Would you cross a picket line?

I'd never cross a picket line. I watched that kind of courage first-hand. When I was a kid, we moved out of state when mergers/layoffs hit my father's industry. He was management and left ahead of the tide, but it was tough sledding for a while when he was job hunting, and we learned to do without some luxuries and some necessities. I had a dentist's appointment one day, so I was riding along when he was on his way to an interview with XYZ Company.

When we arrived, there were pickets in front of the building. We stopped, Dad rolled down his window and talked to them. We drove off, he stopped at a pay phone (pre cell phones -- I said this was a long time ago!) and he called to cancel his interview.

I will never forget him telling me, "There are some things you just don't do. If we have to eat pancakes for dinner for a few days, we'll do it."

In my eyes then, he looked like Gary Cooper in High Noon.

 

Great story.

 

almost 18 years later, no validation being sought. i came to peace with my "waffling" almost 18 years ago and never looked back.

everybody does what they feel they must do. never claimed i was "better" than the scabs who leaped over those strikers to get their foot in the door. make your own judgment on that.

i made mine long ago. it's my right to feel they are/were pond scum. you feel differently? be my guest.

again, during our strike, there were those employees who crossed and stayed crossed 'cause they felt they could not afford to be out. others crossed 'cause they were not union members. others crossed 'cause their probation wasn't up yet and management told 'em they would not be let back when the strike ended.

all of those people i had no problem with. i crossed for four days and couldn't stand it. but how could i be irreversibly ticked off at those who crossed and stayed crossed? i couldn't.

but those non-paper emloyees who seized the opportunity to get their shot by flying over the picketers to get a check for five months and help the paper continue to get out? i will never give a rat's ass what their rationalizations were. NEVER EVER.

 

Should he be more or less proud than some teamster, delivery guys would follow you home and make your life miserable -- or worse?

 

I can remember my parents walking pickets in the freezing cold, warming their hands over burn barrels. Our school bus driver stopped by every morning with boxes of donuts and coffee. I'd look out the window and wave to my mom and dad and not really understand what they were doing, but I knew it was important. They worked at the same place, so it was hard, I can remember, because we had nothing but strike pay to live on for a long time -- an immigrant family with three kids. But they never wavered. They got up, walked the picket, came home, scratched together dinner -- fretted through the night, I'm sure now -- and did it all over again the next day.

A scab is a scab is a scab. You're one once, you're one forever. And you and I, we wouldn't have much to talk about.

 

Well-stated, MM.

 

Then why did you ask?

This sure looks - and reads - like a request for validation to me.

 

There are degrees of scumbaggery. What makes Shockey's scabbing less offensive than most of the other scabs was that he figured out he was wrong fairly quickly in the process and corrected course.

 

There are definitely degrees in right and wrong, 'berry. Allow yourself the possibility of not having the final, incontrovertible answer in this.

 

It's called an informed opinion, Shotty. Feel free to inform yourself and have one if you don't agree with mine.

 

Fair enough.

But I haven't been the one who has to decide whether to put feeding their family above honoring their bond with their co-workers. It's not a no-brainer of a decision, on either side.

 

Never worked union in a newspaper job. Now I am a union member, but it's the NEA, and it's largely for the liability insurance I get in the classroom.

Would I cross? Depends on the situation. I tend to get my feathers ruffled about management an awful lot (and that happened when I was *in* management), so probably not.