It's worth noting, from a story in today's Wall Street Journal, that the three flight attendants on the USAirways flight forced to ditch into the Hudson, with all aboard surviving, brought 90 years of collective experience in their jobs. Doreen Welsh, Sheila Dail
and Donna Dent each had at least 26
years of flying. These kind of employees, along with pilot Capt. Sully Sullenberger, are the very ones targeted for layoff — and hiring discrimination — by an increasing number of American employers. Where's that Baby Boomer revolt?
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That experience thing…
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One of the fiendishly clever things the right did over the past 30 years was convince workers that THEY were the problem. How else do you explain a majority of union households voting for Ronald Reagan? Yes, they used race cards and culture-war nonsense, too. But the argument was holistic: if it was in any way “liberal”, it was bad.
Today, in the ongoing aftermath of right-wing utopian governance, workers are often shell-shocked and depressed. They took pay cuts, gave up defined-benefit pension plans, and shouldered more of their health care costs. As Detroit autoworkers are finding out, it’s still “their fault”.
The right did this – and continues to do this – because they seized the media. In the vacuum of community-based journalism, there’s now the group think of talk radio and cable-TV. The core reality of group think is fear of ostracization. People fear isolation and abandonment, believing themselves wrong absent other explanations. Yes, there’s a minor revolt going on against their captors. After all, Obama won. But don’t underestimate the power of the right-wing scream machine. It’s tanned, rested, and ready.
let’s see…
the heroic pilot is a Union member
the three brave flight attendants belong to a Union
the firefighters and EMT’s that did the rescues…yep! Union members.
the rescued passengers were taken to hospitals where
the nurses and orderlies are Union members
.
But the tighty-righties tell us Unions wrecked this country?
Yes, Soleri and Magonista, you’re right.
In addition, experience is bad. We have to have youth because youth is willing to do things that older experienced workers are not. They will make the same mistakes made before them, but that’s OK, we don’t pay them as much. (end irony)
I would make the case that today’s financial troubles were caused by the first generation of management who had no direct memory of the Great Depression and were busy making the same mistakes as those that led up to it. The same type of mistakes, if not the exact same ones. Jon lists them regularly, so I won’t mention them.
Yes, there are new factors, as Jon also points out, but greed is still greed and it still leads people to do the same kinds of things; growing bigger so you can bully the competition, abusing the employees, and cheating on every law you think of.