Who’s the lady in the image below? I don’t know but I hope she will be ok. I “stole” this image from a video of the “Bold moves” series of Ford from two years ago. It was the video on the build of the Shelby GT500 and you can find it here. I remember watching the video at the time and getting surprised with the spontaneous reaction of the line worker hugging the new powertrain of the Mustang GT500 and saying “wonderful”. It’s easy to forget how people can get passionate about their work and how they are not just numbers ready to be discarded.
I’m writing this today with a bitter feeling because in the last attempt to approve the car bailout the major problem with the senators that voted against was the wages of line workers. And this is not a new trend: in Europe or in the United States it seems whenever restructuring is needed the first thing to sacrifice is workers benefits and jobs. We have had many years now of management specialized in downsizing at the expense of the workforce (and adding management bonuses in the process…). And we are also getting used, at least in Europe, to the progressive loss of health benefits and pensions value. At this point one asks: do we have to accept living worse than the previous generation? This is not progress, it’s quite the opposite, and people should simply not accept it.
University students in Greece have reached the limit point. The can no longer support the prospect of living with 600 Euros per month after college education and they realized that the current democracy status will not change that. So they went for action. I hope this event does not escalate. And I hope something new comes out of the new American administration that really triggers changes in the way things operate globally. On the lady in the image, she will probably be ok: she works in a Ford factory, the American manufacturer in best shape, building a best-selling car that is the Mustang. I hope she keeps hugging powertrains whenever something new arrives in the assembly line.
I’m writing this today with a bitter feeling because in the last attempt to approve the car bailout the major problem with the senators that voted against was the wages of line workers. And this is not a new trend: in Europe or in the United States it seems whenever restructuring is needed the first thing to sacrifice is workers benefits and jobs. We have had many years now of management specialized in downsizing at the expense of the workforce (and adding management bonuses in the process…). And we are also getting used, at least in Europe, to the progressive loss of health benefits and pensions value. At this point one asks: do we have to accept living worse than the previous generation? This is not progress, it’s quite the opposite, and people should simply not accept it.
University students in Greece have reached the limit point. The can no longer support the prospect of living with 600 Euros per month after college education and they realized that the current democracy status will not change that. So they went for action. I hope this event does not escalate. And I hope something new comes out of the new American administration that really triggers changes in the way things operate globally. On the lady in the image, she will probably be ok: she works in a Ford factory, the American manufacturer in best shape, building a best-selling car that is the Mustang. I hope she keeps hugging powertrains whenever something new arrives in the assembly line.
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