The UAW and GM have been negotiating. Biker Buddy called this morning to say they were probably going out on strike at 11 AM. He would have to walk the picket line. At 11 AM, I heard on NPR that in fact the UAW has gone out as of 11 AM on Nationwide strike against GM for the first time since 1976.
I started crying when I heard the news. I guess I'm worried, more worried than I realized. Maybe it is bringing up old stuff from when my father was out on strike so often and so long against American Locomotive when I was a child. Strike times were scary times for me, my father home but not on vacation, pacing, worried, low on money. I was more scared then than I realized until just now.
My father finally changed jobs and went to work for General Electric instead. He worked at Knolls Atomic Power Labs, and changed again when we weren't allowed to go fishing in Canada because of the high security of the work he did. This was not as much a financial issue, but a matter of principle. He did not feel like a free man, and he wanted to be free, so he moved his family at a critical time in my life--I lost an opportunity to go to France as a foreign exchange student, was no longer in honor society, etc.
None of this has anything to do with Biker Buddy's circumstances, and my current ones, I hope. Except that they strongly affect my feelings about it and I am still in useless, pointless tears.
5 comments:
I was thinking of you and Biker Buddy when I heard the news. I hope the strike is short and ends well.
NPR had me in tears on my way to work this morning with a WWII story about a soldier who took pictures when freeing a concentration camp.
I hope the strike is short (is that the right thing to say?).
YES, we hope the strike is SHORT and ends well for the workers us, and also, somehow, for the company because if the company goes belly up, no jobs.
One of the things at stake is biker Buddy's JOB! (They want to eliminate it!) Another is our health coverage.
I missed NPR today, I don't listen when BB is home--he doesn't like NPR.
What he doesn't like is blabbing on the radio of any kind--he reads the NY Times instead, but rarely tells me about what he reads.
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