Monday, July 26, 2010

Something New, Something Old

It's July already. I guess we stay busy, and the time flies by. In that flying-by time, there's always something new. And everytime there's something new, something else turns old.

New:  a week spent on the East Coast earlier this month - New York, and Boston. New York was again fun in the summertime, although I got to suffer along with the entire Eastern seaboard in the well-reported heat wave. I of course was traveling on business, and the business side of New York for us was suffering from stormy weather also. Certain things I thought were true were in fact not true, and certain things were said that revealed that untruth. But these are issues that arise in every business, including ours.

I proceeded to Boston, where the treading was much, much easier. We were privileged to be invited to participate in the annual "post-NeoCon" Boston party sponsored by Jim Burke's Allegheny Flooring - targeted to those professionals in the flooring trade that opted out of traveling to Chicago for the real NeoCon show. "Those professionals" are further described as about 400 architects and interior designers in the New England area, attending this Thursday afternoon and evening extravaganza. Plantation had a modest display of flooring for the troops, and happily met what seemed like all 400 of those professionals!

New things push previous new things into the now-old things category.

One old thing is the maturation of the subject I wrote about here many months ago - the making of hardwood flooring by prison labor. My thesis has been that the state and federal govenments should not be supporting manufacturing in prisons of products that compete with products produced in the private sector by tax-paying, mortgage-paying, family-supporting citizens. It is galling to think that I cannot hire additional workers, or worse, that I have to lay off my workers, while prisoners supported by the state do the same work in their prison workplaces, subsidized by you and me.

Anyway, while I was all exercised over this subject, I did what all red-blooded Americans are advised to do: I wrote to my Senators! My Senators are the California Senators, namely Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. And guess what! They answered me!

Barbara Boxer's office sent a letter that said "Dear Citizen..." and proceeded to tell me how much she appreciated my letter, went on to mention all the things she is doing to help me, the poor, put-upon citizen suffering from the policies of George Bush; and of yes, how she is fighting for the environment. Not a hint of response to my specific concern - just a form letter. Pretty much a joke, and I hate to say it - pretty much what I expected.

"DiFi," on the other hand, wrote me a real letter, signed by the Senator herself. Turns out the prison labor situation is the focus of one of her committee assignments in the Senate, and she promised in her letter to remember my concern the next time the committee met. A real response - what a concept! Thank you for listening, DiFi.

Why am I rehashing this subject now? Two things happened recently to bring my thoughts about competing against prison labor back to the forefront of my mind. One was a piece in the Wall Street Journal about prisoners being "laid off" from their "jobs," due to a retraction in demand for the products they make. The accompanying sentiment was sympathy at this unfortunate development, and likened these layoffs to those of the private sector. Of course, we all know it's not the same. Prisoner layoffs don't result in failure to pay the rent, or tightening the food budget, or telling the kids no vacation this year.

But laying off prisoners does have an affect, according to the WSJ article. Prisoners don't like to have nothing to do all day, so the level of prisoner unrest is rising. Prisoners are acting out against their "layoffs." Guards are endangered, lockdowns are more frequent.

Give me a break.

The other event that happened to focus me on this topic is a conversation I had at a recent trade show with an industry executive whose well-known flooring company supports in this prison labor scheme. After I expressed my views on this subject, this executive explained about the marvelous benefits being generated by his company by making their flooring in the prison system; about the monies being sent home to families of the incarcerated, about the funds paid in being used to offset the state costs for maintaining the prisoners, about the restitutions being made to the prisoners' victims, about the savings accounts being established in the prisoners' names for use at the time of their eventual release.

But, significantly, this executive confided the real reason they go to prisons for labor: the fact that the flooring company can find no one outside the prison system who will do the work. That is, the effort needed to make handscraped wood floors is too hard, too much work for too little pay for the good folks in the neighborhood. Prison labor, according to this executive, is their only recourse.

I said instantly, send your work to us in California, and my crews will work night and day to get your jobs done. They need and want the work. Unlike prisoners, they have rent to pay, groceries to buy. They pay taxes, they raise their families.

And they didn't steal your car.