The Porter on CBC

CBC has an interesting new series on called The Porter. It is set in the 1920s (in Montreal, mostly) and follows a group of Black railway porters who seek to unionize. The result is the world’s first Black union.

I’m two episodes in and quite enjoying it. There is a pretty readable introduction to this topic available here.

 

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: More Brooklyn 99

It looks like Brooklyn 99 will be using the Policeman’s Benevolent Association as a recurring antagonist in its final season. In Episode 3 (The Blue Flu), the uniformed officers fake an attack on an officer (mouse in a burrito) in order to pressure the NYPD to support the officers and buy them new tactical equipment. (These are likely reasonable demands from the perspective of the workers, but they are not explored and simply dismissed as self-interested.) When the NYPD won’t play along, the officers call in sick (i.e., strike illegally) and the main characters have to investigate and foil this job action.

Again, recognizing that writing a police comedy is tricky these days, there was a lot of interesting stuff packed into this show. First up, we don’t often see workers engaging in direct action on television. While the direct action is eventually contained by the employer, that the workers forced the employer to respond highlights how effective direct action can be. I’m not sure that was the intent of the writers, but it was an interesting facet of the show.

The sick out is basically treated as illegitimate. But one of the workers' demands was for new tactical gear (i.e., personal protective equipment), which you’d think the main characters might have some sympathy for. This suggests that there may be more to this work stoppage than worker laziness and manipulation (which is how it is presented).

The speed at which the main characters (who are generally written as moral, upstanding, and sometimes politically aware) jump to bust the patrol officers’ job action is quite striking. This again highlights how police officers sit in a conflicted position as workers. The main characters are workers but their job is to act against other workers on behalf of the powerful. That none of them (particularly Rosa, who left her job as a cop because of racist policing practices) were in any way discomforted by this was a missed opportunity.

To fill out the ranks while the patrol officers are out sick, detectives are dragooned from other precincts. The other precinct captains use this demand as an opportunity to take out the trash, dumping their least productive detectives on the 99th Precinct (my wife and I laughed aloud, having witnessed this exact play in government). This requires Amy to figure out how to covert these detectives’ capacity to work into actual work. She does this by offering an incentive program linked to pedometer metrics. The workers immediately subvert this effort, which is played for laughs and further amplifies the lazy worker trope.

The sick out is eventually brought to an end when the Captain tells the union rep that the strike has revealed that fewer patrol officers actually resulted in better policing. The threat here is that, if the patrol officers stay off, they won’t have jobs to return to when they come back. This is a classic management power move (threatening jobs to gain worker compliance). It has echoes of employers threatening to dump a product line, close a business, or automate a process if the workers don’t do management’s bidding.

While the police union has only appeared in two episodes, it seems that Brooklyn 99 is drawing upon the corrupt union (or union boss) trope to create a recurring antagonist for its final season. This makes sense given that the show is trying to highlight racist and violent policing, to which police unions have contributed, while also trying to be a comedy. To the degree that viewers don’t distinguish between this particular example and the behaviour of the broader labour movement, Brooklyn 99 is likely doing workers a disservice.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: WCB fraud

 

A colleague passed along this Kids in the Hall skit about construction workers jinning up a fake workers’ compensation claim. The premise is that the worker’s job is so bad he’s prepared to experience a disabling (but non-crippling) injury just to get some paid time off and his co-workers actively help him out.

 

This skit is interesting for several reasons. First, while there are lots of examples of blaming the worker for injuries in popular culture, there are relevantly few that deal with workers’ compensation fraud. 

 

Second, there are almost no reports of workers actually injuring themselves (because workers are not stupid!). Rather, what malingering occurs (and it appears to be pretty rare since being stigmatized as an injured worker is awful) tend to result from workers exaggerating the degree or duration of an injury (the supervisor’s back injury in the skit is actually a good example).

 

Third, the skit gives us a chance to ask what is left out. And, much like real fraud detection in workers’ compensation, what is left out is the employer. Employers failing to report payroll accurately and encouraging workers to not file claims is almost certainly a much bigger problem (that no one wants to tackle because employers are powerful) than worker fraud.

 

Finally, there was a joke about the incomplete level of compensation. “Compensation lets you live life to the fullest. Well, 90% of its fullest.” This deeply appeals to the policy wonk in me. Thanks for the tip, Jonathan!

 

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Dawson's Creek?

So, I was watching Dawson's Creek last week (don't ask) and stumbled across some labour activism in Season 5, Episode 22 ("The Abby"). By this point in the series, Pacey (Joshua Jackson) is working as a cook in a Boston Restaurant (Civilization).

The restaurant is sold and a new manager (Alex) arrives to shake things up. She fires some of the staff, while promoting others (Pacey included) to exert control. 

Just prior to an important dinner, after which the investors will decided whether or not to open a chain of Civilization restaurants, Alex loses her cool and fires a staff member (who is a single mother working three jobs) in front of the entire staff. This alienates the staff, who donate the dinner top a homeless shelter and provide take-out pizza to the investors. The "staff association" then reads out a letter trashing the manager and everyone quits.

Overall, I thought the episode was pretty realistic in how it portrayed the new boss and her control tactics as well as the response of the workers. Specifically, I liked that it showed them reacting spontaneously and voting with their feet. A more nuanced (but likely more boring episode) might have included them getting together, organizing a series of escalating tactics, and holding a march on the boss (or some other job action). But, in the context of the show (and given the many other plot lines that needed to be wrapped up at the end of the fifth season), that would have been a pretty forced narrative and this one-off mass quitting was more appropriate. If you want a show about organizing, the series Good Girls Revolt might be more your speed.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Good Girls Revolt

If you are looking for an interesting historical dramatization to fill you winter evenings, Amazon Prime is presently offering Good Girls Revolt, a 10-episode miniseries set in 1969 and 1970 at Newsweek Magazine.

Amazon cancelled the show after one season. But what a season it was! The show is based upon a book the chronicles a sex discrimination lawsuit by female researchers at Newsweek.  The researchers are exploited horrendously, often being more qualified and better writers than the male reporters, but paid a fraction of their wages and denied credit.

 

The most interesting part of the show is how it documents what is essentially an organizing campaign by the women to assert their rights. I can’t think, off hand, of another mainstream series that follows an organizing campaign over time. Usually collective action is framed as spontaneous or the result of a long-standing power base. 

 

In Good Girls Revolt, we get to see a group of workers create a new power base in a workplace. This includes recognizing and articulating their interests and how they differ from the interests of other workers (the men). It also engages how race and class can affect solidarity within a group. The character’s flaws and mis-steps are also realistically portrayed. 

 

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour and Pop Culture: Frankie Drake

I recently had the… opportunity?... to watch a few episodes of CBC’s Frankie Drake Mysteries series. The series centres on an all-female detective agency in 1920s Toronto (so kind of a flapper lady Matlock dealie). The series is available on Amazon Prime but perhaps also the CBC website.

Episode 2 of the first season (“Ladies in Red”) sees Frankie hired to investigate an attack on a factory owner. The owner is convinced the attack was the work of communists in his plant (that manufacturers some kind of confusing glass window product). The show makes reference to the 1919 Winnipeg strike as well as the 1920 Wall Street bombing (which may have been the work of Italian anarchists or communists… or maybe not) to explain the owner’s concerns.

The detectives’ investigations turns up a group of communists (or red sympathizers) in the plant. But their interest is mostly in world peace and perhaps in better working conditions. There is a subplot around sexual harassment and, in the end, the real villain in the plant manager who is skimming, sexually exploiting, and trying to deflect blame onto the workers.

If you can get past the many inconsistencies (e.g., the show is pretty race blind until race is a useful plot point) this episode has a positive portrayal of collective action by workers and highlights the plight of working women in urban Canada after the first war.

I have to admit, by the end I was on my phone googling. But my impression is that the episode ends with Frankie cajoling the plant owner into raising the women’s wages. This seemed very out of character and pretty Pollyanna.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The English Game

Earlier this spring, I watched a mini-series on Netflix called The English Game. The story is set mainly in northern England in 1879 and (loosely) follows the first British working-class soccer team to win the FA Cup. Previously, the game was mostly the preserve of upper-class amateurs. Factory Owner James Walsh breaks the rules by hiring two Scottish ringers to play for his Darwen team and mayhem ensues.

The storyline is interesting because it foregrounds class differences, conflict and blindness. The organization that controls the FA Cup is very upper crust and is largely (and perhaps intentionally) blind to the advantages that the rules grant to those who are wealthy (mostly leisure time).

The factory owners (many of whom also run soccer teams on the side) are a mixed bag and continually grind the wages of the factory workers. This leads to a strike and violence (which is quickly repressed by the police and judiciary). The social services available for “fallen” women was also starkly depicted.

Soccer is presented as one of the few positive things in the lives of factory workers. The notion of soccer as bridging the class divide (without in any way upsetting it) was a bit heavy handed and galling. This gets papered over a bit with a story of the moral redemption of (eventual soccer big wheel) Arthur Kinnaird.

While period dramas are not my thing, this was an interesting (and short!) foray into the lives of upper- and lower-class people during the industrial revolution.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The Crown and Supergirl

As I recover from the end of semester marking rush, I’ve noticed a few instances of labour issues appearing on TV shows. 

In an otherwise dull season of The Crown, there are two items of note:

Ep 3: Aberfan: This episode centres on the destruction of the mining village of Aberfan. Piles of coal slag were stacked too high and shifted, burying portions of the town, including the school. The Queen feels bad.

Ep. 9: Imbroglio: A subplot in this episode is the 1972 miner’s strike in Britain which causes rolling blackouts. After two months on the line, the workers gained a 27% pay increase. The Queen feels bad.

A funnier thing I noticed was in season 3 of Supergirl. Episode 4 sees Supergirl rescue a man from a burning factory. As Supergirl walks away, you can just see at the top of the frame the “days without an injury” sign flip from 190 to 0.

-- Bob Barnetson

Film: American Factory

Netflix has recently released a new documentary entitled American Factory. This film chronicles the opening of a branch plant of Fuyao Glass America in economically depressed Dayton, Ohio by a Chinese billionaire. The location has previously been the site of a General Motors plant that was closed, putting thousands of workers out of a job.

The documentary (which notably includes no narration) tracks the first two years of the factory's operations and the clash of cultures that it entails. A trip to China for American workers--and the failure of the management strategies that they tried to bring back--was particularly striking. The vulnerability of the local workforce to exploitation and their awareness of their vulnerability is nicely captured.

The film explores the relentless work of employers to shed jobs and increase productivity (regardless of the cost to workers). It also does a nice job of exploring the tactics of both the union and the employer during a union drive.

-- Bob Barnetson

Unions and the USS Enterprise

A friend passed me this 1977 song about organizing a union on the USS Enterprise (ST:TOS). The absence of unions in Star Trek (excepting one episode of Deep Space 9) is quite notable. This song moots how a Starfleet crew might be induced to organize and how this would affect ship operations.




Listen and I'll tell you a tale I've been told

Of a union organizer who knocked a starship cold They met where the stars are squattered thin out along the galactic rim And starfleet command is sorry that they ever ran into him Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Now the ship was patrolling rim stars when she got a call for aid And up come a local convoy in a hurried grim parade Saying Captain we've caught a monster whose far much for us by far So take him and throw him into the heart of the nearest star Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Just why do you need a whole convoy the Captain wished to know Three ships to guard the other less decrepit as we go Now the Captain was intrigued and he said stand by for scan But all that showed on the viewing screen was little ol'union man Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man The Captain said I can take him and he beamed the man aboard The convoy turned and raced away crying Thank the Lord Then the Captain looked him over asking just what's going on That they sent out half their trading fleet just to make sure you were gone. Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man The little old man just chuckled saying Captain don't you know My job is organizing wherever I may go And I can build a union out of anything you got And the folks that run that planet well they disliked that a lot Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man I first organized the laborers Then i unionized the clerks Then i unionized the robots that staffed the atomic works But when I organized the milk cows and led them out on strike Well you can guess what official reaction to that was like Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Amazing said the Captain but you cant do that in here My crew are loyal navy men and we've no cause for fear But he heard the old man saying as he walked out the door Captain, yano, there have so been navy unions before Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Well the Captain soon forgot him setting course for starbase five For all he saw the union man he might not ever of been alive Till a troubled ensign asked him 'is it true sir what they say? That we've got high hazard duty without high hazard pay?' Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Well the Captain couldn't answer except to say its true Starfleet could pay you better but there's not much I can do But when he woke up next morning he found out what moral was like For the bridge was filled with pickets and the whole crew was on strike Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Then the union man walked up and said I'm sorry to trouble you But your ship is now a job shop of the I-W-W-U We've sent our demands to Starfleet command and they said they'd grant us none So we're just gonna keep on sailing till this strike is won Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man Now further we've decided to run this co-op style Giving everyone experience at each others job awhile We like you too much to dump you at the first starbase we see But we bolted you to the galley and this weeks command to me Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man So somewhere down in the galley you'll find poor Captain Kirk Scrubbing away on dishes swearing it'll never work And Spock as he dries those dishes says 'It might succeed I fear' And please Sir while you're washing don't splash water in my ear Pull up your guns Run while you can Look out here comes the union man

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Seinfeld

Most representations of unions in television and movies centre on picket-line conflict or union corruption (both compelling plot lines). Less often do you see a more nuanced view of unions or work stoppages.

I recently ran across an old Seinfeld episode that I had forgotten about, where Kramer gets news that a strike at his workplace (which apparently had been going on for more than a decade) was resolved. He then tries to return to work (where no one has ever heard of him).

The underlying lesson in this clip is that unions generally don't win protracted job actions (workers lose interest, employers learn to cope with the strike or close up shop). What that suggests, strategically, is that a short strike with catastrophic disruption of employer operations is a union's best shot at a quick and decisive win.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Office Drug Testing

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture revisits The Office to look at how employers handle drug use in the workplace. This skit is relevant given that, on October 17, cannabis consumption in Alberta (and elsewhere in Canada) will become legal (with some, still emerging, restrictions).

Alberta’s framework for regulating cannabis use is available online and includes a brief (and vague) discussion of cannabis use by workers:

Impairment in workplaces
Workers who are impaired on the job – whether by alcohol or drugs – are a danger to their coworkers and themselves. Alberta already has rules and programs in place to address impairment on the job and keep workers safe, but we are exploring options to better address all forms of impairment in the workplace, and will continue to work with employers, labour groups and workers to ensure the rules continue to address impairment issues. This may include developing additional regulations, education or training programs.

Employer efforts to randomly test workers for drug use and/or impairment have been a long-standing source of conflict in Alberta. For example, Suncor’s decision to randomly test workers has yielded an extensive amount of litigation since 2012 and the issue remains before an arbitration panel. An overview of this litigation can be found here.

Drug testing entails serious and competing interests. It is often framed as a contest between workers’ right to privacy and employers’ obligation to keep workplaces safe (although the evidence that random testing has any safety effect is basically zero).

The debate about drug testing is often tinged with an underlying moral judgment. It goes something like this: since drug use is illegal, workers who use drugs (on their own time) deserve to experience the workplace consequences associated with testing because they are criminals.

This dynamic is, in part, the premise of the joke in The Office skit above. The legalization of cannabis use undercuts this moralizing and it will be interesting to see how employers handle this change in the law.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Damnation Ep 1-5

Rainy summer days are a nice time for TV. I have been working my way through the Netflix series Damnation.

The series is set in the rural America in the 1930s (but filmed by Calgary). It follows local preacher (of sorts) Seth who rallies local farmers facing price fixing by local business folks who are in league with the nasty banker.

The series opens with a producers strike, based on the Farmers’ Holiday Association strike of the 1930s. There was also a producers strike in Alberta in the late 1940s. This idea circulated in Alberta again during the debate about Bill 6.

The bad guys then bring in a strike breaker (Creeley) who kills strikers. While this seems a touch dramatic, it is based upon the strike breaking activity of private detective agencies like the Pinkertons (in the story, Creeley is a Pinkerton).

Episode 1 ends when Seth responds by nailing the dead man up to the bank door with the sign “which side are you on?” around his neck. (Which Side Are You On is a 1931 miners’ strike song from Harlan County—which is also (sort of) covered in the series).

Episode 2 features white supremacists and explores how the newspaper aligns itself with the interests of the local business people. Episodes 3-5 explores escalating conflict over farm foreclosures and an effort to split the farmers up to undermine their strike. A lot of people die in this series.



There are three strong female characters in story (a sociopathic strikebreaker, the preacher's radical wife, and a very cagey prostitute), which is nice to see given the tendency of unions of be viewed as “male” organizations and the limited roles of women in the 1930s. I’m hopeful we’ll see more of them in the second half of the series.

I’m pretty keen to finish this series and see how it plays out. There is some larger conspiracy by industrialists at work in the series that I’m keen to see revealed.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Incentive Pay at the Office

This week's instalment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at incentive-pay systems as portrayed on the television show The Office. I'm currently revising AU's introductory human resource management course and incentive pay is one of the topics we touch on.

The basic idea, as noted by one of the workers in the sketch, is that the employer wants more production out of the workers without paying them more. So manager Andy sets up a points system whereby workers can win low-value prizes for achieving performance targets.

Incentive-based pay sounds like a good idea, but it is fraught with peril for employers because designing an effective system is tricky. Set rewards too low and they have no effect. Set rewards too high and they can drive all sorts of perverse behaviour, such as increasing quantity at the expense of quality.

The Office does a nice job of noting that the interests of workers and employers conflict in such systems and that workers can, if they work collectively, subvert these systems. This is a good lesson for wannbe managers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Safety Training

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at the recent Superstore episode entitled “Safety Training”. This episode centres on a minor workplace injury to a worker (Mateo). There were three main subplots of note.

First, the store is keen to get Mateo to accept a small monetary payment in exchange for waiving his right to sue. The waiver includes a background check on Mateo (who is undocumented) so he declines the initial offer of $1000. This triggers an escalating series of offers that eventually reaches $50k.

This fear-of-litigation dynamic speaks to a key reason why Canadian employers typically support workers’ compensation system: it limits employer liability for injuries. The historic trade-off in workers’ comp is that workers (usually) get stable, immediate and predictable compensation but give up their right to sue.

Second, the series of safety incidents in the store results in the employer offering a refresher course in workplace safety. The training (e.g., how to mop) is completely demeaning to the workers. It also has no relationship to the incidents that caused the incidents. This kind of biting commentary of corporate training is one of the reasons Superstore is worthwhile watching.

Third, there is a darker subplot wherein a previously injured worker finds out the employer lowballed him on its settlement for cutting off his finger. Seeing the potential for financial gain, the worker then commences trying to re-injury himself. In the end, the insanity of this behaviour becomes clear even to the dim-witted worker. This sub-plot is a sharp critique of the notion that workers will malinger on compensation.

I couldn’t find a link to any on-point clips of the episode. But I did find this digital exclusive where Garrett developed a VR training simulation of how to close up the store. It is worth a watch.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Dreamland

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at the Australian comedy “Dreamland” (also called “Utopia”) available on Netflix.

Dreamland follows the travails of the bureaucrats at the fictional Nation Building Authority as they try to develop infrastructure projects, cope with their own shortcomings, and manage political interference and fads.

If you have ever worked in the public sector, you’ll recognize most of the characters (“hey, that’s Mark!" or "Oh no, here comes the Minister's chief of staff!") and situations ("OMG, they're setting up a social media taskforce!" or "Oh no, the boss just came back from a conference with a great idea!”). These include:

• Episode 3: The staff are directed to re-examine (one more time) a white-elephant rail project while undergoing a safety audit.
• Episode: 4: A new and marginal employee manages to finagle a promotion by gaming the performance assessment process with meaningless lingo and filing a grievance.
• Episode 12: The staff must put “meat on the bones” of a terrible, off-the-cuff policy idea while also coping with a Freedom of Information request.
• Episode 15: Firing an incompetent employee takes a terrible, terrible turn plus a new coffee machine disrupts the office.

Episode 12


Episode 15


The crux of the humour is the effort by the two managers (Nat and Tony) to do their jobs while surrounded by easily distracted staffers and meddling political and communications operatives. Having survived a couple of years of government employment, this show nails the hard work and absurdity of it.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Dirty Hands

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is the Battlestar Galactica episode “Dirty Hands”. I recently coauthored a paper on the absence of unions in science fiction with Mark McCutcheon and this was one of the few examples we found of unions in the (huge) canon of SF. I never really watched the new BSG (I prefer my Cylons robotic and my flight suits corduroy—see right) but this was a good episode.

The crux of the plot is declining fuel quality and quantity endanger the fleet’s ability to evade the Cylons. Responding to Dickensian working conditions aboard the fleet’s refinery ship, the refinery workers sabotage its operation by hiding crucial parts, a tactic thwarted via imprisonment and psychological torture. A replacement director of the refinery is converted to the worker’s cause and calls a general strike, which is averted first by threats of killing supporters and then by accommodation of some of the workers’ demands by the authorities.

In this episode, we see fleet Admiral Adama use the coercive powers of the state—including imprisonment, threats, and torture—to contain illegal strike action. Yet, having achieved his goal, Adama then sees the need for a political solution, wherein workers’ consent to their conditions of work is necessary to maintain long–term stability.

This portrayals of state activity may reflect the pluralist view of labour relations (i.e., workers and employers have legitimately conflicting interests and the state referees to preserve social stability) or the radical (i.e., the state colludes—or is one and the same as—with the employer to contain worker dissatisfaction).

This radical interpretation of “Dirty Hands” might be preferable given that the union’s leader, after abandoning a strike and securing minor improvements in working conditions, is wined and dined by the president in her luxurious cabin. This scene implies that the union leadership has been coopted by the political elite.

It is notable that the episode uses a strike as a plot device: strikes and corrupt union officials are pretty much the only two instances where unions are mentioned in contemporary books, TV series, or movies. I couldn’t find any related video of “Dirty Hands” so, instead, I leave you with the opening sequence from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The A-Team

With the Christmas break upon us, this week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks beyond music to television. I’m awaiting publication of an article (coauthored with Mark McCutcheon) about the absence of images of labour in science fiction. When that finally drops, I will feature some of the few sci-fi texts we found.

In the meantime, I’ve been keeping an eye out for other television shows where unions and labour issues come up. With in-laws to avoid, this situation cries out for… the A-Team. Because, if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team.

The A-Team was a terrible 1980s drama about a group of do-gooder Vietnam vets driven underground because of something-or-other I forgot after I discovered girls. Season Two featured an episode called Labor Pains. I have embedded the key scene below but you can watch the whole, tedious episode here.

The show is a good example of the “a stranger comes to town” trope, albeit in a 1982 custom GMC van driving helluva fast and crashing through a billboard and then jumping a washed out bridge. The boys then have a fight with some goons who work for some agri-stooge kingpin who are pushing around some migrant farm workers. (You can now skip the first 14 minutes of the episode). Eventually, the A-Team convinces the workers to continue a work stoppage and form a union.



“You’ll have a union in this valley over my dead body!” cries the boss and then tries to starve the workers out because the crop is rotting in the field. Organizing ensures (the scene at 28.00 is pretty funny—if only every union drive had Mr. T on board, suckas). Mayhem ensures (although this was shot in the 1980s so it takes for-frigging-ever to get to the action), including a cabbage cannon. The workers triumph and the A-Team scoots before the military police show up.

Not a super realistic portrayal of an organizing drive, but an oddly sympathetic one (usually television episodes focus on the disruptive nature of strikes and union corruption). Of course, the A-Team are mercenaries and, in Season Three, they help a small-time logging operation battle a (you guessed it) corrupt union intent on shutting them down.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Superstore

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is not a song. Instead, I’m going to plump for the sit-com “Superstore” that premiers its second season on Thursday, September 22 on NBC.

Superstore follows the adventures of workers in Cloud 9, a big box store where employees have to say "Have a heavenly day" to customers but otherwise can't discuss religion in the workplace.

There have been lots of shows set in workplaces (e.g., The Office, WKRP). What sets Superstore apart is its very clear commentary on the precarious and crappy employment conditions that its characters face and how they cope with them.

The first season (available on iTunes) starts out a bit uneven, with newcomer Jonah trying to fit in with various veteran workers. The sight gags in the first few episodes are funny. As the characters start to get established, attention shifts to some fairly typical corporate HR practices (e.g., corporate magazine profiles, racist job assignments, internal sales competitions, secret shoppers, anti-union animus). More interesting is how these practices lead to disengagement, cynicism and (strangely) Stockholm-syndrome behaviours.

The season finale (episode 11—short first season) sees the workers accidentally trigger corporate panic over the possibility of a union. The real issue is the workers want maternity leave for one of their coworkers who is otherwise planning on giving birth in the store because she needs the shift. The resulting union avoidance techniques actually catalyzes the workers to strike (and one scab seizes the opportunity to curry favour and advance her career).

Overall, this is pretty sharp (and socially critical) writing for network television and the second season appears to pick up with a strike.

-- Bob Barnetson