READ ’n’ WEEP: After sustaining no less than seven flat bicycle tires in 10 days, my first inclination, naturally, was to blame City Hall. I figured the city’s street sweeping program — for which we pay $1 million a year via increased parking tickets — must have utterly collapsed. Why else would the city’s bike lanes be choked with so much broken glass? I came to learn, however, that the street sweepers had not slacked off at all; frequency of service has remained steady while the number of miles swept has increased. By the time I discovered this, I’d become so bedeviled by my flats that I was looking to hire an exorcist. Had I been reading the News-Press at the time, however, I would have known the source of all my pneumatic leakage: the Teamsters.

In recent weeks, the News-Press has been running about five full-page, color ads sort of denouncing the Teamsters Union — which was elected to represent News-Press newsroom employees at the bargaining table two years ago by a 33-6 vote — for various and nefarious misdeeds. Among the almost-allegations leveled by the News-Press against the Teamsters was the slashing of tires involving the cars of six News-Press employees. I say “sort of” and “almost” because the ads, no doubt vetted by a very competent attorney, took pains to never actually accuse the Teamsters of these acts. Instead, the ads strategically noted that tires had been flattened, and exhorted readers to “Let the Teamsters know that Santa Barbara will not tolerate these tactics.”

More than anything, these ads indicate that the bees under the bonnet of News-Press owner Wendy McCaw are buzzing again. And that’s rarely a good sign. Arousing the wrath of Wendy is the Teamsters’ latest effort to get McCaw to negotiate a contract in good faith. Earlier this summer, McCaw gave over a considerable chunk of space to run an op-ed comparing the Teamsters’ tactics in Santa Barbara to the Nazis back in Germany. If that comparison seems a bit unhinged, it could be that McCaw was feeling stressed. About the same time, the General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board announced it would be filing charges against McCaw and the News-Press for their bad faith at the bargaining table. That’s a serious accomplishment. It takes a lot to get the NLRB — hardly a bastion of bolshevism or a hotbed of proletarian proclivities — to jump in this way.

At the same time, the Teamsters have begun quietly dispatching small squads of organizers to various businesses asking them to discontinue advertising in the News-Press until the News-Press begins bargaining in good faith. The Teamsters are so touchingly naïve. As if loss of money has ever affected McCaw. If it did, she might have made some effort to reverse the dramatic loss of confidence — that’s cost the News-Press an estimated loss of 10,000-12,000 readers in the past two years — now felt by so many in the community for their daily paper. Beginning late July, the Teamsters started passing out leaflets to customers of the businesses that have declined to stop advertising, asking the customers to ask the owners to discontinue advertising. In addition, the Teamsters are asking customers not to patronize those businesses who keep advertising with McCaw.

Frankly, I think the Teamsters seriously goofed by not announcing this campaign to the broader Santa Barbara community. This silence has allowed McCaw to frame the issue in her own terms. It has also caught many union sympathizers and supporters of News-Press employees off-guard. To the extent the Teamsters have any prayer of success, community support will be absolutely essential. While many Santa Barbarans are indifferent — if not actively hostile — to labor unions in general, they have come to seriously miss having a daily they can rely upon for obits, sports, and some modest semblance of news. Instead, they now have a daily that’s embraced and embodied all the one-sided nastiness common to the blogs. Ironically, bloggers are rushing in to fill the mainstream void and conducting themselves with relative restraint.

Push came to shove last week when Teamster organizer John Peralta filed a police report claiming he’d been struck while passing out leaflets in front of the Home Improvement Center by an angry customer. Peralta claimed the man called him “an ugly faggot,” adding, “I wish you would die,” and then struck him in the chest with “a reverse karate chop.” He acknowledged the man may have hit him accidentally while trying to grab Peralta’s leaflets. Peralta had a fellow Teamster organizer — and witness — call the cops; so too did the agitated customer. By the time the cops arrived 50 minutes later, the man had left. Based on the eye-witness testimony of a store employee who disputed any assault occurred, the police remain skeptical of Peralta’s claim. For his part, Peralta remains suspicious that the whole thing was a setup engineered to make him loose his cool so that he could be tarred as the classic “Teamster goon.”

In the next few weeks, there should be a whole lot of action all at once on the News-Press front. Next week, in Orange County, a judge will be asked to rule whether McCaw, a multimillionaire many times over, abused the court system by suing the writer of an American Journalism Review article critical of the News-Press. The writer countersued McCaw, claiming Wendy is trying to silence and intimidate critics from speaking their mind by dragging them through the courts, a trip most people simply cannot afford. Given that all 33 of McCaw’s specific allegations of libel against the writer have been rejected by various judges, things are looking grim for McCaw but good for the 1st Amendment. In addition, a ruling should be out any second now in the dispute between former editor Jerry Roberts, over breach of contract and journalistic ethics: she sued him for $500,000, he counter-sued, and then she counter-counter-sued for the amount of $25 million. Finally, the documentary, Citizen McCaw, will be screened again next month at the Fiesta Five as well as on PBS — unchanged — despite demands made to do so by McCaw’s hard-chomping legal team.

What actual good any of this will do remains unclear. McCaw may lose and lose and lose, but her ability to appeal appears as unlimited as her bank account. In the meantime, my flat tires have miraculously ceased, for which I credit divine intervention. But if I were the Teamsters, I’d get on the phone and call an exorcist.

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