Friday, June 23, 2006

All in a day's work

Today, I had a good day. One of my employers approached the union about making this permenant substitute a regular full-time employee. This will entitle him to about a $4.00 raise per hour, as well as health coverage. Especially dental.

I say 'epsecially dental' because the gentleman is slightly mentally retarded, and he's so desparately poor, he tried extracting some of his own teeth. With pliers. So he gets dental. Which is good.

True story.

I remember another time several years ago, I was organizing part-time faculty at the City Colleges of Chicago and I met this woman with two master's degrees. Biology and math. I remember her name and everything. This happened to be a competitive election with another union, and my colleague and I were giving her the rundown on why our union was clearly better, etc. etc. She said, and I'll never forget this, "You guys have probaby noticed my teeth. I just want the union that will get me more money for my teeth." She had three teeth. Three.

One more than her advanced graduate degrees.

True story.

We did win, and I hope that she did end up getting enough money to get some of her teeth fixed.

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