The Sage Observer

Long-term Jobless

          Reuters, a well-known news reporting organization, has reported today that President Obama will meet with the leaders of more than twenty large companies which have agreed not to discriminate in hiring against the long-term unemployed.

          Wonderful! I’m all for it. Over the years, and especially in current times, it has been reported that companies are refusing to even interview those who have been out of work for an extended period of time. Also, with one excuse after another, businesses are turning their backs on the hiring of older people. It seems that they just don’t quite fill the bill. They are over-qualified, under-qualified, too fat, too skinny, black, white, yellow, and not pretty enough–you get the picture.

Frankly, I don’t know how far our President is going to get with these companies. Keep in mind; these are some of the same companies that hire slave labor abroad at wages less than a dollar an hour. It sure is slave labor. Really! Everything is relative; and, as I have said many times, “A rose is a rose by any other name”. They may not consider (or admit) it is slave labor in the countries where it is being performed; but, relative to wages and conditions in our country, it is slave labor. Believe it! They even lock those poor people in at their work sites–all for the sake of excess profits. And, do you really think they pass all of their cost savings from using slave labor back to the consumer here in America? Their net profits are not only higher; but, so also, are their gross margin percentages. Look at how many people have been killed in these slave factories. Have you forgotten Bangladesh? I hope Walmart hasn’t. The families of these poor people need to be compensated for the loss of their loved ones.

It has been a while. Some of you may be too young to remember; but, perhaps others of you may recall. In 1970, Union Carbide India Limited, UCIL (51% owned by America’s Union Carbide Corporation, UCC), built a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Subsequently, on December 3, 1984, a release of methyl isocyanate gas which immediately killed approximately 3,000 people and subsequently lead to the death of more than fifteen thousand. In February 1989, the Supreme Court of India directed UCC and UCIL to pay the equivalent of $470 million to settle all claims arising from the tragedy. Think about that–only $470 million for that many lives.

Let me make one last observation; and, then, I’ll quit for the day. You have been reading and hearing about the subsidization of fast food workers, other retail employees and low wage workers through welfare payments, i.e. food stamps, healthcare, and housing aid, as well as recommended increases in the minimum wage. Wouldn’t this same subsidization apply to our vast unemployed, out of work because of the outsourcing of labor to this foreign slave labor? Wouldn't it? It would seem to me that employment, i.e. jobs, would be better than subsidization by welfare.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net