BomChickaWow

Why not embed the video though? This guy's got a teeny tiny little channel and this video has fewer than 4k views, and if this post blew up it would be pretty unfair to him, getting lots of watchtime on his work but without the cruel youtube algorithm gods knowing about it so they can recommend it to more people.

Some things are too important to society to be left in the hands of Wall Street investors.

Again. As I said weeks ago and again the other day. They will put a cap on Insurance costs, make all kinds of concessions and happily give a *24%* pay increase but won't give the workers time off.

And ss the article touches on, they are doubling and tripling up trains. They say it's for efficiency but it's to eliminate workers.

So by tripling up 3 trains in one (engines in front, middle and back) 2 people are doing the work of six - on call 24/7/365 with no sick leave, no time off at all unless pre-approved and it won't be approved.

I have so many stories I could tell and that was from years ago. It's worse now.

Railroad policy is that you are on call 24/7/365.

And

It is the railroad employees responsibility to be rested. Now remember that because they throw that in your face all the time and it's going to come into play in the story.

Per the FRA the railroad is required to give you "10 hours of uninterrupted rest"

So normally if you're gone on the rail for a day and a half to 2 days before you can go back to work for another 2 days they have to give you 10 hours off. For me that 10 hours included an hour of travel to and from work so 8 hours. And because you can't just flip a switch when you walk through the door and immediately fall asleep that was reduced to five to six hours of actual rest. Add to that your own physical wellness, spouse significant other kids doctor's appointments. Family loved ones friends. The grass needs to be cut. The dishes need to be washed. The laundry needs to be done. Groceries need to be bought. Meals need to be made. Bills need to be paid. Life needs to be lived. But. Again, it's the railroad employees'responsibility to be rested when they call you back to work.

But WOOHOO TEN HOURS!

I was a union official and my future wife was a company official and we had to work together on a regular basis which is how we fell in love and then I moved to Kansas where we got married and had kids.

Her job in railroad management was overseeing the call center for the railroad.

I was on a call list for a 350+ mile route from KC to Galesburg IL.

One night it appeared that I was going to be first on the list and due to get out on a train at 6:00 a.m. Because the railroad is required to give you a 2-hour call that meant I would get called at 4:00 a.m. To be at work at 6:00 a.m.

So Jennifer and I planned accordingly. We did dinner early, I prepped my meals , got the kids to bed and went to bed as early as possible so that I could hopefully get a solid 6+ hours of sleep before the phone rang at 4:00 a.m.

The phone didn't ring but we naturally got up early because we went to bed early. According to the computer, the new train lineup said my train was going to get out about noon. So we made breakfast. Got the kids off to school and waited for the phone to ring at 10:00 a.m. It didn't. The train was pushed back to 6:00 p.m. so we went to lunch together. Ran some errands. Went to the hardware store and Target. Before we knew it, the train was pushed back again to 6:00 a.m. the next day. So we went about our normal evening routine. Kids got home from school. We did homework played with the kids, had dinner. Watched some TV, put the kids to bed about 8:30 and we laid down just before 9:00 pm. I closed my eyes and the phone rang.

" This is BNSF crew management calling *my name* for an on-duty assignment" the automated voice continued and I pressed one to accept the call. I now had 2 hours to get to work.

Jen: What are you going to do?

Me: What do you mean? I'm going to work.

Jen: But you're not rested?

Me: so?

Jen: *starting to get panicked* You've been up all day. You can't work all night. This isn't safe.

Me: say that again.

Jen: Jude, THIS ISN'T SAFE

Me: *turned to her, speaking very calmly cause she's getting upset* That's right Jen, but if I rejected the call and asked to speak to a supervisor which would be you, and I said I can't take the call because I'm not rested. What you say to me?

Jen: *eyes welling with tears* It's your responsibility to be rested

Me: didn't I do everything by the book yesterday and today? Didn't we both monitor the train lineup and watched the train fall and fall and fall?

Jen: *crying* Yes

Me: Do you think that I could have stayed in a perpetual state of rest the past 24 hours?

Jen: *still crying* No

Me: then I have no choice to go to work because you know if I don't I'll be disciplined and or fired. Further I was just falling asleep and now I have to be behind the wheel of a car for an hour. I'm not so sure I make the trip to work let alone the 12 hour, 350 mi train ride to Illinois. But I have no choice because it's my responsibility to be rested.

Jen: *Sobbing* this isn't safe

Me: You're right, it's not safe and now you get to see how the railroad policies that you enforce affect real people. And someone you love.

Not good times. Jen was always Pro-company but that changed that night.

So yes I was awake for 15 hours, drove my car and hour to work and then drove a train for 12 more hours.

I've always said if you are first out on the call list and you sit first out for 24 hours, you should be allowed to request an additional 8 hours off specifically for sleep while maintaining your position the first out. If a train is called while you're in that second rest they would go to the next person in line.

Anyway. Long story long. I didn't violate the FRA federal guidelines because I was on the train for 12 hours or less. Even though I was severely impaired.

And if I had rejected the call because I was not rested I would have been disciplined and or fired. If I had noticed what was about to happen and I requested a day off it would have been rejected.

Namely, the union is on strike. HarperCollins, the second largest publishing house in the United States, has made record profits (in the billions) but refuses to pay its employees a living wage or negotiate in good faith. Unlike the one-day strike earlier this year, this will be an open-ended strike, to last until a fair, good-faith contract is agreed upon.

I cannot overstate the implications here. HarperCollins is a 200-year-old behemoth with over 120 imprints, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch. You have reads books from this company, I guarantee it. You have enjoyed movies and TV shows spawned by this company. The workers striking at the blood and sweat responsible for launching those properties you love. And as Harper goes, so goes the rest of the industry. If we raise the living standards for one, so the pressure increases on other companies to raise it for all.

The Harper Union need your support. They have a full thread here, but here’s the gist of what they’re asking:

EVERYONE:

- Donate to the strike fund if you can

- Politely email Harper’s HR ([email protected]) and the CEO ([email protected]) to express your support for the strike and the union.

- Boost their message on social media and among your social circles (here are some assets you can use to do that)

- If you are in the NY metro area, come join the picket line at 195 Broadway in Manhattan!

BLOGGERS/REVIEWERS/BOOKSTAGRAMMERS/BOOKTOKERS:

- If possible, please hold all reviews of Harper titles until the strike is over. (And I would add, if you feel comfortable doing so, tell Harper why.)

FREELANCERS/INDUSTRY HOPEFULS:

- Don’t be a scab. Don’t take new freelance projects or temporary positions while the strike is ongoing.

BOOKSTORES/BOOKSELLERS:

- Share the “I Stand With” graphic

- Print and distribute the union bookmark at your store

AUTHORS/AGENTS:

- Do not submit or sign new contracts to Harper until the union’s own contract is finalized.

———

Please note they are not asking for a boycott on Harper titles. A boycott would harm the authors, who have nothing to do with this, so the union is explicitly requesting no boycott.

Also, please do not @ Harper social accounts to yell at them. Direct all feedback to that peopleteam email. The majority of folks watching those accounts are out on the picket line anyways, and their managers have already been warned that, as non-union members, they risk termination if voice any public support for the strike.

For more info, check out the union’s accounts on Twitter and Instagram. I also recommend this Twitter thread for some hard facts and figures.

- The union’s official Venmo is @HCPSolidarityFund, but I’m trying to get a current, official statement from them to link to here, so you don’t have to take my word for it.

- The Harper union is part of the UAW Local 2110. Their website is here. The union’s press release announcing the strike can be found here.

“I want to email but I don’t know what to say.”

Templates are tricky. If you copy-paste my words, HC can dismiss it as spam. Here’s what I would recommend trying:

- a greeting (”To whom it may concern” or “Dear HarperCollins” or just “Hi” works)

- introduce yourself in relation to who you are to them (a regular customer of their titles? a member of a Harper-related fandom? a concerned parent/teacher/librarian? an author? a bookseller? a potential future employee?)

- a statement of support (”I am writing in support of the ongoing strike because…”)

- an explicit notation on why they should care (should be framed in terms of Harper’s reputation, Harper’s clout, and/or Harper’s finances. How can YOU affect THEIR bottom line?)

- a line on what actions you wish to see them take

- your name

Voila. That’s like six sentences, tops. If you’d like, add in how you heard about the strike to give and how you plan to share the news even further to give a sense of scale. (see: the impact on Harper’s reputation.)

You can do it. I believe in you.

A brand/book/author you care about is definitely going to be affected

Here is a very incomplete list of just SOME of the books, brands, and authors published by HarperCollins:

Warrior Cats. Series of Unfortunate Events. Bridgerton. Wicked. Chronicles of Narnia. Lord of the Rings and the entire Tolkien backlist. Agatha Christie. Dorothy Sayers. E.B. White (his adult stuff and Charlotte’s Web, Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little). School for Good and Evil. Amelia Bedelia. Goodnight Moon. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Frog and Toad. Master and Commander. The Princess Diaries. The Queen’s Thief Series. Red Queen. The Hate U Give. Dumplin. The One and Only Ivan. New Kid. Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. They Both Die at the End. Ella Enchanted. Beverly Cleary. Wayside School. Bridge to Terabithia. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Where the Wild Things Are and other titles by Maurice Sendak. Where the Sidewalk Ends and other titles by Shel Silverstein. All of the I Can Read books. Bel Canto. American Gods (and a bunch of other stuff by Neil Gaiman, incl. Coraline and Stardust.) All of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Pretty Little Liars. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Little Bear books. The Divergent series. Little House on the Prairie. The Abhorsen books. Howl’s Moving Castle and Diana Wynne Jones’s other books. Splat the Cat. Flat Stanley. Babel by R.F. Kuang. Song of Achilles. Anthony Bourdain’s books. Barbara Kingsolver. Anthony Horowitz. EVERYTHING under the Harlequin and Avon imprints. EVERYTHING under Zondervan and Thomas Nelson. The Little Prince. Life of Pi. Ursula Le Guin. Virginia Woolf. The Princess Bride. The Handmaid’s Tale. Fancy Nancy. Zora Neale Hurston. Neal Stephenson. Becky Chambers. Clive Barker. Michael Crichton. Sarah Plain and Tall. R.A. Salvatore. Mitch Albom. Aldous Huxley. Anne Hillerman. Michael Chabon. FGTeeV. 

200 years of history. 200 years of gobbling up other companies, other imprints.

You. Are. Affected.

This strike is not anti-Harper/anti-tradpub

Listen, I get it. Some of y’all have some rightful bones to pick with HarperCollins and/or traditional publishing. But the brave people forgoing their livelihood indefinitely in order to demand livable wages, increased diversity in the workplace, and union protections—demands that will affect our entire industry—ARE HarperCollins, far more than the C-Suite execs they’re fighting against. It is the latter group, the VPs and executives who roll up the ladder after themselves, who are the barrier here, not HarperCollins as embodied by the stressed out and in debt subrights coordinator marching on the sidewalk.

I agree, stick it to The Man, especially when that man is Rupert Murdoch, but this isn’t about “taking Harper down a peg” or “burning tradpub to the ground.” This is about bettering working conditions and providing a more equitable, sustainable environment for hundreds of passionate, dedicated people and thereby further opening the door for those who come after them.

This strike highlights issues that are endemic to publishing as a whole

Publishing is white. Publishing is rich. Publishing is layer upon layer of privilege and power and invisible hurdles like you wouldn’t believe.

The union is asking for three things:

- livable wages

- an increased commitment to diversity

- better union protections

All three are intertwined. Until the 2020 protests, standard entry level salaries were at $35k, which is below the poverty level for NYC (where employees are required to live.) Harper raised their base salaries after the protests, after a lot of public lip service to diversity, and after literally EVERY other competitor raised their salaries first. Current entry level salaries at Harper are $45k, which is still less than a year’s rent in New York. (Food? Electricity? Who needs it!) Employees are expected to take on additional jobs to survive. That’s standard. Employees are also expected to work overtime without pay. Again, this is standard across the industry, not just at Harper.

The people who survive are people with wealth, people with privilege, or people who make it only so far and then burn out spectacularly. The churn in this industry is unreal. This also leads in to Harper’s lip service to diversity in the workplace. BIPOC folks, disabled folks, folks without significant financial support, even once they managed to get through the door, retention is abysmal. Again, standard across publishing.

Harper has done a heck of a job at trying to gut the union. The amount of union busting even in “normal times” was unreal. And yet Harper remains the only US publisher in “the Big Four” with a union.

If the union can pull off a win here, raised salaries will apply pressure for their competitors to follow suit. Same for tangible, practical, enforced commitments to diversity. And if the union wins, more may appear in other houses, keeping the cycle of change rolling forward. And this is not limited to the United States. We are an interconnected global world. May actions here inspire further actions abroad.

So again, thank you all for your support. If you have specific questions and want to make sure I see, send an ask or DM.

The Harper Union is still on strike. Harper’s HR, which publicly tried to position themselves as “bargaining in good faith” has yet to even reach out to the union.

It’s been fifteen days without even an attempt at a deal, and Harper has begun hiring scabs.

Still on strike. Worse, the CEO, Brian Murray, sent an open letter to authors and agents rife with spin, misinformation, and outright lies—everything from claiming that the requested salary increase would be “higher than any other competitor” (it’s not), that they give generous benefits like ample time off (which by their accounting includes federal holidays like Christmas—but not Christmas Eve or literally any other day in December! can’t have that!—and also using that time off is aggressively discouraged by management), to pledging to remain “ready and willing” to negotiate in good faith when they’ve yet to speak to the union and have tried to recruit scabs from local bookstore staff and publishing courses.

I am eagerly looking forward to the union’s rebuttal letter in the style of their last round of edits, but that’s the only thing I’m pleased about. As a former employee, I feel sick for my friends and colleagues who are being so poorly mistreated by their company. As an industry colleague, I’m disheartened. I left Harper on good terms, but now I can’t imagine myself ever going back. They’ve shown themselves to be violently opposed to the wellbeing of the very people who make the company what it is. And as an author, I cannot at present see a future in which I would willingly submit a manuscript to any portion of Harper, knowing that anyone left is miserable, mistreated, or a scab.

This dinosaur skeleton is incomplete. But, it doesn't look that way to us, because the parts it's missing are parts we don't have.

See how there are ribs on the bottom? Those are called gastralia. That's right, dinosaurs had ribs on their stomachs as well, and modern crocodiles and alligators still have them! (Also, notice that the ribs keep going to the hips instead of stopping above the waist. This is also true of modern birds, and why a bird can't have a concave stomach!)

Next, notice that ring floating in the center of the eye socket? That's called a sclerotic ring! Fish, reptiles, birds--with the exception of mammals (and, oddly enough, crocodilians), pretty much all modern vertebrates still have them! It's literally an eyeball bone. Afaik we haven't found a T-rex specimen with any intact, but since we've found them in other dinosaurs, it's very likely they had them too.