"A Gratifying Irony" by Daniel Guss
Equity and Solidarity Ironically Missing from Chaotic LA Times, DSA
There is nothing good about anyone facing the prospect of losing their job. It is a painful and lonely experience marked by fear, anxiety and uncertainty regardless of whether one’s colleagues are going through it, too.
Thank god those facing layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, where the “Bidenomics boon” has been celebrated, can now figure out how to use it to their advantage.
Perhaps they can learn to code.
Like miners.
Similarly, employees facing likely job losses announced over the weekend at the Democratic Socialists of America will get to evaluate what they will get in return for the “solidarity dues” they paid to the group rooted in Marxism.
It is particularly ironic that the group, which bemoans billionaires like PayPal founders Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek, enriches these men and their shareholders by using PayPal to haul-in its revenue.
As porn magnate Larry Flynt once told me, the only difference between himself and Jimmy Swaggart is, “he sells his thing and I sell mine.”
The same can be said for the Times and the DSA.
But what else is shining through at these struggling organizations is that living with “equity,” which both have zealously promoted for years, is not as fun as demanding that others (i.e. the rest of us) live by it.
As I wrote twice last week, one issue that the LA Times Guild is fighting for is to keep seniority protections for employees who earned them, yet it won’t loosen them in layoff negotiations in exchange for buyout offers that could result in saving 50 jobs of younger reporters, particularly those with Black and Brown skin or LGBTQ status.
That’s noble.
Isn’t it?
In fact, these are some of the same organizations that endlessly claim that successful white people used their “privilege” to get ahead, and that their success necessarily came at the expense of minorities who were treated unfairly in the generations before them.
Then why cling to those seniority protections?
Isn’t this the time for #SocialJustice to kick in?
As Bill Shakespeare might have said, 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔱𝔥 𝔟𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔴'𝔯𝔡, 𝔨𝔦𝔠𝔨𝔢𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔲𝔠𝔨𝔢𝔱 𝔟𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔴'𝔯𝔡.
(For the visually impaired, that’s liveth by the sword, kicketh the bucket by the sword.)
Unless the LA Times figures out how to raise revenue on content people don’t trust and aren’t buying, we’ll see before too long how much social justice its senior staffers have in their hearts for their younger colleagues with darker degrees of melanin and/or LGBTQ status.
As to my writing, “content people aren’t buying,” this weekend, the Times endorsed George Gascón for re-election as LA County District Attorney.
That’ll raise the revenue for sure!
Over at the DSA, where celebrating anti-Semitism and terrorism may turn into the worst business decision since the AOL-Time Warner merger, many may soon have an epiphany that the “solidarity dues” they reliably paid to the DSA via PayPal was about their solidarity to the DSA but, apparently, not reciprocally.
Otherwise, both organizations would do this:
Identify how many people are going to lose their jobs
Place the name of every employee on pieces of paper, without exception, into a hat
Shake it up and pull out the names randomly to determine who is going to be laid off
Honor the equity as their security passes and parking placards are turned in.
That’s what these organizations have told everyone else that they need to do in the name of equity and social justice.
But before the names are placed in the hat, give the protected senior and/or Caucasian employees a chance to do it voluntarily.
Or simply put, they can be the “quit” in “equity.”
Again, my condolences to anyone facing these layoffs.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)