Poor Lifestyle

This quote appeared on the IAM933.org website: "When challenged as to why the Company is proposing these high rates to our members they say we are 14% higher in utilization, which according to the Company, is related to our poor lifestyles and practices."

I really appreciate "the man's" perspective on my poor lifestyle and practices. Unlike those white collar workers who rarely use their health benefits, I might tend to use them just a bit more. You see I didn't have health care growing up, my parents weren't college educated, so a few health issues had to slide occasionally, poor practice on my part right? Or how about how I did dirty jobs these cuddled, manicured, starched, poised poker faced Daddy Warbucks would run from with their dainty hankies pressed against their Arbonne coated faces?

I got the privilege of cleaning some special juice growing in the bottom of a drink cooler at a restaurant once. Oh yeah that was minimum wage and of course no health care provided. The only thing I could recognize in the special juice was mold and the restaurant didn't have or believe in rubber gloves. I later discovered while reading Science Digest that such water was an ideal breeding ground for tuberculosis, Yeah!

After several more minimum wage jobs for another 7 years and cleaning toilets, grease pits, fryers and mixing Clorox and drain cleaner in confined quarters on an off shore oil rig "under orders" from macho bosses, I finally landed a "good job" in the military! Finally a job with health care. So yeah, I got some things fixed. My teeth really needed some help, they yanked 5 wisdom teeth - no wonder I'm not as smart as when I was a teenager, LOL. Okay the 5th tooth was actually just growing sideways against my wisdom tooth, but I digress. Well the nice thing about working for the government is that they would never violate the law, right? Sorry, but the military is exempt from such b.s. as LAWS. Standard practice at my first duty station was cleaning gage blocks with a super cool substance we called "trike" it really cut the oils especially when your hands were coated in oil. My next duty station actually had MSDS's, so I did a little reading. It seems the cool "trike" stuff was actually trichloroethane and is some pretty nasty stuff "health-wise". Prolonged exposure to the skin can cause kidney damage 10 years AFTER exposure. Try making a worker's comp claim on that stuff - 10 years later! Gotta love the military.

Then I tried to find a job doing what I learned in the military, but no one gives up those cushy jobs, so back to the rat race. I worked for a place making Craftsman tools. Almost every process involves some kind of noxious smell of awful chemicals. I got assigned to work on the primer machine where every tool gets coated before having the handles dipped with that cool soft rubbery stuff. The old primer machine was huge, complicated and costly to maintain, but management had a plan. So they rigged up a really cool 50 gallon bucket of primer. I'd put the tools in a basket, open the door on this metal box, slide the basket onto a spinny thing and close the door. Then the magic happened. The 50 gallon barrel of primer would move up and coat the tools, then it would move down just low enough and the basket of tools would spin and the excess primer spray would go back into the barrel.

Then some 'bean counters' got involved and decided that the door on my metal box was slowing things down. The next day I came to work and the door was gone, I went through my same routine, and now when the basket would spin all those nice primer fumes went into my face instead of being trapped in the metal box. I worked that job on the graveyard shift so I didn't think much about why I started to feel tired at 4:30 in the morning. Then my mom started complaining of headaches from her security guard job at Ulta cosmetic shop, and my lightning fast mind said the reason I was tired and totally exhausted after work was "chemicals".

The next day I checked the MSDS for the primer and discovered all the symptoms I had were exactly the same as overexposure to that primer stuff. I was tired, had heart murmurs, dizzy and had headaches. So I called in sick the next day and went to that company's worker's comp doc and he confirmed that I was overexposed to primer fumes, and my EKG proved heart murmurs, YEAH! I quit that job, that day. I didn't want a respirator, I was tired, really, really tired and not just from primer fumes, but from bean counters. Those measly little penny pinchers who think a person's health isn't as valuable as their bottom line.

Now you know why I'm a Zone Safety Specialist. I care, I really care. It's also why I want strong representation not some ho, hum, yeah we are a brotherhood. Don't give me some gangland mentality. I want 1,000 men with the passion of Sir William Wallace, you know the Braveheart movie character to stand strong against tyranny. Tyranny starts in the boardroom when good men secede their good principles to bad morals by counting beans. If they like beans so much let's mail them some!

So you see the thing I love about working at Raytheon is knowing that sometimes after they make numerous speeches about safety they will actually do something every now and then to back up all those pretty words. And the other thing I like is knowing that if they miss a few "safety things" like non-ionizing radiation, fall or slip hazards, that I have the assurance of knowing that when I'm just following the orders of some macho boss man, I have a good health care plan to back up their stupid, gotta get it done now attitudes.

Sometimes they are the victims too man, y' know that Arbonne stuff is a chemical, and probably goes to their brain, and have you ever sat in a manicure room at Wal-Mart?. Chemicals, dude and not the good kind. So be patient with the starch shirts, but don't blame me for a poor lifestyle. I was just following orders. Poverty and being a single parent will make you do stupid things, and when you have to choose between getting a testicular checkup or putting Ramen noodles on the table, the kids come first. So yeah, the poor workers may not be able to afford those healthful lifestyle choices and gym memberships, but cutting off our health care isn't going to fix our lifestyle, but a living wage could help. I'm sorry Raytheon couldn't find pampered healthy people to do assembly work, but would they be willing to do the work? Not likely. You'll have to settle for the huddled masses, the tired and weary who need to put food on the table, and who's health leaves a little to be desired, because, hey, LIFE happened! Dude did you get run over by a bus? Nope just life. So as long a Raytheon RESPECTS me I'll work for them, but as soon as I feel dissed I'll quit in a day. Been there done that, got the tee shirt.

God bless the negotiating committee on both sides of the table and help them to work TOGETHER for all our good, so we can focus on those we love who need us most. Let them not be petty or small, but RESPECTFUL. AMEN.