Don’t lay off the mailroom

Posted on February 27, 2025 by Jim

I’ve been watching the drama over the Trump administration’s layoffs of government employees with mixed feelings. I believe government reform and downsizing is long overdue. As a veteran of multiple corporate downsizings during my career, I’m amused at the manufactured outrage of politicians and the partisan media. But I’m disappointed at the ham-handed way the government reform effort is being implemented and communicated. 

Terminating employees is never easy or pleasant. The companies I worked for were pretty good at it but still made missteps.

When I worked at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works during several rounds of layoffs, my secretary came in one morning and said: “There’s no mail today. They laid off the mailroom.”  They WHAT??  Turns out that when management cut jobs in the top wage grades, the union contract gave the displaced workers the right to “bump” workers in a lower wage tier. The mailroom kids, at the bottom of the wage scale, were certain to be replaced by employees bumping down. So a manager jumped the gun and laid off the entire mailroom force before replacements arrived. 

During my three years at Western Electric, the Hawthorne Works was reduced from 16,000 employees to 11,000. Illinois Bell, where I spent most of my career, made a series of downsizing moves that significantly reduced its management force. This was part of a dramatic reorganization in a telecommunications industry that had seen little change for nearly a century. 

We quickly learned that the best way to help employees cope with uncertainty was to step up communication. Illinois Bell held frequent employee town meetings and coached executives to answer questions candidly. Western Electric equipped all supervisors with confidential information and guidance to talk to their people. Employees were not pleased by the downsizing moves but were never surprised. 

We’re seeing the same kind of culture shock in the federal workforce that we saw during AT&T’s divestiture of the Bell telephone companies in the 1980s. Both workforces were accustomed to a high degree of certainty and job security. Federal employees in particular were considered virtually fireproof. 

Elon Musk is a genius. He’s also a jerk. That makes him the best person to root out government waste and fraud and the worst person to communicate downsizing moves to employees. Now that Trump’s cabinet members are taking office, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency needs to hand off implementation of layoffs to agency heads who actually are effective communicators. That is beginning to happen. 

What’s even harder on federal employees is that the Democratic party is celebrating them as martyrs of the Great Resistance. Public officials and anti-Trump media – who rarely shed tears over layoffs in the private sector — are giving us heart-wrenching stories about laid-off employees. 

They are not getting much sympathy. The majority of Americans voted to downsize the federal government. Nearly half of Americans have little or no confidence in federal civil servants and Musk’s chainsaw rampage has lots of fans. My state’s two senators and an assortment of Democrat groups have beclowned themselves on Facebook with wild claims that laying off one percent of an agency’s headcount is putting Americans in mortal danger. Their posts have drawn derisive comments.

I confess that I am tempted to mock government employees who are shocked to learn that they are no more secure than ordinary working stiffs. The news media do these people no favors when their coverage plays into the popular caricature of entitled bureaucrats. 

If the DOGE layoffs are clumsy and disrespectful, the hysterical Democratic reaction is likely to make ordinary Americans resent government employees even more. Do Democrats seriously think that listening to federal employees sing protest songs on a workday will melt the hearts of Trump voters?

As much as I enjoy the Democrats’ unintended comedy, it’s time for Trump to rein in Musk — who is growing increasingly unpopular — and let his cabinet members manage their agencies’ force reductions in a deliberate, compassionate manner. This means communicating more effectively with federal employees and avoiding dumb missteps. Like laying off the mailroom. 

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The Confederates are back

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Jim

I’ve been a Civil War buff for years. I spent childhood summers with grandparents in Corinth, MS, visited the Shiloh battlefield and briefly wore a Confederate cap as a kid. Since I retired to New Mexico I’ve enjoyed reading about that state’s bizarre little Civil War campaign. 

I never thought I would live through anything like the American Civil War. But history often repeats, or at least rhymes. The news lately has been dominated by governors and mayors pledging to nullify federal law and shield illegal-immigrant criminals from deportation. The last time states defied the federal government it did not end well. Yet California, Illinois and New York are scrambling to be South Carolina in 1861. A Marist poll last year found that nearly half of Americans think they will see a second civil war.

An antebellum divide has been building for a while. Historian Victor Davis Hanson compares Democratic states to the Old South, hampered by racial and economic ideology that saps their vitality and growth. California has been flirting with secession for years. Sanctuary cities and states are effectively nullifying federal immigration law. We’ve seen an economic shift in recent years as Democratic states have lost residents and businesses to Republican states. 

The 2024 election did not heal the divide. The Democratic news media’s tearful reaction to Trump’s election was similar to this Southern news account in 1860: “Let the consequences be what they may — whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”

My adopted home state, part of the new Confederacy, is starting its 2026 campaign for governor. In a state beset by rising crime, rampant poverty and failing schools, the leading candidate’s first campaign promise was to oppose everything Trump does. 

Instead of firing on Fort Sumter, today’s insurrection uses lawyers. State attorneys general, public employee unions and Democratic nonprofits have filed the expected flurry of lawsuits against everything the Trump administration is doing, from going after government waste to deporting illegal immigrants. Trump & Co. are returning fire by taking state officials to court for shielding criminals from deportation raids. Can we get the opposing teams of lawyers to wear blue and grey suits? 

Since I live in a Confederate state, I’m wearing my John Bell Hoodie.

The lawfare campaign may deal a few setbacks to the Trump administration. He probably cannot annex Canada, but it’s likely the courts will decide that the federal government is entitled to deport illegal immigrants, and that the President has authority over the executive branch. 

Meanwhile, the new administration will continue laying off bureaucrats and deporting illegal immigrants. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, will move faster against illegals than Gen. George McClellan did against Richmond in 1862. Rep. Maxine Waters is no Stonewall Jackson. 

In the Civil War, the Confederate states defended slavery with the support of their population. Today’s neo-Confederates are urging their constituents to fight in the streets to defend government waste, a bloated federal workforce, trans athletes in women’s sports, unrestricted immigration and antisemitic campus demonstrations. Unlike the Old South, Americans overwhelmingly oppose all of these fringe positions. Blind hatred of Trump and Elon Musk may not be enough to fuel a popular uprising. 

The federal employees singing union protest songs in Washington (on a workday) do not represent the record percentage of the American public that now believes the government is on the right track, and the 50% who approve of Trump’s leadership. Nor do the cries of “constitutional crisis” from the legacy news media the majority of Americans no longer believe.

So if it comes to civil war, we are unlikely to see today’s neo-Confederates standing like a stone wall at Manassas. They are more likely to resemble the Japanese soldiers who held out for years because they didn’t believe World War II was over. 

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DEI’s out. Now what?

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Jim

With the stroke of a pen, President Trump wiped out a massive government bureaucracy that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Even more important, he rescinded President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 executive order establishing affirmative action programs for hiring and promotion. 

This changes our approach to minority relations: not just DEI but a half-century of affirmative action. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination by race, religion, sex or national origin. President Johnson’s executive order the following year went beyond removing barriers: It called for taking affirmative action to hire and promote minorities and women. 

I spent most of my career in AT&T’s affirmative action program, one of the first in industry. It worked fairly well. The company promoted minorities and women aggressively, but that did not keep me from getting promoted. You can quibble about whether a specific person is the best qualified for a particular job, but I never saw the company promote a person who was unqualified.

Being the largest company in the world made AT&T’s affirmative action relatively painless. If you were passed over for a promotion you had a shot at the next one. The company also had lots of women who supervised operators and service reps and were more than ready to move up.

Over the years affirmative action became less affirmative and more regimented. Colleges began setting racial and ethnic quotas for admission. While I always had a chance to be promoted at AT&T, race-based hiring and promotion foreclosed that opportunity in many institutions. A college-professor friend was told that when he retired his successor would NOT be a white man. 

DEI used race as a determining factor for practically everything. The Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 spread DEI throughout the economy and culture. The Biden administration created a massive bureaucracy and a government-wide obsession with race, ethnicity and gender. 

The idea of using discrimination to correct past discrimination failed. In 2023 the Supreme Court struck down racial preferences in college admissions. Mandatory DEI training sessions exacerbated workplace conflict, Bud Light learned that diversity doesn’t sell beer and Americans refused to vote for candidates who called them racists. 

DEI did not improve race relations: The percentage of Americans who say relations between black and white people are good declined sharply from 72% of whites and 66% of blacks in 2013 to 43%/33% in 2021. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 still is the law of the land (and the reason why the discriminatory aspects of DEI were struck down). Unlike 1964, when President Johnson relied on Republican votes to pass the law, a couple of generations of Americans have grown up in a society guided by affirmative action. 

Today there is nothing unusual about women and minority group members in positions of power. Workplace inequality between women and men has narrowed. It’s hard to believe Archie Bunker was considered radical in 1970. There’s widespread acceptance for gay, lesbian and disability rights. Interracial marriage has become normalized and the number of mixed-race people is growing. My kids went to integrated schools. Despite disagreements about race relations, there’s a broad consensus that discrimination is wrong: a consensus that did not exist 60 years ago. 

We still need a civil rights movement, however. Progress for women and minorities is not a done deal and the Civil Rights Act needs continued enforcement. We’re still sorting out how to accommodate trans people without hurting women. Antisemitism is a growing problem. Racial disparities haven’t gone away. 

Much of the black-oriented civil rights movement forfeited moral advantage when it was co-opted by the Democratic Party and race hustlers. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was purchased by the teacher’s union to oppose black parents who want school choice. The Southern Poverty Law Center has become its own hate group. The American Civil Liberties Union advocates for illegal immigrants and opposes anti-crime legislation. Black Lives Matter took everybody to the cleaners and nobody listens to Al Sharpton. 

Civil rights organizations for women, LBGTQ, the disabled, etc., have important work to do but must decide whether they are advocacy groups or partisan operatives. 

I’d like to see civil rights become a bipartisan issue as it was in 1964. The shift in the political parties, with the Republican party becoming working-class and multiracial, gives Republicans a vested interest in helping their voters in inner-city neighborhoods. Perhaps Democrats, having lost credibility as the champions of civil rights, will figure out that calling their opponents racist and sexist is not a winning strategy. 

A bipartisan commitment to enforce the Civil Rights Act could focus on systemic racism in Democrat cities as well as in Republican election laws. Cities that provide less police protection for minority neighborhoods and lock minority children into failing schools merit scrutiny from federal civil rights lawyers. So do universities that condone antisemitism. I’d like to see civil rights demonstrations outside both Democratic and Republican institutions. 

Eliminating DEI can clear the way for a renewed focus on civil rights. Call it civil rights 2.0.  

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Government goes up in smoke

Posted on January 25, 2025 by Jim

Watching Los Angeles burn on live television, dismaying as this is, may be a turning point. What we’re seeing is not just a wildfire, but a century of trust in government going up in smoke.

Most of us grew up with the understanding that our elected officials could be trusted to keep the country and our neighborhood safe and prosperous. My hometown of Chicago billed itself as “The City that Works.” We figured that most of the aldermen and all the building inspectors were on the take but did not object so long as the streets were safe and the garbage was picked up. That was the deal: We paid taxes to make the city a good place to live.

The deal was self-enforcing. In 1979, Chicago was paralyzed by a blizzard when the city failed to plow the streets. The mayor, on vacation in Florida when the blizzard hit, was kicked out of office in the next election. For years thereafter snowplows hit the streets at the first sign of snow. I think I saw a snowplow chasing individual snowflakes once.

Now the taxes-for-safety deal is broken. In then last few years we’ve seen a humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, an open border, unchecked riots, homeless encampments, refusal to prosecute criminals in major cities, unsafe subways, mystery drones and more.

Another deal we made, nearly a century ago, was that we would be better off when the government hired experts and civil servants to run the country under the oversight of elected officials. That no longer applies because the experts, increasingly, are screwing up and screwing us in the process.

The Affordable Care Act doubled the cost of individual health insurance. Public health officials mishandled the Covid pandemic and lied to us about it. The Forest Service started devastating wildfires in New Mexico. Our taxes paid for electric-vehicle charging stations that have not been built and rural internet that has not been connected.

Government at all levels is failing at its basic functions and no one has been held accountable. Civil servants have been immune from accountability for years. Elected officials gave up the power to fire them, or even to get them to show up at the office.

The Los Angeles fires are bringing all this to a head. Yes, record high winds spread the fire and frustrated attempts to contain it. Climate change certainly is a factor. But California knew its fire risks and chose not to put resources in place to mitigate them.

The state has water problems because the state government refused to build reservoirs and infrastructure that the voters authorized in 2014. Environmental regulations did not permit the government to clear vegetation, create firebreaks and use controlled burns to prevent wildfires. The local reservoir was closed for repairs. Fire hydrants ran dry when water ran short. Los Angeles cut the budget for its fire department. Insurance companies pulled out of California, leaving many homeowners uninsured, after the state’s insurance commissioner rejected rate increases based on current risk.

California politicians are blaming climate change and, inexplicably, President Trump. While Los Angeles burned, the state legislature held an emergency session to protect immigrants, abortion rights and environmental rules from the Trump administration. The legacy news media are giving Democratic politicians a pass, as always, but are unlikely to influence public opinion any more than they did during the recent election.

The people who lost everything in the fires are the victims of government malpractice: the failure of their elected officials to perform the basic function of keeping their citizens safe. Common sense would suggest that the voters ought to throw their politicians out in the next election, but Californians have been unusually tolerant of poor governance even though 200,000 of them left the state last year.

Watching Los Angeles burn will further convince the rest of the country that it’s time for accountability in government. Fewer than one-quarter of Americans now trust the government to do what is right all or most of the time. Last November the voters rejected the party of big government and dismissed the arguments of the experts, academics, celebrities and commentators.

President Trump’s rapid moves to reshape the government are overturning the assumption that government employees have the right to block the policies of elected officials. His changes — actually firing people! — are meeting with predictable hysterical opposition from Democrat politicians, advocacy groups and the legacy news media. But most Americans are no longer listening. Few tears are being shed for the hundreds of federal employees who are being dismissed and sidelined by Presidential order.

When Chicagoans kicked out their mayor after a snowstorm, the city improved its performance in using snowplows. If we’re lucky, the same thing will happen to the federal government. And maybe California will learn how to prevent wildfires.

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Disruption comes to Washington

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Jim

Watching the transition to President-elect Trump’s second term is shaping up to be my favorite spectator sport. Trump was elected on the promise to clean up the federal government and, true to form, is appointing cabinet members who promise to disrupt the agencies they will head. In addition, the new administration has launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to significantly reduce government spending.

Watching the reaction of the opposition party and media pundits to the coming disruption is amusing. They seem particularly alarmed at the notion that government employees can be fired, or that government programs can be dismantled. That’s understandable because government initiatives never die and federal employees are almost never fired. 

This time may be different. Heightened voter support for change, along with the disruptors Trump is appointing and their allies in Congress, makes it likely that we will see some major shakeups.

Welcome to the real world. The government may resist change, but disruption is the rule in private business. Most large companies go through cycles of reorganization, downsizing and renewal. Successful companies disrupt themselves to adapt to changing business conditions. During my corporate career with Illinois Bell and Western Electric I saw a long series of reorganizations and downsizing moves, culminating with the court-ordered breakup of AT&T and my own eventual departure in a voluntary buyout.

Reorganization often makes sense. When Illinois Bell was doing a lot of hiring and retraining, the company upgraded and expanded its training operation to a stand-alone department. A few years later the department was reduced and downgraded as training needs diminished. Most other departments reorganized every few years. It’s not unusual for a company to create new organizations and disband old ones. 

It’s also healthy for organizations to downsize periodically to counter the natural tendency of managers to build empires. When I was a manager, I pestered my bosses with proposals for all the wonderful things I could accomplish if they gave me a bigger budget and more people. 

During my 22 years with Illinois Bell the company’s workforce gradually dwindled from 40,000 to 24,000. The company had grown rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s and had an aging management force by the 1980s. This made it easier for the company to significantly thin its management ranks by offering a pension bump to incent people to retire a few years early. Some companies also offer buyouts to executives when a new CEO wants to bring in a new management team.

Wonder if this would work for government?  How about offering a buyout to Environmental Protection Agency executives who oppose Trump’s environmental policies? 

The disadvantage of downsizing gradually, as Illinois Bell did, is the temptation to believe that you can keep doing everything you’re doing and just work a little harder. This never works. Sometimes a drastic cut is more effective. 

When I worked for Western Electric, the Hawthorne Works reduced its workforce from 16,000 employees to 11,000 over three years The public relations department where I worked was cut in half in a matter of months. Doing everything we had been doing was not an option: We had to make tough choices and shut down some activities. After several months, we were pleasantly surprised to find that nobody missed the programs we had discontinued. Our slender staff was operating more efficiently and even was able to start some new initiatives. 

We can’t expect the government to downsize the way a private business can, of course. Every federal program has a constituency, and Congress has blocked every attempt to reform the administrative agencies. 

What’s changed is that nearly two-thirds of today’s Americans do not trust the federal government. Many of them voted for Trump. His promise to shake up the federal government has unprecedented support from the voters. The disruptors Trump has nominated for his cabinet indicate that he intends to keep his promise. The non-governmental DOGE initiative by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will work with a Congressional subcommittee and Trump’s cabinet members on reforms that are likely to be popular with voters. 

One indication of this effort’s potential for success is the virulence of the opposition. The traditional Democratic effort to discredit Republican nominees promises to reach a new level of slander. The news media campaign already is in full spin. Happily, the recent election confirmed that the traditional media are irrelevant. 

This will be fun to watch. Can government agencies trim their ranks by forcing employees to show up at the office? Will some agencies move their offices out of Washington? Can displaced bureaucrats find honest work? 

I’m not expecting miracles but hope we will see a few positive changes. If we’re lucky, perhaps Elon Musk can teach the Navy how to build ships again.

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Serving with the Greatest Generation

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Jim

I couldn’t help watching the TV coverage of the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It’s a moving and pivotal episode in our history and a reminder of values that often are forgotten today. 

I got acquainted with the Greatest Generation when I joined the Navy in 1964. Most of the senior officers and noncoms in those days were World War II veterans and were approaching retirement after 20-plus years on active duty. 

My first duty station, a joint-forces headquarters in Albuquerque, was a magnet for senior officers on their twilight tours because it was a great place to retire. One of my bosses was a Navy commander who was building a lavish new house near the base. Another was an Air Force colonel who had purchased a ranch outside of town. 

Because military headquarters tend to be top-heavy, senior officers actually outnumbered their juniors. At one point I was the only Navy ensign among two admirals and several dozen captains and commanders. I was 21 years old and marveled at the age and seniority of the brass-hatted elders I encountered (including the Army colonel who became my father-in-law). The Air Force in particular had numerous officers who had been promoted to colonel in their 20s by surviving high casualty rates and stuck around for another 20 years without further advancement. Some of them were colonels before I was born. 

They rarely talked about their experiences in World War II and Korea. I wish I’d had the temerity to ask. When I told my Air Force colonel boss that the Navy was transferring me to Sasebo, Japan, his response was: “Nice town. I bombed it once.” 

After my sea duty tour, I encountered another gold-braided environment at the Great Lakes, IL, naval district headquarters. By this time I had more appreciation that those stuffy seniors were badass when they were my age. The elderly admiral who woodenly delivered the speeches I wrote for him earned a Silver Star on D-Day as a particularly daring destroyer skipper. 

In one meeting it took me a minute to notice that the captain at the other end of the table wore an unusual light-blue ribbon with gold stars. I learned later that he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor as a lieutenant in charge of a landing craft. The Navy recently named a ship for him. 

I encountered another contingent of the Greatest Generation years later. In 2012 I co-authored the biography of an Albuquerque veteran who was captured in the Philippines and spent the rest of the war in Japanese POW camps. My co-author and I attended a reunion of Bataan-Corregidor survivors in Albuquerque as part of our work on the book. I was surprised at the number of survivors who were healthy and vigorous in their 90s, suggesting that people who survived the ordeal they went through are practically indestructible.

If I gained unique insight and priceless inspiration by serving under a generation of heroes, it wasn’t evident at the time. I had some excellent mentors and encountered a few blockheads. Mostly I absorbed the example of solid citizens who didn’t brag, were team players and generally got things done. Exactly the sort of men who stormed the beach on D-Day.

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University of Intifada

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Jim

When I graduated from Northwestern University in 1964, most of my fellow students were supporting Barry Goldwater for President. Now my old school is capitulating to anti-Israel activists. The university agreed to consider divesting from Israel and subsidize more Palestinian faculty and students. 

I’m disappointed but not surprised. Antisemitism has been growing in academia for decades, starting decades ago with the Palestinian-led movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. Critical race theory curriculum defines Jews as white oppressors, Palestinians as an oppressed minority and Israel as a colonist state. 

In addition, Middle Eastern autocracies have been donating billions of dollars to U.S. universities in recent decades. This has funded departments of Middle Eastern studies, Muslim faculty and a surge in Middle Eastern students. Northwestern already maintains a campus in Qatar (where graduates with the same journalism degree I hold may be churning out propaganda for Al Jazeera). 

Fortunately, I stopped being a loyal alum after Northwestern sent me a collection letter demanding payment on my student loan when I was serving in Vietnam. 

Some are pointing out the eerie similarity between today’s academic antisemitism and the German universities’ embrace of Nazism in the 1920s. Particularly when the emphasis of campus protests has shifted from concern for civilians in Gaza to openly calling for the destruction of Israel and threatening their Jewish classmates. Chants of “from the river to the sea” (Israel will no longer exist) have been supplemented by “Intifada” (war on non-Muslims everywhere), “Death to Israel” and occasionally “Death to the USA.” A few protest leaders are saying the quiet part out loud by claiming that “Zionists” do not deserve to live.

The sudden emergence of an anti-Israel voting block has neutered the Democratic party’s leadership, is influencing U.S. foreign policy and may cost Democrats the election. The only bright spot is that it’s more difficult for Democrats to portray Trump as Hitler when mobs of their voters are calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. 

Regardless of how this plays out politically, the radical takeover of universities is likely to force an overdue reckoning for higher education. Tuition costs have been rising dramatically as colleges have padded their bloated bureaucracies. This now affects every American because the Biden administration is forcing all taxpayers to foot the bill for student loans. So when the TV news shows a keffiyeh-clad student spouting hate slogans, every viewer has to ask: Why am I paying for this idiot?

Colleges already were under fire for racism in admissions and hiring, suppression of free speech, trans-athletic controversies, plagiarism scandals and denial of due process to students. Some employers are refusing to hire recent graduates because they are unprepared for the workforce. Because of high costs and demographic trends, fewer students are entering colleges and some schools are closing. 

Even though the Hamas wannabes represent a tiny minority of college students, their aggressive stupidity is the new face of higher education. Universities were founded to educate new generations of leaders and thinkers and their degrees were marks of distinction. We’re now learning that our most prestigious schools are producing useful idiots who are easily led, ignorant of history, unable to articulate why they’re protesting and unwilling to show their faces. And the leaders of many of those institutions are capitulating to the mob. 

We have seen campus unrest before but this time it’s different. This is not principled opposition to the Vietnam war, support for racial justice or a desire to make America better. Today’s campus protests quickly evolved from concern for the Palestinians to a degree of Jew-hatred and anti-Americanism never before seen in this country. The professional organization, terrorist sympathies and cult-like behavior of the protesters strike many Americans as sinister. The inability of so many schools to exercise adult supervision is alarming.

This raises a fundamental question: Does America need schools like Columbia, UCLA and, yes, Northwestern? Why should they receive government subsidies and tax breaks? Will any employer risk hiring their graduates? Will parents want to send their children there? Will anyone mourn if some formerly elite universities simply close?

The pushback is beginning as the 80% of Americans who favor Israel are getting involved. We’re beginning to see pro-Israel counterdemonstrations. Major donors are withdrawing their contributions from Ivy League schools. We may see lawsuits from parents whose kids have been blocked from classes and graduation ceremonies. 

Congress is getting involved. There are bills opposing antisemitism and federal funding to universities probably will be at risk. We are likely to see investigations focusing on Middle Eastern influence and the ease with which outside organizers have been able to infiltrate campuses and lead protests. 

The result is likely to be a shake-out in higher education. Universities that have kept the protests confined will survive. Some states have begun reforming their universities. But more colleges will close and major universities will see their reputations diminished. 

The challenge for our politicians is to preserve and clarify the right to peacefully protest and utter hate speech while making colleges a safe space for everyone. A bigger challenge will be to restore academic excellence to the American university system.

Germany’s example is not encouraging. Before they adopted Nazi ideology the country’s universities were among the best in the world. After World War II German universities never regained their former standing.

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My new ride is a technology trip

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Jim

Buying a new car used to be an exhilarating experience: gleaming metal, that new-car smell and the sensation of commanding a more capable machine. I’m finding it a little more complicated. My first new car in 17 years is an unfamiliar technological journey. 

I could have kept my 2007 Subaru a little longer. It was gently used and meticulously maintained. But my repair bills suggested that I was already replacing the car one part at a time. My daughter complained about the cramped rear seat during her Christmas visits and I really wanted the latest safety features. 

My 2024 Subaru Forester was delivered in November. It’s enjoyable to drive, but figuring out the controls and technology features requires a learning curve. The salesman’s hasty explanation of the car’s array of switches and buttons left me mostly confused. 

I quickly learned to start the car by pushing a button and figured out how to lock and unlock the doors by touching the door handle (so long as the magic amulet that replaced the key is in my pocket). It took longer to learn how to lock and unlock the doors from inside the car, which lacks the locking button of earlier models. After consulting the owner’s manual I used the settings menu on the touchscreen to program the doors to unlock themselves when the gearshift is in “park.” 

I get a kick out of using the power liftgate but have not tried to open the power moonroof (one of the features I would not have chosen but “came with”). 

The dials that control the heating and air conditioning are a little complicated but I’m muddling through. The dashboard gauges and information screen give me more information than I want and keep track of my gas mileage in at least three places. The safety features – backup camera, lane departure warning and blind spot detection – are easy to use and have spared me a few close calls. 

I have not yet tried out the adaptive cruise control or the traction control for mud and snow. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to slog through the owner’s manual and learn to use all these gadgets.

The infotainment system is another challenge. A touchscreen controls the radio, connects to my cell phone and controls other computerized applications. The radio is easy enough to use when it decides to turn itself on. My cell phone connects with the car wirelessly via Bluetooth, but I need to physically plug it into the dashboard to use the phone’s navigation feature and recorded music. I recently discovered that the car can receive phone calls and am not sure I like that. One of the car’s apps that’s supposed to interface with my phone is not working as described in the owner’s manual and, according to the dealer, is being withdrawn. 

What’s frustrating is that I am not your typical geriatric Luddite. I managed a large office computer system in the 1980s, started my own website in the 1990s and have embraced cell phone apps as senior moments occupy more of my waking hours. I should be able to master the technology in an ordinary Subaru. It’s not surprising to learn that touchscreen distraction is an issue for some drivers. I wonder how many new-car owners are learning just enough about their cars to drive them around and are not taking full advantage of their capabilities.

I also wonder if the high-tech gadgetry will last as long as the rest of the car. My last midlife-crisis car was a sporty 1986 Nissan with a computer voice that reminded me to close the door or turn off the headlights with just a hint of Japanese accent: “Your ritesare on.” Eventually the voice got confused, talking about doors instead of headlights, and finally went silent. I chose not to restore the voice with a $300 microchip because I did not need my car nagging me. 

I suspect the auto industry is going through the kind of transition we saw in the computer industry decades ago, when every new software version came with a thick book of instructions. Over the years software for computers and smartphones became more intuitive and user-friendly, and automotive gadgetry may follow the same trajectory. My car salesman suggested that auto companies are scrambling to keep pace with cell phone advances to connect only those apps that do not interfere with driving. My periodic service appointments at the Subaru dealer probably will include the occasional software upgrade. 

Auto companies may need to emulate the tech companies in user training and support, like the Apple Store’s classes for new users and its tech support resources. One stopgap measure is a wealth of video tutorials on YouTube, including one that helped me program the car to open my garage door. 

On the other hand, helping motorists understand the technology in their cars may not be the point. The confusion we’re coping with may be the auto industry’s way of preparing us to welcome self-driving cars in a few years. 

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The old headquarters building

Posted on November 21, 2023 by Jim

They’re renovating the building where I spent most of my career. The former Illinois Bell Telephone headquarters in downtown Chicago was sold some years ago. It’s about to re-emerge as an updated office tower and just landed a law firm as a major tenant.

The building was practically new when I began working there in 1968. It was one of three buildings. Illinois Bell built its original headquarters at 212 Washington in the 1920s, expanded into an adjacent building of similar vintage and built the new 30-story building at 225 W. Randolph in 1966 to occupy most of the city block bounded by Randolph, Wells, Washington and Franklin. 

It was an impressive complex with an expansive lobby that extended through the new and old buildings, a motor pool in the basement and a pedestrian plaza on Franklin St. Walking into the place made me feel kind of important. The complex was occupied by several thousand of the nearly 40,000 employees who worked for Illinois Bell when I joined the company.

I was impressed that the public relations department that hired me was at the very top of the building, on the 30th floor – which suggested that my profession was really important to the company. Years later one of the engineers who helped design the building told me that because this was the tallest building in the West Loop, they were worried that an airplane could hit the top floor. So they put the executives on the 28th floor and the engineers prudently located their offices on the 15th floor. 

The building became an unplanned addition to Chicago’s art scene. One of my colleagues was an art expert who told his vice president that the boring but lavishly framed print on his office wall was a piece of trash. He suggested that as long as the company had to decorate the new building’s miles of beige corridors, buying original paintings from unknown artists would be a better value than traditional prints of landscapes and ruminant cattle.

The executives gave the guy a budget and turned him loose to buy art but were a little worried when he brought in a collection of wildly abstract paintings. They proved to be popular with employees who welcomed the addition of a little color to the 60s-modern décor. This evolved into a permanent art program with periodic art shows in the building’s lobby. Over the years Illinois Bell’s art collection increased in value and became a significant capital asset, which probably gave the company’s regulatory accountants fits. 

The building was strictly an office headquarters without the phone company’s switchboards and equipment. Its design was a product of its time, an open floor plan with a central core of elevators and glass curtain walls. It reflected the company’s hierarchy with private offices for managers and cubicles or open desks for working stiffs with identical furniture. I started out in a cubicle and eventually was promoted to a 10-foot-square office with a carpet, water jug and speakerphone. Higher-ranking managers got bigger offices with fancier water jugs. 

Overall, the building was a fairly pleasant place to work. The entire 20th floor was a cafeteria and employee lounge. Coffee carts circulated through the offices twice a day and in the 1980s we got robot mail carts. Its location on the west edge of Chicago’s Loop was a couple of blocks from the El and commuter trains with plenty of restaurants within easy walking distance. 

For many years the company leased space in the building to a barbershop. Not only did the barber enjoy a steady clientele, but whenever he had a gripe about his lease he would complain directly to the executives in his barber chair. When his shop eventually closed the barber opened a cell phone dealership.

After I left the company in 1990 the older buildings on Washington were sold and renovated as luxury condos with a new parking garage on the Franklin St. plaza. A private developer purchased the 225 Randolph building in 2007 and leased it back to AT&T until last year. The building was granted landmark status in 2021. 

My 22-year career with Illinois Bell had more good years than bad ones. There even were a few times when I left the building after dark, looked up at its looming 30 stories and thought: “Yep, I think I moved it an inch today.”

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Communicating during a strike

Posted on September 4, 2023 by Jim

In 1968 I celebrated Labor Day in the middle of a strike.

I was hired by Illinois Bell Telephone’s public relations department when I got out of the Navy in April of that year, shortly after a five-month strike began. Because the telephone company cannot shut down during a strike, management employees were pressed into service to keep the system working. I was a switchboard operator, installed phones and drove a supply truck through hostile picket lines.

I finally got around to working in public relations but strikes became a key component of my career. I went through six contract strikes: 1968 and 1971 at Illinois Bell, 1974 at Western Electric, 1983 and 1989 at Illinois Bell and a school strike in 1998 when I was an independent consultant. Not counting wildcat walkouts. 

After that first strike I was a public relations manager rather than a substitute installer. I handled media relations for the Western Electric strike in 1974, employee communications for Illinois Bell’s 1989 strike, and assisted with strike-related PR in 1971 and 1983. 

Strikes are best avoided and can be devastating if allowed to drag on for months. When they happen, managing communications is an interesting professional challenge that I found satisfying.

How strikes happen

Union-management bargaining is an adversarial process in which both sides press demands and negotiate a compromise. Labor contracts are detailed and the minutiae of union jurisdiction, shift differentials and work rules are as open to negotiations as wages and benefits. Management usually is willing to trade higher wages and benefits for more flexible work rules.

Information warfare is part of the process because the union needs the support of its members to go out on strike if necessary. Management needs to explain its position to employees, customers and investors. Local politicians may get into the act at the request of the union.  Both sides use a variety of legal tactics that generally will be misunderstood by the news media. 

When bargaining begins, unions members vote to authorize a strike. This does NOT mean they are voting to strike (as the news media report) but merely authorizing their leadership to call a strike if negotiations break down. Otherwise the union will have no bargaining power. 

When negotiations break down the union calls a strike. Not all strikes are alike. A strike lasting a few days is largely symbolic: Workers blow off steam, are convinced that their leaders are tough and make up any lost wages with overtime. More serious strikes last longer. 

Wildcat strikes are walkouts that are not authorized by the union, usually by a small group of employees expressing a local grievance. I’m sure it was just coincidence that I saw a number of wildcat strikes on warm Friday afternoons in springtime.

A strike has its own rules of engagement. The union has the prerogative to be combative and shrill because it needs the news media to motivate its members and enlist public support for the strike. Management, on the other hand, must be restrained and statesmanlike to maintain its relations with customers, investors and regulators. The result is a media slugfest in which the union attacks and management counters union disinformation in a cross between a chess game and a bar fight. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The news media arena

Strikes at large companies are always newsworthy.  Most reporters know nothing about bargaining procedures and labor law and are inclined to side with the union. During the first day of the Western Electric strike I had an amusing exchange with a reporter on live radio. The reporter announced that 16,000 employees were on strike and asked me to comment. I quickly corrected him and said we had 11,000 employees on strike. 

For some reason the reporter chose to argue with me (on live radio), insisting that the union claimed 16,000 strikers. I explained that the company is in a better position than the union to know how many people are at work because they punch timecards and we pay them. The reporter continued to stand by the union’s claim. Finally I said: “If you want to believe there are 16,000 people on strike that’s fine, but let me assure you that only 11,000 of them work for Western Electric.”

Some union disinformation tactics are more challenging. During Illinois Bell labor negotiations the union got the National Organization for Women to release a statement charging that the company’s proposed contract was unfair to women because it offered higher wage increases to top technician job titles that were dominated by men. Within a few hours we countered with statistics showing that employees in lower pay grades were being offered a higher-percentage wage increase, and that the majority of employees promoted into the top job titles were women. The news media quickly dropped the story and many of our women managers dropped their NOW memberships. 

Since management usually is on the receiving end of media attacks, quick response is essential. At Illinois Bell and Western Electric my public relations colleagues and I worked closely with labor relations executives and lawyers who could approve our statements quickly enough to win the news cycle. 

That was not possible when I worked with a suburban school district during a teachers’ strike. The school board spent all day micromanaging a media statement and the union dominated the news coverage. I resolved to never again take on a public school board as a client. 

Keeping employees informed

Communicating with employees during a strike is even more important than fighting the news battle. Most employees have only a vague idea of why they’re striking. A proposal for modest changes to the company medical plan will prompt folks on the picket line to scream that the company is taking away their healthcare. 

Employee communications is a long-term investment. Illinois Bell and Western Electric, both subsidiaries of AT&T, had earned credibility by keeping employees well-informed through publications and supervisory communications. Illinois Bell’s phone-in employee newscast on an answering system was so popular during strikes that we had to add circuits to meet demand for up-to-the-minute information. 

Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago had a general manager who was good at communicating with employees on the factory floor. The strike called by the company’s national union saw vandalism and violence at other locations, but at Hawthorne the GM visited the picket line every day to chat with striking employees. I could even ride my bicycle through the picket lines without being hassled. 

The communications job isn’t over when an agreement ends the strike. The union needs to convince its members to ratify the contract — not a sure thing – by boasting that the strike was a decisive victory. Most union contracts are a victory for management, too, but management needs to wait until the contract is ratified to tell shareholders how much money the company saved by negotiating more flexible work rules. 

As inflation continues to drag down the economy we’re likely to see more strikes. In most cases, at least in the private sector, they will end quickly and confirm a healthy balance of power between labor and management. I will enjoy watching from the sidelines, will miss the gamesmanship and will not believe what I see in the news media. 

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