Thanks for sharing, Jack...I'm guessing we wouldn't have found this link on BlueOregon.

Unless it was Gordo's wife.

I wonder if labor relations are any more advanced at Powells? My impression is that even the most "progressive" among us will spend a lot of time and money to avoid becoming a union shop.

Mr. Tee: Powells is unionized and just agreed to a contract. Check out what Ralph Nadar and Ben and Jerry's did when faced with union organizing. It was ugly. Nothing as ugly though as when union staffs try to organize themselves internally. Now that is ugly

Sigh. I don't know what's less surprising: the otherwise unemployable English majors whining about a nonexistent "good old days" where bookstores and bookstore employees were respected as pillars in the community, or a company run into the ground because one control freak got into a position of power.

It's precisely this paradox that's the reason why I laugh so hard at the impending bankruptcy and fire sale of Borders: on one side, you've got the managers who manage to leach every last bit of joy out of a company and then wonder why the remaining employees gleefully steal inventory or talk to the media. On the other, you have the precious widdle snowflakes who whine about how they don't get paid enough for the abuse and they don't get paid enough to work hard, but refuse to quit because "I wanna stay in the publishing business!" Bookselling is a business just like the restaurant business, but you generally don't hear the frycooks at McDonald's rationalizing living in squalor because they aren't paid a living wage because "I wanna stay in the ranching business!"