I worked for a Burger Chef for two years while I was in high school. The work was hard and fast paced. We had bosses that pushed us very hard. I was paid $.80 an hour and received a raise of $.05 the second year. I often worked 40 hr. weeks. I would work every night till 11:00 P.M. and sometimes cleaned up until 11:30 or 11:45. There must not have been much oversight by the school because no one seemed to care about any labor laws. My grades did suffer and I considered it an achievement just to graduate.
My reward was four yrs. In the U.S.A.F. I decided to make use of the G.I. Bill and started school at Kent State. Sadly the money from the G.I.Bill was not enough to pay all my bills. There were times I went home just to eat a good meal. I decided to drop out for a year to make enough extra money to carry me through the next three years.
I was lucky to get a job at a meat packing plant that used CO2 (dry ice) that was shot into a box of meat usually weighing between 80 to 180 pounds. My job was to stack these boxes on a pallet .To keep the Co2 gas from the rest of the plant our line was in a separate room. The room was monitored with a meter that would ring when the co2 level would reach an unsafe percent of the breathable air.When that happened we would take a break and give the fans and filters a chance to catch up and clean the air. You could usually tell when the level was getting too high because your heart rate would rise and you breathing would become labored.
One busy day the alarm went off. This time, though, the bosses just raised the red line on the meter to a higher level and put us back to lifting these heavy boxes. After work that day I filed a grievance with my teamsters union. They sent a union official and a Dr. to the plant the next day to resolve the matter. I felt lucky to have a good paying job and a union that looked after me and my healt.
After graduating with a double major I started to work in a school district and again was lucky to be protected by a good union. My wife also worked with me but quit, after only one year, to stay at home to raise our two children.
After our children were older, and in school, my wife went to work in a nursing home. At first she was a restorative aide and eventually went from Social Service to an Activity Director. She had no union to protect her and each time her facility was sold (3) she had to start over like a new employee with benefits, wages and seniority. The fourth time, after 20 yrs. Service the new owner decided to get all new workers and replace them with younger people. The accomlished this by treating everyone so bad that most quit and were not able to receive unemployment. My wife held out for a bit but quit because she had no recourse.She had no union to protect her rights. 20 years of hard work git her a kick in the teeth. She even lost weeks of vacation time because she felt she was needed and treated her emplouer with respect.
I told these two stories because last week I read an article that stated that 47,000 GM employees would each receive $7,000 profit shearing checks because GM mad a profit of 7 to 9 Billion dollars last year. Many workers I know are envious of them but not me. I did a little math and found out that the total profit shearing total came out to 329 million dollars split 47,000 ways. That equals around 2-3 % of all profits going to the workers. That seems fait to me. I believe all workers in a business shows a profit should share in the success of their company. When GM lost money all employees were forced to take a pay cut or lost their jobs.
Wal-Mart recently posted profits of over 14 billion dollars last year. Guess what their employees got. Nada, zero, nothing. This is not how Capitalism should work. This is an attempt of business to return to the start of the Industrial Revolution where workers were treated like crap. Did you ever go into a Wal-Mart and look into the eyes of the workers? Many look sad to me and very unhappy. My advice would be to Buy American. Buy GM. Stay away from Wally world or China Mart. Let’s support unions and tell politicians that denigrate or tell lies about them to piss off.
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