Hard to imagine in this bitter cold January the sweltering heat of the Washington Mall on August 28, l963 when the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It is one of history’s great speeches with its soaring rhetoric and cry for justice. It is recommended reading for any of you who haven’t read the entire speech. And if you have, read it again, read it aloud to your kids. It still sings.

On this Martin Luther King Day, we do well to remember Dr. King’s lifelong quest for equality and justice, ideals we manufacturers embrace.

This is a manufacturing blog, of course, but blogs are given wide latitude to wander into all sorts of semi-related areas. Since we routinely cover workplace issues here, we feel safe wandering into the latest workplace imbroglio, the issue of drug testing in the workplace that is the National Pastime, baseball.

Today’s paper carries news of Major League Baseball’s “get tough” policy on steroids. Having seen the sport suffer a great loss of public confidence and image, they have decided to draw the line and take a zero tolerance against illegal strength-building substances. Yessirree bob, it’s time to get tough.

So what’s the policy? You weak of heart, avert your eyes: a first positive test wins you a whopping 10-day suspension, a second positive test a suspension of 30 days, a third positive test a 60-day hiatus and a fourth positive test a one year ban. All suspensions are without pay, of course. Upon a fifth positive test (everybody still with us…?, this “get tough” policy requires you go to the Commissioner’s office where the same guy responsible for this namby-pamby program will mete out your discipline. He’ll probably make you sit in the corner and wear a funny hat.

Manufacturers deal every day with worker safety and health issues. Those in sensitive jobs are often subject to random drug testing. You can bet the economy doesn’t rely on manufacturers with policies like this, that allow at least five bites at the steroid apple before being sent to the Principals’ office. Wouldn’t it be logical for baseball to at least have a three strikes policy? Even still, three is a long way from zero. Maybe they can change the scoring rules to allow any team with 5 or fewer runs to be scored as a zero, too.

To us, zero tolerance means zero tolerance. Any employer with a zero tolerance policy that allowed at least 5 chances would be a laughingstock. Unfortunately, the odds of baseball changing this rule any time soon are, well, zero.

Here’s a press release from the Americans for Tax Reform, demanding that organized labor explain to its members why their union dues went in political donations to virtually only Democrats. Since l989, unions gave $183 million to Democrats, some 96% of total union giving.

ATR points out that CNN exit polling showed that almost 40% of union members voted for President George Bush. These folks are not being represented in the House of Labor. Very sad.

Just to put a little historical perspective on this, here’s a piece from December of 2002 called, “Once More, Down the Rathole”about the $141 million of their members’ money that the AFL-CIO put down the rathole in the elections of 2000 and 2002. At the time, their stated intention was, “to win back the House for the Democrats”, a task in which they failed miserably.

Just think of what they could do with that money if they put it into organizing, or better yet to help purchase health care for the uninsured, an issue they purport to care about. How many unemployed families could buy groceries for a week with that $183 million? Imagine the fealty they’d earn with working people if they used this money for good, worthy causes. Sam Gompers must be rolling over in his grave.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: this is not a labor movement, it’s a political movement. And, they’re playing with their members’ money.

For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to streaming video of the boss’ (John Engler) press conference this morning. He was talking about our agenda, and had a pretty good give and take with the press corps. It’s almost as if he’s done this type of thing before…. Suffice it to say they asked all the questions that we thought they would ask (and then some), and asked all the questions that are on your minds as well. Here’s the transcript, for those of you not among the video generation.

Enjoy!

If you want to know the real story on outsourcing, we were reminded by the Washington Post of a story that ran in the vaunted New York Times last summer, when the outsourcing (non-)issue was in full frenzy, before the election, and before the mention of the word dropped in half (see story, below). Here’s the story, from the Post’s annual “News of the Weird”:

“Overworked Catholic clergy in the US, Canada and Europe are outsourcing prayer requests from parishioners to Catholic clergy in India…”

This makes perfect sense to us in that manufacturers move production to be close to the customer. In fact, 90% of what US manufacturers produce overseas stays overseas. Since half the world is closer to heaven for half the day, it makes sense that prayers should be sent from there, to shorten the transit time, the “time to market” as it were, no?

“Inshala”, you hear them say over and over again in interviews from the street, from the long lines of voters in Baghdad and Fallujah, their thirst for democracy undeterred by terrorism and violence. “Inshala” (“God willing”, it means) “Peace will come.” “Inshala”, they say, “We will be free.”

We are old hands at this freedom, we Americans. We did this more than two centuries ago when 56 brave men signed the Declaration of Independence — and with it, their own death warrants — and sent it off to the King. We’re so good at this independence, this freedom that we now export it around the globe, and help others realize its liberating power. In fact, today we are the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of democracy around the world.

And so in Iraq, we deposed a dictator who massacred his own people and led a reign of repression and terror against those who would be free. The images on TV from Iraq are quite literally unbelievable. The lines stretching city blocks, the ink-stained fingers — the “blue badge of courage” — the families in their finery, gathering in groups to vote, all the while defying the looming and pervasive terrorist threats.

On CNN, even Christiane Amanpour, her husband a top foreign policy advisor to John Kerry, had to admit — yes, even gush — that this was an historic day. For this was not a day of partisanship but of freedom. The winds of freedom were blowing.

This was a day when 8 million people — some 72% of the population –voted, a day that saw 3 dozen people killed in separate attacks, a day that saw voters attacked by a car bomb, assessing the damage and then queuing up to vote once more. This was a day where women were threatened with beheading if they voted, yet they voted in droves. All the threats, the intimidation, the oppression, the terror, blown away by a ballot. What an awesome and inspiring sight. So quiet, so unbelievably powerful.

One woman told of her father, who had been murdered by Saddam Hussein, and how she thought of him as she voted. “What did this mean to you?”, the reporter asked. The woman dabbed at her eyes and answered deliberately. “Freedom…” she said softly, slowly “…happiness … victory.”

Today and every day we remember those who gave their lives in pursuit of freedom around the globe, brave men and women who understood and fought for one fundamental truth: that a threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.

There are so many images from yesterday’s vote but this picture
from the New York Times says it all. The smile, the dual images of the ink-stained finger and the international sign of peace.

“We will be free”, it says, “And peace will come.”

Inshala.

OK, here’s the end of the week round-up:

– For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to yesterday’s C-SPAN interview with NAM President John Engler. It’s about a half hour in total but you can do your e-mail while you run it and listen to it. Some good stuff here on a wide range of topics.

– This week we put out the 2005 NAM Agenda. We will continue to focus on the issues most important to manufacturers large and small: Reduce the cost of production in the US, level the international playing field, develop the 21st Century workforce and promote innovation, investment and productivity. Please read it over, there will be a test throughout the entire 109th Congress…

– Finally, so many NAM members have been leaders in making sure that they and their employees are involved in carrying the manufacturing message. If you want to see some best practices (which we hope you will emulate), go to our “Best Practices” website. Enjoy!

Here are some links to some interesting stories about blogs. The first is entitled, “Blogosphere Readership Growth Surges to 58% in 2004: The Five Most Read ‘Blogs’ Last Year” (we’re not on there — yet.) The next one, from Tech News World, “Commercial Interest in Blogs Booming”, talks about the growing commercial interst in blogs. And finally, from the Motley Fool, “Blogs Booming?“, notes that “Blogs are hot”, even though it notes that in a recent poll, some 62% of respondents had no idea what the hell a blog was.

Hope you enjoy being on the cutting edge, as manufacturers almost always are…..

We all support the spirit of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), don’t get us wrong, but its best intentions have often gone awry and it is a statute rife with abuse.

So here’s the question: What’s your experience with the FMLA? Seen any abuses or is everything according to Hoyle?

Those of us trapped inside the Washington Beltway and regular readers of the Washington Post have been following the saga of medical malpractice reform in Maryland, where Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich is in a battle royal with the forces of evil, otherwise known as the trial bar.

Like many other states — in fact worst than most — doctors have been fleeing Maryland in droves due to the soaring cost of malpractice insurance. So the great minds in Annapolis convened to find a solution to the problem of doctors being sued repeatedly and often unfairly by a tenacious trial bar. Guess what they came up with? A tax on HMO’s! Stop us if you’ve heard this one.

Recall if you will that Maryland is home to, among other luminaries, Peter Angelos, trial lawyer extraordinaire and owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Angelos and his ilk wield legendary power in Maryland, as evidenced by this latest half-baked scheme.

The Washington Post, for its part, editorialized with snide comments about Ehrlich’s unwillingness to raise taxes, opining that through his obstruction (i.e., his unwillingness to add the cost burden on employers and individuals) he had “missed his change to strike a constructive deal” with the trial bar-controlled legislature. Too bad.

It seems to us that if you want to fix the problem of too many frivolous lawsuits, you might want to start with the lawyers, no? Call us crazy, but the idea of taxing HMO’s is just one more stray bullet in the health care battles where the villain is pretty clear.

And so we say “Bravo” to Governor Ehrlich for standing in there and suffering the slings and arrows of the press and the legislature by threatening a veto. Taxing HMO’s is the wrong way to make up for lost money in the system. Capping legal fees, and then capping them some more, and throwing the book at lawyers who continue to press frivolous suits, might be a better place to start.