Friday, October 13, 2006

Meow

The day begins in the usual manner. I have coffee and I begin to type. Then the cat announces her presence at the window. If I’m lucky, I hear her first and can move to the back door and let her in. If not; if I’m so busy typing that I miss her clues, she leaps into the air and grabs the window screen. With her dangling less than a few feet away, I can hardly ignore her.

This morning I am lucky, I heard her first and now she is safely inside and being a pest. For some reason she seems to think that I exist only for her pleasure and comfort.  “Come here!” she demands, “scratch my head and rub my belly”.

Here’s some news that caught my attention;
China Drafts Law to Empower Unions and End Labor Abuse
By DAVID BARBOZA
American and other foreign corporations have hinted that they may build fewer factories in China if the law is adopted.”

That won’t happen. It’s an empty threat. Even with unions, China’s labor will still be the cheapest. And the most plentiful.

With a global economy desperate for talent, unions now have a chance to rebuild themselves everywhere and not just in China. Union labor has always been better educated and more skilled and now is the time to promote that fact.

One of the highlights of the current talent crunch is that corporations are being hurt financially by the fact that employees are not as “loyal” as they once were and are quick to jump ship if they see a better offer. Loyalty used to be a two way street and if you were loyal to the company, you could expect to work for them for your entire career. Then corporations discovered downsizing and outsourcing as a way of increasing the bottom line. A decade or two later and they wonder why the employees aren’t so quick to love them? In most large corporations the Human Resources department is now the most important. With Accounting in second place of course.

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