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If there's anyone who's unhappy with the weekend settlement of the dockworkers' union contract dispute, would they please report to the nearest media outlet? The day-after coverage of the tentative agreement is crowded with smiles all around, by the union, its employers, and President Bush. Few outlets bothered to cover the pro-union pickets at Wal-Mart, and given the lopsided contest there, union organizers might think it's just as well.

According to media outlets, if the dockworkers' contract is ratified, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union will see a buffet of tasty benefits. Their $27.63/hour base pay will be raised over the next three years. They also continue full medical coverage, and if you're unsure of how major a win that is, read the New York Times' front-page coverage of the woes of those without health insurance. The union members are also notching comfortable retirements, scoring pensions of $50,000 to $70,000. Reporters estimates' of average pay are all over the map -- the more lucrative end of the map, that is. Media reports put the average dockworker's wages at $80,000 to $106,000. As the Los Angeles Times quoted one dockworker as saying, "This is a great gig."

As for management, reporters were fuzzy on the reasons for their happiness. The claim is that the union conceded to allow new technology implementations that will replace an estimated 400 workers. But fear not: Those workers will be reassigned new jobs. No one was quite sure what the new technology will be -- something about bar-code scanning and integrated computing.

Meanwhile, the media found little to cover at the Wal-Marts in 40-plus cities where organizers had set up pro-union protests. There was a smattering of local coverage among newspapers like the Durango Herald. On the national level, The Nation filed coverage as did the Los Angeles Times, whose union reporters also turned in a slew of stories on the longshoremen.Wal-Mart is a thorn in labor's side, employing more than 1 million non-unionized folks in 3,300 stores and successfully keeping unions out. But with the longshoremen's contract on its way to being settled, look to the $9/hour folks at Wal-Mart to become the epicenter for labor coverage. - Deborah Asbrand

W. Coast Shipping Contract Is Set
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34531-2002Nov24.html

Problem of Lost Health Benefits Is Reaching Into the Middle Class
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/national/25INSU.html

Tallying Port Dispute's Costs
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-portecon25nov25001435,0,17195.story

Threat of U.S. Role Aided Port Deal
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ports25nov25.story

Port Labor Deal Struck
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ports24nov24,0,1751042.story

Dockhands Hoping Accord Brings Stability
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-reax25nov25,0,2352291.story

Threat of U.S. Role Aided Port Deal
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ports25nov25.story

Workers Likely to Ratify Port Pact
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/11/25/MN242769.DTL]

Dockworkers lose 400 positions, gain wage increases (AP)
http://www.insidevc.com/vcs/state/article/0,1375,VCS_122_1567824,00.html

Borders Bookstore Workers Used Web to Win Union Vote
http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/3429866.html

Labor Opens a Drive to Organize Wal-Mart
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/08/national/08WALM.html

Demonstrators Picket Wal-Mart (Durango Herald)
http://tinyurl.com/2zng

Unions Stage Protests Against Wal-Mart Stores
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart22nov22.story

WWJD? Protest Wal-Mart!
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021209&s=featherstone20021122

High-speed wireless networking has been moving into the public eye, and the last week offered a bouquet of mainstream press coverage of the fast-growing technology. We're talking about the 11-megabits-per-second technology called 802.11b or Wi-Fi. Verizon is bringing it to small and midsized businesses. Comdex provided a real-world test bed for it (and showed some of its limitations). And folks in Boston, New York, and elsewhere are settling into life with Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi enables Internet access to be shared over an area 300 feet in diameter via radio waves in an unlicensed area of the spectrum. The AP quoted a market study claiming that over $2 billion in Wi-Fi gear has been sold in 2002, with more than $3 billion expected for next year.

Last Friday, News.com and the AP covered news of Verizon's plunge into selling Wi-Fi gear to their business customers. The Globe noted that Verizon is trailing cellular provider Nextel into the business. Both accounts mentioned the push by T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream) to Wi-Fi-ify hundreds of Starbucks, airport lounges, and malls around the country. News.com quoted an analyst who approved of Verizon's focus on businesses, opining, "Nobody has found a viable model for selling broadband inside cafes yet."

Wi-Fi got one of its largest-scale tests at Comdex last week. In this morning's Seattle Times, Paul Andrews reported that a sort of "tipping point" had been reached at Comdex: "Nearly all the journalists, analysts and salespeople ... had wireless PC capability," yet could hardly find a Wi-Fi access point in all of Las Vegas. Comdex itself provided five Wi-Fi hotspots on the show floor for up to 300 people at a time, but this was hopelessly inadequate for the demand, reported 802.11-Planet.com.

Yesterday's New York Times and today's Boston Globe carried thoughtful appreciations of life in cities dense with Wi-Fi hotspots. The Globe's Scott Kirsner reported on the high-tech startups, mostly unfunded, whose founders meet in the city's Starbucks cafes and get their Internet connectivity over the airwaves after paying $30 a month to T-Mobile (and $3 for their nonfat lattes). Writing in Sunday's New York Times, Tom Vanderbilt, an author who writes about urban spaces, waxes poetic on the community scale of Wi-Fi. Vanderbilt quoted one of the founders of NYC Wireless, a free public-access project: "This technology flies in the face of all the 'death of distance' and 'end of geography' rhetoric of the '90s fiber optic boom ... It's a very intimate technology, very local." -- Keith Dawson

Wi-Fi wireless technology goes mainstream with Verizon service (AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002-11-22-wifi-verizon_x.htm

Verizon takes Wi-Fi to the office
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-971023.html

Wireless vision still trips over wired reality (Seattle Times)
http://tinyurl.com/2zkb

Comdex Puts Wi-Fi Weaknesses on Display
http://www.80211-planet.com/columns/article.php/1546141

Free office space -- but coffee's extra (Boston Globe)
http://tinyurl.com/2zjv

Walker in the Wireless City
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/nyregion/24FEAT.html

Wi-Fi joins broadband access debate
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-966667.html

BlackBerry's Maker Infringed on Patent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23914-2002Nov21.html

Apple's Quirky Ads Evoke Parodies of Themselves
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/technology/25PARO.html

Following Old Media's Path
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25316-2002Nov22.html

Microsoft, Justice Department Agree on Two Technical Experts
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1037983436373125468,00.html

Madison Ave. Isn't Getting It: Zapped Ads Are Zapped Sales
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038186643307814948,00.html

Free software vs. Goliaths
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/329/business/Free_software_vs_Goliaths+.shtml

Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jimduffy86@yahoo.com).

Editor and publisher: Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com).

Media Unspun is produced by The Vineyard Group Inc.
Copyright 2002 Media Unspun, Inc., and The Vineyard Group, Inc.
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