Jobs, presses and the future of labor
Posted on November 19, 2006
Filed Under All, Technology, My Brain |
The L.A. Times Pressman’s blog has linked to my note about the Chron outsourcing its printing starting in 2009. I didn’t touch on the topic of jobs in my earlier post. It’s a hard issue, and I have some hard experience with same. It’s close to bedtime for me - my chemo regimen starts one hour before bedtime - so I don’t have time, or sadly, energy enough now to walk through this tonight (though in a different epoch I would have stayed up all night to write about this).
For Hearst, this is a decision driven by a spreadsheet: for 230 Chron press men and women, this is hopes, dreams and a better future for their children sitting on the block, and likely gone forever two years from now. I’ve had a foot in both camps - and know from wrenching personal experience that this is not an easy issue. The big bad corporations are not as evil, nor the workers quite as good as a 1950s Union-buster movie would paint this.
Like most real, complicated human issues, there are many, many shades of gray here. There is more danger, anguish, promise, and hope, than a backward-looking union boss might be aware of, and more challenges than a can-do worker might foresee as well. I’ll have time on Caltrain, on my way to radiation therapy tomorrow, to finally write a long overdue piece about this...
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