6 Comments
May 13, 2023Liked by Hamilton Nolan

You mentioned "right to work" (what a phrase), and it reminded me that it was repealed in Michigan just recently, which I thought was a nice development. The usual suspects made their complaints about how the state's economy will be ruined by this, but we had RTW for a number of years and we didn't exactly enjoy a boom time. It was always just a way to gut union membership and weaken political influence and bargaining power.

Expand full comment

Labor unions aside, a mistake like this is a glaring example of innumeracy in America today. People see numbers, but they don’t think about numbers.

Expand full comment

What's most bothersome is the fact that they ran with this. They had to know this was not accurate. Shame on them

Expand full comment

TeamsterLink.org discovered this "error" more than a month ago and issued a Special Report "Massive Growth or Accounting Error" 4/12/23. Members have been commenting since then.

If you look at the corrections the IBT finally filed last week - for both 2022 and back to 2021 -- they were not just a keystroke error. For 2022 the amendment raised the number of reported members by 32,000 but had to lower the number of Fee Payers by 279,000. For 2021, they amended the reported filed by the Hoffa administration just before they left office, and adjusted that year’s number by moving 238,000 from the Fee Payer category to the Member category. So, when comparing the amended numbers for both years, the 3,000 gain being talked about is for the total of Members plus Fee Payers, as the actual number of "members” declined by 200 in 2022 compared to 2021.

And worst of all - they haven't said a word to the members to explain the real numbers or why it took so long for them to correct them.

Expand full comment

I want to become a labor journalist, when I grow up, like you. (I'm 23.)

Expand full comment