June 27, 2003
Posted on 06/28/2003 11:23:30 AM PDT by sten
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June 27, 2003
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In little time I found that both my options and expectations tumbled into freefall.... Finally, I was hired for the deli job - for $8 an hour.
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Tonight I'll mop the floor in the deli. It is not really my job - it's Gary's. But Gary can do little with his right arm due to a devastating North Vietnamese rocket attack at an airbase outside of Saigon some 30 years ago. The attack left him severely injured, and he nearly bled to death. But military surgeons made saving the young captain's life and his badly-mangled arm a priority. Years of physical therapy, however, have left him with little use of it. Most of the time it hangs limply at his side at an unnatural angle. His injury, in fact, is remarkably similar to that of another war veteran whom Gary admires - former Kansas Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole.
Gary and I work the same late shift at a grocery store deli in a suburb outside of Seattle. When we're not slicing sandwich meats or cheeses or brewing mochas for impatient customers, we clean and restock. The pace is fast - and there is always work to do. There is also a good deal of reaching and carrying that Gary has difficulty doing. During rare moments when we have time to talk to each other, we sometimes reflect about how life's vagaries led us to this place.
I used to be a technical writer. Most of the last decade I spent ensconced in a windowless office at Microsoft's main corporate campus, where I wrote online Help files or sections for user manuals. During my tenure there I worked as either a full-time employee or as "contingent staff,"; where I was employed by a temporary employment agency rather than the company itself. In June 2001, after my last assignment on the Windows XP team, I decided to take a break after having worked several months on an exhausting release schedule. Microsoft requires members of its "contingent staff" to take 100 days off after having worked at the company for a calendar year. I felt fortunate to be able to time my break with the summer. My required "break" ended Sept. 8, a Saturday. That meant I was eligible to take another Microsoft assignment Sept. 10, 2001. The timing turned out to be monumentally bad. I have not worked as a technical writer since.
I began looking for other jobs. In little time I found that both my options and expectations tumbled into freefall. I responded to job ads for a security guard, barista, carpet cleaner, airport shuttle driver. I rarely even got an interview. Other job seekers responded to the same help wanted classifieds by the hundreds, sometimes even thousands. My unemployment benefits ran out last November, soon after Congress and the Bush administration nixed Democratic proposals to extend them. I began to pound the pavement, canvassing blocks of businesses at a time, filling out job applications. Finally, I was hired for the deli job - for $8 an hour.
After returning from Vietnam, Gary retired from the U.S. Air Force and returned to school, where he earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering and was subsequently hired by the Boeing Co. Like me, Gary came from a working middle-class background, where we were taught that with hard work, education, and determination, we could achieve the comfortable, even affluent lives we sought. For Gary, a disabled right arm - although a hardship - was little more than an inconvenience in his work. He trained himself to write with his left hand. Unlike his father, a German immigrant who ran his own delicatessen, Gary was able to earn his living solely with his intellect. With a head for science and numbers, he excelled at weights and measures. He built his career on teams that designed some of Boeing's latest and best examples of military and passenger aircraft. Along the way he bought a home, raised a family, saved for a secure retirement. He believed in Boeing's future, and he invested much of his retirement savings in the company, as well as with Microsoft, another stalwart of the Northwest's - indeed the nation's - economy.
Often, however, events occur that derail the best laid plans: Stock market corrections. The events of September 11, 2001, and the ensuing recession. Both Gary and I understand this, and we've done the best we can to cope. Not long after 9-11, Gary lost his career due to layoffs, when Boeing sent much of its work to contractors overseas or eliminated jobs altogether. His stock portfolio and retirement savings were savaged when the market went south. Along the way, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. His military and company medical plans aren't what they used to be, so he sold his home and most of his assets to pay his wife's medical bills. At age 61, he is forced to live in a rented two-bedroom apartment, where he also raises a 4-year-old grandchild. His military retirement pay and what is left of his retirement savings at Boeing won't pay the bills. He was forced to turn to the only other thing he knows that he could make a living at - working in a deli. It is union work, so he is eligible for medical benefits. Both he and I now make less in an entire six-hour shift than we once earned in an hour.
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I've sold nearly everything I had of value, and my 401(k) and IRA have been eviscerated. I have very little debt. Still, I can barely pay the bills. I haven't seen a doctor or a dentist in nearly three years.
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I consider myself luckier than Gary. I don't have a family, so medical insurance has not been a paramount concern (so far). True, the lifestyle that included a Porsche and a waterfront house on Whidbey Island is gone. I've sold nearly everything I had of value, and my 401(k) and IRA have been eviscerated. I have very little debt. Still, I can barely pay the bills. I haven't seen a doctor or a dentist in nearly three years. Once companies bid for my services. Now I'm in my late 40s and a veteran of software technical documentation. Apparently, those are not very marketable commodities. In virtually every case I'm aware of where I interviewed for a job, the person who eventually got the job was both younger and less experienced than me.
Of course, now there are significantly fewer technical writing jobs available for which to apply. Certainly there is technical documentation to be done. IT experts from META Group believe companies are holding off for now, but when conditions improve a lot of pent-up demand is expected. But the hot trend in IT is offshore outsourcing. Forrester Research reports that millions of the IT jobs lost will never return and have been - or will be - outsourced to outsourcing giants like India. I've been told by other American technical writers of Indian origin - also unemployed - that they could have all the work they wanted if they would return to India and accept the equivalent of $12 per hour, which they tell me is a very good wage there.
At least I have a job. For that I am grateful, although it relegates me to the ranks of the so-called "working poor." The irony is that while Indian workers make $12 an hour (the equivalent, an Indian tech worker tells me, to about $40 U.S. dollars) and considers that a living wage, Gary and I make only $8 an hour and are struggling to make ends meet. It leaves me to ponder what this says about the priorities of American big business and the lack of concern, or even understanding, of our elected officials.
Often customers who wear the infamous T-shirt or jacket brandishing a Microsoft logo come in to purchase sandwich meat and cheese or fried chicken and a salad - something easy to prepare for a late dinner. I once told one such customer that I had also worked at Microsoft. He just shot me an odd look for a moment, and then he grasped the pound of roast beef I had just sliced for him and hurried off in the direction of the grocery department. I often wonder what he must have been thinking. Did he find it hard to believe what had happened to me? Was he afraid that what had happened to me, Gary, and a growing number of others could also happen to him?
I also wonder what will happen to the U.S economy as the number of members of the so-called middle class continues to grow smaller. Under our current circumstances, neither Gary nor I can afford to buy homes, large appliances, or new cars. We don't go on shopping expeditions to Bellevue Square or to Costco. Buying a $3 latte is an uncommon treat. We are the dropouts of the American consumer economy, and more join our ranks every day as jobs disappear in the U.S., many of which reappear in places such as India, Indonesia or the Philippines.
How will Boeing executives sell planes to U.S. carriers when the number of Americans who can afford to fly dwindles? What plan do Microsoft's leaders have to maintain their company's revenues as the number of those who can no longer afford to purchase new operating systems or Xboxes grows? What becomes of the United States as a world leader as other countries surpass our expertise in aerospace and computer technology? These are questions Gary and I sometimes ask one another as we scrub down the deli at the end of the day when we have a few moments to ponder.
Since leaving technical writing, David Beckman has returned to his journalism roots and is a regular contributor to TechsUnite -when he is not working in the deli.
I somehow doubt that fairness enters into any businessman's decision making.
Read that again and again until it sinks in.
$12USD in India equals $40USD in the U.S.????
That is most interesting! The purchasing power of our currency varies with geography. In India, the $USD is stronger than it is here. Why might that be? Money is credit, and money enters the economy where the banks are when loans are made. Most $USD loans originate in the US when J6P gets a home equity loan or a car loan, or some other loan. Also when businesses borrow for business purposes. It is obvious how easy it is to borrow money, to go into debt. Checked the interest rates lately? Checked the national debt lately? Checked consumer debt levels lately? How much "equity" was extracted from homes in the last three years and converted into interest bearing debt? So America is like a fountain of US dollars. For some reason, those dollars are in demand in foreign countries by foreign workers who view 12 of them the same way our people locally view 40 of them. Neglecting living conditions and infrastructure for a moment, you could still make the case that the differential in value is analagous to the situation where the man who lives near a source of clean water is not as careful to conserve it as those who live far away from the source. Hence, the man will wash his car while those further away exercise water conservation measures. If a source of water were suddenly discovered in that distant land so that people didn't need to come with containers to get it from the source near our proverbial man, you would find that they themselves relax their conservation efforts in step with their newfound abundance. The more they have, the more uses they'll find for it that would once have been considered wasteful.
Since we live on top of the dollar well, we value the dollars flowing from it less than those in foreign lands who have accepted it as money but who live in distant lands. That is why we demand 40 of them for a unit of work of a certain kind, but those far away in other countries are happy with 12 of them.
It might be safe to say that 12 will buy there what 40 will buy here simply because they are downstream where it is dry, and here, we are up to our necks in dollars.
I believe the name for this process is "exporting inflation," and "importing deflation." We are exporting inflation to India, and India is exporting defation to us. They experience their inflation as we did our previous boom, low or lessening unemployment, feelings of hope and optimism, increasing prosperity, increasing prices as the the prices of commodities go up in dollars, which progressively lose their value over time as more arrive on the scene.
Meanwhile we experience our deflation as increasing permanent unemployment or underemployment, a feeling of decreasing prosperity, prices of luxuries dropping as prices of necessities increase, feelings of fear and pessimism about the future, business failures, mortgage foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, a shift in careers as "your services are no longer needed," to whatever work one can get for whatever wage to pay a bill.
Isn't it possible that our problem comes the fact that our government creates inflation? The reason the Indians appear to be "cheap" labor is not because they are cheap and allow themselves to be exploited, but it is because our dollars are indeed cheap here, but strong over there. This creates the opportunity for international companies to take cheap dollars they obtained here probably through borrowing from a bank, or selling bonds, or profits from sales, and transfer them overseas where they are spent to produce things that are consumed here. But they are not spent there as freely as they are here. They are held back somewhat. Instead of paying them $40, we pay them $12. There is an advantage to having access to a source of money where money is cheap, so that you can take it and spend it where money is dear, but our whole system is based on this dynamic and it is what is responsible for the deflationary effects (rising prices of energy and other important things like medical notwithstanding) we experience here. I think you will find the more inflation there is out of the dollar well that is the Federal Reserve, the more pronounced the problem will become. Making our dollar weaker here will only serve to encourage internationals to take the dollars and spend them overseas where the dollar is stronger for geographical reasons...thus, making foreigners busy, while Americans grow more idle and suffer deflationary effect.
But what if there were something that was valued equally by US citizens and Indians and generally well distributed throughout the world? Then the amount of that substance that the Indian would be pleased to accept for a given service should be equal to the amount of that same substance that a U.S. citizen would be pleased to accept for providing the same service. The world at one time used such a substance as money. It is called gold.
If our money was gold (and silver for small change) instead of debt, then our government could not engage in inflation by "monetary policy" and deficit spending. And then by not engaging in inflation, it could not export inflation to other countries and import deflation to us. As long as Americans continue to accept the US government's unconstitutional practice of using things other than precious metals as symbols of value, i.e. money, then you can expect these sorts of dislocations to continue.
And as long as the government tries to fight the effects of deflation here by increasing inflation here, the dollar will only look stronger "over there" and labor look more attractive "over there," and attract business away from here at a faster rate.
This is the proverbial vicious cycle unfolding before your eyes.
Fine. But if your 'decision making' includes undercutting the American standard of living by offshoring your laborforce - you are no longer an American company and should be forced to pay tariffs to offset the 'protection' and 'profit margin' garnered by participating in the US marketplace.
If wishes were horses...
If I only had a brain...
If a face could launch a thousand ships, then why can't I see you?
If, If, If
Perhaps workers of the world should unite?
Yes, those durn "Greedy Corporations" are intent on squashing the "little-folk."
EEEEvil Capitalism is denying workers from getting their fair share.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but something is strange when highly-experienced American tech writers are working in delis for $8/hr while tech writing jobs are going to India for $12/hr. When the author muses about the priorities of big business, he's not questioning their patriotism, he's questioning their profit motive.
I have run into this same kind of discrimination myself, losing jobs whose very 'foreignness' is regarded as a kind of favorable attribute without paying attention to actual performance. And I'd like to know why.
The 61 year old former Nam officer that is a different story. Too many parts that are unexplained to know what caused a disabled man to be working without help either from the VA, Boeing or the State of Washington. Too many unknows. Say a prayer.
Dismissing my statement as an attack on corporations in general is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
My statement, "general culture of corporate greed", was more directed at the Ivy League educated corporate executives that have been indoctrinated into a system that tells them "greed is good".
Unbridled capitalism is ruining our country (Enron comes to mind) and if you can't see that, I have some penny stocks to sell you at $200 a share. ;-)
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