The world's smallest violin this week goes to Politico labor reporter Mike Elk.
Elk, who has bragged about unionizing workplaces where he has previously toiled, is working on doing the same thing at the alleged news site, which is really a Democratic Party stenography machine posing as one. His major complaint, seen in an item by Erik Wemple at his Washington Post blog, follows the jump (bolds are mine):
Overwork is a problem that Elk plans on addressing in his union drive. “I can’t work the kind of hours I did when I was 24,” says Elk, who is 28. Putting in too many work hours, he says, is a problem of journalism as an industry and not exclusive to Politico. “Everyone works so much, it’s almost tough to get people to get together to talk about” forming a union, he says.
Okay, Mike, get a grip:
- You have a job. You are thus better off than 8.7 million officially unemployed Americans, the 6.4 million who say they want a job now, and at least several million more who I would argue should be classified as unemployed among the 93 million members of the civilian 16-and-over population who are classified as "not in the labor force."
- You work at an outfit which Wemple describes thusly:
Though its reporters and editors do indeed work insane hours, Politico has a reputation for paying good salaries. In recent years, the Erik Wemple Blog has interviewed many of workers who’ve left Politico, and traditional union issues — pay, vacation, benefits and so on — have rarely figured into the discussions. Another impediment is mobility. In building an aggressive publication, Politico’s leaders have infused employment in Rosslyn with considerable cachet, as recent raiding expeditions by the New York Times, CNN and others have demonstrated. Frustrated employees who might be inclined to unionize can just as easily choose a new employer.
- Talk a walk. Get a treadmill. Lift some weights. 20-30 minutes, 5 days a week should do the trick. Highly conditioned athletes can stay that way into their mid-30s and beyond. If you're losing stamina, it has nothing to do with Father Time and everything to do with your lifestyle.
- If you succeed in cutting hours while the competition doesn't, the competition will smoke Politico journalistically even more than it does now — even the Hiuffington Posts and center-right publications which pay nothing or very little.
Wemple relays the following observations from Politico insiders:
One staffer wrote, “There is no unionization drive, that I’m aware of. There’s just Mike Elk.” When asked whether Elk’s thing was a serious movement or just some noise, yet another staffer responded: “Headache.”
Given that his major complaint is that he's an old 28, I'd say: "Joke."
Just imagine how lousy the reporting must be from a whiner like Elk.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
