When the orders for the furnaces slowed down, workers were taken off the assembly  line and put to work making the parts.  This way the company did not have to lay off workers.  Worker relations were more in tune with human dignity. One job I had for awhile was in the worm gear making department and was awed by the skill of the person in charge. 

After this, I took a job with an electrical transformer manfacturing and here I met a man who I hold in very high esteem and perhaps he is the best person I ever met in the world world which includes some of the highest echelons of corporate management including CEOs. He was my shop foreman who watched over this workers as if he was their shephard. He would come by and take over one of the more dirtier job and tell you to go take a break.  He always was ready to help you in any way and gave you a task in a way I could  did not want to let him down.  I became a better than average spot welder which was my main duty and also ran a paint conveyor and several punch presses.  The main spot welder worked like an artist and no one could come close in matching his production and quality.  He was so good that he had to take many breaks so he would not wreck the piece-work rate for other workers. This was the nature of many men who I met in my factory life. In the summers I worked at other factories because of all the overtime that was available. At one factory, I worked up to 16 hours in a day at time and a half for 12 hours and at a double time rate for the remaining 4 hours. I also met another wonderful foreman at one of these factories. In the first week or two of employment every worker had to spend time grinding parts. I was grinding my hands instead and after seeing my bloody fingers, the foreman spent a long time making a hand grip to hold the parts and it worked. He did this so I could complete the reguirement for me to keep the job.

Later on, I was even a substitute factory manager for a small factory and even later in the computer field when computer tape was taking over as the main storage media ,  I deeply studied the manufacturing process. During this time, I met another wonderful factory production manager who really had a feel for the streets.

This led me to other studies for the sake of the best in manufacturing and later I became a trouble shooter supplyer for some of the top manufacturers including the industrial computer manufacturing sector in my own business.  I was also able to call engineers directly on the factory floors for information in a real time fashion. This would be impossible today. I also helped jump start the cat scan industry and the computerized typesetting industry.

Now all those jobs are gone. If the factory jobs I had in college were still available, there would be thousands standing in line applying for them including college graduates.  I made the equivalent of about $15 to as high as $30 an hour.  And the times,  I worked 16 hour shifts at time and a half and doubl time  would represent a weeks work of pay for most workers today.  Just a few years ago I became active in helping a phyically and mentally challenged workers communities find work.  They work at a by the piece rate and the more physically apt workers were willing to produce more to make up for those who were less capable for the same wage for all.  I devoted almost full time to this effort for four years but could not compete in price for these tasks due to foreign competition.

All these factories are gone. Not a single one has survived. I can drive for miles in our city and pass by  many places where there workers once made a middle class wage and now I see places looking like as if it is after a war.  And I can see our surrendering at rail road stops across our land as giant shipping containers roll by with the logo Cosco on them. Cosco is the giant shipping company owned in part by the Chinese Liberation Army.   And I see more surrendering as people shop their jobs away shopping at places like Walmart and a town in Georgia that hangs up a banner in the square with it saying Thank you Jesus for Kia.  Kia was paid a 160 million dollars to build an auto assembly plant in the town by the tapayers of Georgia. The mayor of our city, surrenders too as he celebrates the new Walmart store built in the grave yard of our steel mills that once employed thousands of workers at middle class wages.

In 1992, I began my advocacy for human dignity in the work day after reading an article in  a high tech publication.  It told how our own federal government sponsored the moving of factories outside of the U.S.A. starting in 1956.  I found out later that while I was preparing to go the Suez Canal as an Army Officer the Suez Canal crisis exposed the weakness of our world financial markets and power international entities established the globalization of money in that same year.

And now our economies based on making money on money instead of making things is burning out. President Roosevelt who initiated the Lend Lease Act which ramped up our industrial base with World War 2 taking over to create the most awesome industrial might the world has ever known where millions lost their lives in protecting our ways, said this- economic diseases are highly communicable. Today these diseases are everywhere as we surrender to free trade and Globalization.