this looks good (if true)

LOS ANGELES, July 29 (Reuters) - Hilton Hotels Corp. (HLT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Saturday it has reached an accord with the union representing North American hotel workers that includes an easing of the company's stance on how hotels are unionized.

Hilton said it had agreed on a new labor contract covering 4,000 workers at its two major New York City hotels that matches a contract ratified last month by workers at 133 of the city's other hotels.

The Beverly Hills, California-based company announced a five-year "partnership for future growth" with the Unite Here union, which has lined up hotel contract expirations in several cities this year as it seeks to improve wages and conditions and boost its membership.

The partnership plan includes working together "on growth where it makes strategic and economic sense, including card check agreements where appropriate," Hilton said in a statement.

Unite Here has been drumming up support for the so-called card-check neutrality process, in which the union polls workers individually and a hotel is unionized if a simple majority supports it. Employers generally prefer a system that uses secret ballots.

Hilton said that about 20 percent of its U.S. employees are union members.

"We will still negotiate city by city. Card check will be a negotiating item in those cities where it is appropriate," said Hilton spokesman Marc Grossman.

Edit: Here's Steven Greenhouse's article from Today's Times. The asbestos and retaliatory "underpayment" language stuff is intriguing. I'm wondering how the "productivity" language figures into the Heavenly Beds (or whatever the various chains are calling them) issue.

this is bad.

A Placer Superior Court jury has awarded the Sutter Health hospital chain
$17.2 million in compensatory damages in a defamation suit against a labor union
that accused the hospital of using soiled linens in its maternity wards.
The
jury's decision, if upheld, is one of the highest ever awarded against a labor
union in the United States, and could cripple the finances of UNITE Here, a
national union of about 450,000 workers in hotels, industrial laundries and
apparel manufacturing.

It's like a new cultural front.

From the Onion:

U.S. Trendsetters Go On Strike

Nation's 'Hip' Seek Recognition, Royalties

NEW YORK—More than 11,000 trendsetters, tastemakers, movers, and shakers gathered in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood Monday to declare a strike against the broad segment of the American population that they say routinely copies their fashions, musical tastes, and sensibilities. Should the strike persist, experts said, it could bring the pop-cultural life of the nation to a standstill.

"We want recognition for what you're wearing, saying, or doing," said Jaycee Kingsley, a 22-year-old animator and silkscreen artist from San Francisco who, nearly four years ago, started the oversized-dark-sunglasses trend, popularized by celebrities Mary-Kate Olsen and Nicole Richie. "Without us, America would be wearing Nehru jackets and saying 'right on' all the time. If we don't get our due, we will have little choice but to stop sparking new fads."

Until the public accepts their demands, the strikers vow to wear only gray or blue utilitarian sweatpants or flannel, and refuse to listen to any synthesized music, wear makeup, shop at thrift stores, bake cupcakes, "make the scene," or discuss any potential trends or up-and-coming drugs.

The strikers are calling for public acknowledgment of their contributions as well as a retroactive 10-cent royalty on every trendy item sold since October 1995. This fee, to be paid by consumers for each trend they adopt, would be applied to cultural phenomena as diverse as Japanese toy miniatures and so-called "Strokes" haircuts, the latter actually pioneered by Dayton, OH sandwich-shop employee and Whip-It junkie Jarvis McClung in 1997.

News of the strike quickly spread through word of mouth, blogs, and Facebook.com, and "sympathy strikes" are already being organized by fashion-forward hipsters in France and Japan.

If a collective-bargaining agreement cannot be reached, trendsetters will likely be replaced with scabs. Indeed, some second-rate trends have already begun sprouting up, as aspiring tastemakers—often the same people maligned by the ultrahip as "poseurs"—cross picket lines and attempt to fill the void left by the strike. Many of their ideas, such as adopting chinchillas as pets, are largely recycled, and, while their original innovations, such as wearing top hats and paper shoes, walking with crutches, and referring to friends as "Frankenstein," may seem forced, they could potentially be the only trends available for some time.

With an estimated one in four Americans relying on guidance from trendsetting gurus, sales are down at malls and Salvation Army stores across the country....
...

"Most Americans may not know how to generate a trend, but they know a good one when they see one, and will support us in these negotiations," said adult-size bunny-hat inventor Gabe Deckland, who said qualified trendsetters have the upper hand. "Scabs will just shank it anyway."

Yet DailyCandy.com contributor Cass Myerson said the strike may inadvertently generate a new trend, pointing to reports that some followers have already begun their own hip work stoppages.

"The romance of the worker's struggle, the charisma of heroes like Cesar Chavez—I love it!" Myerson said. "I think we're going to be seeing a lot of drab shirts, coarse wool coats, and fierce Maoist pigtails on the runway this fall. In everything—from the way we talk and the way we dress, to the way we don't work—striking is going to be huge this year."

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Dear Pat Benatar,

What's up with the monkey?

The Denver/Argentina bureau of the vast left-wing conspiracy behind this blog have reminded me that I am 88 (89?), not 25 as previously reported. Weapon of Class Instruction deeply regrest this grievous error.

By The Time You're 25

The title of this post is a reference, first, to a rather wonderful Sleater-Kinney B-Side from the "Get Up" single, and second, to the fact that as of four days ago, I number among the ranks of the "25 and over" set. My feelings about this are mixed. On the one hand, it's been a fun couple of days. The trip to the zoo was loads of fun. I could have stayed there and watched the otters play around for hours. I got to hang out quite a bit with friends and family, and the cohort took me out to dinner last night, which was equally awesome.

But I often feel like the last few years have slipped through my fingers - kind of a "how the fuck did I get to be 25/when did that happen" moment, i guess. 23, after all, was a near total wash, and I don't really feel like i got out of 24 what I wanted to. And now I'm halfway through my twenties with no money, and what I suspect is not much of a better idea of how to be an adult in any positive sense of the term than I had when I was 21 or 22. And that's a little scary, because as much as i could concievably spend the rest of my life playing World of Warcraft or rewatching Buffy DVDs, that strikes me (no pun intended) as a pretty defeatist scenario, and I would like to - no. fuck that, I need to figure out how to actually participate in struggles for social justice in meaningful ways. And I would also like to figure out how to build/find a community here in the city that I feel comfortable in but that challenges me to be a better organizer/researcher/academic/whatever and a better person. The idea of struggling through all this shit into my 30s is kind of scary, and 30 doesn't feel anywhere near as distant as it did a year ago. Grad school, i guess, will do that to you.

I think i'm being overly melodramatic. But hey, at least you got something mildly substantive, right? I haven't been a good blogger lately either, i guess.