everyone is saying that the changing “newspaper model” and the Internet are to blame but is this really what’s going on?

Knowing that the Hearst Corporation just finished construction of a $500 million dollar corporate headquarters in 2006 might lead a critical thinker to believe that the privately-held company is not doing so poorly after all but, without access to the books, we just don’t know. We are simply asked to take George Hearst III’s word for it that layoffs and the end of the Guild are necessary. This is, we are told, what every good media company has to do to survive.

When George’s great, great, grandfather was around, he was no doubt a hard man. He did not likely place a whole lot of importance on the plight of those outside his immediate circle. From what I have read, this amazing Hearst was kind of like Daniel Day Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” (except that he was a miner, not an oil man). He was a self-made millionaire at a time when that was an awful lot of money. He was also seen by many as nothing short of ruthless in his pursuit of both money and power. He died a U.S. Senator.

In settling a gambling debt, Hearst ended up owning the San Francisco Examiner and he turned it over to his son, William Randolph, who became a media mogul. William is arguably the most famous of the Hearst clan mostly for turning the acquisition of that one newspaper into a large, privately-held, media empire that still exists to this day.

Forbes estimates that the current incarnation of the Hearst Corp. grossed about 4.4 billion dollars in 2007 and had about 17,000 employees. To hear Steven Swartz tell it (now President of Hearst Newspapers), you’d think that Hearst and its subsidiaries were rolling in the dough. More specifically, in the piece cited above, he says that “targeted distribution” in 2008 saved the Times Union about $750,000 with no adverse impact on its advertising revenue. Does that sound to you like the kind of financial doom and gloom that signals imminent financial disaster?

Now, we all know we are in a recession and we’ve all heard the newspapers’ talk about the web-related “changing business model” and how it negatively impacts them all but we are at a severe disadvantage. Without examining Hearst’s books, how can we determine whether George III’s actions in trying to kill the Guild are self preservation or just greed? Lets explore those changing conditions a little bit.

Statistically, papers make about 15-20% of their gross revenue from actual subscribers. The rest is actually ad revenue. So, if the T.U. lost even half of its paid subscribers to its free internet site, it wouldn’t even lose 10% of its gross revenue. While that’s not a good thing, it’s also not the end of the world. While there might well be a corresponding loss of ad revenue, there would also be a massive savings, I have to imagine, in not having to print or deliver half of the physical papers which were delivered previous.

And, lets not forget that newspaper advertisers really have nowhere else to go in this market except the web (and who is selling that ad space?). When you are the area’s paper of record, I find it awfully hard to believe that the negative impact of lost subscribers or advertisers could really be anywhere near as terrible for you as it’s made out to be. The Times Union has not lost half its subscribers and, like every other paper, it now sells tons of additional ad space on the web (just look at this site). It doesn’t take much imagination to see that this new model should actually be a boon for newspapers, not their death knell.

For most papers, I have to imagine that the enhanced revenue stream has quickly offset the slight loss of revenue from decreasing subscriptions. This should yield the T.U. at least as healthy a bottom line as it has for many other papers, our town’s little corporate daily included. The Glens Falls Post-Star is certainly not doing well because it is a great paper. It is doing well because it is the only daily paper in town. They claim to be the most profitable paper in the Lee Enterprises chain (with more than 50 dailies across the country). Much of this “success” has been attributed to their web advertising and the ads they sell in the many little weeklies and magazines they also print.

While I am constantly amazed at how much smaller and more centralized my “local” newspaper becomes every year, it’s never enough for them. They regularly use outside sources to trim local expense. They killed their union decades ago so that they could lay off good people and great writers. This is a huge mistake in my view. While it is not, in any way, sustainable, it seems to be their actual business model. It is all about short-term gain simply because a company has a monopoly and the public has nowhere else to turn for its “news product”. My question to these titans of industry is what happens when the media consumer just turns you “off”? What happens when you devalue your product to the point that the “consumer” simply stops looking to you as a viable media source? The corporate media seems to really believe that people will just continue to read their papers no matter how bad they get. I don’t share their “optimism”.

Maybe I’m not seeing the bigger picture but it seems to me that the Times Union’s refusal to settle with the Newspaper Guild is not indicative of the maneuvering of an industry that is struggling to survive but is simply the squeezing of workers by an entity that, by all rights, should be doing just fine.

I am very interested to know what others think about this dispute and I very much appreciate, in advance, the Times Union being principled enough to allow me, and others, to voice our opinion on this matter.