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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 1994)
The Clackamas Print Page 2 r, Nov. 2,1994 NEWS/OPINION Oregon and the Art Center see more rain than ever V It's raining, it's pouring, the old man Is snoring by Jeff Kemp Editing & Design Editor Last Thursday, Oregon saw its heaviest rain ever. Ac cording to the National Weather Service, 4.77 inches of rain fell in Portland in a 48-hour period. Clackamas Com munity College saw even more than that October has seen an outstanding 8.41 inches of rain and almost 8 of those came in the last seven days. The downpour washed out Thursday's scheduled classes in the Art Center and closed some pathways in the Envi ronmental Learning Center. “We don’t have a drainage system that can accommo date this kind of rain,” said Carol Patterson, director of Plant Services. Patterson had her personnel draining the Art Center around the clock last Thursday and Friday. Classes in the Art Center resumed after rigorous cleaning efforts by Plant Services were completed Friday morning. Sand bags were also used to ward off future flooding, but Patterson calls the project “ongoing”. "At this point there's really nothing we can do," Flooding forced the closure of several The Art Center was forced to cancel classes Patterson explained. pathways In the ELC. last Thursday because of the heavy rain. Lett eriioliOe|Bd||Öif Labor disputes have no winners English instructor denounces vandalism Tb the Editor. ' v yan^alisrh.hurtsprbperty and people. Last Tuesday; the: :bumperstiGkerS,:prdclainiing' "Noon is*on 6 offices-, to tb& with equal and opposite force? I speak put more, vehemently: •apdpohftderiily/.-.ifg^ep^ w^ts toxfiahge my vote/tfiefr: English department were ripped' W between 4^4 5^9 not tty to intimidate me. ’ Mea sure 13 to'itoelf attempt p.m. The week before I called bpedftny student^ whose car was bombarded with eggs for no ostensible reason? Other than die car. H^d a "No on to silence a group of people, to deny people their Visibility and vorce. If the person who thruw eggs orsirippedlhebutnper stickers is reading this letter, I hope that:M or she knowsiO; he ot she;helped me redodbiig ? 13* sticker.‘. These twbtool* erance. In a college, freedom =of speech is especially precious,: right of speech and the rights and we should respect therighls of Students .arid facultyto.speak; of under-represented peoples, Sincerely» s/ and show the# opinions. • • When someone triesfi^fe Kate Gray /Z t .:idhcemy.vqice;Itry toresppnd' •>; English Instructor .. Ike CCaduuHM P’ uh X StoJi Editor-in-Chief: Tina Guinn (Ext. 2576) News Editor: Anjanette Booth (Ext. 2576) Feature Editor: Jocelyn Gauthier (Ext. 2577) Sports Editor: Jason Hunter (Ext. 2577) Photography Editor: Chad Patteson (Ext. 2578) Copy Editor: Cöri Karget (Ext. 2578) Business Manager: Zach Kreinheder (Ext. 2578) Editing and Design Editor: Jeff Kemp (Ext. 2578) ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Staff Writers/Photographers: Eric Eatherton, Jessica Garcia, Donny Kemp, Michelle Shipman, Christi Snavely, Jesse Sowa, Angela Williams, Josh Kehler ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Secretary: Cheryl Willemse (Ext. 2309) Advisor : John Knowlton (Ext. 2310) The Clackamas Print aims to report the news in an honest, unbiased, pro fessional manner. The opinions expressed in The Clackamas Print do not nec essarily reflect those of the student body, college administration, its faculty or The Clackamas Print's advertisers. Products and services advertised in The Clackamas Print are not necessarily endorsed by anyone associated with The Clackamas Print. The Clackamas Print is a weekly publication distributed every Wednesday except for finals week. The advertising rate is $4.50 per col umn inch. All letters to the editor will be considered for publication and must be sub mitted by 1 p.m. the Friday prior to the next issue. Clackamas Communtiy College, 19600 S. Molalla Avenue, Oregon City, Oregon, 97045; Barlow 104; (503) 657-6958, ext. 2309. by Eric Charles Columnist You know about the goings- on in our grocery stores. Need I remind you about the baseball strike, pending hockey lockout and nasty words being spoken in basketball? Labor disputes. You know how they get started: the workers’ (usually represented by their unions) Cv^'acts expire, they negotiate for new contracts which may or may not appeal to management...and so it goes. That’s a major point of labor management relations. What hap pens is labor and management ask something of each other. (To be gin with, it’s often labor provides products/services for manage ment, and in turn management pays labor reasonable wages.) Sometimes that’s not enough, so either side asks for something more; sometimes the other side may be reluctant to give it When that occurs, usually there are a few steps before there is an actual strike. The situation may be settled in one of those steps. If nothing else works, though, the union may ask for a strike. Once the strike goes into effect, look out. Boycotts, ad campaigns sometimes as nasty or nastier than some political ads...you get the picture. I wouldn’t bring up the sub ject of labor disputes given what’s going on, but I think nobody truly wins in them. You may get higher wages, a secure schedule, senior ity and thus job security, but at what cost? (This column is about what I’ve seen about labor dis putes generally, not about any spe cific labor dispute.) Why nobody truly wins: the old physics law holds here: “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” Let’s say a union of workers was striking for higher wages. If the workers get higher wages, the prevalent belief is their standard of living will improve. Yet what happens, maybe not pronto but in the long term, is these new higher wages will raise a business’ labor, costs and cut into that business’ profit margin. In some industries, that profit margin is already low, hence a possible loss might result. So to maintain those profit mar gins and avoid a loss, the busi ness may have to raise its prices to make up for the profits it would lose to the higher labor costs. The higher prices would negate what ever raise in standard of living striking workers would’ve ex pected in the long term. Thus, the real raise would be negligible. With those higher prices, the cus tomers lose. Also, since businesses usu ally profit by providing goods and services of reasonable quality at reasonable prices with excellent service, if a boycott comes along, that business may stand to lose massive amounts of revenue and customers. (It could be driven out of business, but that’d represent an extreme case.) So how will it make up for all that? Yup - raise prices. That business won’t be the same again after getting a bad rap. Again, the customers lose. If the pertinent issue is se niority (i.e. workers who’ve been with an employer for a longer pe riod of time are less likely to be fired), job security is dictated by your tenure of work in a compa ny. Don’t get me wrong; seniority’s worth getting, as it’s a visible sign of company loyalty. But if companies are firing work ers, that means more work to do for the ones still with jobs, and perhaps the remaining workers might suffer from stress. Also, someone who might’ve been very loyal to customers could be laid off and his/her replacement (if there is one) could be...let’s just say it won’t be quite the same again. . Concerning work hours, full- time workers usually work the same amount of hours each week, or an amount not too much dif ferent. Sometimes labor unions ask that there not be part-time jobs. The role of the part-time worker, in my opinion, is to assist the full- time worker when demand is high for products/services. Also, part- time woik can be useful to build a work ethic and experience, not to mention pay the bills or pro vide a little extra pocket money. (Besides, if employers truly wanted to cut labor costs, they would go where labor is less ex pensive, e.g. the Third World.) Still on money: the United States has one of the highest stan dards of living in the world. And, from what I’ve seen, Americans pay less taxes than their European and Oriental counterparts. Thus, Americans have more take-home pay than these same counterparts. So why ask for more wages when you’re paid more than a lot of people around the world already?! Another point concerning labor disputes: unions have strike benefits for their members who don’t show up for work because they’re picketing. But the strike benefits union members receive for picketing are a fraction of what the same workers get paid for the job they usually do. So what happens? The union mem bers lose their standard of living. If more than one union works in a particular business, and if one (or more) of these unions either goes on strike or honors the picket line and thus convinces its mem bers to picket, those workers will receive strike benefits and lose their standard of living as well, since the strike benefits are a far cry from the regular wages. To summarize: nobody wins in a labor dispute because higher wages mean higher labor costs ; the business gets a bad rap be cause of boycotts, thus losing rev enue and customer loy-alty ; job security can be dictated by quan tity rather than quality; and since strike bene-fits are a fraction of wages, standards of living may drop.
