Next time you order pizza to be delivered, you better hope the pizzeria you’re ordering from is a union workplace, unless you want an extra ingredient on your pie.
That might be your mindset after seeing the August 27 segment on MSNBC about the “My Bad Boss” contest conducted by Working America, an arm of the AFL-CIO that actively promotes union ideals in non-union workplaces.
In something that more closely resembled a television commercial for unions than a news report, anchor David Shuster actually outdid the union’s “My Bad Boss” contest with a comment about one pregnant employee putting “placenta” on pizza because her boss wouldn’t let her go to the hospital.
“The pizza maker was a worker who works in a pizza parlor. She was pregnant and when she went into labor, the boss told her she had to stay and make pizzas between the contractions because he to go out to lunch,” said Robert Fox, deputy director of Working America.
Shuster had a very nauseating reaction to Fox’s story. “The person who was making pizzas might be then tempted instead of putting pepperoni, put I don’t know – placenta on the pizza,” said Shuster.
Despite that outlandish comment, give Shuster some credit. He did point out one major problem with the contest: the organization didn’t even bother to try and “verify that the stories are accurate.”
A good counterpoint to the report might have been “My Bad Union Boss” featuring the hundreds of instances the National Legal and Policy Center has posted on its Web site for such a contest where union bosses went awry.
