Winners and Losers Show : #156 - TYT's Union-Busting, Their Vicious Conspiracy & The Honesty Problem

April 2024
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Mon, 25 October 2021

#156 - TYT's Union-Busting, Their Vicious Conspiracy & The Honesty Problem

Skip to 24:00 to bypass the opening ramble.

Video version: https://youtu.be/TesMZ6KNtYI

As a former employee of TYT who was part of the union-organizing effort, I was dismayed when the company answered the union with aggressive union-busting tactics, first by rejecting card check, then using nearly every tactic in the union-busting playbook; but especially when they spread a deliberate lie that their workers were part of a conspiracy by Cenk Uygur's political opponent, Christy Smith, to harm his upcoming election for US House of Representatives in CA-25.

Our efforts began several months before Cenk launched his campaign and would have happened had our boss become a politician or not. IATSE endorsing Smith was 100% irrelevant to our right to organize collectively to demand respect and address long-simmering workplace issues, which is the actual truth the company was desperate to avoid.

The conspiracy was further signal-boosted by Ana Kasparian, who tweeted it was "done in bad faith" and was "extremely suspicious."

I watched in horror as the workers whose labor and talent the well-paid high-status careers of Cenk and Ana is built upon were thrown under the bus in order to protect the politician boss's political aspirations. It was heart-breaking, not just for its viciousness or its hypocrisy but for its effectiveness. Confusion, suspicion and malice spread among the TYT audience and satellite entities (Around The Nation, Humanist Report, Progressive Voice), all of whom were misled into questioning the motives of the workers at TYT, simply for the act of standing up as a group to exercise their right to form a labor union.

The trust and good faith of the audience was used against the workers and the only people in charge of the narrative so far has been those who conducted the union-busting campaign.

This podcast aims to change that. This is a worker's perspective.

It also raises the issue of the two management-side law firms TYT hired, as detailed in publicly-available filings with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — Mitchel ,Silberberg & Knupp; and Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, which are explicitly pro-management anti-union operations.

The Young Turks' paying audience believes they are supporting the 'Home of Progressives,' which raises the question: Do they deserve to know if the money they send to TYT to fight for progressive values has been spent on these anti-worker law firms? If so, how much? The Young Turks was not honest when it spread the conspiracy attacking its own workers and it owes its audience a truthful accounting of what happened.

It owes its workers much much more. Shame! *ding ding* Shame!

Intro Ramble - Dogs At Work: 00:00

TYT's Union Busting Intro: 23:42

Congrats TYT Union: 28:59

Who Is This Guy? 36:20

Bumpy Start or Aggressive Union Busting: 42:56

Workers Attacked w/ Wild Conspiracy: 1:02:06

Ana Helps Cenk Mislead The Audience: 1:33:03

The Workers' Perspective: 2:01:29

Cenk's Election Results: 2:12:55

TYT Hires Management-Side Law Firms: 2:23:19

A Plea For Honesty & Wrap-Up: 2:39:08