The words of the profits

In the 90's, I had a pretty good job with a decent, rather progressive construction company that I shall call Ratmo Construction, LLC for the purposes of this post. 'Progressive' somehow has become an ugly word these days as republicans spew it out of their mouths calling anything that keeps us from falling back into the 19th century, progressive. (Then they spit, making a mess of their computer screens).

Ratmo actually treated us pretty good during the Clinton years. They offered us a Simple IRA that they matched our contributions to,  to the tune of 3%. One year they surprised us by rewarding us and instituting a Paid Time Off policy where we could earn up to a weeks paid vacation. Every six months I was eligible for 50 cent raises. Insurance was free for individual employees and reasonable for familes. Twice a year they would cater lunch for us and all the other trades on big jobs. Closer to home, they sprung for pizza and pop at meetings when the IRA or safety was discussed. Christmas meant a company party at a fine dining establishment. So what happened?

GW Bush happened. All these goodies began to go away about the very moment he took office. It was as if I memo went out that day: "Fuck these motherfuckers! They can ALL be replaced!"

This was true. First they went for the 12 man finishing crew, laying off ten of those guys and subbing out the bulk of the work to an outfit that employed illegal aliens of the Mexican persuasion. Word was that a consultant had consulted this idea to them. Yes, it does make business sense at many levels to not have responsibility for your employees. Not paying workman's comp for them is a huge savings alone. No PTO, no drug tests- no etc. etc. etc. All this works well for the Chinese I might add before any repugs in the non-reading audience get too patriotic. In fact, they do it better....

The finishers were a warning that most all of us were finished as well. We were regularly warned that we could be next. In fact, saying 'good morning' to our diminutive boss, Little Jimmy, usually was met with the response: "Y'all motherfuckers can be replaced by Mexicans!!!" instead of the usual, 'And good morning to you!' Little Jimmy hadn't changed with the appointment of Bush to the presidency. He had always been a prick. The only difference was, his prickness was now sanctioned from the top tier of the company. The idea was to get us to quit and not be eligible for unemployment. But, that didn't take. As I used to hold my hand up about five feet three inches in the air, one inch above Little Jimmy's head, I used to tell him: "You must be this tall to fuck with me." 

Well, that didn't help my association with him but, after five some years of him being him, it really didn't hurt either as you might think. He was a prick no matter how nice you were to him. Might as well have some fun. Have you ever seen me on Topix? LOL!

The handwriting had been on the wall since they fired the finishers. They got me and 15 of the painters  in February of '02 with Little Jimmy citing 'Osama Bin Laden and 9/11...' as the *reason* until I, speaking for the crew, told him to shut his fucking midget mouth up. That the company had him, all by his little lonesome, break the news to those of us who had bothered to show up that day spoke how little they cared about his life, nevermind our own. He was visibly shaken from the get go.

Laid-off, I collected unemployment and may or may not have supplemented that with cash from working for a house painter. I'm not sure about that....I just remember having a lot of money after that. Maybe I invested well.... I worked for other companies after that, some in similar size to Ratmo but none as good as Ratmo had been in the 90's. Are any companies close to that good today? Well, construction is hurting, of course, but evidently all the employee-fucking changes that probably happened at your job too didn't actually keep that from happening, did they now?

And they're still not done with us yet.