I'm a New Yorker, but I was born and raised in Milwaukee which, at the time, was a big labor town. Unions were strong and people made a good middle class living. People had a strong work ethic and were proud to be employed, to do their jobs and know they did those jobs well.
I was on the debate team in college, and my debate partner's boyfriend had started one of the first cold type presses in the state. Before that, it was linotype machines, hot metal presses that required guild-like skills. The unions were very much against cold type press, which entailed tape-punching keyboards that could be run through a computer and voila! There was your copy.
Of course now we have desktop publishing. Those tape punch keyboards I worked on are as outdated as dinosaurs. I ended up working for that fellow, though, and became an apprentice typesetter. I also paid a lot of attention to what was going on in the workplace, thus my diary.
It's not a black and white story to me. Shortly after becoming an apprentice, something I very much enjoyed, learning under an experienced journeyman, the company, due to overcapitalization, went bankrupt. The owner ended up being bought out by a small local publisher and took us all over to the new place.
All of a sudden, after only a few months of training, I became the only typesetter there, and a journeyman. That meant more money, but it was highly stressful as I really didn't have enough experience to know what I was doing half the time. Luckily for me, the sales rep for the equipment I worked on was a whiz at explaining the answers to my zillion questions, so I got a big education in a hurry.
I didn't like the place where I worked. There were only four of us there but we "unionized" the shop and my salary almost doubled. But I didn't feel right about it for some reason, didn't like "slowing down" work, not doing my best, making threats, all that jive. I wasn't fond of my new employers either. So I figured I would just leave and start somewhere else.
So I went and worked in the typesetting department of what was then the Milwaukee Journal. Oh boy, that was some job. Rows of typesetting keyboards, we'd receive the copy on a conveyor belt and then do it and return the copy with our roll of punch tape. Over and over again. I really loved typing, I didn't mind the work at all. What bothered me was the union shop atmosphere.
I remember two incidents in particular. First was when I got up to go to get a cup of coffee from the coffee machine, which was on another floor. The lady next to me was scandalized -- "we are not allowed to leave the floor!" she told me in hushed tones.
I was by far the youngest person there, in my early 20s. I told the nice lady I didn't give a shit about that kind of rule and went and got my coffee. Nothing happened, so I figured she was just a scared type who followed the rules a little too closely.
The other incident wasn't as simple for me. I was called to the chapel chairman's desk. I wondered what I had done wrong. I was told I was working "too fast," taking work away from other people, and I should slow down.
My Midwest work ethic made my choice for me. I quit. I could not in conscience do anything but my best in a job. And after that, I never took a union job again. This was in the late 70s.
So I switched, became a legal secretary, as I was planning on moving to New York and wanted a job that was easy to find no matter where I lived. And that was a great job for a long time.
My first job was at a lawfirm in Milwaukee working for a tax partner. At the time we all worked on IBM Selectric typewriters (still the best keyboards in the universe, I still loathe computer keyboards that don't have that groovy "click").
I remember when the first computer came to our firm, it was a WANG stand-alone. Only one woman was allowed to work on it. I decided I wanted to learn this new-fangled thing -- I have always been a science fiction fan and this seemed like a very cool new technology to me.
I knew not to go through the usual channels as the bureaucracy in just about every business will usually say no to a support staff person. So I befriended the woman who worked on the word processor and learned it during my lunch hours -- it certainly didn't take very long, it was a really simple computer.
Of course the inevitable happened and the WANG lady was out sick one day. The lawyer I worked for wanted something done and I admitted to him I knew how to use the computer. After that I got to use it whenever I wanted.
I remember telling the other secretaries they ought to learn this thing -- that in just a few years they would be out of jobs if they didn't. That made me very unpopular for a while, and I ended up being the only one who knew how to use the word processor until I left that job and moved to New York.
In 1981 I moved to New York City and got a job at a great small law firm. At the time I started we were using mag card typewriters, which were a real nightmare, but shortly switched to stand alone word processors. My first program was the dreaded Displaywrite. But I was really happy, I was surrounded by all this Star Trek looking equipment where I made ridiculous spaceship comments while revising and printing documents, to the amusement of my co-workers.
Eventually I ended up at one of the big law firms. The pay was good and so were the benefits. We were treated like the professionals we are and the lawyers were extremely appreciative of our work -- often we knew as much as they about case law for a given client and we were essential in running interference between the lawyers and their clients.
In the mid-80s, the new Wharton Business School grads started changing the face of work in America. Before then, "bottom line" was an accounting description, not a business philosophy. If a business had a slow time, they laid off workers, and when times got better, the workers came back.
All of a sudden I started hearing the word "downsizing." I knew right away what that meant and it was not pretty. Of course none of my co-workers believed me when I fumed about this new "philosophy." They all felt very secure in their jobs.
When I started at this firm, they had just made the changeover from typewriters to word processors (Displaywrite, again, which had been obsolete for years, ick). I knew there would be changes because of the increased productivity, but my fellow secretaries were not interested in my predictions.
And for the most part, there wasn't all that much downsizing in my department. A few secretaries were given minimal "packages" around 8 years ago. But the other changes have been enormous.
Used to be when you worked for a partner, they were your only assignment. Now all of us work for three people. I was in favor of that -- it was silly to sit around doing nothing as many partners' secretaries were doing. Again, my Midwest work ethic was appalled by that. So I was virtually the only secretary who was happy to become more busy.
The law used to be a profession. Sometime in the 80's, with all the big mergers and acquistions, all the money to be made, that changed and law became a business like any other. I was not happy with that. And the technology made clients more and more demanding, to have big contracts turned over in less and less time, with the resulting stresses we see today with young lawyers -- and no corresponding pride in their profession to mitigate the pain of such long hours.
But the day finally came when I knew something had gone permanently wrong, and it was a couple of years ago. Our new human resources director, a very nice fellow, gathered us all together in a departmental meeting and told me and my fellow secretaries about the changes that were going to be made in the firm.
What struck me was how he described us. How labor was an "expense." And that "expenses" had to be kept down. This was not about downsizing us, I wasn't worried about that. It was about how we now were being viewed by the people who owned the firm.
We used to be assets. We used to be workers who maximized the profits of the firm with our productivity and skills. We still do. For several years some of the more corporate oriented partners looked forward with glee to the time they would not need secretaries. That has not turned out to be the case -- far from it. Our jobs have changed dramatically, but oh, they still need us. And hundreds more support people as well, whose job descriptions didn't even exist ten years ago.
When a business of any kind starts looking at its employees as an "expense" instead of an "asset," we've got trouble. This is more than just an economic issue; it is a cultural issue as well. Just as the Republicans have claimed they can change "reality" with their propaganda, so have the corporate elite done with their "bottom line" philosophy, making companies feel there is only one way to make a profit. That's not true. But for now I am an expense in their eyes. I know I am an asset. Don't matter what they call me, I know what I am.