Posts Tagged ‘work’

The In Box front page

Weds news roundup: Union deals and paper

June 5th, 2013 by Nora Flaherty
Photo: David McDermott, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Photo: David McDermott, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Hi! Since this is one of my first days back from the vacation you may or may not have noticed I took in the last few weeks, I’d like to say that I heartily regret that I wasn’t during this year’s Lake George Elvis Festival, which ended Sunday.  I love me some Elvis (and some Elvis love) and I seem to be away every year.

But moving on. What else is going on in the North Country today? Well, SUNY and the union that represents more than 35,000 of its white-collar employees have reached an agreement. They’ve been working without a contract since 2011, and the agreement passed with 77 percent of those who cast ballots voting yes.

North Country Now reports that SUNY’s new contract with the UUP (United University Professions) won’t give said professionals a raise this year, but they’ll get two percent increases in 2014 and 2015; they’ll pay more for health insurance and be able to opt out if they’d rather be covered by a partner’s health insurance; and they’ll receive lump sum payments of a few hundred dollars.

In other labor news, Lewis County legislators approved a four-year contract with more than 500 workers at the municipal hospital. The deal between the county and the Civil Service Employees Organization (CSEA) and the county came after about two years of negotiations, the Watertown Daily Times reports. CSEA workers have been working without a contract since January of 2012, and while they won’t get a salary increase for this or last year, they’ll get two percent increases in 2014 and 2015. Lots more detail in the article.

And from the “no kidding, really?” file, the Glens Falls Post Star reports that Glens Falls-based company Finch Paper, which employes about 650 people at its plant, isn’t happy about a proposed law that would, among other things, allow drug providers to provide prescription information electronically rather than on paper. The Safeguarding America’s Pharmaceuticals Act of 2013 passed the US House overwhelmingly on Monday in a voice vote.

The paper manufacturer reached out to North Country reps Chris Gibson and Bill Owens before the vote, asking them to oppose the bill. In a statement, the paper quotes Finch Paper President and CEO Deba Mukherjee as saying:

There are a number of problems with this bill, and we hope our congressional representatives will take prompt action to correct them…By eliminating the use of paper for these vital health care communications, the bill will take away a key source of business for the printing paper industry.

What’s more, the bill will force senior citizens and everyone else to seek out vital information about their prescriptions online, even if they are not comfortable using the Internet or have poor or no Internet service.

FYI, the bill does require that printed instructions be provided to patients if they ask for them. Chris Gibson didn’t return the paper’s calls for comment, and Owens wasn’t there for the vote but says he’d like to see the part of the bill Finch is objecting to be removed. The version of the bill apparently doesn’t contain the language.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Morning Read: When the glass ceiling wasn’t even made of glass

July 18th, 2012 by Brian Mann

Lilly Ledbetter has become a symbol of the equal pay movement in the US. (Photo: Wikipedia)

It’s sort of weird, right, that in the year 2012 equal pay for women has become a campaign issue in the presidential race?

But the facts remain the facts:  In modern America, women are still paid roughly eighty cents for every dollar paid to men in comparable positions.

The Democratic and Republican parties are feuding over what that means and how to deal with it, not least because women have emerged as one of the defining voter blocs in national politics.

This week the Plattsburgh Press Republican offered some context for this discussion, recalling that just 25 years ago women weren’t even allowed into Rotary, one of the country’s most influential civic and business organizations.

We asked Rotarians from time to time in the ‘80s why women hadn’t been welcomed into the club, and a couple of older members said then that admitting women would douse the exchange of off-color humor.

In their editorial, the Press-Republican noted that a quarter century ago, women comprised some of the city’s most prominent business and civic leaders – and yet they were excluded.

That’s not a glass ceiling.  That’s just good old fashioned discrimination.

“Restricting who can join based on superficial criteria is anti-American and just plain bad business,” the article concludes.  “Every organization should want the best — not just half of the best.”

I wonder if someday soon we’ll look back on the equal pay issue in a similar light.  Is it good business to pay an equally talented worker a fifth less than her male counterpart?

As always, comments welcome.

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Work of the eye, the hand, the mind

April 30th, 2012 by Brian Mann

This morning, we begin a two-week exploration of people in the North Country who still pursue what we’re calling traditional work.

The truth is, I’m still not quite sure what “traditional work” means.  We’ll talk with a blacksmith, a clock repairer, a taxidermist, and on and on.

All of these are practical arts that have their roots somewhere before the industrial revolution, before automation and standardization got together and gave birth to mass production.

In a fuzzy sort of way, I think of this as work — once a deep part of the human experience — that unified the eye, the hand, and the mind.  It was practical labor, for the most part, but also creative.

The artisans I’ve interviewed all talk about their process as an exploration.  They take risks.  They’re not making widgets, after all.

My feelings about this kind of abor is complicated by the fact that it’s a club I can’t join.  I have always had what I call “stupid hands.”

My father could do anything with his hands, from milking a cow to repairing the PTO on a tractor to stringing a barbwire fence.  He had an instinct for it.   I get befuddled trying to turn on a vacuum cleaner.

(My one distinctly uncool hand-eye skill is that I can type like a house on fire.)

Which is why I think it’s so remarkable that many of the folks we’ll be profiling over the next couple of weeks are self-taught.  They’ve revived and mastered arts that were fading away, or already consigned to dusty old books.

There is, in fact, a healthy tradition in New York of reviving traditional arts.

The Byrdcliffe Colony near Woostock was established in 1902, with an eye toward resisting the uniformity and tedium and ugliness that often comes with industrialization.

A century and more later, some of us are still swimming against the tide.

I suppose it’s an open question how much this kind of work actually contributes to our modern economy here in the North Country.

How many of our neighbors make part of their living with a pottery wheel or by making lumber in their barn or by rebuilding antique clocks?  Maybe more than we think.

Whatever the dollar value, it’s heartening, especially to those like myself who can only admire, that so many people in our small towns take up these traditional labors.

There is a rootedness in it that lies beyond romanticism.  It is a form of memory that is muscular and practical and beautiful all at the same time.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments »