March Productivity Madness

Economists show the proclivity
Toward lamenting the lost productivity
When Americans cling,
From the first day of Spring,
To basketball bracket activity. 

At work we may go to extremes
Of collegiate basketball dreams,
And glance in our laps 
At websites and apps
With brackets and video streams. 

Consultants engaged by the boss
To reckon the March Madness cost
Deduce from the gauges
Of hours and wages
That 1.2 billion are lost.

But a national payroll statistic
As a measure is much too simplistic,
As workers are apt
In March to adapt
In a manner that's deft and holistic.

Despite how the experts may warn
That brackets are worthy of scorn,
It's easy to see
For office esprit,
They're better than downloading porn. 

#Winning Labor Relations

A comedy actor was hired
Though ev'ryone knew he was wired,
Abusive, depraved,
And bizarrely behaved;
He insulted his boss and was fired.  

(Okay, you've read about Charlie Sheen everywhere else - why not a limerick blog?)  The affair about which everyone is talking has taken a legal turn after TV's highest-paid actor was fired, and he sued for breach of contract.  Did he fail to hit his marks, as alleged by Warner Brothers, or have his caustic comments regarding producer Chuck Lorre hit too close to home?

Ronald Reagan, Union Supporter

"'To organize skilled and unskilled
Is a right that the law has fulfilled - '
A view I adopted
While on the red carpet
As head of the Screen Actors' Guild."   

The world's most glamorous celebration of organized labor - the Oscars - coincides this year with the effort by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to strip state workers of their right to organize. It is therefore worth recalling the words of an earlier Republican governor, president of SAG and President of the USA, who said that to organize labor is  "one of the most elemental human rights."