WBJ Talk Back: Online reader comments from December 22 through December 30, 2008
Our last issue may have come out in the middle of the holiday season, but our readers still found time to give us their take. Here’s the latest roundup of reader reaction:
Wage Wars
Re: Prevailing Wage Provision Raises
Questions & Concerns
Eileen Kennedy wrote about the prevailing wage provision in the rules for becoming a certified life sciences company in her most recent Biotech Buzz column. Of course, prevailing wage rules don’t just impact biotech firms, as evidenced by the this e-mail from reader Dawn Johnson of A.J. Robbins Co. Inc. of Worcester:
“Back in 2005 I wrote a letter to the Worcester City Council and then mayor, Timothy Murray about my frustration regarding a bid my business had submitted to hang wallpaper for the Gateway Park. At that time the prevailing wage rate for a painter/paperhanger was $43.52 per hour ($27.06 base pay + $16.46 in fringe benefits per hour). That translated to $90,521.60 per year.
The WBJ article…brought my frustration to the surface. In these hard economic times, why are our tax dollars being used to now pay the prevailing wage rate for a painter/paperhanger of $50.46 per hour ($30.76 base pay + $19.70 in benefits)? As a struggling small business owner I would like to make that kind of money!”
Animal Rights
Re: Worcester Tech Plans Lab Animal Program
The Worcester Regional Technical High School is planning a program to help train workers for animal testing labs. Not surprisingly, we received a comment from an animal rights activist who does not support such careers:
“It is not surprising that Charles River Laboratories has to make extra efforts to recruit animal experimenters and their support staff to breed, confine, mutilate, poison and kill animals at their facilities across the country. A career inflicting pain and killing animals is not considered desirable by many young people… This article describes a career of animal experimentation as “less flashy” but this is an inadequate explanation for the reluctance of young people to pursue this career. It is less flashy in the same way as working at the slaughterhouse cutting the throats of animals all day is less flashy. Most people find this kind of work not just unexciting but also repugnant and offensive; most people refuse to engage in such violent behavior meaning that employers like Charles River have to make extra efforts to sugarcoat this nasty work and fill these positions.”
Tax Time
Re: Mass. Needs To Address Infrastructure
Eric Bourassa from MASS PIRG opined in our last issue that a gas tax would be a good way to raise money to fund improvements to the state’s ailing transportation infrastructure. One reader suggested that we take the tax a step further:
“Make it a ‘reversing tax’ that goes down when retail prices go up, and up when retail prices go down. True, it would be an unsteady source of revenue for repairing infrastructure but would tend to stabilize prices at the pump, a necessity if we are serious about investing in alternative fuels.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments