September 6, 2009
Celebrating Labor Day? Not the nearly 15 million unemployed and untold number of under-employed men and women of our nation.
Read this article, “For The Jobless, Labor Day Is Hardly a Holiday,” posted on the Gainesville Sun newspaper’s webpage, September 5, 2009.
September 5, 2009
I saw this picture this morning (bottom left) in the Yahoo! news and couldn’t believe my eyes! David Letterman has hair!
Upon closer examination I discovered it was Max Baucus, the Democratic senator from Montana. Kinda looks looks Letterman doesn’t he (without the glasses of course; that’s why he’s squinting) ?
Max Baucus David Letterman
September 4, 2009
Oops! I slipped.
Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t me; it was the unemployment rate.
August’s unemployment figures have come in at 9.7% with 216,000 jobs lost in August.
Read the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s report for August here.
August 28, 2009
I was just listening to a Free Speech News Radio (FSNR) report on what it is like in New Orleans four years ago this Saturday after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. The thrust of the report has to do with housing and the city’s redevelopment. The reporter states that 25% of New Orleans’ population has not returned to the city since the hurricane. She also reports that 100,000 former-New Orleans residents now live in Houston.
Housing and redevelopment lagging as New Orleans commemorates Katrina anniversary.
New Orleans will commemorate the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday. Local newspapers report an increase in small businesses opening and the city´s tourism is on the rebound, figures are up from last year, with hotel occupancy at 65 percent in July.
Despite some signs of recovery, rebuilding efforts are still incomplete. Human rights observers in the United States and abroad continue to raise concerns about the US government’s approach to housing and redevelopment. From New Orleans, FSRN’s Sacajawea Hall reports.”
As I listened to the report I was reminded of a photo of New Orleans during Katrina that was taken from a helicopter by a National Guardsman as the copter flew over the flooded city. At the top of the picture is a quote from Grover Norquist of the former Bush Administration. (You may remember some of the Bush Administration’s response, or lack thereof, to the Katrina disaster.)
Here is the photo from the National Guardsman with the quote.
You can listen to the FSRN report in its entirity here.
August 2, 2009
Since I have been working on the construction job, I have gotten some unusual reactions and questions from people. I hope that sharing them does not come across as prejudice or as a attitude of privilege. I share them as a part of the learning experience that I am going through as a white, middle-aged man with two degrees who is working on a construction site on the clean-up crew.
One day I was working with my fellow clean-up man and had to made a quick move to avoid a board that was being tossed into the trash dumpster. My co-worker made the comment that I have pretty quick reactions for a man of my age. (Did he call me old?)
Later that day, at lunch, a man who has spent time in state custody, asked me how old I was. When I told the man I was 57 he then asked me if I was retired. I said “No” and that I will probably work at a job until the day that I die. He then asked me what I considered to be a very strange question. “Did you just get out of prison?”
When I thought about it later I thought that the man’s question may not really have been that unusual a question for either him or the job site. You, see, the man that I clean up with has been incarcerated in the past. The man at lunch who asked me how old I am has also been in prison. Three other men on the job that I know of have been incarcerated as well.
Maybe the man at lunch thought it was unusual for an older white guy to be working 53 hours a week on the clean-up crew of a construction project for $8.oo an hour. In his mind, what other reason could there be except that I had just gotten out of prison? Did his question reflect his experiences in life with people, at work or the racial prejudices that still exist in society? I don’t know; I’m just asking.
These thoughts have been furthered by the reactions and questions that I have gotten from other guys, men with the company that I am employed by as well as men with out-of-town sub-contractors working on the job. It seems that my presence on the job site has been the cause for some discussion among some folks.
For example, when a Hispanic man asked me how long I had been working on this job, he said, “You’re working with a lot of Mexicans.” Was he telling me that construction work is only for Mexican men, or was he expressing amusement that a white guy would work where most of the other men are either Mexican-American or Mexican?
In the elevator the other day, a supervisor with a window company from out of town (a man that I had never seen or spoken with before) said, “So, I understand that you’re a teacher.” It was like, “I’ve heard that you have a ‘white collar’ job as a teacher; what are doing working here?” So, I had to explain to him about being a substitute teacher who doesn’t work during the summer months, doesn’t get paid when he isn’t working and still has a family to feed and care for.
I am sure that the questions that these men asked were honest questions, but do these men, any of these men, think that color, age and background are lines that divide other men into certain job categories, skills or abilities, and income levels? Were any of the questions based on prejudice? I am pretty confident, though, that the questions reflect their individual and personal-experience perspectives from living life and working “on the job”.
I don’t know. I’m just asking.
July 25, 2009
Organized Labor
Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor-those who cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized – do a disservice to the cause of democracy. “
President John F. Kennedy
July 22, 2009
I have recently found a labor-related website that includes, among many things, quotes about labor and unions from famous Americans, both past and present.
I thought that I would occasionally post some quotes from these folks. Perhaps you’ll be surprised, as I was, at the different people who supported labor and what they said in support of working men and women and unions.
The first quote that I’ll share with you in from Franklin D. Roosevelt.
If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union.”
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The website where the labor quotes is found is the American Labor Studies Center.
July 16, 2009
Yesterday I started a job that I am going to work for the rest of the summer until school starts in late August. When the fall semester begins I will return to my position with the local school district as a long-term substitute teacher and detention hall supervisor. I have worked at the district for a number of years. and am thankful for it, but it is a “part-time” job even though I work a minimum of 55 hours per week during the school year. I actually consider it a seasonal job, always looking for something permanent and always in need of employment during the summer months. Hence, my employment this summer.
Anyway, yesterday I started working for a local construction company that is building a ten-story building in the area. I am working on the clean-up crew - sweeping, cleaning up debris, trash and litter, cleaning bathrooms - whatever the assignment calls for. I go to work at 7am and get off at 5:00pm four days a week and from 7am to 3:30pm two days a week. I come home tired, dirty and hungry.
While I worked in a blue collar job in the mid-1970s to early 1980s as a heavy-equipment warehouseman and parts sales person, this is the first time that I have worked on a construction crew.
I had some concerns about the job when I started yesterday. My main concern was the heat. Temperatures in our area have been in the low-100s for weeks now, anywhere from 101 degrees to 104. But as I worked, most of the time inside the building (one floor is air-conditioned) I kept thinking about the farm workers that United Farm Workers has reported about lately, workers who have died from heat stroke in the fields this summer.
While I have the opportunity to speak to everyone on the site, it’s the men that I take breaks and eat lunch with that I’m getting to know. While there is quite-a-bit that I could share about their backgrounds and histories in terms of marriage, children, and encounters with the law, what I will share is that they are all friendly, ready to share their food around the table, hard working and can be very funny. They talk about their wives, children and girlfriends and work at very hard and dirty labor to provide for those they love. They offer me safety tips, advice on how to do my job better and even made sure, my first day on the job, that I was in the elevator to go downstairs so that I could punch out on time.
I have driven by the building that I am working in a hundred times. I have thought about the building itself but never about the men and women who are building the building. Now that I am “one of them” and am getting to know them, I am gaining a much greater appreciation for the working men and women of our nation, the work they do, the wages they earn, and how difficult it can be to make a living and provide for families … especially in today’s economy.
My last day on the job will be August 21. On the 24th I will go back to my job at the high school. On that same day, my new friends on the construction site will be punching in for another long, hard, mostly unappreciated day of floating and taping drywall, stringing electrical wire and cleaning toilets.
July 10, 2009
It has been a long time since I checked the United States Bureau of Labor website for unemployment figures, so I checked them out this afternoon.
The unemployment rate continues to spiral out of control, affecting working men and women and their families across the nation.
Non-farm payroll unemployment continued to decline in June, with 467,000 jobs lost.
The Bureau’s report shows that June’s unemployment figure was 9.5%. This is up 4.6% percentage points since the recession began in December 2007.
The 9.5% figure represents a total of 14.7 million unemployed men and women. The job loss was widespread in manufacturing, professional and business services and construction.
