Blue state casino

I once asked a good friend who worked as a professor in Texas if the adjuncts at her university were part of the union. She laughed and laughed and explained to me that in Texas, you don't unionize. I was young and naive I suppose. Also, I had only ever lived in MA, MI, and CT. I had taken some things for granted, like a strong or at least highly visible working class with empowered workers who will fight like hell to get, keep, and enforce their bargaining rights.

Today, as I read the news, I was reminded that this may not be how it works in less labor friendly states. It was this headline which called that conversation with my friend from Texas briefly to mind:
Unions Take Shot At Casino - Ruling Might Help Organization Efforts
The casino is one of those tribal casinos in Southeastern CT. The ruling is a federal one, not by the NLRB but by a circuit court which extended the federal labor law to the casinos. That this is a federally mediate issue would seem to negate the notion that unionizing casino workers might be easier if only because it is more conceivable in a blue state - except that while whether workers are "allowed" to organize is important (i.e., among other things, whether workers are allowed to call themselves workers), whether workers see themselves as workers and think of unionizing in a positive light is crucial.

I know this from the truly odd world of academic labor. Consider grad students. Most of these would be academics are not from working class families and were not raised to see blue collar values as anything other than quaint at best. The cultural experience many graduate students drag along with them like some unacknowledged toilet paper tail stuck to their shoes is one bounded by upper middle class at the low end and chock full of prep schools, private high schools, social and intellectual elitism, and an unquestionable inherited skin deep pseudo-liberalism. In short, people who think listening to NPR makes them radicals, who can afford to support their vegan lifestyle without collapsing of scurvy, and who have the luxury of certain key comforts and securities - either now or at least in childhood - which allows them to believe in such fairytales as the american dream and the tenure track job.

Part of the cultural package bought and consumed by these folks is the implicit message that unions are bad. By the time they reach grad school, they are not in a position to think of unions favorably, unless you're talking about unions in like Brazil or something. Then they're very pro. But here? For us?

I think this is because of a deeper element than the consumption of anti-labor cultural rhetoric with no immediate contextual antidote. These are people who have lead their lives very much expecting mommy and daddy to know what's best and right, and who as they've matured, have learned to predict and conform to certain key parental expectations. Moreover, these are people who are old enough to have felt a little of what life might be like without the billowy cushion of the mommy and daddy money pillow. Such a person will transfer this parent pleasing attitude into the university upon matricuation as a graduate student, applying it to anyone from a major advisor to the departments head, and finally if nebulously all the way to the ineffable, unknowable god-like deans and provosts.

In that context, it is a simple matter to bust any grad employee union before the cards are even printed simply by threatening that the university (provosts, deans, department heads, and advisors) will stop loving you.

Hm...I seem to have gone on a rather lengthy tangent. Well, there's a lot more where that came from but I'm not up to delving that deeply into thoughts of unionizing and organizing workers in a field I am pretty sure I will not be a worker in for much longer.

However - to return to the topic at hand - I am pleased to see that folks working at the casinos of CT are being roused. I don't know what working conditions are, but I am of a mind that unionizing is not something which need only be done in dire circumstances. Unless your experience has told you the people above you will always act fairly, compassionately balancing your interests with other needs like massive huge profits, it is foolish to dismiss the notion of collective bargaining a priori.

From the Hartford Courant
Unions unsuccessfully tried to organize workers at Foxwoods, one of the state's largest employers, in the late 1990s. This time, union organizers appear to have two new advantages: a recent, favorable court ruling and signs of dissatisfaction among some workers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in February that Indian tribes, though considered sovereign governments, must follow the National Labor Relations Act, including its rules giving employees the right to organize and bargain collectively. Foxwoods is owned and operated by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe.