I was watching the news covering the local teachers’ strike. The demands are less about pay and more about decent working conditions for teachers and students. Ridiculous that teachers feel the need to bargain for HVAC in ALL the public-school buildings. The city has been nickel and diming and basically ignoring so many of the physical buildings that this has become a major point of contention. Bet the administrators all have air conditioning in the 90+ degree weather…
It brought back a close encounter with a group of entitled white guys sent to talk to the clericals at the University out of unionizing, trying to convince a bunch of low paid women that joining a union couldn’t possibly be in their best interest.
The bullsh*t session wasn’t very memorable but I very distinctly remember parking behind the Lamborghini those a@@holes had the nerve to drive onto a public university campus. I know for sure it was them as we followed them into the room. (They made enough of an impression that I remember the head a@@hole’s name was the equivalent of Bill Strawberry.). There wasn’t much of a stomach to unionize in those days, our salaries were very low – I think I made about $15K a year so there was no money in that miniscule salary to pay dues for sure. It was a truly disgusting display of the gender inequality, mansplaining crap we were forced to put up with back in the early 1990s. We could do nothing but shake our heads and go back to the office sadder and no wiser.
Even more to love: Around the same period of time, the staff had to attend a meeting with a very snarky and highly disliked male head of Human Resources concerning salary and compensation. It was a huge lecture hall, 90% full of women who mostly worked clerical positions. After an hour-long talk by this fool, someone asked a question about how increased skills and responsibilities were going to be compensated as technology (read computers) was becoming a required skill across campus. This joker’s answer was that “any little yellow woman swinging from a tree in the jungle” could do our jobs. I kid you not. Really… In other words, who did we think we were? People with valuable skills? He saw us as interchangeable and replaceable. The disrespect was palatable. The racist remark left us speechless. There was an audible gasp in the audience. I think I recall that this creep wasn’t in charge of HR very much longer after that…I guess that was something….
Shouldn’t shock you that I remember his name as well…
He was “promoted” and eventually given a staff award posthumously.
Ah…the good old days.
NOTE: The irony didn’t go unnoticed that the person who replaced Mr. HR was an Asian-American woman…
Khatzkel Did It 