Portnoy’s Complaint: A Union Is Organizing His Barstool Sports Blog

In 1969, Philip Roth published a highly controversial book, Portnoy’s Complaint, featuring a lust-ridden Jewish bachelor whose sexual conquests and detailed masturbation episodes may have warped a teenage Jeffrey Epstein, also Jewish and consumed by insatiable lust.

But I digress. David Portnoy owns Barstool Sports, a trendy blog. Last week he tweeted that he’d fire “on the spot” any employee who as much as discussed forming a union.

David Portnoy’s complaint reflects the success that writer guilds (read: unions) are having forming unions and getting much better pay and benefits.

You don’t need to be a labor lawyer to suspect that threatening to fire somebody for forming a union violates the National Labor Relations Act.

Adding more juice to the story, AOC jumped on this be tweeting, “If you’re a boss tweeting firing threats to employees trying to unionize, you are likely breaking the law &can be sued, in your words, ‘on the spot.’”

Forgive me for yawning. I’ve been reading labor law opinions from the NLRB and courts since 1985. Yes, AOC is correct. But by the time the NLRB litigation runs its course, Twitter will be replaced by the next new trolling platform.

Labor unions have found more creative ways to handle people like Portnoy. With social media, it’s not hard for writers to flood Portnoy’s Trumpian Twitter feed with Scabby the Rat posts.

That’s mild.

If they’re unified, they can stage a walkout similar to Google employees—and the other day, Uber and Lyft drivers— and get a mess of bad publicity for their faux tough-guy employer.

Portnoy has won Round 1, I suppose. But since his blog features sports material, I’d remind him that early leads often vanish by late in the game. My money is on the creative talent that he is threatening to fire.

Thanks to AB for the idea!