Saturday, January 19, 2008

Anonymous history

The room on the 21st floor of a Hartford office building is about the size of a neighborhood gas station mini-mart, trading the racks of potato chips and coolers of pop for meeting tables and a witness stand.

There are no windows. The acoustics are patchy beyond the first row of public seating and the wooden benches are butt-numbingly hard after a few hours. It is not, plainly, Philadelphia's Independence Hall or a stop on Boston's Freedom Trail.

It is, however, where the course of a federal agency's jurisdiction over tribal employees and the Mashantucket Pequot tribe's argument of an unfair union election will be hashed out yet again next week.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

In the stacks

You know it is going to be a long day of hearings at the National Labor Relations Board when attorneys begin to disappear behind ever increasing stacks of evidential Foxwoods Resort Casino brochures and employee manuals and training materials.