Doing Nothing in America

I was raised to believe that a person worked hard all through school, and then worked even harder after school. Eventually all of that hard work would pay off. Both of my parents received their degrees while I was in my teens. Both parents worked full time jobs, and both parents worked hard and sometimes long hours. You see in my household that was normal, so I picked up on it. From the time I entered the workforce at 13; I was consistently praised for my hard work, and my work ethics. I received the typical attaboy from supervisors, and was even promoted several times. I’m actually happy to say that I was only let go from two jobs. The first was due to a disagreement with the store owner, and the second was due to a reduction in spending by the branch I happened to be working at. Neither job has really adversely affected me, and I’ve learned something different from each experience. Needless to say I have no problem working. Even now I work weird and sometimes long hours. I enjoy what I do and that helps, but I would still work just as hard even if I hated my job. That’s just who I am.

It’s for this reason that I just don’t get today’s society. Ok first off let me just say I’m not some old guy pining away about yesteryear. I’m only 37, but even I remember a time when Americans worked for a living, heck we wrote songs about it. Today’s worker doesn’t seem to want to do a heck of a whole lot. Some are happy sitting around complaining that Mexicans are taking their jobs, but are unwilling to accept and do the work that Mexicans do. Some are all too ready to point the finger at Washington for letting their jobs go away, but don’t want to acknowledge what drove those jobs away in the first place. Truth be told America has lost its edge in the workforce. This used to be a country where workers took pride in their craft, and loved putting out a quality product.

Just look at the American automobile. There are cars still running from when I was an infant, cars still running from before my time. Heck I see more 60 – 70’s Camaros and Mustangs than I have of their 80’s counterparts. Try buying an American car now and keep it for 10 plus years, within 3 years it starts to make noises it never made, and run sluggish, I know I own one. Compare that to the Japanese cars like Honda and Toyota, which run forever with very little maintenance. Where did the pride in our work go? What happened to all of that American ingenuity? Personally I feel it was taken from us. Gone along with the jobs that fostered it.

You see Americans used to take pride in their work, and work hard, but over the years certain organizations stepped in to try and “help” the American worker. These organizations told the American worker that they were better than the work they were doing, and deserved more money for doing it. This gave the worker an over inflated sense of value, and pretty soon that job, that put food on the table, was beneath them. Eventually these organizations “helped” the workers get more breaks, and much higher pay for the same job, all the while making the bureaucracy between the worker and management expand. Unfortunately these new prices were higher than the employer was willing to pay, so the work went elsewhere leaving the American worker angry and disenfranchised. Along came Washington, and promised more jobs, so they gave tax breaks to companies who hired American workers, but even that didn’t bring back the jobs, so they continued to promise. Promise a new day is dawning, promise the jobs are coming, promise to fix the problem created when the American workers created a union.

Let me give you an example of how much inefficiency is involved in union labor. Some years ago I was doing installations for call recording systems. A typical install would take about 5 days of steady 17 hour days. It was hard work, long hours and way too much travel, but I was good at it. On one occasion I was sent up to NY to install one of these recording systems. Now mind you we had this down to a science, Days 1-3 were for actual server and phone line setup Day 4 was for serious testing and debugging, and Day 5 was for wrap up and acceptance.

This trip turned out to be completely different. This trip actually went down as my worst and best trip ever. Our first day in NY my partner and I met up with the local field office and took the train over to the worksite. Upon arrival we found a typical server room with none of our equipment in it. Now usually we’d have the equipment drop shipped a week in advance and it would be waiting for us when we got to the site. No such luck this time. Getting the equipment upstairs took about an hour because the work had to be performed by someone in the union whose job it was to unload and move the equipment.

While this was happening my partner and I decided to start punching down some of the 200 plus phone lines that were needed for this task. It was then that we were informed that someone from the union had to do that and we weren’t even allowed to touch the phone block. When the equipment finally arrived, I began to unload it only to be told that I had to stop because I was taking a union workers job by putting the server into the rack. This trip went exactly like this, for 4 days. Every time I was ready to work, I’d be stopped because I was not union. To make matters worse the union people who could do the jobs I couldn’t, were always on breaks and were required to leave the building at 4:45 pm. I found out that they needed the 15 minutes to get back to their office and clock out on time. You see if for some reason they clocked out late they would automatically get time ½ for the first hour regardless of how much of that hour they worked. There was a really intricate pricing scheme for how much they could make, but it’s been some time so I don’t really remember it all.

Now with no one in the building after 5 my partner and I were free to roam NY and take in the sites. Having grown up there, I knew the city well enough and still had friends and family in the city. That’s what I meant that this trip was my worst and my best. It truly was the worst place to work because of all of the union regulations, but those regulations allowed me to enjoy myself more than on any other trip. Having worked for a union, when I lived in NY, I was familiar with how they functioned. But that was just one local for one store; I had never seen how multiple groups functioned when forced to coexist.

That being said it’s no wonder that jobs have slowly and steadily moved oversees. Personally I’d be hard pressed to allow that kind of bureaucratic nonsense at my company. You see companies make money when companies are efficient. Having multiple layers of red tape reduces a company’s efficiency and costs it money. I’m not saying that the guys I worked with were lazy. In fact they seemed every bit as annoyed by these rules as I was, well some of them anyway, but for the most part I can see how this could breed the current society. Imagine a society of people who feel they should be paid much more than they deserve to do a job. Imagine a society of people who don’t show up or bring business to a halt when they don’t get their way. That is America.

For all of the good that unions have brought to this country, they have also done this country some serious harm. You see its one thing to demand safe working conditions. It’s one thing to want overtime for working longer hours. Those things are fine, they’re expected, but we as a country have gone overboard and the unions have essentially priced their workers out of a job. Like every other bureaucracy the unions have become what they were never intended to be. They have become a hindrance to the American worker, and the worst part is that they have been coddled by the American politicians into believing that they deserve to exist. Let’s be honest, Washington goes out of it’s way to speak to these union workers and get them on board with it’s vision.

Am I against the workers? No I’m against the unions which have hurt the workers. If the average, blue collar, American worker wants to know why they closed down the plant that put food on his family’s table, they need look no further than their union rep. Unions have bled American companies dry and forced them to go elsewhere. American companies have moved manufacturing jobs to places like China, Mexico and Korea because American workers cost too much. Heck I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but can you really blame them? Why pay high taxes on employees, deal with inefficiency, and union regulations that have gone way too far, when you can get people somewhere else for a ¼ of the price?

My question to American politicians is this; Why not tell Americans that? What’s so difficult about saying to the American worker “Listen I want to bring jobs back here, but companies are tired of dealing with American taxes and unions” Yesterday I argued that if we as a country went to a fair tax system, we could lower the cost of doing business, for American businesses. This is just an extension of that argument. If we can somehow break the hold that unions have on us then we can lower business expenses even more, and bring more jobs back to this country. With lower taxes, fair wages, and less bureaucracy; I feel that the average American company would rather bring work here to America than ship work out. Every time a company ships a job out it takes a risk. For manufacturing jobs that risk is copyright or patent infringement. Some countries, like China, have a history of looking the other way when it comes to knock offs. This costs companies money, but is accepted because it’s considered a tradeoff of doing business.

There are many benefits to keeping work within the United States. For one it keeps American money in America, where American workers can spend it on American goods. There’s also the issue of training and education. Depending on the field, Americans have a much better education than most of their third world counterparts where these jobs end up going. Then there’s the language barrier. Being a software developer, I’ve had to work with people all over the world, who contract out to my employer. Some of these people are easily understood, and easy to work with. Some have difficulty getting their meaning across and cost me time spent on translating their intentions.

What is the solution to this problem? First we Americans have to realize that we will not be paid executive salaries for entry level positions. We need to understand that certain jobs are going to fetch a higher salary, and that the only way to those jobs is through hard work and schooling. Second we need to be willing to take a job that we see as “beneath us” because the truth is we need it. America needs to produce again. America needs to get back into the business of designing and building things again. That is what made America great, that is what will make America great again. Just think right now we buy and spend more than we make, how long can America live this consumer life, without becoming a supplier of anything? Finally the unions need to dial it back some. Give up some of the "rights" they've won, because Americans need a place of work more than they need 3 coffee breaks, and tripple time after 6pm.

We Americans have to learn to accept our particular place in the grand scheme of things, and remember that nothing is permanent if we’re willing to work for something better. Right now you might be a worker drone slaving away in a factory, but after some hard work, and night classes you too can be the suit that gives the orders and gets to leave early. That’s the beauty of this country; the only limit is the one we impose on ourself.