What are you working for?
C: Hey, Hyppo. What’s with that “$1” text floating about your head?
H: That? Pay it no mind. That’s just my retirement number.
C: Retirement number?
H: Yeah. It’s like a goal. It represents the amount of money I’ll need to comfortably maintain the lifestyle I want after I retire.
C: And it’s only one dollar?
H: Think that’s too high? I’m trying to keep it real. I’ve got 12 cents in my pocket. Only 88 more cents to go!
C: Good god, man! What’s your plan? You gotta have a plan!
H: It’ll involve a lot of recycling and reuse. And curbs. And a shopping cart. I have my dreams.
—
What are you working for? Sustenance or subsistence? The next weekend? A paycheck on Friday? Enough money to get your wife and/or husband that fancy dress in the store window? Just trying to hold on to the end of the current shift? Or do you have bigger fish to fry?
I have two pensions. I worked at a company 16 years. I started at the bottom and worked my way up. The first 11 years as an employee and then five years as a member of management. That’s 11 years in a union and five years as a company man.
There was a grand tradition at the company. The owner was a legacy and the company grew as it was passed down from generation to generation. Finally it was owned by the Old Man. He liked to pork his secretary. So he married her and then died. It was a bit of a promotion for her. She become the owner of the company. She retired and passed it down to her adopted son who was a bit off kilter and not quite right in the head.
He was also, for a time, on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.
Soon after he sold out to the foreign investors. The end of the company’s legacy and tradition. I’m sure the Old Man’s father would be so proud.
Meanwhile the company was subjected to remarkable shrinkage. And that guy on the Forbes list? He croaked while driving his $2 million car.
In another part of the galaxy, a guru was wondering about his financial future. He had no savings and social security was under siege from all sides. What if, he thought, both of those aren’t there when I need them? The legendary promise of a three-legged stool seemed more like a pogo stick. Then he remembered. His pensions!
He called his union. Yep, the pension was good. They’d send him a statement and even had his current address. Nice.
He tried to call his former company. Oops. Problem. He couldn’t find any place to call. Finally he located a phone number on the internet but it turned out to be some poor sap’s personal cell phone. It must suck to have that phone number. So far he’s been unable to find any trace of his company pension.
For those keeping score:
Union: 1
Company: 0
The guru rested easy. All was right with the world. He had half a pogo stick and some stranger out in the world was most likely enjoying his swimming pool.
Going into Labor
Friends, today I read a passage from the Demotivational Dictionary:
labor union: just about the only people on planet Earth who give a flying shit about the plight of the lowly worker.
–Source: not Wikipedia
What is a labor union?
If we think of the employer/employee paradigm as a formula, on one side of the equation we find power, control, the ability to make decisions, have a hand in the company’s fate, profit, dignity, respect, ties to government, legislation, influence, and much, much more.
The labor union is that which stands to protect all that remains on the other side of that equation.
There may be a lot of power-imbalanced relationships in the average person’s life, but the relationship between employer and employee is most likely at the top of that list. Bar none.
Are labor unions perfect? No. Do they have flaws? Yes. After all, they are comprised of flawed human beings just like every other human-based organizational unit on planet Earth. They are, however, just about the last bastion of hope for the average worker who stands opposed in the face of overwhelming injustice and the imbalance of power.
Like my daddy used to say, it’s enough to make me go burlap.
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Sally Ride
Sally Ride. Source: NASA, circa 1984.
The news of Sally Ride passing was something that hit me harder than I expected and took me by surprise. It had been a while since I had heard about her.
As a NASA booster and a fan of the space shuttle program since it began, Ride was a hero of mine. (According to Ride’s sister she “hated” labels of every kind, including the word hero.)
Described as a “private” person, Ride kept details about her pancreatic cancer from the public eye. She also chose not to reveal that she was gay. She lived the last 27 years of her life in a same-sex relationship.
Ride is often described as “the first American woman in space.” (A Russian woman named Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space way back in June 1963.) Twenty years later Ride did it aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. (The same shuttle that claimed the lives of seven astronauts just three years later.)
Ride also had a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University and took that brain into space, logging 14 days, 7 hours and 46 minutes of flight time away from the Earth.
Sadly, Sally Ride was prohibited in this country from marrying the person of her choice. And because she was in a same-sex relationship, Ride’s partner of 27 years is not entitled to death benefits or Social Security payments.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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