Re: LRO: Overworked and underpaid

From: Bryan Hoult (bhoult@peoplepc.com)
Date: Thu May 31 2001 - 20:10:47 EDT

  • Next message: christian147@juno.com: "Re: LRO: Overworked and underpaid"

    Interesting contrast in subject delineation between Tom's point of view and the opinions apparently held by Marin and Peter. Tom has referred to social/political action and effect only with respect to his personal situation. While Marin and Peter have discussed the effects on all of us as a whole.

    Probably not a Rover topic, but interesting none the less. (especially after a few beers on a hot day :-)

    Bryan
    62 88
    70 109 "Genie"

    On Thu, 31 May 2001, Tom Gross wrote:

    >
    > Ok that's it. I've listened to this crap long enough from Olgive and Faure.
    > I worked for the government, United States Forest Service, as a fire fighter
    > until I was 39. I don't recall feeling particularly fat or underworked
    > after pulling 24 or 48 hour shifts digging hand line in steep mountain
    > terrain, breathing smoke that seared my lungs. I was burned over once. I
    > don't remember feeling coddled when I wondered if that final roiling,
    > broiling, coppery colored cloud of dust and smoke was going to be hot enough
    > to kill me. I don't remember feeling particularly lazy when I was running 5
    > miles a day so that I could be in good enough shape to last through 45
    > minutes of initial attack on fires in the Sonoran Desert in the summer
    > before I got sick from the heat. I don't remember looking around and seeing
    > too many slackers on the line.
    >
    > My father was a non-union carpenter in Phoenix, Arizona (a "right-to-work"
    > state) until the day he said piss on it, and retired at 63. He was grateful
    > for unions so that the wages paid to non-union carpenters would be a little
    > more than what they would have been had there not been unions. He worked
    > hard and got laid off at 55 after an idiot who had enough money to buy the
    > business where he worked, but not enough brains to keep it afloat ran it
    > into the ground. There wasn't any health insurance for him, my mom and the
    > 4 kids still at home while he scrambled to look for work at his age. If
    > he'd been in a union, he'd have had health insurance. Today he'd at least
    > have had some protection thanks to those bleeding-heart tax-and-spend
    > liberals who worked for COBRA.
    >
    > In 1966, when I was 18, and just out of high school, my father got me a job
    > working at the mobile home factory where he worked. About 2 weeks into my
    > new job I stuck my middle and index fingers into a radial arm saw. Most of
    > it was my fault, but some of it was due to an incorrectly set up saw.
    > Afterall, you can get a couple more inches of cutting travel if you set the
    > backstop back under the blade a little farther. That way you don't have to
    > buy a bigger saw. Think of it, I might not be able to flip off Faure and
    > Olgive with the short middle finger if there had been an OSHA around in
    > those days.
    >
    > You know boys, "Survival of the fittest." has its place, but humans are
    > conscious beings. We can see that maybe the carnage left from laissez faire
    > in an industrial society may not be in the best interests of everybody, and
    > certainly not in the interests of those that aren't fit enough.
    >
    > So, please keep your warmed over Ronald "S-head" Reagan rhetoric off a list
    > that's supposed to be about keeping our vehicles going down the road.
    >
    > I apologize to the list for this rant, but these guys don't seem ever to get
    > called on this stuff.
    >
    > Tom Gross

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