Posted on 06/20/2011 7:35:18 PM PDT by Hojczyk
I had to check my paper copy of the Wall Street Journal today to make sure this wasn’t some elaborate prank. Then I double-checked what year it is, to make sure I hadn’t been slingshotted around the sun and found myself back in 1975.
That’s about when I remember it last being routine for Rust Belt lawyers to publicly disparage the skills and education of people from the South. The only thing missing from the op-ed by Chicago-based lawyer Thomas Geoghegan is the word “hick” or “hillbilly.” WSJ is to be applauded for its determination to feature different viewpoints, but Geoghegan’s piece certainly pushes the envelope.
The topic is the NLRB ruling against Boeing moving its assembly plant for the Dreamliner to South Carolina. And it really is as bad as my intro suggests. Go read it, if you think I may be cherry-picking or making a mountain out of a molehill. I’ll wait. OK, here’s that last paragraph again:
Most depressing of all, Boeing’s move would send a market signal to those considering a career in engineering or high-skilled manufacturing …: Don’t go to engineering school, don’t bother with fancy apprenticeships, don’t invest in skills.
In case you miss the point of the piece, here’s another go at it: “We should be aghast that Boeing is sending a big fat market signal that it wants a less-skilled, lower-quality work force.”
Here’s a weird fact, though. There is already a plant manufacturing rear-fuselage elements for Boeing in South Carolina. (The Dreamliner final-assembly plant that opened 10 June is located next to it.) South Carolina also has a BMW plant, a Honda plant, a Bosch plant, a Caterpillar plant, an American LaFrance plant (fire engines and ambulances), and a Daimler plant, all employing highly-skilled labor to manufacture big, intricate stuff
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
If they had said something similar about, um, other types of labor, we’d have a civil rights lawsuit.
How dare this company go to a red southern state, increase its population thus raising its representation. Those southerners vote conservative. How dumb is that? Heavy sarcasm. I’m from alabama and proud. We have fine university that has a top engineering division. War Eagle!
Amen brother, preach it!
To hell with the left. I hope they all lose their jobs and starve as well as their families.
The NRLB is a cancer.
If the author is the Chicago lawyer of the same name that I met a few decades ago, he is/was a big time gambler.
Hope he’s better at winning games than winning friends.
+1.
Thomas Geoghegan needs to be greeted with some good old southern pine tar and some good old southern chicken feathers.
My family has roots in WV and KY and migrated to Ohio, MI, and Washington 3 generations ago. All of them were solidly union until my generation which is belligerently anti-union.
I think culturally it was about fighting the big companies aka “The Man”. The problem is that unions are now “The Man”.
Many parts of Washington will seem like Appalachia.
I read that article in the Wall Street Journal and thought about how the unions ruined rust belt cities like Detroit and manufacturers like GM. Now the NRLB seems to be trying to destroy Boeing and prevent companies from moving to states where the business climate and right to work laws make economic sense.
I was a southerner who was a manager in a national company. I had technicians working for me in a northern state and a southern state. The northern technicians were members of a national union affiliated with big labor. Many of the workers were OK, but others were terribly inefficient (e.g., “ he is not allowed to turn that [simple, harmless] valve; I’m the guy who turns valves”). The inefficient ones didn’t seem to care for the good of the company. I probably had 70 technicians working for me at that location at one time or another, and I knew them all.
On the other hand, I had maybe 25 technicians working for me over the years in a southern state in the same company. They did the same type of jobs as their northern counterparts. The southerners were in a local, non-national union not affiliated with big labor. They would do things that made sense and worked to help the company be more efficient.
There was a difference in attitude between some of the northern workers and all of the southern ones and the unions that represented them. Fortunately the professionals working for me in both states were not unionized, and all worked for the good of the company.
What is it worth 6 Electoral votes versus SC 7 ?
There’s plenty of folks right here on FR that HATE the South and anyone who’s foolish enough to self identify as a Southerner.
To them, we are intrinsically deficient, both moraly and mentally. They will allow us to live, as long as we remember our place, pay taxes to FedGov, and don’t get uppity.
Golly, mister, I always wanted to work on them there aeroplanes. Shazam!
But then again, he wasn't a College Professor either, even though the Media spreads that lie far and wide.
Obama the man is a myth, just like his Economic and Foreign Policies.
Ya got that right. Atlanta in the '70's was a great place to be; a cesspool now.
Yep, those dumb low skilled southerners. Guess Mercedes, BMW, Nissan (Tennessee), Government motors (Shreveport and Dallas) Caterpillar (San Antonio) and all the other companies that have located down here are just as stupid.
And we are so stooopid that none of us ever move north after retirement. Hmmm something goin on here.
btw, roll tide. Both kids born in L A.
I was actually referring to the snot nosed Chicago lawyer that wrote the article in question. It’s one thing to refer to people as ‘bitter clingers’ in the context of a pretentious pseudo-intellectual San Francisco wine and cheese fundraiser ... it’s another altogether to essentially say that southerners are ‘bitter clingers with no talent, skill, or work ethic and jobs from major manufacturers should be denied them so quality doesn’t suffer’ and say it in a major publication.
Unions are on the wane in WV. What has changed is that 50 years ago and earlier people would become trapped in a town. There was no other employer and no way to leave. They were not free. The towns were run by foremen who knew their employers, who never got within 500 miles of the town, saw no reason why they should treat the people working in that town honestly.
Now that people have freedom to move, they can leave the unions and the bad employers.
Also Volkswagen just over the state line in Chattanooga.
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