National Holiday for 300 Million Population

My First Eye Opener

In the early 1970's I was working at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the Systems Training Department in Piscataway, New Jersey. The mission of the department was to provide business systems training to employees at all Bell Labs locations, and to other AT&T locations nationwide including the operating companies such as New Jersey Bell, as needed.

This was one of my first jobs since graduating from college.

I always wanted to meet or at least sit in on a presentation given by one of Bell Telephone Laboratories many Nobel Prize winning scientists but never had the opportunity. Most of them had the title of Member of Technical Staff. I worked with and trained many Members of Technical Staff employees of BTL over the years. I also worked with and trained many associates from the operating companies and Western Electric, also.

One day I selected my lunch and walked over to a table of more senior employees than I and sat down to join them. They were celebrating a new employee benefit which I forgot specifically what it was but think it was a dental plan benefit which they never had until then. The discussion boiled down to the fact that the union just won the dental plan and now everyone else (including exempt employees) would get it. They also told me not to say anything to management, but that all employee benefits to us were accomplished by the union employees having a strong union and winning them during labor contract negotiation. If it was not for the union employees having a strong union, then we would not benefit from a good salary, sick leave, vacation, retirement, medical/hospital, annual salary increase, dental, eyeglass, or any other benefit program.

I did not really believe it, until later, and even became a town delegate to the Union County, New Jersey convention a few years later and met George W. Bush and his brother Chad from Florida, while they were supporting their father for vice president of the United states. A couple of years later, I became a registered Democrat.

posted by God Bless America - Bob @ 4:00 PM