HR/Employment Blogosphere update for August 22, 2005

This week I’m chillin’ a bit, hoping to cool you off with this big colorful ice cream cone, and sprinkling in more than the usual number of hopefully interesting or entertaining digressions.

Plugging a blog aggregation, and the first digression

Labor Law & Unions (Northwest strike; blaming Taft-Hartley Act for labor’s woes and for suppression of free speech by unions; and the second digression)

Discrimination Litigation (audio file of Jesperson oral argument)

Career Advice (lunching with the boss and working with the millenial generation)

Safety/Workers Comp (falls in construction industry)

Benefits (more acronyms and important benefit cost study)

Changing World of Work (impact of gas prices on where we work)

Big Blogosphere Bonus for Both Bloggers and Blogreaders (check it out!)

Let’s start with a plug for a fellow blogger’s efforts to consolidate some employment-related blogging in one spot.

Ross Runkel explains how he has tweaked his WorkLawBlogs site to show his handpicked favorite employment-related posts, kind of like I do here. But Ross keeps it clean and objective, just presenting links and excerpts, and avoiding the kind of uppity commentary, lame attempts at humor, websurfing digressions, and other bad habits into which I so easily fall.

There’s so much going on, I guarantee Ross and I will not be selecting all the same posts! So be sure to add the feed for his aggregation to your newsreader.

First digression: Ross is heading back to the law school classroom to teach contracts, usually one of the first classes a law student confronts.

Reminds me of that day 25 (!) years ago when I walked into Harry Pratter’s classroom at Indiana U. - Bloomington, was challenged by the very first word of the very first case (”Assumpsit“), and began to discover that — in what I think were the words of the fictitious law student “Hart” in Paper Chase — “I Love the Law.”

(I hope Ross at least, and maybe some other law profs, students, or lawyers click the Harry Pratter link above and read the wonderful descriptions of this unique and devoted teacher. In IUB law school’s 160 years, almost 9,000 law degrees have been awarded. 6,200 of these were when Professor Pratter was teaching.)

Labor Law & Unions

Donald at All Deliberate Speed writes briefly on the Northwest Airlines strike: “Northwest Vows To Break Union” (Here’s the Washington Post’s Sunday story on the Northwest strike.)

Like any good blogger, Donald isn’t afraid to take a stand, advising: “If you believe that workers have a right to organize, your course of action is clear: Don’t fly on Northwest Airlines.”

Personally, I don’t just believe workers have a right to organize, I know it; it’s been the law since the Wagner Act. They also have the right to put companies out of business by exercising their NLRA-protected rights — and have often done so.

A 26% pay cut is huge. And these safety-sensitive jobs (maintaining commercial aircraft) are very important. But what are these mechanics making now? And what are other people who have the skills willing to work for? Isn’t the military constantly training aircraft mechanics, who eventually end up in the private sector, not having become used to Machinist’s Union wages and benefits?

It’s the labor market, stupid. . . . Union workers who are overpaid relative to the market price for their services may have to take large cuts to come down to market level if their employer is to survive in a competitive, hurting industry.

Second digression. A little bonus from Donald: “Gas Guy: Real or Fake?” Nah, it’s nothing serious that will enhance your continuing professional education, but take a minute anyway, including clicking over to the “Gas Guy” blog (actually entitled “My Life as a…Gas Station Attendant.” Sometimes this employment blawg stuff is way too serious. . . Real or fake, “gas guy” tells some curious tales.)

Nathan Cohen at Labor Blog asks “Where’s the ACLU?”

Same old prounion blamegame — Labor law that hasn’t changed in decades, and was in effect when labor was in its prime, is to blame for labor’s woes.

I’ll tell you why the ACLU’s not jumping into something like the secondary boycott case Labor Blog doesn’t like. It’s because there’s no real issue. The only issue was whether the conduct was more like picketing than like plain, unadorned handbilling. The latter is free speech not prohibited by the NLRA, even if for a prohibited purpose. The conduct clearly was more like picketing. End of case.

I love this from Labor Blog:

You occasionally hear folks say that unions face less repression than back in the “old days”, meaning the 1930s, which is just plain ignorant. Labor law back then didn’t have these kinds of anti-speech provisions. They were only added after World War II in the Taft-Hartley Act and followup legislation, which not coincidentally coincided with the decline in union density in our society.

Yes, the secondary boycott restriction Nathan dislikes was added by the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, in response to strongarm unions that were perceived as using coercive tactics to bring the economy to its knees [linked article is vigorous defense of Taft Hartley]:

Taft-Hartley was enacted at a time public opinion had swung against unions, primarily because of the wave of strikes that followed World War II. For example, in the auto industry, President Truman appointed a “fact finding” board when the Auto Workers struck General Motors for 119 days in 1945 [after 4 years of nonproduction of automobiles due to the war effort]. The following year, national strikes crippled the soft coal industry and the nation’s railroads. In 1946 alone, there were a staggering 5,000 strikes, involving 4.6 million workers.

Taft-Hartley did NOT coincide with the decline in union membership: in 1948 union membership was 31.8%, and it continued in the low 30s or high 20s through the mid-70s (not dropping below 25% until 1979).

Discrimination Litigation

Donald at All Deliberate Speed links to an audio file of the oral argument in Jesperson v. Harrah’s, the casino bartender mandatory makeup rule case, about which we’ve blogged here and here.

Saturday night I was trying to hustle onward with this update and not be distracted with listening to this argument (an hour long), but it’s pretty darn interesting. [Update -- I ended up listening to it all and staying up way too late. Will blog separately on it later in the week].

Career and HR Management Advice

Rita at MSSP Nexus blog talks about “doing lunch” with bosses and coworkers as a key networking opportunity, sharing some helpful “dos and don’t’s.”

Susan at About.com Human Resources has an intriguing piece about managing the new generation of employees — “millenials.” She says, in essence, that they have tons of good potential, but you better treat them right if you want to keep them — and offers tips (11 this time!)

Safety/Workers Comp

Workers Comp Insider writes about falls in the construction industry, which are often fatal, and what are described as “human fall traps” or “HFTs” (apparently benefits lawyers aren’t the only acronym-lovers) — “situations in which falls are almost inevitable.”

Benefits

BenefitsBlog has expanded the acronym list into a separate Benefits Acronym Lexicon (might be helpful to bookmark if you’re not a benefits specialist but have to talk to one periodically; kind of like carrying a foreign language dictionary when you travel out of the country).

Thanks to Jottings by an Employers Lawyer for linking to this detailed study commissioned by the Small Business Administration: “Cost of Employee Benefits in Small and Large Businesses”(.pdf)

CathColl.net offers some thoughts on this report– but if the subject is of interest to you, don’t stop at her summary. Look at the whole thing, as it’s full of useful details.

Changing World of Work

The always thought-provoking Future of Work Weblog sees gas prices as a force pushing us towards more telecommuting and distributed work. Most of what I’m reading says prices aren’t changing behavior, though obviously displacing other expenditures. I’m ready to consider more days working at home or internet cafe (like I needed an excuse for that!) Also buying a cheap high mileage used car for local transport, while keeping minivan for when its capacity is needed.

Big Blogosphere Bonus for Both Bloggers and Blogreaders
(George catches a big blogsurfing wave and can’t resist sharing, in case anyone cares to follow along)

Yes, I know blogging about blogging seems even more self-absorbed and self-gratifying than blogging generally, which all too often seems that way anyhow (never here, of course).

But never mind that. You must see this hilariously creative cartoon at the Nonist blog, “a nonist public service pamphlet.” It’s a cartoon booklet entitled “What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression.” It’s a gem. It drew many comments (71 last count).

A serious response here: “The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging” (at The Tattered Coat).

A sample:

The pressure that the Nonist speaks of is very real for most bloggers. Once a blog gains an audience, the blogger feels a silent (and occasionally not-so-silent) demand for new content on a daily, or more-than-daily, basis. One sees, through site traffic reports, how many people are visiting one’s site, and one feels guilty if there is no new material for those visitors to read.

That pressure can be crushing, and the Nonist’s advice — to get a grip, to keep things in perspective, and to remember why you first started blogging — is spot on.

I started this blog as an outlet for my writing and my political activism. But what has kept it going, and made it worthwhile, is the sense that a community of readers has gelled around it. That sense of community, I think, is one of the best things the blogosphere has to offer. . . .

But it’s important to remember that, for most of us, blogging is a largely unpaid hobby, something we do because we love it, and because we just can’t stop writing.

Indeed. And some blogreaders just can’t stop clicking links and reading with amazement: Good God, look what I just found! As I did tonight.

Poking around Nonist for a moment, I found this beautiful gallery of near-abstract color photos by Jaime Morrison, and a gallery and words by Minor White, who was an inspiration for this and other similarly inclined photographers, working in large format black and white 50 years ago.

Next, looking for the home page url for Tattered Coat, I found this sad story of a missing person found dead. All too common story: an eerily similar one also involving a pregnant woman is ongoing now in Missouri.

What grabbed my attention was this: bloggers trying to use the blogging medium to assist in getting out the word on missing persons using “blog PSAs (public service announcements) for missing persons”; blogs as “today’s milk cartons.” While you’re on this link, note the catchy skyline photo heading the blog (Philly Future).

And finally, a blog I stumbled on somehow (I really don’t have a clue how) that goes to prove once again that someone’s blogging about every subject known to man or woman, however weird: The Essential Ghoul’s Record Shelf: A song-by-song tour through pop music’s unexpected fascination with the ghastly and supernatural. (complete with album art and MP3s for your twisted listening pleasure).

Oh . . . my mind is really blown now . . .the same guy has this “Dr. Mysterian” site, a true work of genius, I say, containing weekly predictions of the future that are mostly closely enough grounded in existing reality to be plausible — to varying degrees (e.g., trend of ipod jukeboxes — so when you go out you can pay for the privilege of hearing your own playlist over the sound system of an eating or drinking establishment).