Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Organized (Labor) Crime

The theater is especially interesting (i.e. like watching a train wreck - you know it is going to be bad, but cannot turn away) in light of a lull in contest action for me, but the tellers union at the Meadowlands continues to give the organized labor movement a black eye, in light of reported shenanigan's of leaders of Local 137 of the Laborers International Union of North America, as reported by Record writer John Brennan.

Apparently, all but one of the seven-member union negotiating committee were no shows (probably much like their present jobs) to a meeting with Jeff Gural, the so-called white knight bidder who is THE only person interested in saving racing at the Meadowlands.  It is obvious that, outside of the blatant attempt to sabotage any hopes of salvaging a racing business at the Meadowlands, that either these individuals could care less about working again, or have such utter disrespect for the sole lifeline to a dying New Jersey-based harness racing program, but to the patrons of the sport who have subsidized their jobs for decades.  These parties are deserving of much better treatment.

Check out this quote from Mr. Gural: "I'm busting my ass to try to save the track, and they don't even have the decency to show up for a meeting that they themselves scheduled.  You have a small group of hard-line idiots here.  It's ridiculous.  The rank-and-file have to understand that a small group of people want to sabotage the deal."

Welcome to Governor Christie's nightmare and doing business in the State of New Jersey!

4 comments:

  1. At various locations on the internet, there have been comments made that Atlantic City Casino money is behind these dirty tactics to kill of The Meadowlands racetrack.

    There is no other way to explain the irrational behavior of the member of Local 137. The thing is that the Gural deal is 95% done and if these buffoon clerks were eliminated from the equation there would be a rosy situation for the racetrack's future.

    I am not sure how mediation at this point would work but every effort must be made to save The Meadowlands and the standardbred industry. Time will judge this to be a very grave mistake in the history of the state of New Jersey and the people responsible for it number less than 100. Twenty two days and counting.

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  2. Such a scenario would come as no surprise to me. I just wish the best for the harness industry, which is waiting on a bunch of people who show no inclination of caring one bit. It's sad.

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  3. It looks like Jeff Gural may proceed without the mutuel clerk's union. Instead of losing $12 million he'll lose $20 million for the first two or three years. But I believe many heads will roll come contract renegotiations time before February 2012.

    Waiting for an official announcement in a few weeks (maybe).

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  4. Some interesting stuff from Brennan again: http://sboanj.com/index.asp?Key=2082. For the sake of fans like yourself into standardbreds, I wish nothing but the absolute best.

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