Tonight, as I sat around getting tired enough to go to bed, I read a little story in the New York Times that rather puts the library employment situation in perspective. The dateline of the piece was Jefferson, Wisconsin, and the subject was wage givebacks by packing plant workers at the Tyson Foods sausage plant in that little town of 7,500 souls.
Tonight, as I sat around getting tired enough to go to bed, I read a little story in the New York Times that rather puts the library employment situation in perspective. The dateline of the piece was Jefferson, Wisconsin, and the subject was wage givebacks by packing plant workers at the Tyson Foods sausage plant in that little town of 7,500 souls.
It seems that Tyson’s management, which is to say the folks who represent the stockholders, are insisting on the reductions in pay and benefits for the same reason dogs chase their tails: because they can. They can because the endless cycle of catch-up and fallback that we call our economy is presently working in favor of the employer. Though profits at Tyson are good, they are not good enough for the company. Tyson is seeking to drop starting pay to nine dollars an hour from eleven, and cut the maximum wage to ten dollars from thirteen. That, and they are demanding more worker contributions to health care and retirement.
Perhaps you have never worked in a factory; maybe you have not labored in a packing plant. Thirteen bucks an hour is what we pay some people in our libraries, but they aren’t doing that sort of work in Jefferson, and nobody would argue that they are. You can lose a hand in a packing plant, or an eye, and even if you don’t, you go home tired as hell every night and it’s a lot noisier and nastier than any library you’ve ever worked in. And rural Wisconsin isn’t so cheap to live in that nine bucks an hour is good money. Nine bucks an hour isn’t good money anywhere north of El Paso.
They are getting the shaft in Jefferson, Wisconsin, right now. Some of us are having a hard time these days who work in libraries, too. The difference between Jefferson and wherever you work or would work if you could is at once great and almost insignificant. Give that some thought, and don’t forget about it when the cycle turns and you’re doing well enough so that you don’t have to worry about the end of the month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/11/national/11LABO.html?hp
Michael McGrorty
Recent Comments