Dear Mr. Sharrock:
It has been reported on several websites that you once tried to form a union while working for Ralph Nader, but that Nader used corporate strike-breaking techniques to fire you and destroy your efforts. Here is one such report:
Ralph talks big about democracy and even unions. But when his own workers at one of his magazines, Multinational Monitor, got fed up with cruel working conditions and started agitating for a union of their own, Nader busted the union with all of the hardball techniques used by corporate owners across America. Workers at Public Citizen, another Nader group, also tried to form a union because of 60 to 80 hour work weeks, salaries that ranged from $13,000 down, and other difficult working conditions and were blocked by Nader, who remains unapologetic to this day.
[snip]
When ringleader Tim Shorrock filed the union recognition papers, Nader immediately transferred ownership in the Multinational Monitor to close friends who ran an organization ("Essential Information") that Nader had set up. When Shorrock showed up for work the next day, he had been fired, the locks were changed, and management called the police to charge him with theft (of his own work papers.) That charge was thrown out of court, but management fired the two supportive editors and sued the three of them for $1.2 million, agreeing to drop the intimidation suit only when they dropped their NLRB complaint. All of these action are straight from the hardball anti-union playbook, and Nader makes no apology.
According to Nader, "Public interest groups are like crusades...you can't have work rules, or 9 to 5." Shorrock, with his "union ploy," became an "adversary" according to Nader. "Anything that is commercial, is unionizable," but small public interest organizations "would go broke in a month," Nader says, if they paid union wages, offered union benefits and operated according to standard work rules, such as the eight-hour day. Remember that Nader's well-funded organizations were amassing tons of extra money that Ralph has been playing the stock market with during all these events.
http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm
In light of Nader's anti-union actions, which are little known to the public, have you considered writing an op-ed for a large circulation newspaper about Ralph Nader the strikebreaker?
I am an independent Democrat who very much wants to see Bush put out of office, and who is annoyed to no end by Ralph Nader's self-centered antics. I think that progressive Democrats need to understand that Nader is no "St. Ralph."
Please let me know if you share my sentiment that Nader is no "St. Ralph," and if you would be interested in drafting the aforementioned "op ed."
Very Truly Yours,
Pontificator
A Regular Diarist at DailyKos