Challenge for HR - National HRD Network

Fascinating Facts
– K. Satyanarayana
189. Battle For Civil Rights In
Birmingham In 1963
Birmingham in the state of Alabama was
the most segregated city In U.S in the year
1963. Dr. Martin Luther King, the civil rights
leader of U.S. was unable to cajole more
than 20 adults to volunteer into his no holds
barred campaign of civil disobedience on
the lines of Mahatma Gandhi's struggle for
Indian independence. It was mostly children
as young as 6 years old that marched,
picketed, jammed the jails and juvenile halls,
shut down the city's shopping district and
at last broke the back of the segregation in
the city. Around 2,000 children of 1963, now
in their 50s are celebrating the 40th
anniversary of the epochal battle they fought
in the civil rights movement. For the children
of the protests, now grown up, looking back
remains a source of pride. Most of them feel
that their children and grand children do not
understand or appreciate enough the
sacrifices of so long ago to get where we
are today. Most of the elders did not take
part in the movement for fear of losing their
jobs but the children had their strong
reasons for taking active part. One lady
recalled, "I wanted to know why I could not
ride the train, why I could not see a duck in
a park, why I cannot drink water from a
fountain, why I cannot try an outfit before
buying it or why I could not eat from a lunch
counter."
(Source: The New York Times,
May 2, 2003)
190. Graduate Students Reject The Idea
Of A Union At Yale University
The group of graduate students under the
leadership of Ms. Anita M Seth, seeking to
unionize 2,100 graduate students at Yale
University faced a stinging defeat with 594
votes against and 651 in favor. Labor experts
said that this vote would send signals
nationwide that graduate teaching and
research assistants would not necessarily
flock to join unions. In a similar vote during
2002 at Cornell University, graduate
students voted 1,351 against and 580 in
favor of unionizing. The reasons given by
those opposing are that the union leaders
are too aggressive, its leadership too
undemocratic and some said they had
developed negative feelings about
unionization because Yale's main unions
had engaged in so many strikes and fights
with the university affecting the reputation
of the institution and also the quality of
education. Several graduate students voiced
fears that if GESO became their union, it
would be dominated by Yale's two other
union locals, which helped finance the drive
for unionization drive. Those locals represent
2,900 clerical workers and 1,200 cleaning,
dining hall and maintenance workers and
are part of the Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees Union. Yale,
Columbia and Brown Universities are
seeking to over turn a two-year old labor
board ruling that graduate students at
Private Universities had the right to unionize.
This vote and vote at Cornell last October
supports their contention.
(Source: The New York Times,
May 2, 2003)
If similar fair polls are held at Indian
Universities, most of the students may
oppose unions in educational institutions
including teaching hospitals.
191. Nestle Closes Its 104 Year Old First
U.S. Factory In Fulton, New York State
Way back in 1899, leading citizens of Fulton,
north of Syracuse in New York State raised
$2,700 (no mean sum at that time) to buy a
chunk of land that Nestle could use as a
site for their chocolate factory. The incentive
and the fact that there were so many cows
around proved irresistible to Nestle. Over
the next century, it grew to cover more than
30 acres. But on May 2, 2003, the company
closed its plant, the chocolate works, as the
locals call it, the birthplace of Nestle's quik,
the home of the crunch bar, the maker of
mountains of morsels for chocolate-chip
cookies.
Despite all the incentives offered by the city
or state or anyone else, the company would
not change its mind and is not even prepared
to discuss it with any one. 467 employees
are losing their jobs including the mayor's
wife, daughter and son-in-law. The average
age of the plant's workers is 52 and the
average tenure is 27 years. It is a heartbreak
for the community as it is worried that if
Nestle with more than $50 million
investment in the last decade won't stay in
Fulton, who will? Fulton was one city that
missed the great depression according to a
1936 headline in The New York Sun. But
during the last 50 years many big factories
were closed. In 1952, a big woolen mill was
closed, putting 1,500 out of work. Later on
paper plants, gun works, brewing factories,
bottle manufacturers, can factories were all
closed one after another. The final blow
came when Nestle sold its bulk chocolate
business to Cargill. Rather than spend a
fortune renovating the Fulton plant, the
company decided to move most of the
production to another underutilized but
younger plant in Wisconsin and a fraction
of the Nestle's crunch business is going to
Brazil. There is no fault of the people who
live there or people who worked so hard for
generations. Production workers earning as
much as $20 an hour are finding it difficult
to find jobs at half or one third of that rate.
(Source: The New York Times,
May 2, 2003)
192. Close Link Between Fat And Cancer
Researchers for the American Cancer
Society after spending 16 years evaluating
900,000 people who were cancer free when
the study began in 1982, concluded that fat
is linked to cancer more convincingly than
ever before and that losing weight could
prevent one out of every six cancer deaths
in U.S. more than 90,000 each year. This
study and earlier studies have found that
excess weight contributes to cancers of the
breast, uterus, colon, rectum, kidney,
esophagus, gall bladder, cervix, ovaries,
multiple myeloma, non-hodgkins lymphoma,
pancreas, liver and in men, the the stomach
and prostrate. The researchers have
however found that there is no link between
fat and cancers of the brain skin and bladder.
(Source: The New York Times,
April 24, 2003)
K. Satyanarayana, Hon. Executive Director on behalf of National HRD Network. He can be reached at: ksnhrd@gmail.com
| HRD News Letter | December 2007, Vol.23, Issue:9 45 |