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closeGuest Column: It’s the economy, coach, that can make people irrational
By Heather Stinson/Herald guest columnist
So, what do you do about a parent who punches an umpire in the face after a Little League baseball game?
My son’s coach mentioned that this happened after one of my son’s games last week, and I think he was hoping I would write about it – kind of a follow up to my civil discourse column. He has been a coach for 15 years and never saw this kind of thing happen.
Perhaps Coach was thinking that I would say something along the lines that each generation appears to be less polite than the last. Our parents would never have dreamed of punching out umpires. But, hey, neither would I. Neither would my husband. The truth is, this isn’t about society’s increasing lack of politeness. This must be something else.
For weeks now I’ve been listening to Ed Schultz on 1090 AM talking about the “99ers,” those Americans who have now been on unemployment benefits since the beginning of the recession and have been unable to find work. Their unemployment benefits end after 99 weeks.
Is this father possibly one of those people? Or, like my husband and I, is he someone who works in a place where employment is much more precarious than it used to be?
The company my husband works for in Tacoma is taking full advantage of the fact that union employees like himself are hard-pressed to find construction jobs outside the company and are playing hardball on their contract negotiations. In addition, they’ve replaced union contract workers with non-union because the first group wouldn’t agree to cross picket lines.
As a public employee, our shrinking city budget has meant that all city employees are required to take six unpaid days off during the year. My fellow planners in Pierce County who are still employed are facing layoff after layoff of their fellow co-workers, many furlough days and the constant possibility that they may be next.
The one silver lining I can see in all of this is that with so many people affected by the economy, even the boot-strappers among us have to admit that unemployment isn’t our fault. All these people haven’t been on unemployment for 99 weeks because they’re lazy or shiftless. The jobs simply aren’t there and the market isn’t creating them.
I know of at least one president who was able to remedy a situation like this. Oh, that our current one would take those lessons to heart. Maybe then, at least, our umpires could call lousy games without getting punched.