The ScabStandard

Creamery seeks replacement workers

It appears that Humboldt Creamery management is preparing for the worst-case scenario, placing a help wanted ad looking for “permanent replacement workers” in the event a strike occurs.

A help-wanted ad in the Eureka Reporter Wednesday offered full-time positions in fluid milk processing, ice cream manufacturing, milk manufacturing and other plant support staff. At the end of the ad, it states, “A labor strike might take place and strike conditions could prevail.”


Full Article--Before it hits the pay-per-view archives--Eureka Times-Standard, February 15, 2007

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Oh what a delightful rhymes-with-"bit" of so-called reporting this one is.

Rather than refer to the new hires by their proper name, scabs, they are given the gentle euphamism "replacement workers", no discouraging words to question the propriety of what the creamery is threatening.

Then a slap is taken at the decidedly pro-business Eureka Reporter (ER). While one could speculate on the editorial position of the ER when it comes to unions, I do not recall their actually taking one. Meanwhile, the Times-Standard gives the scab hiring effort far more favorable publicity than a "help wanted" ad in the much-lower-circulation ER ever would.

The Times-Standard is owned by media mongrel, er, mogul, Dean Singleton, whose company is called MediaNews Group. Lets take a little trip into the mind of Singleton:
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Meanwhile, Singleton's California empire continues to expand. In January MediaNews purchased one of the last independent papers in the northern part of the state, the Paradise Post in Butte County. On January 20, I sat in on MediaNews's weekly publishers' meeting, where the Paradise Post deal was under discussion. "Is there a union there?" inquired one of Singleton's lieutenants. "No," replied another. "Why do you think they call it Paradise?"

Source: Columbia Journalism Review, March/April, 2003


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