A Message From the Management

rabble staff
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12458

posted 13 April 2006 08:48 PM

---

We on rabble staff have been watching the protest by many babblers on behalf of Audra, whose contract was terminated at the beginning of April. We are all sorry to see Audra go, and have enjoyed having her as a colleague at rabble. We are also sorry for the loss many babblers are feeling right now.

We understand that you have perceived our working conditions at rabble to be very poor. We have seen comparisons of rabble's labour practices to sweatshops, individual board members viciously maligned, and the discussion forum spammed almost into inoperability by participants who are understandably unhappy about losing Audra as one of their moderators. We have seen suggestions that rabble be turned into a worker's co-operative, and a demand that the rabble management committee answer to the participants on babble for their labour practices.

We feel that the protest you are engaging in is not a strike. It is a protest/boycott. We are the workers on this site, and we are not on strike.

We furthermore have no desire to be on strike. We do not feel that rabble is a poor employer. On the contrary, the management style of rabble is very staff-directed and oriented. We are currently going through a renewal process which we feel is a constructive way to address any work-related issues we might have. We enjoy the collaborative spirit of working together on it, and we are happy to have a Board that encourages us to do so.

It is with dismay and anger that we have read some of the attacks on individual members of the management committee (namely, Judy Rebick and Wayne MacPhail), as well as the committee as a whole. They are not just colleagues, but friends who share our progressive principles and values. While we appreciate that those who have
been protesting on Audra's behalf, and on the behalf of rabble workers in general mean well, we feel that you do not have an accurate impression of our working conditions.

Therefore, we do not support the current protest action on babble. We feel that babble is a very important part of the site, and that it cannot continue to be disrupted in the manner that it has been, and certainly not in the name of the workers at rabble. We would like the protest to end.

This is an excellent example of contract workers being coopted by liberal left
organizations that spout the progressive line but are neither worker run cooperatives nor unionized.

The Babble board at rabble.ca has now been shut down for the weekned, and who knows how long after that, due to the online picketing of it and protest commentaries over the firing of the Babble editor/administrator. Rabble Needs A Union

The folks at Rabble.ca have no union thus no grievance procedure, no recourse to outside arbitration, nor do they have a democratic worker run organization, there are owners and there are workers by their own admission.

This is not unlike situations that have arisen at other progressive organizations such as Greenpeace, which fired staff, when they unionized.

Rabble.ca staff are correct though in asking folks to quit spiking the babble board with attacks and trolling.

Better to BOYCOTT RABBLE.CA

Read Straight Goods instead, which started before Rabble. And oh yes if you have a complaint about how Rabble has treated its NON UNIONIZED staff, write to their advertisers who ARE UNIONS and ask them to boycott Rabble until this situation is resolved between the users/consumers of babble and its 'owners' and their staff.

This is an important lesson for the progressive Left community; Rabble and all so called progressive media online and in print that pay writers and editors should be unionized. Period. Even if the workers are on contract. If they aren't then they are hypocrites and despite their ideological bent still screw workers.

Also see: Unite the Left

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
rabble.ca, babble.ca, Rebick, union, Audra, Williams, picket, strike, union