One might have hoped that if anything, 2010 would produce a thaw in the cold war between Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw and the Teamsters Union which represents the employees of the paper's newsroom. Well, it's evident that there will be no glasnost at De la Guerra.
In December, I told you about a basket of fruit that had been sent to the newsroom employees as a holiday gift from the Teamsters negotiator Nick Caruso and how that basket mysteriously disappeared, never making it to its destination.
Caruso wrote a letter to News-Press management inquiring about the fate of the fruit basket. In a response to Caruso's inquiry, News-Press management has now fessed up to intercepting the basket and its contents.
Calling the fruit basket "a trespass on the News-Press private property," the response accuses the Teamsters of attempting "to create some unfair labor practice issue."
I guess the notion that the Teamsters might have been trying to create some holiday cheer among their members held captive in the newsroom was out of the question.
Although the letter responding to Caruso was signed by Yolanda Apodaca, the paper's director of human resources, it has Wendy McCaw written all over it.
For example, there's the repeated use of the phrase "private property" four times in the seven paragraph letter.
As the Indy's Nick Welsh once sagely observed, Wendy's two favorite words are "private" and "property." And once again, she appears to be obsessing over the notion of keeping other people's bodies, and fruit baskets, off her property.
So consider yourself warned. If you've ever sent a bouquet of flowers, a candy gram or a birthday card to someone working inside the News-Press building, Wendy considers you to be a trespasser. Let's hope she doesn't call the cops.
Wouldn't mind being able to use that same line of reasoning to keep the paperboy from tossing that News-Press Direct advertising rag into my driveway every week.
© 2010 by Craig Smith and www.craigsmithsblog.com
