Jan. 05, 2002 - 22:27 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Labor Less Fruit?

I am not sure whether I am a hoi or a polloi, anyway I are one. Having been a worker most of my semi adult and adult life, I will have to state that my sympathies are with people who not only have to jump through their tails to accomplish their given tasks but also have to please touchy bosses and greedy upper echelons.

Piece work, wow, I've been there done that. A certain operation pays a certain rate. Through ingenuity a worker figures out how to increase his production without quality being degraded. For a short time it is profitable for him. Then comes the time study man and suddenly the worker has to proverbially jump through his tail to survive.

I remember working for a farm equipment manufacturer, a unionized one it was too. Said manufacturer produced a certain machine by using the subassembly method. Seems like we assemblers were making too much on our piece work operations (too much according to the ownership). One day I went to work and the line was no longer there. Shut down and torn out. We were all transferred to other departments, and not recalled to that line when it went back into operation. When it did start up it was now a progressive assembly. Axles and wheels on which, piece by piece the machine was assembled. A quick and dirty solution to the company's greed. All they had to do was to reach the guys on one station and give them a little extra - voila - production proceeded at the rate decided prudent by the company.

The thing that irked us was that the departments we were transferred to were also piece work jobs which were already so degraded that it was almost impossible to survive.

Wildcat strikes would happen, one I remember in particular was an operation using big sheets of metal that paid an hourly rate, but when a particularly oily, greasy bunch of sheets showed up the required hourly rate could not be met by the workers and the company refused to adjust the rates.

That was then. Have things changed ? A skosh. I see that another state has voted in the, "Right to work," law. Yeah riiight! The right to work for less. That's for sure. Check the income levels of the workers of the Right To Work states against those of the states that don't have those laws. The more states that get that legislation through the more work will eventually go to them of course, the prices of the product will stay the same but the workers will be paid less.

I have been wondering if the, "white collar," people will ever have the sense to unionize. Seems like corporate thinking is to make jobs which are excluded from the unions oversight but having the same tasks accomplished by associates, engineers, semi-managerial people, etc. you name the funny names the workers are given instead of decent wages. Jeepers! Wake up guys and gals! Fancy titles do not a living make, and the assumption that the title makes you one of the corporate family is to my viewpont pure baloney!

An article in January 5th Rocky Mountain News by Ann McFeatters almost gives a laundry list of the goverment actions against working people, including women who are hard hit now. Quote, "Now come Chao, a Mount Holyoke educated conservative and President Bush's labor secretary, and the White House Office of Management and Budget with a plan to close the 10 regional offices of the Women's Bureau." Supporters of the status quo advance the idea that the offices are important mechanisms to let women workers know of their rights when confronted with sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, less pay for work of equal value and child care issues. It is also noted that the idea is advanced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank that employed Chao before Bush tapped her for his Cabinet. Their recommendation is touted to save 3.7 million of the 11 billion dollar Labor Department budget. But it seems to me that the 3.7 million dollars savings will eventually come out of the hides of the women who work for their living -- thus degrading the state of laboring people of this country even further.

She also states, "Relations with the AFL-CIO have soured noticeably." She notes that, "The White House lobbied vigorously and succssfully for a fifteen billion dolar bailout for the airlines after September 11, but fought down efforts to help airline employees and the 65 percent of 700,000 workers laid off since September without benefits. The administration effort enraged unions." You bet, and it should enrage them. Everyone who will eventually be an airline passenger should think and remember that though pilots fly the aircraft to destination in a professional manner -- the only reason a passenger makes it to destination is because the employees that maintain and service aircraft are the ones the airlines are trying, it seems, to make peons. Was it the Fram oil filter people who had the commercial? Where the gist was, "You can pay me now, or pay me later," said by a mechanic who advocated changing the oil filter but stood to make a bundle later if the filter wasn't changed. It looks to me that the service people can be paid now -- or the payment of lives will be very high because of the lack of adequate maintenance on the aircraft in passenger service.

She says, "Bush just repealed a rule pushed by unions in the Clinton presidency that prevented the government from awarding contracts to businesses prosecuted for violating federal envioronmental, civil rights and labor laws. Blacklisted businesses are cheering." Doggone right they are.

Further she states, "The White House also is battling labor unions over Bush's nominations of conservative Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to be inspector general for the labor department. Eugene Scalia successfully lobbied Congress to repeal an ergonomics rule for workers, arguing that the engineering science that tries to reduce strain and discomfort from machines for the people who use them is junk." I think her construction is mangled but means that the discomfort, strain and often disability caused by machines the ergonimics people are trying to rectify. Case in point from my view point is carpal tunnel syndrome and the recent use of waist belts which are now mandatory for many workers who have to lift things in their jobs.

Many of these things I have read about elsewhere, it is not just her off the cuff, hairtrigger lip, but seems to me to reflect the realities of our present situation. Any body interested can go to their library and check out, "Legacy Of The Ludlow Massacre" "A Chapter In American Industrial Relations," by Howard M. Gitelman. The mining difficulties were handled by the state militia and by goons as were many strikes in the US in earlier times. Corporate strength has often been backed by police, militia and goons. One of our big business security firms got its start as goons for Henry Ford, it operates yet today, legitimately I presume.

So the forces of government, corporations and enforcement seem to be against a man or woman striving to get a living wage. One ploy now seems to be that corporations are doing spinoffs, getting smaller as they go and laying off union workers. There is no guarantee that the buyers will honor union contracts. The old, "Divide and conquer bit?

That is this old man's opinion. Will we be going into Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times," world and have Labor Less Fruit ? . . . . . . .

Blog