The Myth of the Progressive Boss

March 6, 2020 12:53 PM

The Myth of the Progressive Boss — Cenk Uygur talked a good game about The Young Turks being the premier progressive media outlet. Then his staff tried to unionize.

“Personally, I feel let down that TYT won’t recognize our union via card check, instead insisting on [an] election vote held on TYT’s terms in a room attached to Cenk’s office, while excluding a few employees from our unit who IATSE does represent,” the organizing committee member said. “That election is NOT voluntary recognition, and frankly, as a progressive, I find this embarrassing at the home of progressives.”

Thompson had expected to see the unit win swift recognition and was stunned to see TYT flub a chance to enhance its credibility in left-media circles. In his view, cozying up to the union would have been nothing but a net positive for Uygur’s campaign, and for the company as a whole. But now Thompson sees the Young Turk image floundering on the myopia and hypocrisy of the network’s leaders. “Principles aside, from a basic sense of self-protection, how could they not perceive the risk of being labeled union-busters?” he asked in amazement.

“Cenk and his company are globally recognized as pro-union, pro-worker, defender of the little guy; stander-upper to corporate power; fighters for truth, justice, honesty, fairness, and openness,” he continued. “This is, by and large, what inspires such loyalty and money from the member base. No one thought they would refuse! Even if only to avoid the optics they’re facing now. We thought they might resist it, but what kind of management team would be so irresponsible and out-of-touch to allow this? I mean, read the room, geniuses.”

The Boss is Never the Friend of Justice

A few years ago, I was asked to speak to a class at Brown about Out of Sight. It was some kind of environmental sustainability course. The students were smart of course and they liked the book, but they could not get over one huge hump–the idea that capitalism was not the answer. They just really struggled with this. They kept trying to argue that good corporate leadership could solve environmental problems. I replied by saying that, first, corporations exist only to make money and that second, even if you have a really well-meaning CEO or other leadership, if the quarterly profit report doesn’t end up the right way, they will be replaced with someone else who will prioritize profit over saving the world.

What was really going on in that class is that these were rich kids who maybe did care about climate change but were going to work for daddy after graduation and didn’t want to have to question their privilege, which of course I told them directly at the end of class. I started thinking about this again when the story came out about fake leftist Cenk Uygur engaging in open union-busting at his TYT media at the same time that he pretended like he had a chance to win the congressional seat of Katie Hill that she lost through revenge porn, which isn’t too far removed from Uygur’s own gross misogyny. Anyway, when I went on Twitter to talk about Uygur was a fake leftist and a unionbuster, there were quite a few of replies about how I wasn’t being far, how there must be two sides to the issue, how Uygur was a great guy, etc. Basically, they liked his show and therefore were cool with him unionbusting.

posted by tonycpsu (38 comments total)

Didn’t he wind up getting like 5% in his congressional primary?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:57 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

The staff of my professional association unionized a couple of years ago and nobody was more against it than their boss, an old-school ex-Teamster type.

It was pretty shocking at the time, but I've since learned that reaction is far from unusual in so-called "progressive" organizations, including organized labour.
posted by rpfields at 1:00 PM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

Not to be all "not all bosses", but worth calling out progressive media orgs and leaders that have supported their workers organizing, like Talkingpoints.
posted by feckless at 1:08 PM on March 6, 2020 [25 favorites]

Yeah, to say, as in the first pull quote, that everyone is surprised at Uygur's opposition to his staff unionizing is a stretch, or representative of a myopic and incomplete understanding of "The Left", perhaps.
posted by eviemath at 1:10 PM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

The worst bosses I have ever had have been old-school lefties. They have always treated their jobs like personal fiefdoms and been absolute shit to their employees. I don't know precisely why, except, I guess, if you have a background in leftist politics but decide to be a boss instead of starting an employee-owned business, you're probably not super interesting in workers anyway.
posted by maxsparber at 1:47 PM on March 6, 2020 [24 favorites]

I fully support unions and the labor movement in general, and I'm proud of being a shop steward early in my working life, but working for a few months in the actual union offices was a lesson in cognitive dissonance because holy shit. Holy. Shit.
posted by um at 1:57 PM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

Josh from TPM (above) was enthusiastic about his staff unionizing. Kudos to him for that.

I'm a bit surprised that it isn't more common. It's like having an unpaid HR staff to represent the concerns of employees. People used to talk about the "Japanese Model" where worker feedback was a key input to business strategy. If you view your workers as just interchangeable resources, you be you. But your work product, and its commercial value, depends on these workers' efforts and initiative, and it's a real benefit to you to have an organized way to get their concerns that's independent of top-down thinking.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:59 PM on March 6, 2020 [15 favorites]

I worked temporarily for a union local office when I was in college. Two things happened to sour me on unions (or any lefty entity) as employers:

1. They lent me a car for a week when I had some commute problems, and I got into a fender-bender. They told me, "No problem, we'll take care of it." They didn't. The other guy made a worker's comp claim for whiplash, I never found out, got a default judgment against me, lost my right to drive in that state, and it cost many thousands of dollars years later to get it all resolved.

2. I was filling in for someone on sick leave, and was told repeatedly that if she came back before my summer was up and I had to return to school, they would give me a week's severance. She came back with no notice, I was sent home, never got the week's pay.

Turns out bosses are bosses, even bosses who claim to be fighting for social and economic justice. And unions (as valuable as they are for their members) are actually pretty crappy employers because they know exactly what they can get away with, and know their employers are willing to be poorly paid and treated in order to help save other people.
posted by suelac at 2:03 PM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

We already know there are bad unions. Republicans have been telling us that since forever. But not all unions are bad and not all bad unions are all bad. The problem is that there are fallible humans in the process. We need better worker representation, not less of it.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:12 PM on March 6, 2020 [61 favorites]

I started thinking about this again when the story came out about fake leftist Cenk Uygur engaging in open union-busting at his TYT media at the same time that he pretended like he had a chance to win the congressional seat of Katie Hill that she lost through revenge porn, which isn’t too far removed from Uygur’s own gross misogyny. Anyway, when I went on Twitter to talk about Uygur was a fake leftist and a unionbuster, there were quite a few of replies about how I wasn’t being far, how there must be two sides to the issue, how Uygur was a great guy, etc. Basically, they liked his show and therefore were cool with him unionbusting.

My experience of the overall reaction to this news on "left Twitter" is that even people who stayed cool with him through all the other shit are largely not cool with him on this.
posted by atoxyl at 2:12 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

I never had a stage where I thought The Young Turks were sincere or legitimate (unlike, say, Chapo Trap House, where I first heard of them as abrasive but intelligent and only later heard about the rape threats), so deep down I'm a little surprised other people did.

I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of unions as terrible employers because they know their workers have nowhere to go, though. One of the things I've been trying to work out is what to do when a union has enough power that they can dictate terms to the industry*, as happens in France and has happened in Australia. Letting them disrupt everything isn't productive for the country, and unionbusting isn't appropriate either. My initial thought was 'why not nationalise it and put the union in charge of delivering the same outcomes' but the obvious downside to that plan is a bigger issue than I thought.

* If you're replying 'well we're not there yet', may I remind you that America is a backwards place and some of us have functioning unions
posted by Merus at 3:07 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

One of the things I've been trying to work out is what to do when a union has enough power that they can dictate terms to the industry*, as happens in France and has happened in Australia. Letting them disrupt everything isn't productive for the country,

Why is this a different/worse problem than the owners disrupting everything tho, which is generally literally business as usual? I don't think I really understand the scenario you're envisioning.
posted by PMdixon at 3:12 PM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

It's like having an unpaid HR staff

To be fair to my employer they have 18 trade union reps who spend some percentage of their working hours on trade union work. It totals, um, 0.08% of the organisation's wage bill. At a rough guess, HR is 0.8%-1% of the wage bill.
posted by ambrosen at 3:33 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Didn’t he wind up getting like 5% in his congressional primary?

He was a carpet bagger running for a seat in my hometown.

Over the years the definition of "native son/daughter" of the City of Santa Clarita (biggest city in CA-25) has changed, mostly because like 200k people have moved there since I was born there in 1980. But, there is still a sense of "I'm from here, you're just some asshole from out town." Hell, when I was a kid if a bar/restaurant got popular enough that people from The San Fernando Valley (not even LA proper) started showing up, the Sheriffs parked a cruiser right in front until the establishment went out of business. Nowadays they have Quinten Tarantino showing up to film movies and hundreds of people a month visiting where Paul Walker died and even Netflix show with "Santa Clarita" right in the name.

But, three congress critters ago was a dude who was one the first city council members (we were incorporated in '87) who owned a western wear store and was big in his church. The guy after that was the son of the guy who was our State Assemblymen for like 30 years, Katie Hill went to Saugus High, Cristy Smith (who won this weeks jungle primary) not only went to Hart High, she also went to College in the Canyons. Cenk had no chance, even without his Young Turks bullshit.
posted by sideshow at 3:37 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Another progressive group that seems to be doing it better is Indivisible. In response to employees announcing that they had formed a union, Indivisble National tweeted "We are really excited that our staff is organizing and we're looking forward to working with them and their union! We're reaching out to them to talk about next steps." I'll be interested to see how it develops.
posted by mcduff at 3:39 PM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

My experience of the overall reaction to this news on "left Twitter" is that even people who stayed cool with him through all the other shit are largely not cool with him on this.

Well, yeah. Seeing as “all the other shit” was a past record of making crude misogynistic comments, there’s a very (sadly) size-able part of the left that decided not to give a shit about feminism or women in general.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:26 PM on March 6, 2020 [13 favorites]

Well, this is interesting, but I think the most important thing I learned is that for my next job application the gaps in my CV will be filled with "caring for the office lizard."
posted by Dumsnill at 5:17 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of unions as terrible employers because they know their workers have nowhere to go, though. One of the things I've been trying to work out is what to do when a union has enough power that they can dictate terms to the industry*, as happens in France and has happened in Australia.

Unions never really have that kind of power - it's a myth put out by employer groups outraged at the idea of having to negotiate anything in good faith on a supposedly equal footing. At the end of the day people have to work and it's the employer who pays them. The union can only do so much and they know it.

A few years ago I learned about Terror Management Theory, and for me the reason why unions tend to be terrible employers sort of came into focus. These organizations tend to be led and managed by people who believe in The Cause and it's in service of The Cause that they can justify underpaying staff, working them long hours, not giving a shit about OH&S, etc, etc. It's just sort of understood without anyone saying anything. At least that was my experience.
posted by um at 5:37 PM on March 6, 2020 [15 favorites]

I am (forced to be) a member of one of the infamous unions. I am very conflicted about the whole thing. On the one hand, we'd never get raises without them. I have one casual buddy that is a shop steward that helped me out when someone was trying to get me fired, so she's great. I've heard lovely things about the teacher's unions that my ex-teacher friends were in.

On the other hand, our local union folks running things are...not great. One of them called me up and was my best friend for an hour and then dropped me like a hot potato and was never heard from again. They have refused to do anything to get me recategorized so I could get a raise and literally ignored me and my boss when we asked. My ex-coworker who really relied on the union to save her from getting fired got fired anyway. A friend of mine used to volunteer for the union and got so fed up that she quit doing it.

I can't help but think that if an employer was actually good, maybe we wouldn't need to form unions. But at the same time, it doesn't seem like much gets done a lot of the time either with mine.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:13 PM on March 6, 2020

I never had a stage where I thought The Young Turks were sincere or legitimate (unlike, say, Chapo Trap House, where I first heard of them as abrasive but intelligent and only later heard about the rape threats), so deep down I'm a little surprised other people did.

Cenk has lots of bad history - most famously writing an article in college denying the Armenian Genocide, and a misogynistic blog - and just generally comes off as an asshole and a guy with Problems With Women. But the Young Turks isn't just him. They've employed people of, I'd say, varying degrees of legitimacy.

(Incidentally various Chapo members have done various shithead things, but I don't think they have threatened to rape anybody?)
posted by atoxyl at 6:40 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Saying unions in general are bad because of specific bad unions or union reps is like saying that government is inherently wasteful because of X and Y wasteful projects, or that democratic government in general is bad because of X and Y corrupt politicians. Or that employment in general shouldn't exist because of all the ridiculously abusive employers. It's such a weird conclusion to stick at.

Humans with power are always prone to bad behavior, and in any organization there need to be mechanisms to address that and minimize abuse. But unions themselves are a mechanism to address bad behaviors on the employers' side. Unless you have an effective and less corruption-prone alternative mechanism to offer, surely the answer should be to say that unions should exist but should be better rather than to argue they shouldn't exist at all.


As for the productivity losses and frustrations of strikes: living in a place where unions are stronger than in the US and where strikes happen fairly often, I can say that they're definitely frustrating and have occasionally affected my own ability to make a living. But unlike with most other such frustrations and disruptions, at least I can feel that the pain is worth it, that my inconvenience is at least in service of a good cause. I feel like I'm inadvertently making a contribution. Solidarity is really not so difficult a feeling to muster up.

Whereas companies pressuring governments to reduce regulations on the environment or workers' rights or human rights - sure it happens in the background and is less immediately disruptive for my life, but in terms of actual damage done there's no comparison.
posted by trig at 11:45 PM on March 6, 2020 [18 favorites]

Humans with power are always prone to bad behavior, and in any organization there need to be mechanisms to address that and minimize abuse. But unions themselves are a mechanism to address bad behaviors on the employers' side. Unless you have an effective and less corruption-prone alternative mechanism to offer, surely the answer should be to say that unions should exist but should be better rather than to argue they shouldn't exist at all.

I accept all this (in fact I'd go further to say that unions are the only mechanism that addresses bad behaviour of employers that reliably works), but my point is that I don't see any way of addressing bad behaviour on the unionised side that can't also be used to minimise all unions, and bad behaviour on the union side does happen. If you have, say, bad teachers who get cycled from school to school because they refuse to be retrained and the union won't allow them to be fired, or you have union leadership that denigrates women and minorities but is popular with the largely white and male rank and file (to bring up two real examples from where I live), you can't really expect the union to self-police. You can't expect other unions to police them, because if it's a big, powerful union and they split, it hurts the other unions. And I don't think I need to explain why expecting government or business to police unions is a bad idea.

Oh no, Heaven forbid that blah blah blah

I'm just going to flag this as a derail instead of touching the poop
posted by Merus at 2:10 AM on March 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

Not a huge Cenk fan but he has some worthwhile takes but there's reason to believe this was a hit job on Cenk in advance of the election (trying and failing to link to a tweet on Cenks twitter, but his take is worth reading)



Also in my experience my most politically progressive bosses have treated me with the most dignity. Even if Cenk is a dick I'm not sure why his behavior geveralizes in any way? He's a media guy and a former republican -- an outlier in so many ways
posted by shaademaan at 5:42 AM on March 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah, to say, as in the first pull quote, that everyone is surprised at Uygur's opposition to his staff unionizing is a stretch, or representative of a myopic and incomplete understanding of "The Left", perhaps.

That seems to be a quote from a union organiser referring to their members: I don't think they are trying to refer to the "The Left" as a whole.
posted by howfar at 6:10 AM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

So far as I can tell, unions advocate for voluntary recognition because they think they have less chance in a secret ballot.

If unions think voluntary certification is supporting unions, then unions should voluntarily decertify to support workers. For some reason, recently Boeing union SPEEA didn't voluntarily deauthorize itself when there was a nearly 70% majority in favor of deauthorization. Nor did a Florida teacher's union voluntarily decertify when the majority of teachers found even minimal dues useless. Nor did an Alaska bus driver's union - heck, the union didn't even let the drivers vote until the union was taken to court. In fact, I can't find a single example of voluntary union decertification in history.

Progressivism doesn't imply trusting any organization unconditionally. Progressivism doesn't imply that democracy is pointless if a loud group of people happen to have a particular point of view.
posted by saeculorum at 12:45 PM on March 7, 2020

> If unions think voluntary certification is supporting unions, then unions should voluntarily decertify to support workers. For some reason, recently Boeing union SPEEA didn't voluntarily deauthorize itself when there was a nearly 70% majority in favor of deauthorization.

"For some reason" being "the union saw it as exactly what it was, which was employees accepting a bribe offered exclusively for the purposes of busting the union":

After Boeing gave a 25% pay raise exclusively to its nonunion pilots late last year, a majority of the unionized training pilots — a group of 29 pilots represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) — filed a petition Friday with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to decertify, or kick out, the union.

Funny that you left that out of your "gotcha" scenario. Simply put, as long as a union exists, it is duty-bound to bargain on behalf of its members, irrespective of whether those members may pursue their rational self-interest in accepting a 25% pay raise. This is as much of a sincere expression of democracy as a signature on a ransom check.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2020 [11 favorites]

I think better pay is a great reason for people to want to leave a union. Isn't that what the union is supposed to provide? If a union can't provide it... why does the union exist?
posted by saeculorum at 12:59 PM on March 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am sure you are aware that better pay is just one thing unions collectively bargain for, that the raises were offered only to non-union members as a means to eliminate the union, and that a one-time raise does not make up for the totality of what union members can gain in a fair negotiation. If you're just reflexively anti-union and are willing to accept that management will do what's best for workers without unions, then you could at least be up front with that instead of pretending that this is about one single raise offered in bad faith to reward those who choose to take it in lieu of future benefits.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:15 PM on March 7, 2020 [18 favorites]

I gave three examples to try to make this not about SPEEA (a union I admit I particularly despise above others). Again, I can't find an example of voluntary union derecognition. Those workers might even be acting contrary to their interests - but they are workers none the less. I don't see a world in which "supporting workers" means "unconditionally believing union authorization cards" but doesn't mean "accepting that some groups' employees might not want to be part of the union, and when they choose to do so, the union should let them". Even a de-authorized union can be re-authorized in the future (at least, as far as I know).

I'm not a fan of unions because they work in a collective interest in ways that seem generally contrary to my own interests (which are outside the scope of this particular discussion, but I can get into if you are curious). I don't pretend for a minute that my management's interests are aligned with my own interests. I trust neither, and am skeptical of a notion that any large group with power is working solely in favor of workers. Hence, I'm particularly opposed to voluntary recognition in particular because it suggests the union can't work in bad faith.

Voluntary recognition is unconditionally trusting unions. I respect workers enough to say that union's assertions of employee support should be verified - just as I support verifying employee's assertions of union opposition.
posted by saeculorum at 1:30 PM on March 7, 2020

So we went from discussing a union-busting asshole to bashing unions? Hmmm. I once helped organize union representation at a progressive employer, a nonprofit with executive staff that was shocked and horrified to discover that we were not one small happy family. My most enjoyable contribution to negotiating the contract was adding language that prohibited discrimination based on employee footwear.

The whole process sucked. It particularly sucked to discover that our bosses were so thin-skinned and took it so personally. Of course, those of us in the rank-and-file were taking the random firings and shitty management pretty personally as well. Luckily that organization genuinely could not afford to be seen as a union-busting force and did not fight an election for long and ended up negotiating in good faith if somewhat bad humor.

People in power never want to give up their power. Not any of it. Doesn’t matter if they are religious or progressive or saintly, and sometimes those people who are religious or progressive or saintly are among the least willing. In any case, that was many years ago. The union and management at that particular institution have worked well together, to the best of my knowledge, over the intervening years. I am proud of my small role, which was larger than the footwear fun but not large enough to deserve much credit.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:31 PM on March 7, 2020 [15 favorites]

This is problematic on many levels, but one of the things that concerns me is how this just gives ammunition to the right wing. TYT is the closest thing the left has to a major news outlet; MSNBC isn't liberal no matter what your conservative uncle says. The comment section on every TYT video is filled with right wing trolls fat-shaming Cenk and talking about Anna's appearance, sometimes even out-numbering the legitimate comments. The right has an advantage that they can do literally anything and get away with it, but we have to be very careful or else we immediately get trashed. The last thing we should be doing is making it easier for our ideological opponents.
posted by ambulocetus at 5:21 PM on March 7, 2020

If you can't understand how scabs/picket breakers hurt unions, even (especially?) if they appear in the form of former union members then this conversation is dead in the water from the start.

Doubly so when they are hand-crafted by the business owner.

No, the fact that they are plain old non C level workes does not alleviate the issue. That's a tautology.

That's just simple common sense and should be treated as, potential problematic as it is, separate from the issue at hand or else we are doomed to repeat basic arguments past each other for all eternity like some kind of deranged, digitally bound Prometheus.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:03 PM on March 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

TYT is the closest thing the left has to a major news outlet

Uh, wut? Democracy Now? Pacifica Radio? The Nation, Mother Jones Magazine, Ms. Magazine? In less major but still well-known: In These Times, Z Magazine, Bitch Media, Commondreams.org, The Root, Autostraddle, Pinknews? Heck, Utne Reader is still going, too, isn't it? Various Lefttube YouTubers that get featured here on Metafilter fairly regularly?
posted by eviemath at 10:42 AM on March 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

Or, as mentioned above already, Talkingpoints Memo?
posted by eviemath at 10:44 AM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

In increasingly well-known leftist media, there's also Unicorn Riot, ItsGoingDown, and libcom.org. And rabble.ca in Canada.
posted by eviemath at 10:46 AM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Uh, wut? Democracy Now? Pacifica Radio? The Nation, Mother Jones Magazine, Ms. Magazine? In less major but still well-known: In These Times, Z Magazine, Bitch Media, Commondreams.org, The Root, Autostraddle, Pinknews? Heck, Utne Reader is still going, too, isn't it? Various Lefttube YouTubers that get featured here on Metafilter fairly regularly?

A few of those - Mother Jones comes to mind - have fallen pretty far as "Left," rather than "left-of-center" publications.

Regardless I think the original comment had to have meant video/"tv-style" news.
posted by atoxyl at 7:11 PM on March 8, 2020

Another progressive group that seems to be doing it better is Indivisible. In response to employees announcing that they had formed a union, Indivisble National tweeted "We are really excited that our staff is organizing and we're looking forward to working with them and their union! We're reaching out to them to talk about next steps." I'll be interested to see how it develops.

That can't possibly be right. I have it on good authority that they're neoliberal shills! /s
posted by sugar and confetti at 8:10 AM on March 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Cenk has lots of bad history - most famously writing an article in college denying the Armenian Genocide

I've always just skipped past this media enterprise entirely, 'cause who the hell on the left would call themselves The Young Turks unless they're idiots who care nothing about history. I never imagined it might be intentional.
posted by eotvos at 2:25 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]