A forum for Blog Community #1 of CSCL 1001 (Introduction to Cultural Studies: Rhetoric, Power, Desire; University of Minnesota, Fall 2010) -- and interested guests.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Adam
Monday, November 15, 2010
Ava
Catharine McCook: A Minnesota moderate
I interviewed Catharine McCook in the lounge of my residence hall, Frontier. We immediately made the connection of us both being freshmen. Catharine hails from Chatfield, MN a place I had no previous knowledge of since I am from Wisconsin. She is planning on majoring in geology in the near future. In our opinions about labor and such topics, I was a three and Catharine was a four so we were slightly Moderate Liberals who didn’t have too differing of views. Catharine’s main standpoints on unions were that they are a good thing when they’re not bigger than the companies themselves. Catharine’s family may have influenced her views on unions because he aunt was a small business owner, therefore she hated unions because they would always overpower here small business. Catharine has never had a job in her life but hopes when she does acquire one, it will be an easy job whether it pays well or not. She also believes that if getting a job you want requires joining a union, then you should go ahead and join it. Another one of her relatives is a carpenter and is in a very interesting situation He is of course part of a union, being in the working-class job that he is, but he gets “laid off” every winter when there is no work for carpenters but still gets paid, and then gets “rehired” in the spring. There seems to be a lot of reliability in joining a union.
Overall Catharine seems like a very laid back and agreeable person. The epitome of “Minnesota nice” if you will. Her agreeableness made her think that when picketers are blocking the main road, they should be removed. I disagreed with this completely, being the sometimes obnoxious liberal I am. She seems a bit like a people pleaser and would not want to make anyone mad by obstructing traffic. I, on the other hand, with obstruct traffic until I’m forcibly removed it if is an issue worth fighting for. Catharine also said that she is in a partial-trust fund to pay for college so she understands when money is tight and how unions can help. I learned from Catharine how moderate Minnesotans can really be and how nice it is to not always be around obnoxiously liberal people like I was and still am when I go back to Madison.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
My Interview with Alex
Andrew
Then I asked him if he would ever join a union? He said if he ever went into a trade with a specialized skill or if health conditions of a work place were unacceptable then unionizing should happen, however if you are working in a place that you need no discernable skill and there is nothing disturbing your health a union should not happen. This is one thing I agree with Andrew on, I believe that if there are no concerns to your health you would not need a union, but if there are then you need to do something about it and get other employees to stand together to fight this, then yes I would join a union as well.
Another question I asked him was who should control the union? He believes the federal government should control the head of the union because they would have the ability to gather together people that are experts in the field of unionization where anyone person, he doesn’t believe could do the job right. From his response to this question I both agree but disagree. I think I would go to someone with more knowledge and with a higher power, but not necessarily the government. I don’t think the government should have control over work groups, because they already control enough as is.
Then I asked him, why do you have so much faith in the government? He does believe in the government. Andrew said “I know I live in my own little world, where I like to think that the United States Government is a right and justice unit.” To this I would disagree, I live in an opposite world where I don’t always agree with the government and politics. I try not getting to involved with these kinds of things just for the simple fact I’m not that interested in it. I do have my own opinions and beliefs just like everyone else but sometimes I feel like even though you care and have an opinion doesn’t mean you are right or wrong.
Getting to know him a little more I asked if he was a Republican or Democrat. He said “I’m neither; I don’t affiliate with any party, I go with a candidate whom I agree with.”
We seem to both agree and disagree.
Will the real Daniel Bliss please stand up?
She sure looks familiar...
Shannon
Shannon has lived in many different suburbs in the metro area, along with a brief time in Wisconsin. Part of that time included living in low income housing. Shannon grew up with a single mom and two half brothers. Her mother was a nurse and spent some time working in a nursing home. She likes to help people and strongly supports helping those out when they are in need. In general Shannon's mother is pretty liberal. Her father on the other hand is more conservative. He is a construction worker and he is against unions. He also comes from a conservative, wealthy family. When it comes to paying for Shannon's education, she receives a sizable amount of grants in relation to her mother's income status and the remaining portion is paid for by her father. Shannon works 40 hours/week over the summer to save up money for living expenses during the school year. She also works one long day every two weeks for more spending money.
Shannon's job history primarily consists of childcare. Shannon has been employed by a day care center as well as many jobs as a nanny and babysitter. She also, like her mother, likes to help people; but for Shannon its especially children. She describes the job as stressful and rewarding; she is taking part in raising that child. Part of her training involves learning how to work with children; praising them, scolding them, there are many dos and don'ts for talking to children. Her favorite child to work with at the day care is her nephew Jaydon. She loves being able to see her nearly two year old nephew while at work. She also enjoys the coworkers that she works with. It is usually only one other girl at a time that she works with. She enjoys working with someone similar to her that is also at the same job level. Her supervisor is rarely at the day care center so there is a lot of flexibility and autonomy in her work.
SUZANNE
Jessica Harnack: You Can't Control Me
In a purple blouse, dark blue denim, black converse high-tops, glasses, and her classic red hair, Jessica Harnack stands nearly six feet tall (top picture: left, bottom picture: top right). Coming over the Washington Avenue Bridge, she meets me at the Science and Teaching Student Services building and we sit in the large, red egg-shaped chairs. I have known Jessica for over two years, having performed a production of Much Ado About Nothing with her in addition to numerous high school classes, but labor and union politics have never graced our conversations until today.
Jessica, 18, lived in Burnsville, MN and moved to the White Bear Lake Area, where I lived and met her, just a few years ago. She is currently a full time student here at the University of Minnesota where she is working for a pre-pharmacy major, of which she will graduate in the next 1-2 years. She wants to be a Pharmacy Technician soon, at a local CVS, in order to become a pharmacist.
She has never worked a day in her life – at least for money, so her personal dealings with unions and labor politics are quite limited. Jessica does not like the idea of working while being in school, though she does not quite like the way our school system is either.
Jessica’s father works as an RN, or registered nurse. He is currently unemployed and when he was employed at a hospital he was not part of a union. But despite being officially unemployed, he works as a temporary nurse filling in for other RN’s and any open blocks in hospital schedules. His girlfriend also works as an RN, but works in a hospital full time (so she is officially employed). She, like Mr. Harnack, does not work in a union.
Jessica’s mother works for Home Healthcare as a quasi nurse-caretaker-doctor for patients, whom she visits at their homes. She worked as a manager, but has since switched positions in order to receive a higher wage and work hands-on with patients and people in need. Jessica’s mother is not part of a union, but, being involved with nursing, she, at least for a bit, volunteered for the large nurse’s strike that occurred recently in the Twin Cities and considers herself “pro-union.” Jessica’s mother’s fiancé works for a construction company and is currently a union employee. He has been laid-off in the past, mainly due to the recession, but has since returned to work with union benefits.
When the thought of unions came up the first thing Jessica thought of was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, where, from my knowledge, is about a “Robber Baron’s” meat company and the horrible sanitary and working conditions reflected the horrible status of the growing American industry of the time. Despite the initial benefits of unions when they became popular in American history, such as improved working conditions, increased wages, and basic health, etc. benefits, modern-day unions also defend poorly skilled and lazy employees from being fired, unions take money away from otherwise needy families who had no choice in joining the union, and seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of employees as the same, identical person. Because of the rather happy medium of both love and hate of unions, Jessica was a 5 on the labor politics test we took in class. She sees unions as a way to defend rights but to also control the working man. The Harlan County documentary she saw as a very bias and unique example of unions, and a particular example that cannot be accurately translated in to modern-day terms. It was like Michael Moore’s Sicko or Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, where big business is the enemy and the common people should have all the power, basically from a socialistic point of view.
But the most profound thing that came up during our time together was when she said, “the thing that most annoys me about unions is that I don’t like [people telling] me what to do.” Controls, like the Anti-Strike Law bother Jessica because she (if she was a union worker) would lose the freedom to strike. This spoke volumes about how Jessica formulated her opinions, ideas, and views on unions and labor politics. During Ms. Harnack’s childhood, mainly the teenage years, must have been similar to the rebellious teenager, with her, perhaps, being a part of a hipster-esque counter culture that has compelled her to resist sources of authority. That may also stem from her relationships with her parental figures, the first authority figures in her life, who may have tried to control her, giver her too much responsibility, or somehow fail or disappoint Jessica as a child. She also made clear in our meeting that she is not necessarily an extrovert, nor does she have a socially outward personality, which feeds in to her not trusting or accepting sources of authority or alien persons or institutions, including unions. Because unions are largely forced upon people, such as Cub Foods employees, they are entities that have some control over the everyday working person, which bothers Jessica.
Overall, Jessica Harnack feels that unions have been an important part of making drastic, yet very basic, improvements in the lives of the everyday worker or laborer, but have become vestigial structures of modern-day society that control their members and create a poor working environment for achievement.
Anonymous Ethnography
Ladies and Gentlemen: Libby Norris
Once class was over on Thursday, Libby Norris and I sat down and talked. It started off very informal and laid back, which was as sign (no keyword intended) that Libby was going to be very easy to talk to. We began talking about what colleges we were in, what our majors were and what year we were both in school. We realized that we were both freshman and upon hearing this Libby was surprised that I was one; she had though I was older, which I have been getting a lot lately. My birthday was last Tuesday and I was with someone who had the same birthday as me but she was turning 21 and she thought I was older than her. I don’t know, I just find that interesting…
ANYWAYS, Libby is an Architecture major who attended Totino Grace High School, a private school with a total enrollment of 1,000 people. We soon realized we attended two very different high schools where she went to a smaller private school and I attended a behemoth public school with enrollment over 2500 only 10th through 12th grade. But that fact didn’t seem to deter us when it came to our feelings on high school because we both had had a great time in high school and had gotten a lot out of our experiences in a place where some people have a lot of issues.
Soon, we started to discuss our parents. Libby’s parents both work for the state of Minnesota in the DNR department. We found a common trait in the point that my mom works for the state as well in the Health and Human resources department. This may be just a coincidence but I see it as valid that her mom and dad and my mom are both liberal leaning in there thinking and they both happen to work for the state. Libby had asked if my mother was in a union, and to be honest I had no idea. Libby said she probably was because both of her parents were in one as well (Libby seemed to know more about it than I did.) Libby also said that her father was more liberal leaning than her mother, but still both are liberal.
After talking about our parents we got into each other’s work histories. Libby has been a nanny for the past five summers 3 or 4 days a week. She really enjoys it because she loves being with the kids and she gets paid “Straight cash homey.” In addition to her nanny job she worked at Dairy Queen this past summer. Libby stated she liked who she had worked with, but when it came to her boss she did not at all. “I could have done a better job than those guys.” Is what she said at one point. Dairy Queen was her first working experience where she had to fill out W-2’s and things of that nature. So to say she hasn’t had much experience with formal work would be true (which is the same with me.) She did not receive many working hours from Dairy Queen so she said when she would get a 90 dollar paycheck she would just use it as spending money, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She held the belief that many people do that when you receive a small allotment of money it is easier to spend it than it is to receive a large amount of money.
We then dove into the PowerPoint where it asked the questions. We started to discuss one of the questions asking whether or not free market was fair to the rest everyone. Here Libby said that she did not think that people are not born equally and that opportunity isn’t distributed that way as well. One thing that stuck out about our discussion about this topic was when she said that a poor black kid from the inner city does not have the same opportunity as a middle-class white kid from suburbia. This I feel like is a driving belief that many people hold when it comes to a free market economy. A person either believes a point like that or doesn’t and there isn’t really a middle ground. For Libby she seemed adamant about this point and seemed to believe in it whole-heartedly. The only experience with Unions that I got out of her was that her cousin has worked at an Arby’s for the past three years and they are currently in a union. She said that the union is beneficial but there are definitely drawbacks like paying “union dues.” She didn’t go into much detail on what these “dues” would be. Frankly I didn’t even think about there being dues with unions.
So after obtaining all this information about Libby in the brief time we discussed I learned a few things about her. I learned that she is definitely liberal leaning which we discussed is largely based off of her parents and just a common trend with people in general. Libby has been working for her entire teenage life (an accomplishment I have not been able to achieve) and has greatly enjoyed her nanny job. Libby also believes that opportunity does not always come equal to everyone and just because everyone gets the same amount of time in the day that that does not mean that life is fair from the beginning. Like me, Libby does not have many experiences with unions with herself but does in the sense that both of her parents are in one. Libby had gotten a 3 on her initial test and when we went over it again we both could not remember all the ones we agreed and disagreed with, which is a point that should not be lost on Libby, not because she has a faint memory but because she thinks about issues when they are presented to her. I am excited to change her mind.
Meet Julia Irwin
Dan Bliss Pictures with the Real World: CSCL proudly present: Collin Brehmer
Today, I interviewed Collin Brehmer, a fellow member of the Real World CSCL, and learned more about who he is and what he believes in. (Besides Santa Claus). Collin is Eighteen years old, and is a freshman at the University of Minnesota. He "isn't really into politics" but when asked he says he is more liberal viewed, but definitely is not a democrat. Collin grew up in Rogers, MN, a nice suburban area about twenty minutes north of the U. Collin is a Christian, though "less traditional" he says. He strongly dislikes people who jump down your throat at first incounter, those who "tell their whole life stories and belief codes to strangers". He calls himself quietly emotional, someone who doesn't let their emotions linger on the surface or make distractions. However, he admits to having an "irish temper" at times. Collin says he can debate, but dislikes when people throw unnecessary/irrelevant insults into arguments. This could come from the debates and arguments he's had with his family, as he described they occasionally bumped heads and lost tempers. He also dislikes arguing about topics in which he does not know, such as politics. To him, they are then exploiting his ignorance to win the argument. He dislikes when people get emotional in arguments, and prefers to settle them with logic and reason. This is reflected by his opinion about strikes, that they do more harm than help. They are too emotional, and push him away from their cause.
Collin worked since sophomore year at a Movie theater in his home town. He says it was a good job, it kept a steady check coming in. However, he was paid minimum wage, with no raises in two years. "The management was lazy, they were supposed to fill out reviews which can lead to raises, and they rarely, almost never filled them out" says Brehmer. In fact, Brehmer was fired for lack of hours, though they were limited as is. "I worked 7-14 hours, which was about one to two shifts per week. At a movie theater, you really can only work weekends and in the summer, when it's actually busy". However, the job was boring, and left Brehmer with a bitter taste of humanity, as people would constantly complain to him about the theater when he really couldn't do anything to help. "The service industry's lower class pretty much sets you up to get shit on constantly" says Brehmer recalling his customer's pointless whining.
His father got his degree in Architecture from the U, but is now an HR director. He worked at a medical company, until it was absorbed by another. He is actually against unions, probably because as an HR Director, they cause him alot of headaches. "My dad hates his job, because he just deals with other people's shit all day" said Brehmer. His father aparently doesn't like to complain about his personal problems, but rather complains about bigger issues. He also isn't part of a union. "He never has had horrible pay of working conditions at his job, so I don't think a Union is necessary." Collin's mom is a special ed teacher for Anoka, and is part of a teacher's union. She is pro-union, but more for her love of teaching rather than improvement in career. According to Collin, she loves her job, working with kids with autism and other disabilities is what she loves.
Collin seems like a person who dislikes conflict. His father's job and complaints about "dealing with other peoples shit" as well as his own belief about logic vs. emotion in debates has structured Collin to avoid/end conflicts in order to go through as little as possible. This structure of feeling thus has affected how he views workers unions. Strikes signify problems, conflicts, and confrontations, all of which Collin would rather avoid or prefers to solve logically, reasonably, and efficiently, vs the Shock and Awe tactics of some protests. Collin's talk about the "service industry" shows he believes that career definitely affects class and status. As far as Unions go, Collin falls in favor of his father. Again, growing up with his father in HR who views unions as a pain in his side at work, and a mother who does not value them highly has helped structure Collin's views of work unions. Also the fact that he has never been in one, makes them seem foreign. Collin says that he dislikes arguing/addressing topics that he is unfamiliar with, and Unions are definitely on that list.
Either way, Collin is a cool guy, and Collin, if you're reading this, I hope I did you justice! I apologize for any offenses I've caused, and note these conclusions are from my opinion. I'm no psychologist, I'm taking the Rousseauean approach and sort of "Making this shit up".
By no means did either of us have bad working conditions or needed a union for our jobs. I mean I even got a free sandwich every time I worked! I think that unions are only needed in a certain type of jobs and can be very helpful to employees that do not have the best working environments. My brother had worked for a union when he worked at Pick’n’Save. He said that the only bad thing about it was that he had to give a portion of his paycheck to the union every week. It was not a lot of money though, so he wasn’t too mad about it. The union made sure that he had enough breaks and that he was being treated fairly and all that good stuff.
Jenna’s dad had been working for a union for a good part of his adult life. So Jenna got a hold of him and he had some interesting things to say. He said that there were definitely some advantages to it and also disadvantages. He said that it can make it hard for the companies to fire or get rid of the bad employees and also he said the unions can provide a disincentive to work hard. This makes sense because what I know is that unions are usually made to help and protect employees and make sure that they are treated fairly. This however, worked in the opposite way. Because the unions protect the employees, the employees can get away with maybe not working as hard as they can. For the most part, Jenna and her dad both didn’t really sound too fond of unions.
I think that it is pretty obvious where each of us got our views on unions from. Jenna’s dad, being a union worker, doesn’t necessarily agree with the union that he works for. For example, something may come up at work where one of his colleagues isn’t pulling his weight. It will be very hard for that employee to get fired because the union will most likely back him up. In my case, while talking to my brother, I got the feeling that unions are good and they do a lot to make sure the working environment is fair for all of the employees.
Changing Mind's Project--Introducing Sam Carolan
For the Changing Minds project, my partner is Sam Carolan. We got together after class last Thursday and just talked—not really anything about unions and worker’s rights, but more just about ourselves and our backgrounds. Through this in-depth research about each other, I think we have both found some valuable data that can lead to explanations for WHY we have the beliefs we do about unions and labor politics.
First thing I found out about Sam is that he is a freshman. Sam is in my blog group so we sit in the same area at class and have had group discussions before and I had for some reason assumed that he was at least a sophomore, maybe even a junior. So it surprised me to find out that he was younger than I had thought. This leads to the assumption that Sam seems to be mature for his age, or maybe just acts older than his age, but both of these pieces of information can be used to explain his beliefs on labor politics. Sam is not exactly sure what he wants his major to be. Right now he is in CLA and is possibly interested in economics, journalism, poli-sci, or possibly education.
Next we talked about high school. Sam grew up in Stillwater—a cute little town (well I think it’s cute..) west of the cities on the St. Croix River. He attended the public high school in Stillwater and there were about 2300 students grades 9-12. His high school is obviously a fairly large high school, more than twice the size of the high school that I attended.
We talked about what Sam’s parents do for a living. We focused on this for a while, because through our discussion we learned that both of us believe that quite often children’s political beliefs stem from the beliefs of their parents—whether this is good or bad, I guess it depends on the situation, but since we both agree on that idea, it made sense to learn about Sam’s parents to best get to know who Sam is and why he is the way he is. Sam’s dad is the head of customer services for Slumberland. Sam says that he considers his dad fairly moderate on the political scale—maybe slightly left-leaning. He is not involved in a labor union. Sam’s mom has worked for the State of Minnesota for the Department of Health and Human Services for as long as Sam can remember. She used to run a daycare, but that was when Sam was very young. Working for the State, Sam’s mom is currently very frustrated with politicians in office. She is a liberal, so her frustration is understandable as the Republicans are currently in control, and the fact that nothing seems to get done in the legislature at all these days. Sam’s mom is involved in a union.
Now on to Sam’s personal work experience. Sam has had several jobs in the past. The first two didn’t last long, as they just didn’t really work out Sam says. Sam played tennis and football, so sports took up a lot of his time so he basically didn’t have enough time for school, sports AND a job. Sam also used to play baseball, and spent a lot of his time focusing on baseball. He was never really great, and often his dad would volunteer to coach his teams. But Sam never wanted this, because he didn’t want to have an unfair advantage because his dad was the coach. He wanted his success to come straight from his own hard work. Unfortunately, when high school rolled around, Sam realized that to be on the high school team, it was more about who you knew and what connections you had to the team instead of about your baseball skills, so Sam didn’t get to play. (That was a bit of a side note but it relates to Sam’s political beliefs discussed late on so I had to include it…but back to work experience now!) So this summer he had his first real job. He was a waiter at a restaurant in downtown Stillwater. He worked an average of 30 hrs a week and made minimum wage plus tips. He had 2 bosses—liked one of them, didn’t like the other one so much. One of his managers was always encouraging the wait staff to “upsell” (basically encourage people to upgrade their meals to extra options that cost more). The manager would tell the wait staff to do this so the waiters would make more money, but Sam realized that the manager was more interested in his OWN share of the profits, not the waiters’ tips. Sam told me about a time when he was scheduled to work from 12-10PM during the towns big summer festival. Sam ended up working for 15 hours with no break because it was so busy. The managers didn’t do anything about it, and both Sam and I thought that there are some laws about working for that long without breaks. For the most part, Sam thought this job experience was fine. He made a lot of money—but also spent a lot of it on fun stuff this summer. He doesn’t currently have a job on campus but is looking into work-study jobs for next semester.
We then went over the quiz we took in class together and I found a few interesting bits of useful data about Sam. Sam, like me, is currently annoyed with politics and politicians. People seem to be so strongly set in their views that they end up saying things that make them sound just plain dumb or ignorant. He showed me an argument that occurred on one of his friend’s Facebook pages on election Tuesday. The original wall post said “anyone who voted for a republican is dumb” and there were over 350 comments. Sam said he knew the kids who were commenting and a lot of them were smart kids but they just all sounded so stupid and looked like idiots. Also, when we talked about the question of whether you would honk and give a thumbs up to the strikers, Sam said he wouldn’t do that because he doesn’t want to be “that guy.” These two little pieces of info showed me that Sam may have his beliefs, but he isn’t one to be extremely vocal about them or aggressively push his beliefs onto others. I believe this is important in discovering why his labor politics beliefs are what they are.
This is all the data that I have gathered about Sam so far. I bet you could take a guess at what his political ideology is and a guess at the number he received for the quiz we took. Take a guess if you want right now. I think it would have been very interesting if when we did this project, we were randomly paired with a person and did not know their number or their political ideology and through our interviews we had to determine it. But here’s the facts about Sam…Sam considers himself socially liberal. He is not completely decided on the economics part of his political views because he hasn’t supported himself ever and doesn’t know what economic policies would be best for himself. He would like to believe that the everyone has a fair shot at being successful in life, but unfortunately it seems that it is more about WHO you know than WHAT you know—this ideology relates perfectly back to Sam’s baseball experience. Sam received a 5 on the quiz, and doesn’t really have a strong opinion on unions yet, but his opinions will develop more as we learn more about labor politics. His middle-of-the-road stand on labor unions fits perfectly with the data I collected about him. Sam is perfectly content sitting in the middle, not quick to jump to any conclusions or latch on to anyone idea. He isn’t strongly opinionated and is willing to learn to people’s views on different subjects. So far I have learned that Sam’s parents, work experience and even baseball have formed his political beliefs. As we talk further about labor politics, I am sure these same factors will be used to explain his specific beliefs on labor politics.