DNAinfo and Gothamist are shut down after vote to unionize A week ago, reporters and editors at New York's DNAinfo and Gothamist celebrated victory in their vote to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down. The decision puts 115 people out of work, both at the New York operations that unionized and at those in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington that did not. (New York Times)
Unions protect the lazy and incompetent. A quality worker doesn’t need a Union because he is too valuable an asset to the company. Unions protect the bottom of the barrel workers which are the exact ones that should be weeded out. After college I worked a short time at a job that was unionized. One of the guys on the graveyard shift was caught downloading hardcore kiddie porn on the company computers during his shifts. OUR UNION WOULD NOT ALLOW HIM TO BE FIRED!! After months of back and forth and who knows how much Union money defending that piece of shit, they worked out an agreement where he would be terminated with back pay and a positive recommendation for any future employer calling to ask about him. ABSOLUTELY VILE. Unions had their time, but their greed and modern working conditions has long since made them obsolete.