May. 11, 2002 - 16:31 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Double Barreled

Just thinkin', for a long time a phone company has been hiring foreign workers, while citizen workers have been in the process of "lay-off," doesn't seen right to me but it is a fact.

There are sometimes many sides to any situation and these kinds of things have differing opinions by either of the sides.

One observation, long time ago was that the American worker and especially the UNION types have caused wages to be so high that corporations must put their operations off shore. Room for argument there, if you want to stand in line to say your piece. For years work has been put offshore, once I was looking at one of the finished products where I worked and determined that many of the parts were made in factories off shore. This was in the seventies.

The steel industry is another place that fails to employ people here like it once did. Even freighting it in from overseas the purchase price is much less than steel made here.

There have been I think, abuses from both sides. Workers have for ages tried to get more wages for less work and fewer hours. But, every good thing that workers now have is something that was fought for by unions which often resulted in loss of homes, bloodshed and death to some of the workers - companies often supported by militia, or local police.

Even people working at non-union companies have eight hour days, five day work weeks, vacations and wages near to what union shops have. Otherwise how else could these employees be attracted to a non-union company ? So, on one side we have workers who want more pay for doing less work, which is a distortion of the union ethic. There has been what is called feather bedding which kept people on jobs no longer having any work attached, slow downs and other things of that ilk. But along with that are corporations who attempt to hire part time workers giving no benefits that the full time workers have and fill in the gaps by hiring more part time workers when the other part timers must be let go as their max months of employment run out. Essentially a corporation could run their whole business by the use of part timers, who get no benefits, no pension accumulations with a skeleton crew of full timers. Even if the part timer is paid the same wage as the full time employees, the part timer is losing financially in the long run.

I have, over the years, worked on both sides of the fence even to the extent of being a joint owner of a business. As we ran that business we were approached by a very anti-union organization trying to enlist us in their cause. And knew that such aims were being actively pursued by other organizations. "But on the other hand," as Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof sang. One of the jobs I worked as a production worker I saw some of the machines and operations moved to one of the company's plants in a, "Right To Work," state where wages were lower. Instances where one employee saw someone actually trying to do a days work and saying to them, "Don't kill the job." There have been instances of harassment interfering with production.

Mandatory overtime has been something that always did stick in my craw. I once worked at a company which would partially shut down for yearly maintenance work, work the employees almost around the clock, no days off and would turn employees back at the exit gates. Those were the times that cots would be set up, meals brought in. Each unit there, in turn would be shut down and maintenance work done on them. Made summers a type of torture. Men who would moan that there was no overtime then when yearly shutdown came would moan that they wanted time off. Even in one of the most favorable, decent and fair companies which this one was, things didn't always go smoothly. There was right on both sides, the company needed experienced people who knew that particular place and the environment to do the maintenance as the work had to be accomplished in the most rapid manner to avoid a lag in the output. Tevye again said, "But, on the other hand," working ten or more hours a day, seven days a week for the best part of each summer exhausted the employees regardless of their overtime pay. They needed time off for rest, recreation and family matters. Due to that kind of operation, mistakes were made by tired folk causing much delay and sometimes accidents would happen because of the consequent fatigue brought on by continuous hours and days worked. The mistakes would still happen when the employess went back to their regular work and schedule for a length of time.

So anyway, this phone company has long been hiring foreign workers (on permits), sending some work overseas (software type) , apparently preparing to ship more sork and jobs over there. Yet they are losing money and the stock is almost junk now. I guess that is part of the problem here, now. Two sides in opposition neither wanting to give ground. One side shipping parts of its business overseas, the other side using tactics that in the end are non-profitable for either side.

I do not see how we can bring the world up to our standard of living. I also see that our standard of living will be going down as our jobs are shipped out and wages go down here. So, I guess the bean counters and their bosses -- the unions and their leaders, are unwittingly pointing at all of us shot guns, Double Barreled . . . . . . . .

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