New York Times' Unconscious Attack on Unions

Any Science at Davos Is Anything but Dismal

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/business/worldbusiness/25davos.html

by MARK LANDLER

Published: January 25, 2006

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 24 - Klaus Schwab, the Swiss professor-cum-event-planner who runs the World Economic Forum, is not about to complain, but the Bush administration has done him few favors lately...

Besides, Davos remains a high-altitude schmooze-fest of rare quality, with 2,340 people from 89 countries expected - among them a dozen heads of state, 77 cabinet ministers, 23 religious leaders, 13 union bosses, 735 chairmen or chief executives and Angelina Jolie.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

BrooklynDodger was sufficiently outraged to email the public editor. Why are union leaders, usually elected, canonically "union bosses," while actual bosses such as chairmen and chief executives never call bosses?

A search of the Times website got 135 hits for "union bosses" and 89 for "union boss." There was no overlap in the top five, suggesting that canonically there are no individual bosses where there is a group of them.

This is a double stylistic and political sin, one for the reporter who wrote it, one for the editor who didn't edit it out.