Report Card
Kane, Matt
REPORT CARD Matt Kane Circle Games INSIDE THE CIRCLE: A UNION GUIDE TO QWL by Mike Parker Labor Notes, P.O. Box 20001, Detroit, MI 48220. 160 pp. $10 plus $1 shipping. Mike Parker has...
...Political cartoons complement the text...
...Jokes aside, The Nuclear Devil's Dictionary contains solid information about euphemistic war terms often used but little understood...
...His extensive guide exposes the dangers unions face when companies tap workers for quasi-management roles, and it presents union strategies for skirting trouble...
...A reentry vehicle is described as a "wreckreational vehicle...
...LETS, as it is called, uses computerized accounts and an alternative money system to coordinate barter arrangements among its members...
...125 pp...
...You, as an astute investor, are searching for competent business opportunities that will help you realize your financial goals...
...7.95...
...If employee participation programs are unavoidable, unions should take an active role in the training programs for them, educate workers on the risks involved, and draw into union leadership workers who preside over QWL groups...
...The entries are rife with puns, word games, and ironic humor...
...A financial planner offers some hard-nosed advice: "Alternative investing is not charity work...
...Farrell defines "escalation ladder" as "a stairway to the scars...
...Where possible, unions should oppose QWL...
...But the guide also provides information of a more altruistic nature, describing several social-change organizations that pay investors no interest on money borrowed, as well as others that pay close to market rates...
...From the corporate viewpoint, QWL is just a short stretch of road on the way to the larger goals of bigger profits and greater control over the workforce," Parker warns...
...An interesting article describes the Local Exchange Trading Systems of Cour-tenay, British Columbia...
...he fits squarely into the tradition of the late journalist Ambrose Bierce, who in The Devil's Dictionary defined peace as "a period of cheating between two periods of fighting...
...The guide offers a quick, and admittedly sketchy, look at topics ranging from serious financial investing to creative gift giving, from low-interest community bank loans to "politically correct" financial advisers...
...This dictionary aspires," Farrell writes in the introduction, "to see things as they are in order to imagine things the way they ought to be...
...In addition, this guide lists a wide variety of mail-order organizations that put their profits to good use, many helping low-income crafts makers worldwide...
...And the definition of "flashblindness" reads: "The temporary sightlessness that succeeds a look at a nuclear explosion, as opposed to the congenital myopia that precedes it...
...Workers in these programs tend to buy into management's perspective, Parker says...
...In this, he has succeeded...
...James J. Farrell's dictionary offers a delightful lesson in "how to read between the lies" of nuclear-age jargon...
...Debunking Doublespeak THE NUCLEAR DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by James J. Farrell Usonia Press, Box 19440 Diamond Lake Station, Minneapolis, MN 55419...
...This potpourri of lists and tips can help socially concerned individuals put their money where their minds are...
...Investing from the Heart GUIDE TO INVESTING IN SOCIAL CHANGE edited by Susan Meeker-Lowry Center for Economic Revitalization, 28 Main Street, Montpelier, VT 05602.40 pp...
...Under quality-of-work-life (QWL) or employee-involvement programs, companies establish small groups of workers and managers which meet regularly to discuss issues of production and work environment in hopes of breeding a spirit of cooperation...
...What's more, Farrell moves beyond comedy to the tragedy of his subject matter, describing in detail the horrors of radiation sickness and the effects of a nuclear bomb explosion...
...Employers use worker participation programs to undermine unions...
...Farrell turns his witty cynicism on the doublespeak of nuclear war, weapons, and energy...
...By participating in such programs, unions are in danger of rendering themselves marginal, Parker says...
...But the arrangements "resemble shotgun weddings with the companies holding the shotgun," writes Parker...
...As a result, they join in decisions to eliminate jobs, reduce job categories, and win concessions from workers...
...Mike Parker has stripped the sheep's clothing off employee participation programs now popular with companies and some unions...
...Parker, who works for Labor Notes, has spent four years researching the issue of employee involvement, and his expertise shows...
Vol. 49 • October 1985 • No. 10
