Some of us were talking yesterday about our national holiday set for today and it was mentioned that a few of us grew up in places where there were sharp lines of difference between management and labor. In case you missed it growing up, it was the common "joke" in spots in what is now the rust belt that you could always tell management from labor because management had put down their strike signs so they could hold vicious dogs in both hands....
We somewhat remember origins of this day (the Pullman Strike resulting in Labor Day) from one of our high school American history classes for some of us taught by one Mr. Meeth who had the brains of - well he had them and they kept him alive but as far as anything "firing" in that noggin of his is highly questionable. He was also the basketball coach. Our freshman and sophomore years, interest in basketball was so high because we had back to back great classes, to the point where we put two teams of freshman each 20-0 and two junior varsity teams each 16-0. Expectations were high until Meeth cut the team back to 8 players (he had actually ordered only 8 uniforms; his lucky number) - not enough even to have a scrimmage and in 3 of the first 5 games we finished with only 4 players in the last quarter...that incredible mindset was characteristic of our little slices of our American History. The fifth game we had to concede because in the middle of the 3rd quarter we were down to 3 players and were talking an awful beating (it was 105-35 at the time - no kidding).
We digressed to our far away, and we stress "not local", high school days as at the time, after the 5th game, the players kinda 'went on strike'...and it is worth mentioning that our school's varsity team had just set the class A record for consecutive basketball losses at 40 and during our 3 years on varsity, we won 5 games and lost 43 with another 23 in a row to close out our career? Anyway, that gave us reason to call a halt to things. His response was, as he had cut 4 black players - the only 4 to trim the squad down to 8 short slow white guys, was to try and bring them back and suspend us from school for insubordination. The black players refused although with them we would have had half a chance - and I'm not being racist here, they were just simply better than we were.
Three of us, in the midst of this were in the top 5 in our class of 650 graduates and protested along now with half the student body. We came to school and went to American History, 2nd period, and Meeth informed us he was going to fail us regardless and had the three of us removed from the classroom by the dean of students (aka "the enforcer"). One of the other kid's parents took the school and Meeth to court and the matter was "resolved" be court order well before it went to trial (we remember it being by last period of the day in fact). Now that we think about it, the lesson may have been about teaching why there are labor unions and laws and the necessity of certain institutions. Some of the stuff unions do is off the charts crazy and can't be support but in general without some degree of organization "management" tends to think more god-like than man-like... take the last few years for example....
We digressed to our far away, and we stress "not local", high school days as at the time, after the 5th game, the players kinda 'went on strike'...and it is worth mentioning that our school's varsity team had just set the class A record for consecutive basketball losses at 40 and during our 3 years on varsity, we won 5 games and lost 43 with another 23 in a row to close out our career? Anyway, that gave us reason to call a halt to things. His response was, as he had cut 4 black players - the only 4 to trim the squad down to 8 short slow white guys, was to try and bring them back and suspend us from school for insubordination. The black players refused although with them we would have had half a chance - and I'm not being racist here, they were just simply better than we were.
Three of us, in the midst of this were in the top 5 in our class of 650 graduates and protested along now with half the student body. We came to school and went to American History, 2nd period, and Meeth informed us he was going to fail us regardless and had the three of us removed from the classroom by the dean of students (aka "the enforcer"). One of the other kid's parents took the school and Meeth to court and the matter was "resolved" be court order well before it went to trial (we remember it being by last period of the day in fact). Now that we think about it, the lesson may have been about teaching why there are labor unions and laws and the necessity of certain institutions. Some of the stuff unions do is off the charts crazy and can't be support but in general without some degree of organization "management" tends to think more god-like than man-like... take the last few years for example....
We urge some reflection on the Pullman Strike that led to today's holiday (see link above). The entire episode was a sad state of affairs with no side having lily white hands. Juxtapose that with the sadly true story of labor and management in the form of a high school basketball team and a sad reflection on how things can polarize in an instant when common sense is lost.
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