As Long As We Exist We Will Be Dougloids, or, Serious Stuff: How The Tulsa Dougloids Got Hosed

There's an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch this day that is a reprint of the same story in the Washington Post.

As it happens, being a cheap SOB I didn't want to buy a subscription to the WaPo so I found it for free.

But that's where the humor ends.

The story's about the McDonnell Douglas plant in Tulsa-to tell the truth I didn't know there was one, but there was. I guess it made parts for military aircraft, but before the gobbling up by Boeing, when McD-D was flailing around trying to save itself, the bosses decided to close Tulsa, primarily because the people who worked there were getting on towards retirement age, and with that came pension funding liability.

As it turns out, that's what the courts found out as well, and the company had to settle, but it left the Dougloids with a whole lot less money in the kitty than they would have had if they'd been vested.

In a way I understand it because I missed being vested by eight months when I got laid off in Long Beach. But my niggles on this subject are minor.

Now, we've got Dougloids who gave their working lives to the company having to work as greeters at Wally World, loading trucks, as barbers and crossing guards. Some are barely getting by, some have gone bankrupt, some owe massive amounts of debt and others are under water in every way you can think of.

One former worker at the plant tells about how he dreams of being at work and wanting to clock in but he cannot find his time card. I had a similar dream that you can find here on this blog.

http://cornponepapers.blogspot.fr/2006/06/subconscious-weighs-in-its-over.html

I also marked the closing of the C17 assembly plant and the end of aerospace manufacturing in southern California, and all the expertise and knowledge that had been built up.

http://cornponepapers.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-really-is-over-isn.html?m=0

I commend these notes to our collective memory. And in answer to the question I posed, I've changed my mind.

As long as we exist we will be Dougloids.

Here's the story from the Post Dispatch. It's a bleak picture for people who'd been banking on that pension rainbow, as it says they're destined for extinction. And, I might add, an even bleaker picture for the millenials who are hitting their thirties and forties right about now.

G-d help us all. It makes me feel guilty as hell, knowing that my spouse served in government for twenty years and that is one of the few places where a pension is a reality.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/mcdonnell-douglas-cut-these-workers-loose-in-and-most-have/article_a01596b3-3f5e-5e8f-a36d-8bbe1a1a231a.html