The Right and The Left
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The Montclair, New Jersey office had the reputation of being the Oakland Raiders of the National Labor Relations Board. Seven years ago the President fired half of the regional office employees who had struck, and they had been replaced by transfers from other offices and by new hires from the better law schools. Most federal employees were granted collective bargaining rights two years later, but strikes remained illegal. From the seventh floor of the Pompton Building, Scott Dagenhart looked southeast at the Newark skyline. Hired as a field attorney after the strike, he was promoted to supervisor two years ago. In that time he had grown critical of the government’s difficult role in labor-management relations, and he was waiting for the right career development opportunity in the private sector. It never came. His gaze moved to Marshall Rosen who was sitting in his office. Scott had given Marshall a P.I.P. (Performance Improvement Plan) at the annual job performance evaluation conference the previous week. Marshall would not be expected to get a raise this year. In his six years with the NLRB this had never happened to him; not even when he was going to night law school and was often tired. "Marshall, I don’t like this any more than you do. You were the ranking trouble-shooter in the office and probably one of the best investigators in the NLRB, but you trashed all that by spending too much time on the non-productive stuff. I’m your friend, believe me, and the boss respects you. You’ve just got to jettison the garbage. The boss believes you guys deliberately kept him from being king of the hill last year when we came in second, which isn’t bad among thirty-one offices. He’ll never forget that either." "You mean my extra-curricula activities is a problem? I would do it again, my brothers and sisters were fired and somebody has to pay," he said. "Someone has to fight back against this pettiness. You guys had no right to send Larry Naihi to vote a rusty tanker in the Bermuda Triangle. How came not many of your people are sent there?" "We’ve got a job to do and that’s part of it. We’re all sorry that the Genesis tanker vanished. The search team never found any trace of the helicopter, the ship or any bodies. We’ve just had a memorial service for Larry. Now let’s be adults and put it behind us and move on." "That’s easy for you to say, but we lost a good union man." "I’m sorry, I see you’re upset." "I’ve been upset since I worked in North Carolina on a detail a couple of years ago. The textile mill defied the Board orders for five years and the case is still in the courts. The Textile Workers had won a second election but now five years later the workers are still without a contract." "These things happen. That’s the Sewanee River Mills case." "Yes." "Marshall, I’m making a change on the Genesis tanker election." "Am I off that case?" "No, you still report to me, but I’m taking a more personal, hands-on charge of it. You’ve got enough to do." Oh, I thought you were already doing that." "You think you’ve got big balls, laying that list of demands on the boss’s desk. Your priorities are all mixed up. We’ve got an important regulatory job to do here in one of the most highly developed and densely industrialized markets of America. We need you on the team, Marshall. If you got out of college with the notion that you can save the world, your tuition money was wasted." "I’m not as naive as you think, but I don’t intend to change. You just don’t understand me. I got out of college with a healthy disbelief in government. Why the hell are a hundred cities burning and it isn’t even summer yet?" "Liberals are in charge and on their watch things fall apart." "That’s your opinion." "You’ve got to be kidding." "Conservatism is the zeitgeist of the future. You liberals still dream the impossible utopian nonsense, forgetting that unfettered, free enterprise made this country. And that’s your problem, Marshall. You’ll never be anybody’s hero, that is, anyone who counts. We’re getting our message across through the American Empire TV series, which is better than the old Picket Line U.S.A. which is being phased out since the sponsors are dropping it as not being in tune with the times as union membership is declining." "I don’t watch that propaganda." "These new message bearers are mobilizing for a new political majority." "Cut the crap, Scott, am I still lead agent on the tanker election?"
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
This is a burlesque of the NLRB where Regional Director Lusignan has a theory that those engaged in oral sex are liberals and pro-union. He uses polygraph tests to find out. Conservatives and liberals clash during his employees’ union drive and some must vote tankers in the Bermuda Triangle and drive ‘69 Pintos. The leader of the Federal Association of Labor Board Agents, Marshall Rosen, refuses a promotion. Camelot Lane, a black woman attorney has a child out of wedlock by choice. She heads the Dept. of Justice’s crime-fighting unit in New Jersey and coordinates with Dero Ingleside’s investigation of unfair labor practices at Lusignan’s office. Camelot and Tommie Ann Shawgo, a Native American NLRB agent provide sexual banter against marriage and male chauvinism. Some whites believe in white supremacy and there is verbal racial sparring. Ingleside’s room was bugged and he had sex with a witness and is fired. Lusignan is fired but lands a better job and lucrative consulting contracts. In 1970, the decline of union membership began with the war of the right and left.
About the Author
I spent five years with the National Labor Relations Board as a field examiner. I was born in Newark, N.J. and served with the U.S. Army in Japan. My short story Occupational Hazard was published in Decade of Short Stories sold in the Brentano chain. I worked for six federal agencies, including the Civil Service Commission, SBA, Dept. of Labor, and EPA as an investigator and director monitoring fair employment practices. For the past twelve years I’ve been an investigator and human resources consultant in 24 states including Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, and Ohio. I am married to Lillian Marie and we have two grown children, all living in Southfield, Michigan. I am a graduate of the Newark College of Arts & Science of Rutgers University. I also attended George Washington University and Brookings Institution. My story Majority at Sea was published by The Crisis magazine.