Bruce and Sawz, educate yourselves.

At one time, there were lots of sweat shops in the United States. But not so many any more. The corporations have moved them all overseas. It seems to me that a combination of government regulation along with modifications of our tax structure could modify this substantially.

The Production Illustration job I had at Boeing was covered by SPEEA, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. If I were actually required to work 14 hours in a given day, the company would have had to pay me triple time!

SPEEA is a union.

One job I had was at a radio station in eastern Washington State. My board shift started at 6:00 a.m. and lasted until I had done the noon news. Then I turned it over to the next announcer. I was then required to go to one of the production rooms and tape the commercials that had been left in my box. This involved voicing the commercial copy, sometimes complete with sound effects and music, which I was required to find and select from the station record library. When I had finished the commercials, I went to the front office to write commercial copy, including the accounts that the time salesmen bought in that needed to be on the air the following morning. My official quitting time was 5:00 p.m. That's an eleven hour day!   More often than not, one or more salesmen would arrive at five minutes to five with fact sheets from clients. I had to take these fact sheets, turn them into commercial copy, and go back into the production room and produce them, so they would go out on the air first thing in the morning.

Often, I wasn't able to get out of the station until 9:00 p.m. or later! And by the way, there were no lunch or dinner breaks. If I wanted to eat, I had to bring sack lunches and eat on the fly! This was seven days a week. The schedule on the weekends was slight different, but not much.

Now hear this!! My salary was $525 a month! I worked there for one year, from fall 1972 to fall 1973. Then I moved back to Seattle.

This particular station was non-union.

[When I worked as a technical writer under contract to the Bonneville Power Administration—residential weatherization program (conservation)—in the late 1980s, I made as much money per week as I did at KORD in a month!]

When I came back to Seattle, I went to work for a local classical music station. I worked from 6:00 a.m. until noon, five days a week, announcing and playing classical music, along with reading a few program notes on the music. I would also read a few commercials and five minutes of news at the top of the hour. I was not required to produce commercials (although I actually did enjoy doing that, but not when I had already put in a long air-shift and hadn't had a chance to grab a bite of lunch). Five days a week, six hours a day, along with the prestige that went with being part of the on-the-air personnel at this particular station—plus frequent perks:   lots of free concert tickets.

At this job, once again I was making as much per week as I had made per month at the eastern Washington station.

This station was covered by AFTRA, which I joined. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. A union.

There's a lesson in there, Bruce and Sawz. You two figure it out!

Don Firth