Am I the only one offended by the cartoon in the latest Railfan?
Railroad engineers and Teamsters making a railroad pres sign a contract since he is wearing concrete shoes. The bags are labeled Hoffa Cement!
I can't believe they would even consider printing such a cartoon. It offends everyone.
I have canceled my subscription.
Roger Kujawa Morton, IL.
Roger,
While canceling your subscription, did you indicate you were doing it as a protest?
Not having seen the cartoon -- I haven't subscribed to the magazine for a number of years -- I cannot comment on it, but I would also think a letter to the editor would also be worthwhile.
Dieter Zakas
Do you always sweat the small stuff like that? You must not have much to do to get miffed by something like that. I can't say I am offended by it, so it doesn't offend everyone. Maybe you can explain just exactly what you found offensive about it.
EMD
As a member of the BLE&T (the new name for the BLE now that we're part of the IBT), I'm certainly not offended. With all the givebacks we've endured over the past few years, I actually find the cartoon to be entertaining ... so much so that I may ante up for a subscription.
It would be money much more wisely spent than on a rag like Kalmbach's "Trains" which prints carrier or UTU propaganda like it's gospel.
Ask any rail employee about how wonderfully the carriers treat their employees, and you'll see why you're probably one of the few who will be offended.
Dear sir, I heartily agree. On the rare occasions when I read a copy of TRAINS, I find it frequently hauling carloads of sappy market-speak. I find that after a strict regimen of diet and exercise that the average human -- myself included -- can endure up to several hours of this claptrap without suffering permanent damage, but it is a dangerous risk at the breakfast table.
Cordially yours, Gerard P.
If it's so horrific to work for the railroad, why do you or anyone else?
Charles
Why does anyone work anywhere? What a stupid question. Does that mean that working conditions are on par as per pay or benefits compared to better years for labor? It certainly doesn't "Charles".
Read & educate yourself, you can keep your big behind right in the seat and do a few good searches right on the net if you really are that interested. Won't be hard to do. You will find that craft Railroad employees are taking a beating , like many other forms of labor in the USA while the big-wigs get bigger the craft rank-n-file (in what's left of unionized labor) are getting less and less to maintain a middle class standard of living. They are getting plowed over by corporate greed. Like it or not that is the fact.
People work at places based first on getting a paycheck & benefits, next because of passion or desire if they are very lucky. If they are not lucky they end up with no choice but Wal-mart, one of the many new jobs created when the government states how many new jobs are expected this yr, they ain't talking about a new Ford Plant or Maytag factory they are talking about low wage/part time/no benefit service retail Wal-mart or Burger King Jobs. DEAD END ..."Mcjobs" as Webster's recently added in the dictionary. That's why some stay at a decent paying Railroad job compared to the excellent salary and job availability in our new world order. Doesn't mean its all that good, its not a model HO layout. You have no life, nothing new about that aspect of the job it has always gone with the territory of railroad employment. But changing work rules in favor of management giving less of a cookie to the labor and pay step levels that are declining. Yet the work is just as demanding and a $1.00 doesn't even buy a half gallon of gas now in some places.
In fact almost all of the class I's are hiring train crews, check out there websites for info on how you can apply and see how your big behind does. Or .....
Charles why don't you go get a pt job at a local Wal-mart and report back on why people work there and love working there, and are grateful their jobs are gone at the local Caterpillar tractor factory or whatever formerly good employer was in town and how much you enjoy working at Walmart and can't dream of leaving such employment.
Sarcasm will get you everywhere, Mike
You might want to look at the trend in upper management "compensation" these days. They used to only get maybe 12x-20x the lowest employee. Now it's several zeros larger. Not to mention the golden parachutes and other goodies. All the bottom end gets is "do more with less" demands.
The state of Oreg>If it's so horrific to work for the railroad, why do you or anyone else? >
-- Jim Sherman xROADKILL snipped-for-privacy@zYAHOOa.COM < remove lower case letters, then use what's left AS lower case
The hurrider I goes the behinder I gets; which makes sense because the older I gets the more behind I gets. And I is gettin an old behind!
I'm not picking nits nor do I want anyone to get another job.
The problem is that people come in and rant about union jobs, life sucks, my job sucks, etc, etc. They come from places where half their town lost their jobs at a factory. Because of this, they make blanket statements that "ALL PEOPLE are going through this horrible mess", "EVERYONE has a McJob now who is below management", "Middle management is screwing EVERYONE". They spend the last half of their life thinking this.
Well, not everyone has a factory job. Not everyone hates their job. Not everyone has been forced to work at Wal-Mart. SOME people like their manager.
The person who started the rant made a blanket statement. Even you have by assuming if you want another job, you can't get one and must flip burgers. It's a cliche.
Then it would seem to me you or your sister would rather be at the top. What are you doing to get there?
Fair is fair. It has nothing to do with whether one wants to be at the top or not. One does not have to be the captain of the ship to know that there are icebergs.
Jim Stewart
OK, I read your reply. I personally know at least 20 people who fit the profile I described. They know their jobs, they're very hard and loyal workers and they are senior enough to demand decent salaries because they don't screw up and they don't have to be lead by the hand through everything they do. They all got replaced by kids who know squat and got paid squat and now the companies they worked for are foundering because they can't compete. No one will even grant them interviews because they're "over qualified". None of them can get past a preliminary HR department review (by a pimple faced kid who asks questions he doesn't understand the answers to from a script) and the interview is always terminated at the point of salary requirements because they made more than an entry level wage at their last job and the new company won't hire anyone above that level. If you're in an industry where that's not happening, then you must be an undertaker.
-- Jim Sherman xROADKILL snipped-for-privacy@zYAHOOa.COM < remove lower case letters, then use what's left AS lower case
The hurrider I goes the behinder I gets; which makes sense because the older I gets the more behind I gets. And I is gettin an old behind!
Well boy, what is she doing to increase her job skills so she can have those things? I've heard a lot of whining of "she'd like, she'd like" but have heard nothing of what she is actually doing to get them. The world is changing and job skills have to change with it. Maybe those department heads with "excess income" got themselves an education and worked their ass off to get to where they are, instead of simply whining "I want this" and "I want that."
things?< Well normally profs are PhDs and usually department heads are PhDs so I'm curious what increase in job skills you had in mind? Department head is usually a political position.
Actually, I've heard that "industry" is going through some retrenchment. Lots of consolidation and buyout / forceout stuff in years past, and now either people can't afford to waste so much money on overpriced body boxes, or else [alas, pretty unlikely] they're getting wise to the scam.
Myself, "funeral directors" are even worse parasites than merger and acquisition specialists or derivative brokers or NeoCon think tankers or Scientologists. Well, maybe they're not really worse, especially than the last two, but they're right up there in the running.
You hit that one on the head. Politics is "specially" nasty in an academic setting, too. And she is a PhD. And she's published. There's just a huge gap in pay between people who do a dept. head's job but don't have the title and those who have the title and spend their time schmoozing upper management.
Clearly our friend hasn't a clue how things work in the real world. In the case of those folks I spoke about who couldn't get jobs, increasing their skills is actually counterproductive. If they're "overqualified" more skills would seem to be a no-no. The only path they have open is as consultants and they're a vanishing breed due to budget cuts.
-- Jim Sherman xROADKILL snipped-for-privacy@zYAHOOa.COM < remove lower case letters, then use what's left AS lower case
The hurrider I goes the behinder I gets; which makes sense because the older I gets the more behind I gets. And I is gettin an old behind!
I suppose she should find a different place to teach, increase her publishing or change her research focus, or otherwise make herself more desirable to be hired at another institution...
I've seen academia up close. It blows. It's more political than a Presidential election, but that doesn't make it hopeless. One just needs to be open to change, or total bullheadedness....
Jeff Sc. Ivy Walls, Ga.
Don't bother to reply via email...I've been JoeJobbed.
Most professors I know agree that if you don't have tenure after seven years, it's time to move on.
Not necessarily, if she deserved tenure and had the desired skills/contacts/grant-writing capability, she could do quite well.
Don't bother to reply via email...I've been JoeJobbed.
Get a PhD and get political.
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