Letters To The Editor

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Union’s cause is fair and sensible

Re: Devon Alcott’s Nov. 19 letter, “Sympathy for all but strikers.”

Alcott seems to assume that all high-school-only graduates only make minimum wage. I hope his vision of this country never comes true, because if it does and people who cannot get a higher education don’t try to get a better life through hard work, then the soup lines of the Depression will return and the welfare rolls will be full. With all of the increased taxes, maybe he could join us.

The union does not make demands against Kaiser, we make negotiated agreements. Kaiser’s problem is that it does not abide by these lawful agreements. The company breaks them regularly and tells the union to “grieve it.”

Alcott is right on his last point. We did prepare for a strike and would have been foolish not to. We will not cry because we are doing what we have a right to do.

Our strike is against a corporate owner, Charles Hurwitz. This is a man who helped cause the failure of a Texas savings and loan, costing taxpayers $1.6 billion, drained $40 million from another union retirees’ pension and had his logging company’s permit to operate in California suspended for ecological reasons.

We are not looking for sympathy. We would like your support in our struggle against this man. I hope this country does not again turn into a land of haves and have nots. Michael J. Hart Post Falls

I’m thankful for union and its efforts

I wish to thank all of my union brothers and sisters for their continued support for all of us during these trying times. Thanks, also, to the temporary workers who have allowed us to recognize what a wonderful extended family we have become, and for showing Kaiser, unfortunately for you and those who are now injured for life, that we did make a difference.

Thanks to the community for all the undying support given to those of us who have chosen to fight for our rights to fairness, dignity and equality in the workplace.

Thanks to the front line supervisors who are doing our jobs and telling the upper management how much they disagree with what Charles Hurwitz and his troops are doing to the people who’ve kept them afloat for so many years. I hope we get a fair contract for you, the supervisors who know the truth, and for those of us who want the truth and want our jobs!

To those out-of-state workers in our mills: Go home and be with your families for Thanksgiving. Give thanks that you’re now employed by people who will turn you loose for looking like you have free time on your hands, who will treat you like disposable objects, force you into 1930s sweatshop situations. Enjoy the hot and dangerous work, the long hours, the graveyard shifts, being forced to work on holidays, missing the kids’ holiday plays at school - and you get all this for doing a hard job for them.

I will be with my family, at the Union Hall, enjoying a meal with a huge family of union workers. Carol Ford Spokane

Strange ideas about workers’ worth

Re: “Steelworkers, don’t run Kaiser off.”

Who’s running Kaiser off? Who hired out-of-state replacement workers? Who is pushing 2,100 employees out of Spokane for other jobs?

It’s been stated we should appreciate $30,000 a year because we’re not college educated. Many of the company employees aren’t college educated either. They decided to work for the company because it paid better, not because of their education. Does that mean we’re worth less?

It’s sad that $30,000 a year is considered a high-paying job. What does that tell us about Spokane? It tells us that our children won’t be able to live here unless they work for the few top employers. Thirty-thousand a year didn’t put my three children through community college. They were denied financial aid and grants. In 1993, our daughter was denied low-interest government loans. We are the middle class people who pay all those wonderful taxes and supply free college tuition and other programs for many.

It’s strange that the city of Spokane hasn’t been more supportive. The main corporate people are sitting in California, hiring replacement workers from outside this city and state.

Labor and materials are the main cost in every business. Spokane has too many companies that don’t invest their high-yielding profits into their work force. Companies that take care of their work force don’t need a union. Companies that have a track record for taking advantage of their work force do have unions. Work at Kaiser for a month, then tell us what you’re worth. R.E. Johnson Newman Lake

Steeleworkers only after fair share

Most of us have never had to experience the trauma of a labor strike the way the United Steelworkers members at Kaiser now do. Kaiser hourly workers made concessions in the 1980s when the company was faced with financial troubles. Now that Kaiser is basking in profits, it demanded more concessions in the proposed contract and spent millions preparing for a strike.

Kaiser follows in the footsteps of many other American corporations. Can you spell “profit”? A well-organized plan included everything from hiring replacement workers to implementing a militia-style security force at plant gates.

Provoked by Kaiser’s strategy, the Steelworkers resorted to the strike now in progress. The strike resulted in the company using unskilled, untrained workers who pose safety and health problems not only to themselves but to the community because of hazardous and environmentally dangerous materials.

The Steelworkers Union, like any other, is not out to break the company. Its members want only what is fair. The union exists to represent and protect its members. For those of you who have no union, who is there to protect and represent you? Think about it. Support the Steelworkers. They deserve a fair contract, a living wage and the satisfaction of knowing they are compensated for a job well done. We deserve the skills and dedication they bring to our community. Mike Rapp, trustee National Association of Letter Carriers, Spokane

You can support union with food

I am writing in support of the Kaiser workers.

We who have good jobs, union or otherwise, should be doing a little more than a thumbs up as we drive by. I suggest a donation to their food bank for part of your Christmas giving, as I plan to do. That way, their families will be as comfortable as we are on that day.

Next year, it could be our jobs on the line. What goes around comes around. Most of the benefits you enjoy in your nonunion jobs came about through organized labor. The United Steelworkers address is 14015 E. Trent, Spokane, WA 99216. Make a notation on your check for the food bank, so they know where to send it. Margaret Martinez Rockford, Wash.

Unions are about more than pay

Shame on you, Kathy Landry (Letters, Nov. 9), for recommending to your union brothers and sisters to go back to work under these conditions. Ever heard of “united we stand, divided we fall”?

Yes, we all need to make our own decisions, but if we didn’t stick together we wouldn’t have a union, would we?

Wages and benefits you enjoy (more or less) are from years of hard work negotiated by the union. The same union that paid a young man’s rent when he said he needed help. This same man cashed that check and then went across the picket line and went to work. Only when he went to work, he didn’t go where he had worked before and use the skills he already had. No, the company sent him down to remelt. Being a fairly new employee, he probably had no experience in the remelt area. That might explain why, within five days, he and another person were sent to the hospital by ambulance after they inhaled chlorine gas.

Be careful what you wish for, Landry, and maybe ask this young man what he thinks of Kaiser now, without the union. For, you see, the union movement was started not only to improve wages but to improve working conditions through health and safety. Dean F. Wise Hayden, Idaho

Mid-managers should join pickets

Attention, Kaiser mid-managers! The way you’re being treated short-time is how Charlie’s hooligans want to treat us full time. Come on, join us on the line! Loren L. Seifert Spokane

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

We’re stuck with a low-life leader

Why can’t this just go away? Have you heard somebody ask this? Have you asked this yourself? The media tell us daily everyone wants this to just end. Is that true? Do we really want to make it official that our leaders are not subject to the same laws, that they’re not held to the same standards we are? That they are above the law and us?

We keep hearing how the economy won’t survive another president being ousted. I don’t believe that we’re really that fragile! Would it be better if this wasn’t going on? Certainly. It would be better still if he wasn’t putting us through this in the first place.

We need a leader we can point to with pride and say That’s our president. We need a leader we can show to our children without having to figure out an explanation. We don’t have that.

“And if we impeach this president, we still won’t have that,” someone said to me. So since we can’t fix it in one step, we shouldn’t do anything at all, is that it? We should just allow the lowest, basest people to occupy the office. Maybe that is it. After all, we put this man in office knowing what kind of person he is. Randall M. Jones Newman Lake

Seamy search for an unholy grail

I don’t believe what I’m reading in the newspaper. These are the political role models for our kids? Leaders of our country? This is where all those tax dollars are going that I must pay? For the “Starr” and some Republicans’ vendetta? Can’t be. I’m dreaming. Gotta be, because otherwise, I’m trapped in a comic book.

Let’s see if I understand this. Secretly taping 22 hours of conversations, hounding, manipulating, bullying and cajoling a supposed friend. This is moral and ethical - right? - because this is done by Republicans and we’re going hell fire after Bill Clinton, who is not moral, ethical and just. So that must make it legal, too, to secretly tape phone calls and use secretly taped conversations - edited, for God’s sake! Though for Clinton or any other Democrat, or citizen, it would be illegal enough for us to be slapped in the slammer.

(Not to mention a horrid thing to do to a friend - immoral, unjust and downright nasty.)

But because this is a Republican thing and we’re on a roll to impeach Clinton, using a friend in this way is OK, too. Perhaps, if I am reading the tapes right and when sweet friend Linda says, “I feel like I am sticking a knife in your back,” planned and perhaps even paid for is OK, too. Because, well, you know …

Why am I reminded of Monty Python?

“I’m a Republican and I’m OK. Ignore what I do, just do what I say.” Jannelle Jaquith Ann Travis Coeur d’Alene

Are we just giving in to trashiness?

I am surprised there is so much fuss over Wiley J. Marks, the convicted sex offender with a history of molesting children, remaining the executive director of CORD. This is obviously character assassination and victimization by The Spokesman-Review!

Haven’t the American people voted, by statistics, that this is a private matter, nobody’s business and that who does what to anybody’s daughters really doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t affect job performance?

If the president of the United States can obstruct justice, lie under oath, manipulate vulnerable interns and other ladies under his management, why should Marks be called on the carpet? Are we exercising a double standard here? Is this some sort of partisan thing?

Do we as Americans really care anymore? Edwin Kopf Veradale

IDAHO VIEWPOINTS

Stricken family appreciates support

Re: “Huge outpouring helps buoy man who lost his family,” (Nov. 20). I want to thank The Spokesman-Review for being at the funeral to get the whole story. This has been a hard time for our family. The one thing that has really been watched is what is being printed and said about the incident.

The community has been wonderful and the story you printed brought a tear to everyone’s eye. It took my uncle, Willis, a few tries to get through the article but it touched all of our hearts. People have made comments about the article to me, not even knowing I am a Presnell. This has touched us all deeply.

Again, thank you for your heartfelt warmth in printing this and thank you to staff writer Brian Coddington, who was so nice to attend the funeral. Thank you to all who have contributed time, money and prayers for my cousin and for the Gore family. Your prayers are being heard. Brandy L. Presnell Spokane

Academy is a good idea

Re: “Little schools, big ideas,” (Nov. 15). Being from Post Falls. I can say that Coeur d’Alene Academy is a great idea. I graduated in 1997 and now am attending St. Olaf College, one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the country. When I was applying for acceptance, it was a difficult task because they saw that I came from a small town in Idaho and worst yet, I attended a public school.

It made my application process very hard. I had to have extra letters of recommendation in order to get in, because they felt that my classes didn’t stack up to those of other students applying. I can say that I took tough classes in high school. Yet when the colleges see records they look for private schools and what not. They said I had too general of an education, and now I’m having to prove that I’m actually worthy of being here.

So I think that the Academy would be a great idea. Especially for those trying to go to the better schools in the country. Sarah M. Paulson Post Falls

Is righteousness a license to hate?

A letter writer agued awhile back that Christians have every right to oppose homosexuality but homosexuals have no right to attack Christians for doing so. Perhaps the writer would like to explain why Christians protested Matthew Shepard’s funeral.

Were they so opposed to sexuality that they opposed any gay getting a decent burial? Or were they expressing their support for the gay man’s killers? Anyone who’d go along with that doesn’t want logic so much as they want an excuse to hate.

The apostle Paul may indeed have shown his distaste for homosexuality, but at the same time, he showed his distaste for a hypocritical church (Romans, Chapter 2). Joan E. Harman Coeur d’Alene

Can it be? An urbanized spotted owl?

Who do you suppose was confused?

The picture and caption inside the front page of the Nov. 19 Spokesman-Review says it all about the attitude and agenda of wildlife biologists, who are going to decide for the spotted owl where it wants to live.

Why? Because if we discover that the spotted owl can adapt to habitats other than the one identified by the biologists and their environmentalist counterparts, the argument for their jobs and their agenda may begin to crumble. And for God’s sake, we can’t possibly admit any evidence that might jeopardize the job security of our wildlife biologists.

After all, unlike loggers and other forest workers, we do owe them a job. Don’t we? Stephen D. Bruno Hayden