Sat
Sri Akaal
Greetings
Shalom
Namaste Salaam Alikum
| PoL Home Page | Bridge to Punjabi-Manch | Links to other Websites | News and Views |
________________________________________________________________________________________
The BOEING company has waged an undeclared secret war against helpless, innocent young children to boost its own profits in order to fill the deep pockets of its half a dozen redundant layers of management.
by: Amrik S. Kang
Seattle, U.S.A. ( November 20, 2000 ) I do not expect this article to bring me any justice but that is not the reason I do things. I am doing it because it is the right thing to do no matter what the end result may be. I am writing it as a kind of time-capsule, a lesson for the coming generations who should be able to read it as a foot note somewhere in the history books, a hundred, a thousand or even tens of thousands of years from today. At that time neither I, nor my wife or my six and eight year old kids whom I am so eager to protect from cold and hunger, will be around. Even the entire group of bozos who I am writing against will have completed their journey through this World. Even the company I am writing against may be non existent at that time but you may be able to find the name Boeing in the history books somewhere along with this footnote. Taj Mahal was built in 22 years by thousands of toiling workers many of which died of hunger, disease, cold, sun and rain enshrining that marvel of beauty in their sweat and blood. Similarly when this new wonder of the World the Boeing built space station is completed, it will drip down the tears and blood of thousands of hungry children whose parents are being cheated by Boeing through its new gimmicks of so called total compensation packages to disguise the legalized robbery of its employees especially the unrepresented group of salaried employees to which I belong.
Some of you who will be reading this article hundreds of years from now may not know who Guru Nanak was. He was the founder of the Sikh religion that I belong to. He existed five hundred years ago at a time of great turmoil. This is how he described the political environment of his time. He stated, " The Kings are lions and the bureaucrats are dogs." This was in the fifteenth century and we are living at a time when the end of the twentieth century is only 51 days away but humans have not changed much. The only thing that have changed is that we have a new breed of bureaucrats known as the company mangers who exist side by side with the Government bureaucrats. Sometimes these two breeds fight with each other and at other times they are in bed together. This is the only thing that has really changed.
The rest of this article is addressed not only to those of you in the future but to those of you in the present as well. Most of you at present are already aware of the unethical business practices of the Boeing company the World's largest aircraft manufacturer that prefers to label itself as the World Class Company. It is World Class in the sense that it does not spare anybody when its comes to cheating. You have read the press reports about this company providing the defective and over priced equipment not only to the commercial Airline Industry but to the United States Armed Forces as well. However, what many of you do not know that the Boeing company also cheats its hundreds of small suppliers, the small Mom and Pop type businesses who continuously struggle for their mere existence.
One of the Boeing company's cheatings that I am familiar with is as follows: A few years ago, I was assigned to a job of DINGING letters going out of the company in order to improve the address hygiene of those letters to conform to the US Postal service's requirements to achieve faster delivery. In about a year's time I dinged hundreds and hundreds of letters going out of dozens and dozens of Boeing mail stops and improved the address hygiene to achieve faster delivery. However, when I tried to ding letters going out of 11-xx Mail Codes, I was ordered to stop dinging them. Those letters always had checks worth of a few thousand dollars each going to Boeing's suppliers. Boeing was deliberately sending them out with less than perfect addresses to insure the late delivery of those letters. This way the Boeing company was able to keep that money in its own account and earn several thousand dollars worth of interest each and every day while those small companies and their employees suffered and innocent little children went hungry. This was an undeclared secret war against hundreds and thousands of innocent little helpless children of the employees of those companies who lived from pay check to pay check and earned much less than the Boeing employees. I am not against profit but this was the profit the Boeing company was skimming out of the tears of helpless little hungry children. The Boeing company is so engaged in trading with China and ignoring its human rights abuses that it does not even see the human rights abuses its own management commits against its own employees. Those look very insignificant to them in comparison.
My friends ! I know how the Boeing management is going to respond to this. They are going to call these allegations totally unfounded, baseless and coming from a disgruntled employee who is in the middle of getting fired. However, you must remember that I had an alibi. My lead Mr. Phil Nelson had assigned me to that job and he was the one who conveyed to me the Boeing management's unhappiness about improving the address hygiene of those letters containing checks. He asked me to stop the dinging and improvement process in order to please the management. Mr. Nelson, a God fearing man and a devout Christian decided to take voluntary lay off after 15 years of service because he could not put up with the thuggish behavior of the Boeing management anymore. You need to know this background in order to understand my predicament at Boeing.
The same thugs in the Boeing management who disliked this deeply religious, hard working and honest man Mr. Phil Nelson who was not only my lead but was a sort of my shield too, hated me even more. The oppressive behavior of my supervisor including my physical intimidation that amounted to sexual harassment at times was happening with the blessings of her boss. I was ridiculed, harassed and discriminated against month after month and year after year but I fought back and survived for nine and half years. These bozos failed to get rid of me until one day my destiny struck. My right foot started to hurt. The pain became so bad that I could not stand on it anymore to do my regular work. I was transferred to an alternative job for six months and continued my medical treatment. At the end of six months on April 7, 2000, I was forced out on a medical leave that I did not even request. But that is the new policy of the Boeing company the so called World Class company. I accepted it to play by the rules.
A couple of weeks before my forced medical leave, my supervisor delivered a veiled threat asking me how my wife and two little children are going to survive and what are they going to eat. I sensed what was coming as this was the same supervisor against whom I had filed charges of misconduct, physical intimidation and racial discrimination.
On my last day at work, my supervisor told me to meet her along with two other Boeing women in one of the Boeing facilities a few miles from my place of work. They took me to a room a little smaller than an interrogation chamber or a mental torture chamber. Their interrogation started with the question of how I was going to survive and how I felt about being forced out on medical leave. I told them that I have been completely destroyed several times in my life and still survived. They told me that the Boeing company is not trying to destroy me. They emphasized that I had the backing of a World Class company who would not only pay for my treatment but would also pay for my lost wages. They told me that I would get 80% during the first several weeks, then 60% under the short term disability insurance that I have been paying into for years. They said after six months, I would be covered under long term disability insurance at 50% of the rate. They threw these things in to disguise their actual intentions of interrogating me. As these three Boeing women continued their interrogation at times disguised as orientation, I could sense their noses growing longer and longer and becoming so long that even Pinocchio would be ashamed. Finally they gave me a phone number to call and told me to leave. I told them that the phone number they gave me belonged in the Boeing Medical building near Boeing Field. I told them that I had to go there anyway and would talk to the person instead of calling. Then these three interrogators told me that they have phoned the lady at that number in the Boeing Medical building and told her everything about my case and she had all the pertinent paperwork ready. As they were telling me this, once again, I could sense their noses growing longer and longer warning me about what was coming.
Anyway, I went to the Boeing medical building to see the Boeing doctor who had ordered me to see him before going on Medical leave. The doctor denied having told me to see him and refused to see me. Then I appeared before the lady whose phone number was given to me by those three interrogators. She told me that she did not know a thing about me and had no paperwork for me and told me to go back to those three ladies who sent me there in the first place. I was able to see the conspiracy unfolding. I told her that I was not willing to put up with that deliberate runaround and refused to leave without obtaining the necessary paperwork that she finally provided. I shared this story with my co-workers immediately. This was the beginning of my medical leave.
Are you getting a sense of the things to come during the next seven and half months between April 7, 2000 and November 20, 2000 that is today when I am writing these lines. If you do not have a clue then continue on.
I have continued my treatment by several doctors. My current doctor for the record is Dr. Michael Vickers who I have been seeing for the last several months and the Boeing company has been made aware of this treatment.
The last time I saw Dr. Vickers was on November 9th, 2000. The next appointment was set for November 28th, 2000. The Boeing center for leave of absence was notified as usual on the 9th and I was assured that my medical leave had been processed and approved until the 28th of November and I would get a letter in the mail. Did I get a letter in the mail? Yes, I did and here is the letter that I received on Saturday the18th of November, 2000.
Well, don't you find it interesting the way this so called World Class company treats its so to speak "Most Valued Assets" ( according to its own literature meant only for PR purposes ) namely its employees? Some of you may even remember that I elaborated elsewhere on this Website what the Boeing company put the SPEEA workers ( the very brain of the company ) through and how they treated me for extending a token moral support to them?