Worker Bashing's Not Cool

Whenever comments are submitted, Pico gets an email alert. He just received the following this morning:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Basha's "Family Values" To Be Aired Before House C...":

'Too bad that alot of the workers that did get fired were those who the outsourced company invited with open arms. The problem wasnt with the new company it was with the current employees that never showed up for work or when they did show, spent more time talking than working. Get real dood, I am for changes but this is just another way for minority groups to say OMG the whiteman did it. (And yes Im black so what).'

Instead of accepting this in comment form, I'm publishing it this way. It's an object lesson.

This writer doesn't know that I know personally three of the men whose jobs were terminated by outsourcing, or that I know a great deal about the details surrounding this case. He or she doesn't know that I saw one of them give sworn testimony before the United States Congress last week, or that even George Bush's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged Basha's with over 70 violations of federal labor law.

Facts about this and other labor complaints against the Basha's chain of grocery stores can be found at the BashasWatch site.

The would-be smear job I received this morning is typical of the mentality that abuses workers who seek fair and safe working conditions. Nonsensical -- why would the new company offer to hire workers just fired for the reasons he alleges -- and a pitiable attempt to race-bait, the post is also a fraud from start to finish. I don't know whether shame or cowardice led to the decision to post anonymously. Either way, it broadcasts the writer's refusal to accept personal responsibility, and that's what this whole thing was about in the first place.