• Are the good employers gone? • As the world warms • The plight of Coco Palms Are the good employers gone? In the last few weeks, there has been a debate in the Letters about Walmart’s sense of corporate
• Are the good employers gone? • As the world warms • The plight of Coco Palms
Are the good employers gone?
In the last few weeks, there has been a debate in the Letters about Walmart’s sense of corporate responsibility toward its employees. I just wanted to recount a previous personal experience with a “real company” to demonstrate how one actually behaves with respect to their employees.
My first job after college was with the Dow Chemical Company. People say all sorts of nasty things about chemical companies, and Dow was no exception.
I worked for Dow for four years in Research & Development. In 1993, when they decided to close the R&D facility I worked in, I got laid off, along with nearly everyone else — at least 100 people. While disappointing, one had to respect how they handled it, because is was honorable. The corporate R&D manager (VP level) came out and personally handled the individual discussions with employees. I was offered a transfer to either Texas or Michigan. I chose not to take it as I decided to go to graduate school. The severance package they offered threw me into a higher tax bracket that year, as it doubled my salary. I also got a payout of over a month of unused vacation. Unlike many companies who do layoffs, they didn’t play any games trying to nickle-and-dime people to death. On top of all of that, they kept me on for an additional four months in a paid consultancy position while I was waiting for graduate school to start.
So when people start extolling the virtues of a company like Walmart, with their rather checkered history of mistreating employees, vendors, and entire communities, while the Walton family becomes ever richer, I seriously have to shake my head and laugh. Perhaps the days of the good employers are gone in general, but Walmart does not engage in actions which even remotely epitomize a “good employer.”
Michael Mann, Lihu‘e
As the world warms
It’s sure getting hotter.
The glut of acronyms representing hundreds of agencies engaged in a myriad of exotic studies of even the remotest tittle is stunning. They are being funded by a frightened populous convinced that their doom is imminent. Wizened opinion makers pontificate with sonorous majesty. They say our salvation lies within their superior wisdom and we must pay more and we must do with fewer creature comforts (and less individual freedom, of course!). They bully us continuously assuring us that our children’s very survival is at stake. It would be imminently laughable were it not so damned expensive.
Four tenths of one degree centigrade over the past one thousand years has been the global temperature increase: and CO2 as a percent of the atmosphere has increased by six one thousandths of one percent over the past 50 years: Scary indeed!
Yep, it’s getting hotter; and the gravy train is getting longer.
SUCKERS!!
Russell Boyer, Hanalei
The plight of Coco Palms
So the county can take Mike Sheehan’s boatyard that has been helping boaters, paddlers for years, So why not TAKE Coco Palms tear down that eyesore and return it as a park and zoo with the bike path? Why does it just sit there rotting away and being such an eyesore?
Christopher Kaplanis, Lihu‘e
