Crossposted from Main Street, the blog of Working America.
Well, why didn’t he say so the first time?
New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin apologized for his challenge on yesterday’s Morning Joe:
"Name a successful unionized company. Think. You’re going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that’s the problem."
Now he’s telling Talking Points Memo,
I did not mean to suggest that there are literally no successful companies that employ union workers. Of course there are! Your readers have provided a good list (though I might quibble with some of the names.)
(apologyish statement continued below)
I made the unscripted comment with my financial columnist hat on in the context of the problems at GM. That's what the discussion was about on the program. And when you look at some of the once great iconic American industries that have faltered -- automobiles, airlines, steel, apparel, etc -- there is a fair question worth asking about whether those industries were helped or hurt by their unions. But let's leave that debate for another day.
No apparent word from the hosts of Morning Joe who had chimed in with equally ill-informed drivel.
But while he at least had the grace to be apologetic, Sorkin’s apology still leaves something to be desired. As a reader at TPM points out,
One point being missed, especially in light of Sorkin's response, is the flip side of this--those "iconic" non-union industries and companies who have also and concurrently failed miserably and who have really been the biggest contributor to our (and the world's) economic meltdown--the Wall Street firms (Bear Sterns, Lehman), the big banks (Citi, BofA), etc.
Exactly! Something goes wrong in a unionized industry or company, clearly it’s the workers’ faults (in the eyes of far too many in the media). Something goes wrong in a non-union industry or company, it’s...the economy’s fault? A mystery? No, no, no.
Let’s put this in context:
Some hedge fund managers made over a billion dollars [in 2007]. Hedge fund manager John Paulson, who made a clever bet against subprime mortgages, made close to $4 billion.
How much is 4 billion dollars? If you work as a sales clerk in a retail store, you'd have to work 200,000 YEARS to make 4 billion dollars. If you have a steady $50,000 a year job as a laborer and work for 50 years, in all that time you'd make as much as the hedge fund manager gets in one hour at the office.
4 billion dollars would pay a year's salary for ALL the public school teachers in New York City.
Yet this money goes to one individual.
When something goes wrong with hedge funds or others in the finance industry, executives still collect their bonuses. But think how much you’ve heard about how teachers’ unions are one of the big problems with education today, standing in the way of efficiency. Think how much you’ve heard about auto workers being the problem in their industry—when they work for decades to earn what this one hedge fund guy takes in in an hour. And at least auto workers produce cars instead of the economic crisis that’s been the major thing to come out of Wall Street recently.
It’s time for the traditional media to take a hard look at their assumptions about profitability and fair wages, to recognize that working people are not the problem.