If it bleeds, it leads!

Exactly. At least when you work for a member of Big Three or some other well-of manufacturer, you likely have a stronger union that tops up your employment insurance. Or offers a bigger better buyout. And, when you're putting in rivets eight hours a day, you have little passion, emotion and attachment invested in the product.

 

I wouldn't be so sure about that. My guess is that just about every occupation has its share of people who not only take pride in their own work but believe in the product, in the company and the industry.

When I clicked on the thread I was about to make the point that printers left newspapers peacefully. At a few stops I got to know some of them socially, usually from drinking with them after work. Some of them cared -- one of them is currently an editor at that newspaper --and to my knowledge, not one of them shot anyone. Stabbed, well, I couldn't vouch for that. They did carry knives.

 

Yes, as an employee of a newspaper, you take home or get the product you produced delivered to you every single day. And, people in the community will say "good story" or "paper looked good" or "I can't believe he/she wrote that."

People who build cars don't get that kind of reaction every single day on that kind of personal level.

 

I haven't known anyone who built cars, but I've known plenty who repaired them and took tremendous pride in their work. Some guys just really love cars. I'm not wired that way, but lots of guys are; they have an emotional connection to those things and they tend to find some kind of work in the automotive industry. Gearheads, we called them.

 

Not even close, even among those that require at least some secondary education:

Teachers, social workers, paramedics, firemen, public defenders (consider the education required there) ...

My number one vote goes to cops. It's not anywhere close to fair what they get paid. Imagine working your 12-hour shift and then moonlighting to make rent.

 

Some places pay them a lot, but the question of whether they get paid fairly, who can answer that? My friend the ex-cop is an ex-cop cause he got shot (in the thigh) and they retired him. He sees it as largely his own stupid fault, but still ... they shot him ... missed a testicle by a few inches. What's a fair pay for that?

 

No, just the ones who seem to get real excited about the idea of killing.

 

I worked on an auto line for almost five years. Trust me, no one has a "connection" to the product. Partly because you only see, quite literally, a piece of the car.

Mechanics are different, because, again, they see the satisfaction on the customer's face. They interact with the person who paid for their service. They may even develop an on-going relationship/business with someone.

In an auto factory is the same thing every 40 seconds 700 times a day.

 

I could swear they did a story like that on that TV show DIRT on FX. It was not a staff member but a person the magazine had covered at one point and did not give a shit about anymore.

 

So, your anecdote is pretty much unrelated to the topic at hand?

 

I think it's more than simply pride in one's work or some connection to the product. It's the growing gap between what lured someone into the business in the first place -- righting wrongs, doing some "good" -- and where things are at now. It's also about what many people leave on the table when they choose newspapering as an occupation -- better paying jobs that would be available via an undergraduate degree, career opportunities that might present themselves to folks with strong communication skills. No offense but most line workers at auto makers didn't choose between pounding rivets or going to law school. The "sacrifice" of giving one's best to journalism can be seen (especialy by someone immersed in it) as greater than choosing job A over job B. Finally, there is a strong desire for "fair play" that many in newsrooms seem to have and a value system that says bottom-line profits shouldn't be the be-all and end-all.

So now the industry doesn't have the impact is used to, in large part for its own failings. Work conditions and rewards have gotten worse, in a relative sense at least. And "fair play" is a laughable notion, based on most available evidence. Like whose medical insurance premiums keep going up and who has the golden parachutes (compared to bare minimum severance).

Current ownership and management is seen as the culprits to a lot of the above. If they then lay off a passionate, driven or mucho loco person -- or worse, scores of them -- that easily could be the last straw. Even if we're talking about 0.01 percent of the business. Only takes one disgrunted soul.

I'm just saying, I won't be surprised if it happens. Rather, I'll be surprised if it doesn't, horrible as it would be.

 

Are you implying I believe that about all military people? I assure you that is not the case, and if you read my posts, you will find I didn't say anything of the sort. I said there was one guy, who happened to be an ex-Marine, who seemed overly enthused about the idea of war and killing, and he said he had an automatic weapon. I know many military people -- including a longtime friend who spent last year in Iraq -- who don't scare me one bit. Having known scary guy hasn't made me assume all military men and women are like that.