Really dude, cough up a few bucks will ya. Take it out of Linda’s checking account, she won’t notice.
How many people worked for nothing last night? NOTHING! NATCH! NADA! Why were they volunteering? Oh right, Pedro from Guatemala was making about $12.00 an hour throwing the rag on doorsteps each morning but there’s a guy out there who says he can do it for $10.50 an hour.
In the meantime Linda and John think its a swell idea if all the people who have suffered though buy outs, sales, lay offs, pension cuts, and stagnant salaries were not “asked’ to run around pre-dawn hours and deliver newspapers. FOR NOTHING! NATCH! NADA!
It will show what a family we truly are. And what a neat idea for a column? Oh this will be so much fun.
Anyhow, allow me to say what everyone at Morrissey Blvd is thinking.
“Hey Boss, how about a little something for the effort? Ya know what I mean string bean?”
Now me personally I think anyone who delivered for John and Linda today should find and extra thousand buck-a-roos in the envelope this month.
Hey Linda from Lynnfield, you better tell your hubby how it works. I mean those businesses on Rt. 1 don’t operate on the good will of their employees. Right?
Say it was a typical Thursday at Sleepy’s and the delivery guys say they can’t work so the boss calls in the sales people from other shifts and asks them to “volunteer” to deliver mattresses for the day.
What fucking planet is that guy on?
So I ask you Mr. and Mrs. Henry, what makes you and your paper different than Sleepy’s and their mattresses; and what makes your employee’s interchangeable and free?
bob-gardner says
but you’re way too nice to the scabs who delivered the Sunday Globe.
merrimackguy says
They are joining many other local institutions in doing the same thing. The guy that delivered my Jordan’s furniture is no longer a Jordan’s employee- they made him buy a truck and hire his own helper. He make less than he did. CVS delivery people are employees of transportation biggie Penske. You’d never guess because the trucks say CVS.
I think it sucks but appears to be yet another inevitable trend.
sabutai says
I mean, if the people who could do something about it decide it’s inevitable, then I guess it is. Because fighting for a sustainable middle class is just so…icky liberal.
merrimackguy says
Refuse a furniture delivery? Boycott CVS?
Note that FedEx has gone with the self-employed contractor model as well. Plan on avoiding them?
That’s a lot harder than canceling your Globe subscription.
Do you remember all the “buy American” efforts? That turned out to be problematic in any number of ways.
If you have a good suggestion I’d be happy to hear it.
centralmassdad says
Fighting for a sustainable middle class is a political issue. Locally, we elect reps to our federal government who seem, mostly, to believe in this, but it is not a party priority, and they are a minority party anyway.
And, we elect reps to our local government who are decidedly opposed to this type of thing, as seen most recently on the other thread.
So that pretty much leaves boycotting CVS and the Globe. Good luck with that.
merrimackguy says
Even those who are still employed in good jobs are finding their health care costs skyrocketing, not to mention living costs of all kinds- utilities, housing, education, etc.
merrimackguy says
should be POTUS
centralmassdad says
and has largely been abandoned for new left liberalism which does not really prioritize economic issues such as this, although Bernie Sanders may be going some way to change that, which would be an interesting development.
Unfortunately, the constituencies for old-left economic liberalism and new left “rights” liberalism don’t make a stable coalition now any more than they did in 1968.
Ultimately, I think that makes Sanders likely to be a flash in the pan, who might have some impact on the positioning of the eventual nominee, but probably not so much on the long term future of the Dem party.
Christopher says
It seems that both sides of liberalism that you cite are united by the theme of speaking up for those with traditionally less of a voice in our system whether it be workers or demographic minorities. The trick is to make sure they don’t see themselves as mutual competitors.
centralmassdad says
really??
The entire intellectual concept of a “new left“– which has come to almost totally dominate liberal, and certainly Democratic, thought for the last 40 years– was self-consciously set in opposition to the working class “old left” that was seen as insufficiently revolutionary after having been bought off by the welfare state.
The new left viewed the intellectual elite and the counterculture as the agent of revolutionary change (hence the turn away from New Deal-style socialism toward New Left civil rights, women’s rights, etc.) and the old-left “working class” as a counter-revolutionary enemy to be defeated. Setting the dated “revolutionary” rhetoric aside, they still do.
They weren’t wrong, as amply evidenced by the last few decades of American politics amply demonstrate. Where do you suppose the “Reagan Democrat” came from, and why has it since morphed into “steadfast Republican”? What happened to the stalwart Democratic constituencies such as Catholics?
The hypothetical coalition isn’t so much unstable as it is explosive and hostile. How many of the people in this picture do you suppose voted for Democrats all the way back to FDR (if old enough)? How many do you suppose voted for McGovern?
sabutai says
CVS is only a problem if workers don’t fight back.
mike_cote says
The purpose of Blue Mass. Group is to develop ideas that will invigorate progressive leadership in Massachusetts and the nation. Robust debate is an important means to that end. We welcome bold, constructive observations. To us, this means commentary typical of thoughtful discussion between acquaintances who may hold differing views on important issues, but who debate those issues in a respectful manner. Insults, personal attacks, rudeness, and blanket unsupported statements reduce the level of discourse, interfere with our basic objective, and are not permitted.
How does calling the owner a “cheap bastard” or implying that his wife is nothing but a gold-digger, how exactly is this in keeping with the policy of BMG?!?! I strongly suggest that it is in violation of this “so-called” policy!
HR's Kevin says
I don’t think that policy every held quite so strongly with public personalities who never interact on this site. Given the obvious money saving motive in the Globe’s change of delivery vendors, calling Henry a “cheap bastard” doesn’t seem all that inappropriate, and I don’t actually see anything in this post that implies that his wife is a “gold digger”.
Mike, I know that Ernie can be obnoxious at times, but I think you are getting a little trigger happy.
shillelaghlaw says
mike_cote will complain.
It’s as incontrovertible as Godwin’s Law.
Pablo says
Cheap bastard is nothing more than shorthand for “1%er who buys the paper to increase his self-importance, and tries to balance the hopelessly unbalanced books of a newspaper company by reducing the pay of delivery people who are already paid well below a living wage.”
jconway says
But she ain’t missing with a broke figure
mike_cote says
So exactly why wouldn’t she notice? I mean really.
HR's Kevin says
At most, he is implying that Linda spends a lot of money. I see nothing there that even remotely implies that she only married Henry for his money. He might have called her a golddigger in some other post (it wouldn’t surprise me), but he didn’t do it here.
If you are going to go in pedantic mode against Ernie you cannot suddenly start making stuff up. We all know you hate Ernie, but you have lost your perspective and have lost to much of your own credibility by attacking Ernie regardless of the degree of the offense.