This past Saturday, Mrs. RVFTLC and I were doing some errands and as we left the local Starbuck's (remember, this IS California and not a Dunkin Donuts this side of the Rockies!) to go across the shopping center to the cleaners, we were about to be accosted by some solicitors.
From a distance, I could see one wearing a t-shirt referencing the so-called 99%. That was a cue to steer clear of these two guys. Yet Mrs. RVFTLC kept going toward one of them unessesarily. As the gentleman was about to hand some propaganda, he asked if we wanted to join them in a protest that was scheduled for today. When the man said that it was to save 200 postal worker jobs, to my shock, Mrs. RVFTLC said loudly, "I don't care!" Then the man asked "You don't care about people who may lose their jobs?!" Then she said tersely, "NO!" and we kept going.
As we were doing our cleaning business, I saw that the propriator had a propaganda brochure on the billboard.
It is the save the Pasadena Mack Robinson post office processing center from closure.
Now since that article, there appears to be a compromise that would keep the actual post office open, yet close the processing center portion.
No matter what, up to 200 jobs could be lost.
Now Mrs. RVFTLC is not a rabble-rouser on these subjects. I mean, one the reasons that I blog is because she can not take my discussing current events. So, I was surprised at her reaction.
Oh, insert memo here to Mrs. RVFTLC.
As I explained to her, I never engage with solicitors no matter what the cause is. Even if is something I may agree with. If possible, I have the ear buds in the ears and when I do have the potential encounter, I simply raise a hand to say "No thank you." so they do not bother me. Once you stop for one, you end up stopping for them all. And since this usually occurs on my lunch hour at the day job, it precludes me from really doing so. Thus I explained that to Mrs. RVFTLC.
Now, I asked why she was so upset.
And she said, paraphrasing, would these people be there to save my job? How about your job?
I pondered that and said, well of course they would not.
Mrs. RVFTLC works for a non-profit. I work indirectly in the medical field for a for-profit company.
Oh, neither of us are in a labor union. For there is not one at either of our jobs.
And in thinking of it further, that is what really bothers me about the so-called defenders of the so-called 99%.
They really do not care about the real people that make America work.
What they were doing was standing up for government, unionized employees who have been riding the gravy train for many, many years.
As noted in the linked article, the United States postal service ran a $5,100,000,000 deficit in 2011. The only reason it is not worse is because the USPS has been making cuts through attrition mostly. And some post offices have been closed.
But the reality is that mostly because of people being able to pay most bills online, even read their newspapers, books and magazines online, the USPS has taken a huge hit. Throw in FedEx and UPS, and it is an even larger hit.
And it is not sustainable.
FTR, Mrs. RVFTLC is not really uncaring about people that may lose their jobs. But it is seemingly worrying about people that had been feeding at the trough for a long time now. And not willing to make nessesary cutbacks to maybe have some stability.
Ideally, the USPS should become privatized and thus it would be competitive with FedEx and UPS.
But they do not want to. And their patrons in congress do not want to make the tough moves that might save the USPS.
Some of the moves maybe having to cut jobs.
But again, what if my wife's non-profit were to make cuts that she and some of her co-workers would lose their jobs? FTR, it came really close a couple of years ago and she and her co-workers had to take pay cuts essentially to keep their jobs. Now things are better and she even got a raise.
Would these same people so concerned about postal workers be trying to save my wife's job?
What if the same scenario I wrote above were to happen to me?
Would these same people so concerned about postal workers be trying to save my job?
See, this is the real world that the government unionized work force has no idea about.
We who are at will employees can have our jobs ended if it has to be for whatever reason.
See, I do not blame the postal workers at all. Their union sold them a bill of goods for many years and regretably for these people, to coin something a pastor once said, the chickens are coming home to roost.
We are sympathetic to the workers, but we can not be saying that their job is so important we have to continue going through unsustainable debt to keep them employed.
Now as I write this, maybe we should have engaged the man and explained why we thought the way that we do.
And to ask a simple question.
Would you be protesting if we had our jobs threatened?
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