>
>
>Now if you want to be productive and play nice and work together on
>getting some sort of union / organization going I'm right there in the
>trench with you but I'm not just going to lie on my back and be treated
>like dirt because people like you feel that I'm moving in on their turf.
>
Once upon a time, crafts unions -- the direct descendants of the
medieval guilds that liberated their towns and cities from the
serf-owning nobility -- considered it their responsibility to sponsor
apprentices, and employers also considered it their responsibility to
train the next generation of carpenters, machinists, bricklayers, and so on.
Now, in today's America, we pretend selfishness and short-sightedness
are virtues, and we don't believe in apprenticeships or anything else
that might benefit our communities and our country in the long run.
Employees are disposable machines, not humans worthy of loyalty and
long-term nurturing.
We are moving toward a Hobbesian economy, with "Each man at war with all
others."
An absolute free market is fine for economists and billionaires, but it
purely sucks for everyone else.
We should be welcoming interns and nurturing them, not worrying that The
Bosses will can long-term, skilled workers and replace them with interns
to save in the short term. But this is "market efficiency," and Florida
is a "Right to Work (for next to nothing until you drop and get replaced
by someone even easier to exploit) State," so many are hostile to
young workers, seeing them as nothing but competition.
Still, there are a few rays of hope in the gloom:
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/11/2022224&tid=23
I personally refuse to go along with the current meanness. I am not a
Christian, but I believe in many Christian values, and I will continue
to practice them -- and encourage others to practice them -- despite the
efforts of our current political 'leaders' to denigrate helpfulness in
any form, and generally treat the working people of the U.S. like smelly
garbage.
- Robin
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