More on Weinbaum scenarios

[ffutures]

For the campaign framing thing I've been talking about the main player handout is a newspaper story that I posted here a while ago:

http://ffutures.livejournal.com/675811.html

I've since made a few changes but the main idea is still the same. What I'm trying to do now is put together some scenario ideas based on the hints in the story - so far I've got one based on finding fugitives, two about smuggling, one about the patrol's primary mission (preventing war), and one about something that isn't in the story.

What I don't have is anything convincing based on the union opposition to automated spaceships thing. I've never been very good at union politics, and I don't know very much about the US unions though I've read up a little on the AFL, CIO, Teamsters etc.

The obvious plot is the ship being "blacked" by unions who refuse to refuel it etc., but I'd prefer something a bit more subtle. On the automation front, I really DON'T want to go the HAL 9000 route.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I can't remember much about that, I'm afraid, and the Wikipedia article on the episode doesn't mention flu.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

The phrase 'blue flu' is more appropriately applied to a form of unofficial police — hence 'blue' — industrial action, where simultaneously most of the force calls in sick. It's featured in one of the Transmetropolitan books, and I think it occured in an episode of one of the CSI shows, IIRC. Or was it The Wire?

I don't know what you'd properly call it in the case of dockers: 'brown flu'? 'Lumberjack-shirt flu'?

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

"Blue Flu", or sometimes just called a sick-out, is when all the workers call in sick, usually because their contracts or local laws prevent them from striking. The B5 episode is one of fairly few TV SF representations of union activity.
Union activity at the time Weinbaum was writing altogether more robust than today's US union activity. Companies would hire armed union-breakers, union activists would be arrested and in some cases executed on trumped up charges. There was a number of big and sometimes very violent strikes in the US coal industry in the teen's and 20's (the film Matewan depicts a famous one), there were big strikes by the Detroit car workers in the 30's. There was the growth and decline of the I.W.W. (the Wobblies).
The portrayals of union activity I can recall from early SF are few, mostly from a later era (40s/50s) and almost entirely very negative, usually showing union reps to be corrupt, greedy, anti-progress and probably communist, and were drawn without much subtlety.