Working
Too few writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2002/borders/talk/dialogue008_be.html
and Studs Terkel
http://www.studsterkel.org/
have actually experienced the life of working class Americans (for want of a better term) and shared it with us:
Sadly too few people that I know these days have had, as did my generation, the actual experience of sharing in the hard working life that is now threatened both by outsourcing and the denial of those critical supports necessary for those who still live it.
Because my generation -- the "silent" one -- was still engaged in the macho atmosphere that the vets returning from WW2 and continued on by the Korean war returnees had brought to our elite colleges, we sought out summer jobs that brought us directly into the blue collar world.
I had summers in which I built houses for factory workers, cleared timber, blasted things, packed crates in a major aircraft plant, drove trucks, did back breaking work in a major scrap metal operation, considered but rejected a tramp steamer venture, work in a Vermont asbestos mine (they knew that asbestos kills, but tried to persuade us that short term work was not hazardous and tempted us with triple normal wages), etc.
Through these jobs I got to know a variety of men (few women were still allowed to compete after WW2) ranging from Texas ex-oil field workers (one of the worst and most dangerous of jobs), new immigrants still picking up English, some African Americans in the scrap metal job who were ordinarily banned from blue collar work then, but who had been especially brought on board by a caring Jewish employer, Michael Suisman of Suisman & Blumenthal West Hartford, Connecticut:
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Gargzdai/warrelief.html
and a diversity of other working Americans who tended to travel where the jobs were. We worked together and became friends, as did my mates at the Oxford railroad station where I did some 7/12s as a heavy freight porter (several were killed by the midnight express as they were pulling a wagon across the tracks the week after I quit).
I had several life-threatening near misses -- a barrel filled with lathe parts weighing perhaps 1000 lbs. broke loose from its cable and fell 15 feet to sink six inches into the ground between an elderly African American and me who had just loaded it and the guy who replaced me at the aircraft plant one day when I went to apply for a fellowship was killed when racing fork trucks squashed him at an intersection. I worked hard -- two of these jobs at once one summer, 6/16 with an hour commute each way -- but my body was still young and able to take the strains.
What I learned from this experience, however, is being missed currently by those who have not done the same.
Hard physical work wears down the body. Many are disabled along the way. We were not allowed to lift at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft (even back then because of possible liability to the corporation) more than 30 lbs. because more weight could cause serious harm to one's back and Workman's Compensation laws passed during the New Deal had provided protections at a cost to the employer in minimum incomes for those disabled -- threatened now by Bush's games with Social Security?
The typical hard physical worker is probably going to find himself unfit for such labor somewhere in his fifties and certainly by his sixties when the worn down body begins to show its frailties. Thus, to extend the age at which one can receive Social Security benefits is point blank discriminatory against those who do hard physical labor!!!!
And to fiddle with the assurance of support either needed along the way for disabilities or at the end of a hard-working career is the cruelest kind of games playing by the spoiled brat of rich parents who sent him to a prep school where his most extensive physical activity was apparently jumping up and down as a school cheerleader!? How contemptible to have Bush "cashing in his capital" now, as he puts it. That capital is not his. It never was. It was his daddy's and grand daddy's passed along to one who was never taught to share anything but the self-indulgence of those who have inherited rather than having had to do an honest day's work!
And I hate to think where that capital came from in the first place. Our Hartford insurance companies got their start with the slave trade:
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-reparations.artsep29,1,5387061.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Did the Bushes play footsie with Nazi big business?
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_08_31_dneiwert_archive.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
They are certainly in deep now with Saudi Arabia where they look not to be spreading much in the way of democracy!
http://cvilleindymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=357
Only in Amerika!
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2002/borders/talk/dialogue008_be.html
and Studs Terkel
http://www.studsterkel.org/
have actually experienced the life of working class Americans (for want of a better term) and shared it with us:
Sadly too few people that I know these days have had, as did my generation, the actual experience of sharing in the hard working life that is now threatened both by outsourcing and the denial of those critical supports necessary for those who still live it.
Because my generation -- the "silent" one -- was still engaged in the macho atmosphere that the vets returning from WW2 and continued on by the Korean war returnees had brought to our elite colleges, we sought out summer jobs that brought us directly into the blue collar world.
I had summers in which I built houses for factory workers, cleared timber, blasted things, packed crates in a major aircraft plant, drove trucks, did back breaking work in a major scrap metal operation, considered but rejected a tramp steamer venture, work in a Vermont asbestos mine (they knew that asbestos kills, but tried to persuade us that short term work was not hazardous and tempted us with triple normal wages), etc.
Through these jobs I got to know a variety of men (few women were still allowed to compete after WW2) ranging from Texas ex-oil field workers (one of the worst and most dangerous of jobs), new immigrants still picking up English, some African Americans in the scrap metal job who were ordinarily banned from blue collar work then, but who had been especially brought on board by a caring Jewish employer, Michael Suisman of Suisman & Blumenthal West Hartford, Connecticut:
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Gargzdai/warrelief.html
and a diversity of other working Americans who tended to travel where the jobs were. We worked together and became friends, as did my mates at the Oxford railroad station where I did some 7/12s as a heavy freight porter (several were killed by the midnight express as they were pulling a wagon across the tracks the week after I quit).
I had several life-threatening near misses -- a barrel filled with lathe parts weighing perhaps 1000 lbs. broke loose from its cable and fell 15 feet to sink six inches into the ground between an elderly African American and me who had just loaded it and the guy who replaced me at the aircraft plant one day when I went to apply for a fellowship was killed when racing fork trucks squashed him at an intersection. I worked hard -- two of these jobs at once one summer, 6/16 with an hour commute each way -- but my body was still young and able to take the strains.
What I learned from this experience, however, is being missed currently by those who have not done the same.
Hard physical work wears down the body. Many are disabled along the way. We were not allowed to lift at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft (even back then because of possible liability to the corporation) more than 30 lbs. because more weight could cause serious harm to one's back and Workman's Compensation laws passed during the New Deal had provided protections at a cost to the employer in minimum incomes for those disabled -- threatened now by Bush's games with Social Security?
The typical hard physical worker is probably going to find himself unfit for such labor somewhere in his fifties and certainly by his sixties when the worn down body begins to show its frailties. Thus, to extend the age at which one can receive Social Security benefits is point blank discriminatory against those who do hard physical labor!!!!
And to fiddle with the assurance of support either needed along the way for disabilities or at the end of a hard-working career is the cruelest kind of games playing by the spoiled brat of rich parents who sent him to a prep school where his most extensive physical activity was apparently jumping up and down as a school cheerleader!? How contemptible to have Bush "cashing in his capital" now, as he puts it. That capital is not his. It never was. It was his daddy's and grand daddy's passed along to one who was never taught to share anything but the self-indulgence of those who have inherited rather than having had to do an honest day's work!
And I hate to think where that capital came from in the first place. Our Hartford insurance companies got their start with the slave trade:
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-reparations.artsep29,1,5387061.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Did the Bushes play footsie with Nazi big business?
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_08_31_dneiwert_archive.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
They are certainly in deep now with Saudi Arabia where they look not to be spreading much in the way of democracy!
http://cvilleindymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=357
Only in Amerika!
posted by Ed Kent at 4:55 PM
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