Stuck with it

Last week's article "Caught in the downdraft" [12/14] about the fall of dot-coms sure rang home with me. I too, left the comforts of a secure job to venture into the promised land of long days, cramped quarters, and frugal budgets—all with the dream of stock options coming to fruition, etc., only to get burned in the end. The price people have paid goes well beyond what was listed in the article. There are plenty of people who are owed back wages that will probably never see the money, expense reports that have never been reimbursed, and people who have been completely screwed over on health insurance coverage.

This has been a painful lesson. The "promised land" of dot-coms was not at all what any of us had expected.

KACEY HAWKER
SEATTLE

Get paid to show up

As a non-striking employee of The Seattle Times, I found Nina Shapiro's report on the strike ["Striking spin," 12/14] to be most informative, despite her obvious pro-Guild bias. The crucial facts that emerge from her report are:

(1) The Guild position is that pay should be awarded just for showing up, rather than for actually getting work done. This is an archaic notion better suited to the civil service than a competitive private sector employer, and certainly doesn't rank among the great progressive causes of our time.

(2) The Guild leadership doesn't give a damn about working people in other unions and is willing to endanger their livelihoods—as well as those of small merchants, independent carriers, and unaffiliated workers—in order to settle a 13-year-old grudge.

In fact, the Guild leadership doesn't even seem to care much about the Guild members, who were not afforded an opportunity to vote on the final pre-strike contract offer and who were cynically deceived into expecting a quick and easy victory.

The Guild boycott, if successful, will only lead to substantial and permanent job losses—among Guild members as well as innocent third parties. This isn't company propaganda, just obvious economic reality.

Shapiro quotes the Guild's VP as saying, "The hell with you too," to the other Times unions. Working people at the Times, while naturally disposed to be sympathetic to their fellow union members, will remember the Guild's cavalier attitude toward their well-being.

We urge our fellow Seattleites to look behind the Guild's self-righteous posturing and consider the damage the Guild boycott will do to working people and their families. DON'T SUPPORT THE GUILD BOYCOTT!

ALLEN WHITMAN,
SEATTLE

More right

For the first week, and periodically since, I have questioned my own reasons for deciding not to participate in the NW Guild strike [see "Striking spin," 12/14]. I spend a great deal of time examining the situation and the impact it will ultimately have on me and my coworkers, both in the building and on the streets.

At the risk of hypocrisy, I had initially supported the Union. My position had gone through some significant changes and was desperately in need of examination, specifically [as] to wages. As negotiations approached, I and other coworkers put in our two cents worth concerning our position. Much to my disappointment, the louder voices were not interested in examining what each position deserved, but in a lump sum for everyone. After all, that is how a Union works and negotiates. Or so at least I have come to understand.

The unfortunate part about this is that the Union really has made this personal instead of about business. The Union convinced a lot of people that they should stop drawing water from the well, then destroy the well as much as they can because then the well will give them more water. Math was never my strongest subject, but something there doesn't add up for me. These contracts are about business: what can the company live with giving up, what can the workers live with getting. And what too many people have forgotten is, work is not guaranteed, nor are workers guaranteed to fill the jobs. If you can't live on what you make, it is time to get a new job. I know that I am not tied to my desk. Like my decision to work during the strike, I can make the decision to leave the company all together.

But perhaps I am being idealistic, and ultimately this comes down not to money, respect, or solidarity. Maybe it just [comes] right down to being right. Religion, politics, even weeks of judicial rule about the presidency were mostly found[ed] on the principle of "I am right and you are wrong." Despite where I am right now, I have no illusions that both sides of the negotiation table posture for the position of who is more right. The question is, what is a person willing to do to prove that point . . . and is it worth it?

JON ANDERSON
VIA E-MAIL

Fefer and vitriol

As a British citizen, I was insulted by the first sentence of Mark D. Fefer's film review: "Into the Arms of Strangers" ["One-way ticket," 12/14]. He writes it is hard for him to believe that England was sympathetic to the Jews during WWII because of the current "astonishing anti-Israel vitriol . . . on the BBC. . ." You what?! Does it follow that the British government has always been anti-Semitic because Mr. Fefer didn't care for a reporter's coverage of the Middle East?