Lack of Asian workers complicates union deal

Philadephia Inquirer ^ | 12/24/07 | Jane M. Von Bergen

[Kid Shelleen]

Being Asian, a contractor and a businesswoman, Vicki Lee would love to get her hands on some of the $700 million that will be spent to expand the Convention Center. But, she won't be bringing any unionized Asian bricklayers to the job site, ---snip--- If the mostly-white building trades have been slow to bring African Americans into unions, they have been beyond molasses in recruiting Asians.

And Asians have not been pushing to join unions, nor have their leaders agitated for union jobs the way African American leaders have.

[Bulldawg Fan]

Remember that liberals and leftists believe your ability is directly tied to your race. And white guys are at the bottom of the list.

And dont forget that this is the city that hates Boy Scouts because of their traditional values.

How much of the contracts are reserved for gay bricklayers? Surely Philly’s wise government didnt forget that group??????

[flowerplough]

At our medium-sized, rural factory, owned by a multi-global corporation, the only “minority” is white women. There are a couple blacks and Asians among the workforce, but 98% of the non-white faces are engineers or managers recruited from elsewhere. Management gets diversity fever once in a while and goes thru race-and-gender gyrations every so often, but they’ve learned not to announce numeric goals, because their goals, no matter how low, have never been met. We’re so far out in the woods that there simply are no minorities to hire, and many of the recruited professionals assigned here seem to feel it’s a test or initiation, or even punishment.

[big'ol_freeper]

Ah socialism. It is so hard to make it work just so.

[Sender]

You can’t sterotype a whole group of people, but many of the Asians I have known came here with very little and worked hard and “ate bitterness” until they ultimately became successful. Their mentality was very different from the union worker mentality. The very idea of unions and strikes and demanding more for less is alien to them.

[Calvin Locke]

Isn't Philly the city that decided to install waterless toilets in a city building, but the plumbers union complained, so they also installed civilized toilets as well?

Or did they just run the non-working plumbing to the waterless ones?

[BeAllYouCanBe]

You all can laugh at this if you want but it isn’t funny. I work with a Chinese lady that grew up in rural China. She applied to many US institutions of lower learning. Was educated at U of North Carolina and didn’t pay a single penny for 4 years of college.

I call it the, “diversity discount”, but unless you ask you won’t get it.

[Kid Shelleen]

I am not laughing. I work with a Chinese guy who never paid a cent for both graduate and under graduate work and is not even a citizen.

[DeLaine]

Not only do we have to hire them, we have to beg them to join the union too?

[bboop]

Oh, WAAAAAAHHHH, the mostly-white trades. Honestly, such whining, in this day and age. Many variables here: 1. Must have graduated from high school; 2. Must be able to do math; 3. Must want to work hard. 4. Must be at work when hired.

As a teacher, knowing full-well some of these variables, I would like to know if any of THEM were studied, too. Racism is the ‘why’ that is assumed here, but it is only one of many possibilities.