TRASHING EXPERIENCE

There are many from both political parties that strive to be bad ass  in trashing skill and experience as having worth in the workplace.  The latest examples point out how wrong they are.. The NFL referees who they thought could be replaced from flunk outs in the panty league. Real successful wern't they.?

A personal experience of how training is discounted in civilian society.. When I got out of the Navy a nuclear trained Chief Electrician, I applied to Idaho Power for a job,, the Chief of Ops placed no value on my Navy experience and didn't hire me..What it took was an in, I was selling appliances for Sears and Roebuck , when a Navy Reserve recruiter came calling.. I didn't know him and told him I wasn't interested , but he kept coming back.One day he asked me what it would take to get me to join,, I then found out he was a dispatcher for Idaho Power..so I looked him in the eye and said get me a job with IPCO and I'll join, two days later I had a job and in 6 years had a top end job with them.. Problem is they held 11 years of training as nothing , still pisses me off to this day.. 

Then of course we jump to Rahm Emanuel's attack on Chicago teachers on  the lines of Walker in Chicago...where both tried to jam  reforms down the teachers throat.. In Chicago the teachers brought him to his knees and he finally caved.  The teachers in Chicago have seen where Rahm wanted to go , he loves the Arnie Duncan route, fire everybody , rehire few, and replace the rest with teachers supplied by a private company (supposedly trained by them) and just by coincidence they were non union.  Fortunately in Wisconsin most of what Walker tried to do has been found unconstitutional .. 

The linked story tells how even union janitors when replaced with non union workers they were shocked when they returned... I have experienced the same effect of janitors in the power plants I worked in ..In the early days they were government employees making a decent wage.. The ones I worked with took pride in the power plants they maintained (two janitors 5 plants)  They were replaced and things turned to shit.. Hell you were reduced to emptying your own  garbage can and brought clothes pins to use when you went to john.  They pretended to save money and ended up getting their asses reamed by some pretty high up people who were shocked at the condition of the plants, because they had seen what they should look like.

The next brilliant idea  was to contract out maintenance work. Problem is they always had to send at least one gov worker with them and after they had to rework jobs they decided it was costing them money to contract out.. 

The attack on workers has been going on for 32 years, started with Regan busting the traffic controllers, who had some valid complaints they could not get resolved , so they struck, and were replaced... A change you can still see the results of today. Every president since then has  been out to destroy the work force, Clinton who  in my opinion was the worst of all, with his NFTA, GATT, WTO and deregulation of the financial markets.

The attack has reduced the household income to 46 K a year barely enough to provide the basics of life for a family man.. I am not sure a single person can do  very well on 23K.  With the outsourcing of 5 million blue collar jobs the middle class has been virtually  destroyed and then the CEO's have the balls to say they cannot find qualified help.. gee I wonder why.  When they destroyed the jobs , unions were destroyed and training ceased.. Check out the school systems today there is virtually no vocational training provided .. and damn little guidance given except get thee to college without a clue in the world what you want to study because you have no world experience.. 

We had better get our heads screwed on straight and start producing blue collar folks tuned to this century.. Manufacturing is coming back and talent is one thing they are going to be forced to build on their own... Many other countries do Germany for example.

As soon as manufacturers figure out you have to spend a buck to make a buck we will be back on the road to middle class.