As our government tries to wind its way through the economic crisis we find ourselves in, we have to consider the relationship of our corporate structures, the American labor force, and the shrinking globe. I offer for your consideration a case study very close to home.

My son is a union plumber. He spent years as a non-union plumber that we had put through trade school. He worked for a company out of Gilroy and actually rose to the level where he was running the plumbing for job sites. However, he has the responsibility of a daughter and that daughter’s health insurance and was unable to swing all the above while working for the non-union shop. So, he became a union plumber and had to enter as a third year apprentice even though he was much more capable and knowledgeable than many of the journeymen plumbers at job sites. The union has its own series of classes and he has had to do five years of course work. The advantages: higher pay and full health coverage. The disadvantages: he doesn’t work as much full time as he used to.

So, he is becoming known for the quality of his work in the area and is being asked for by name. He was told at the current site that he was working that he would be employed there on the current project into January at the very least and then they wanted to send him to another location to work for them. On Tuesday, he got word that he had passed the state examination to become a journeyman and that provided him with a whole new range of possibilities and an automatic $8-10/hr raise. So, he found this out on his break Tuesday and gave me a call with the joyous news. The company found out, told him how happy they were for him, and promptly laid him off because they could not afford to keep him going. They said an apprentice would be hired to finish the work.

It’s a fine kettle of fish! Now, I know it’s easy to give simple black-and-white answers to life. Nonetheless, a whole lot of black-and-white folks are going to have to learn to cooperate, see some gradations of gray and figure out how to meet people’s and the nation’s needs in the middle. Right now, we have a very productive construction plumber collecting unemployment and sitting on the sidelines.