Marna Borgstrom ditches the New Haven Board of aldermen, and the UOC demands card check, which, granted, isn't exactly radical at this juncture since DeStefano did so two months ago, but neither does it necessarily have to be to apply pressure where needed and is still, a good development to offset Marna "I wrote my M.P.H. Thesis on Union Busting" Borgstrom's refusal to be held accountable.

Amid the battle, an old master's thesis has surfaced that has union leaders wondering if Borgstrom ever intended to give them a fair shake. As a graduate student at Yale, Borgstrom spent one summer at a hospital in San Jose, Calif., helping to break the union there. She wrote up her findings in a 1979 thesis that was discovered this week in a Yale library.

In Borgstrom's study, an employee sick of paying union dues schemed with management to decertify the union. Managers ousted one of their own to placate workers. They also implemented "Operation Speak-Easy" to listen to employee complaints while monitoring union support. In the end, the union fell. "The Hospital should strive for union-free status," her thesis concludes.

It snowed a lot in Sunset Park last night, so much so i could hardly sleep because snow makes me all giddy. So now I'm going to go out and walk around a but before it all melts, and try to forget two of the three long, long meetings of the past week.