LETTERS
Editors: How much longer will Dissent publish pieces such as "It's a Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab World" (Fall 1999) by Michael Tomasky and continue to call itself a magazine of the left? For a magazine...
...Powell was using a union-busting maneuver well-known in whitecollar workplaces: make it clear that union members are poor or working class, unlike themselves, and play on emErrata The listing of recent and forthcoming books by Dissent editors in the Winter 2000 issue (p...
...We wanted some flexibility in our own finances...
...As an American raised in five countries, I can assure you that Le Monde, La Jornada, Liberation, La Repubblica, El Pais, Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Zeit, the Guardian, and the Independent all provide top-level international coverage (not just of disasters or one-time events as the Times tends to do, not to mention the others) and they publish critical pieces and analysis that the Times wouldn't touch...
...The author allows that the Times might blame the Salvadoran rebels for blowing up a bridge when the rightwing forces really did it...
...Finally, if, as Tomasky maintains, even liberal dissent at the tabloids is now taboo, one is a right-wing house organ, and one of the two may fold in the coming years, just why is it that New Yorkers or anyone else should be so cheery about all that "variety" in the New York daily press...
...That was one of the most basic points of my article, and Powers reveals having missed it when he observes, as proof of the grooviness of the practice, that "even a fellow-traveler like Michael Moore employs non-union crews...
...As Featherstone reports, half of the workers in Powell's close vote (161-155) opposed the union...
...Just think of those poor people suffering in Bangladesh...
...Conflict is dangerous for them because it can reveal that workers' and owners' interests are not one and the same...
...In my article, I acknowledged that unions can be corrupt and was sympathetic to progressive workers' skepticism about them, arguing that such skeptics can be strong allies in the movement to create more democratic unions...
...Our apologies to George Holoch, who translated Marc Lazar's article "Fin-de-Siecle Communism in Western Europe" (Winter 2000) but inadvertently didn't receive credit...
...Besides, my piece contained plenty of information about how ideologically horrid the Post is, so I can hardly be accused of ignoring the question...
...Liza Featherstone Replies Frankly, I'm a little puzzled when Thom Powers argues that I treated unions as a "cure-all" and made "no attempt to explain the opposition side...
...Dissent, as a journal that considers itself to offer the most sophisticated coverage of European politics you'll find anywhere outside of Europe," should take note...
...The same could be said of doctors and hotel maids, or symphony violinists and burger flippers...
...But people in all those professions have, at times, chosen to be represented by unions...
...Letters must be no more than 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...There was no guarantee that they'd negotiate a better contract...
...When union recruiters came along, it was guaranteed they would add a new layer of fallibility, self-interest, and dues...
...It also saved us from the kind of polarizing rhetoric that portrays Michael Powell as an enemy when he's more of a friend to progressive causes overall...
...But there are other ways to see the world...
...Missing Half the Story Editors: Liza Featherstone raises some healthy doubts about "socially responsible" companies ("'It's Business, Man!': DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 125 LETTERS Unions and 'Socially Responsible' Corporations," Dissent, Fall 1999...
...ployees' desires to be seen as successful and middle class (and perhaps their liberal guilt: "What, you're exploited...
...123) mistakenly gives Columbia University Press as the publisher of The Oversocialized Conception of Man, by Dennis Wrong, and the publication date as 2000...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...the need for a shared civic laugh, for example, is not to be underestimated in a city like New York, and the tabloids often provide it...
...See http://www.fair.org/err/991213.html, Dean Baker's Economic Reporting Review and http://www.fair.org/activism/embassyfollow-up.html, the London Observer and the Times on NATO's attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade Michael Tomasky Replies Let's try to have a little sense of humor here, can we...
...In fact, Columbia did publish Skeptical Sociology, of which this is a re-issue, but the current publisher is Transaction Publishers, and the date is 1999...
...Far from "glossing over" this criticism in my article, I explained it fairly (more lucidly and specifically than Powell did, in fact...
...But woe to the world if every publication shared its dour outlook...
...As a past employee of bookstores similar to Powell's, I think she's missing half the story...
...It expresses the biases of the Ivy League ruling class that produces it...
...It's a common one, and I argue that "the assumption that conflict itself is dangerous" is a cornerstone of "socially responsible" anti-unionism...
...THOM POWERS Brooklyn, N.Y...
...My piece was—I thought—self-evidently somewhat tongue-in-cheek...
...Outside of New York and the United States, however, even the mainstream press allows more "dissent" than this...
...We apologize to the author and to the publishers...
...Anyone who cares about organized labor should confront these realities, not gloss over them...
...To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...Powers, echoing Powell, complains that unions get in the way of business "flexibility...
...One can support labor's right to organize without treating unions as a cure-all...
...Perhaps uncritical and incestuous reliance on government officials and public relations mavens along with editorialists who pride themselves on thinking like hedgefund managers (Tom "Lexus" Friedman), is what it takes to be "probably the world's best newspaper...
...Even more sympathetically, I observed that Michael Powell and other progressive employers are right to criticize unions' history of racism, sexism, and "nearly every imaginable form of exclusion...
...DAVE DORKIN Louisville, Ky...
...But what that suggests is not that unions are irrelevant or useless, but that employers end up acting like employers...
...I wrote that having "opponents with the vocabulary to recognize such problems is probably constructive for the labor movement...
...In film, even a fellow-traveler like Michael Moore employs non-union crews...
...I read FAIR's Extra!, and I admire it and find it useful...
...DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 127...
...While he states that the two tabloids take information and then package "it in such a way that it both confirms and augments the reader's prejudice," the Times itself all too frequently does the same...
...Economist Dean Baker at the Economic Policy Institute and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has long documented the errors of the Times on the side of unexamined "elite" opinion, often contradictory on its face, and has done so with the very orthodox tools of neoclassical economics (see endnote...
...Then again, as Powell's employee Paul Couey said of Powell's "flexibility" fetish: "Most of the flexibility to which he was referring was managerial...
...Indeed it is dangerous — for bosses trying to maintain power...
...Although she calls his opinions "bluster," he sounds perfectly reasonable drawing a distinction between book clerks and farm workers...
...But she makes no attempt to explain the opposition, quoting union criticism only from owner Michael Powell...
...And as for Powell's "perfectly reasonable" distinction between book clerks and farm workers, sure, those folks may be in pretty different situations...
...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...But her skepticism seems to fail her when she advocates unions as the best possible solution for the disgruntled workers at Powell's Books...
...Bargaining directly with management seemed easier...
...I admit I don't read Le Monde, but I find it hard to imagine the same's not true of it...
...In theaters, union contracts have driven the best work off Broadway...
...But only somewhat: from an ideologically left point of view, of course the tabloids cut very little mustard...
...126 • DISSENT / Spring 2000 However, I'm thrilled to use Powers's letter as Exhibit A in my ongoing exploration of the bogus rhetoric deployed by "socially responsible" anti-unionists and their supporters...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes...
...For a magazine of the left to publish the claim that New York's dailies still offer "a sufficient diet of variety and spice" without comment is remarkable...
...Just because the sacred cows of mushy progressivism exploit their workers doesn't make it OK...
...As for unions' "polarizing" tendencies, again, I analyzed this criticism in my article...
...As for the Times, some of what Dorkin says is true, but, as infuriating as it sometimes is, that paper has changed more in the last decade than it probably did in the previous fifty years, and the vast majority of those changes have been for the better—a younger staff, more diverse staff, and perhaps not groundbreaking but dutiful and regular coverage of New York's poor...
...If unions want to broaden their constituency in cultural professions, they need to learn more flexibility...
...He invokes many of the cliches such businesspeople love, to familiarly disingenuous ends...
...And "fellow-travelers" who also happen to be millionaires may end up acting like millionaires...
...Too often, union regulations can be stifling to small cultural enterprises...
...Many unionized workers have serious complaints about their own representation...
...Perhaps the "variety" of New York's daily press is in his mind...
...One thing I valued about working for small bookstores, publishers, and film companies was a human scale of organization that didn't require union bureaucracy...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...In reality, the Times's record is full of misstatements and not just where the apparently "passé" third world is concerned...
...You don't say...
...He sniffs indignantly at "union bureaucracy," as if every business didn't create "bureaucracy" of its own...
Vol. 47 • April 2000 • No. 2
