The Seattle Times has an interesting story today testing out the often-heard complaint that public workers are better paid than those in the private sector.
Their general finding is that lower level public workers do a little better than their private sector counterparts, while those in professional ranks are paid well below those outside of government employment.
The median wage for the 2,000 janitors working for the state last year was $13.44 an hour, or $27,955 a year. Their 37,100 nonstate counterparts earned about 6 percent less.
The opposite was true for the state’s 1,200 computer-systems analysts. Their median wage last year was $31.47, or $65,463 a year — nothing to sneeze at, but 22 percent below the median for nonstate systems analysts.
Anyway, it’s an interesting read.
So is this short but suggestive statement by the AFL-CIO Executive Council regarding labor problems at the American Red Cross. I don’t recall reading much about these problems in all the reporting that involves the Red Cross.
Blood drives are big business for ARC. In 2009, ARC had $2.2 billion in revenues from its biomedical operations. While this addresses a critical medical need, ARC has a horrendous track record of protecting the safety of the U.S. blood supply. Since 1993, ARC has been under a Federal Consent Decree to improve its blood safety practices. Because of continuing compliance problems, the Consent Decree was amended in 2003, allowing the FDA to fine ARC for violations. Since 2003, ARC has been fined $21 million for repeated safety failures. Decisions on a new round of fines are currently under consideration at FDA.
At the heart of ARC’s safety problems are draconian cost-cutting measures that amount to running blood drives like fast-food operations. ARC frequently understaffs blood drives, assigns workers to regular 16 hour days and downgrades its staff by eliminating the most experienced, licensed medical personnel. These labor practices have created a low-morale, high-turnover workplace, increasing the risk of blood safety errors on the job.
There’s obviously lots of room there for local follow-up.
I liked this introduction to an interview with retired Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston on the Newspaper Death Watch blog.
“In his career, Johnston has certainly done plenty of afflicting.”
It has the ring of a great epitaph.
Now I have to listen to the audio interview.
And spend a few lazy Sunday minutes browsing through these “rules for writing fiction“, which seem to really apply to all kinds of writing.
For the record, the Blood Bank of Hawaii is independent from ARC – may still be worth a follow-up, though.