I was listening to a Commonwealth Club speech on NPR tonite. The speaker was John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO. He is on some sort of anti-Bush road trip called "Show me the jobs" or something. He brought with him a couple of out-of-work tech employees, who spoke about their previous jobs and their current lack of jobs.
The woman used to have, as Sweeney described it, a "$90,000 per year technology position" and now she is unemployed. She worked as a senior QA employee at Palm. Palm hired a bunch of Bangalore-based QA people, who the US-based people had to train, supposedly assured all the while that there would be no job cuts. Then, much to her surprise, seven months later, she was 'terminated' (I think that means laid-off).
She talked about the difficulties of not working. She is also a parent of a six year old with sickle cell anemia. How to explain to him that they need to cut back? What does that mean to him? Well, she told us the harsh regime that she was forced to impose:
1) Less eating out
2) Chess Club instead of Tae Kwon Do
3) No more private school (which she said she feels is the best way to prepare kids for the 21st century workpace).
Ok, let me get this straight. A speaker for the AFL-CIO, the largest government employee union in the country, is explaining how difficult life is for her and her family is now that she is unemployed, and the worst thing that has happened to them is that the kid is now forced to go to public school. The irony abounds - public schools can't even pay teachers based on merit because of the teacher's union. That's right, the UNION.
Ignoring this irony, the bigger point is that things just didn't seem that bad for her. I was waiting to hear her say that they lost their health care, which would obviously be a huge issue given her son's sickle cell anemia. But she didn't mention it at all. I was waiting for her to say that they lost their house, had to move out of their apartment, didn't have enough money for food or other basic staples. She said none of this. Just less eating out, Chess Club, and public school.
I sympathize with her position. It sucks to be out of a job. But for the government to intercede, things should be really bad. 10-15% of the citizens in the US don't have enough food. 10-15% of the population of our country is counting pennies every day. Every dollar these families save at Walmart means more food on the table - one less night that the kids go hungry. Is it really fair to protect this woman's job - so that her kid can go to private school and Tae Kwon Do - at the cost of another family or families going hungry?
Protectionism has a cost and this is a big part of that cost. These poor families may not be connected enough to grab the headlines, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at May 1, 2004 12:37 AM