Dec. 13, 2004 - 20:17 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Dumps

Humor and fun after a time cause me to realize that there are things in life more serious to also consider.

A small, buried in the back item today by the Associated Press in the Rocky Mountain News for instance. In full:

Layoffs ahead for meat workers

GREELEY -- "About 800 workers at the Swift & Co. meat packing plant will lose their jobs four days before Christmas."

"The layoffs will take effect Dec. 20, 11 days before a contract expires that had Swift processing cattle from three ConAgra Foods Inc. feedlots. ConAgra, the nation's second largest food company, sold the lots earlier this year to Smithfield Foods Co. of Smithfield, Va."

"Those lots supplied about 40 percent of the cattle we processed at the plant," Swift spokesman Jim Herlihy said."

"Swift, the largest employer in Greeley, anticipated 1,100 layoffs when it first announced changes to its meat production two months ago."

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Thoughts and opinions are mine. Things change, as they say, sometimes for the better and that is hard to see at times.

Looking back at my early days, there existed the Stockyards. Big operation it was. Swift and Company, Armour and Cudahy were the biggies and the yards themselves were full of cattle awaiting slaughter and packing. The Yards took up quite a bit of the flood plain of the Platte River at the north end of Denver. Most of the rest of the flood plain south of there occupied by the rail yards and a few industrial complexes. There were many auxiliary businesses nearby that fed and were fed by the Stockyards. I can remember riding the Pioneer AMTRAK a few years ago while they were still running that route through southern Wyoming, paralelling I-80, periodically seeing the almost defunct corrals and loading chutes where the cowboys brought their cattle to be shipped. Vacant these many years, cowboys dead and buried long ago.

The old reputation of our Queen City Of The Plains as being a "cow town," had much truth in it. But it as well, was a mining town also, it just was that the gold was not hooved. Oh we had Gates Rubber Company at the south end of town. Which made automotive tires, garden hoses, v-belts, radiator hoses and many other rubber goods. Depending which way the wind blew it was either the smell of rubber being processed or the smell of the stock yards providing the daily aroma.

But the Yards back then was a big operation. However as the years went on the infrastructure of the location became run down, buildings had aging problems and railroads gave way to trucklines, which also hauled refrigerated meat as well as livestock. The business was no longer reliant on railroads.

Gradually Swift and Co, Armour and Cudahy silently stole away, leaving I think, their tents to be later razed by someone.

There remained several independent packers around town. One supplied Kosher meat, some of which shipped to New York and Chicago. I worked for a truck line back then and remember the procedure for shipping Kosher meat, the rabbi, the hosing down of the contents of the semi-trailers and etc.

Then meat packing moved on out, near the feed lots which by that time had grown huge. ConAgra replaced so very many farms and ranches once owned by families.

So, in the ensuing years the whole industry has changed, but not CHANGED all that much really.

It still boils down to approaching Christmas, a pink slip in one hand and a last paycheck in the other for many folk. Thinking about it, where would those 800 workers go two months ago to find work for a living wage ? Don't think there was anywhere in the state they could have gone. Six months ? A year ?

It is not just this one happenstance either, many folks who have been working for a company for years find themselves suddenly standing dazed on the sidewalks outside a once busy place, shaking their heads wondering if all is lost or by some miracle a job will show up in the nick of time. That kind of miracle never happened to me. There were times when I tightened my belt so tight that the buckle rubbed my backbone raw before I found a near survival job to work at until something better came along.

Remembering way back when some very capable men were without work during the depression and when finally things began to look up -- those men never came back up to the life style they lived beforehand. Something had decimated their drive perhaps and of course while the depression was on those folks aged like the rest of us and opportunities just weren't there for them anymore.

Still remembering the places I read now about who are laying off, some of them going out of business too.

Yet we are being told by the pols in power, "Oh, things are doing great, GDP rising to the top, we are in better shape than ever. Productivity is at the top." Only real rise in productivity is the money flowing into the hands of the big corporations while wages are being whittled, health care being dumped and what pensions are left in great danger of being cut down drastically. If there are no workers working -- there is no productivity.

I guess tonight I am in residence at The Dumps . . . . . . . . . .

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