Letters: Readers discuss Google workers, Harry Truman and Kansas’ Roger Marshall
Banding together
Last week, Westport Google Fiber representatives filed with the National Labor Relations Board for a unionization vote. These efforts from about a dozen representatives began in October 2021.
After years of working in a pandemic with no hazard pay, things came to a boiling point when representatives who had been there more than a year received only a 4% raise and no cost-of-living adjustments, while certain Google executives received a 53% raise.
In 2018, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had more contracted than non-contracted employees for the first time. Despite the company’s reliance on contracted employees, these employees are often paid less without the same benefits as direct employees. The workers at the Kansas City locations hope to achieve better benefits and an employment contract in line with what Google claims to strive for.
- Emrys Adair, Kansas City
Quite unalike
To say that Donald Trump and Harry Truman are polar opposites in their personalities and policies should be obvious to all of us who read or remember.
Within a few weeks after he departed the White House in 1953, Truman wrote a series of articles about his time in office. He said, “I always made the distinction between the office of the president and the person of the president. That may seem to some a fine distinction, but I am glad I made it. Otherwise I might be suffering today from the same kind of ‘importance’ complex that some people have come down with. Washington is full of big shots whose already inflated egos go up with a touch of ‘Potomac fever.’ I tried very hard to escape that ludicrous disease.”
As time went on, Truman received many job offers with high salaries. He turned them all down, knowing they were efforts to commercialize on the “prestige and the dignity of the office of the presidency.” Later, he said that presidents who, after leaving office, had devoted themselves to education or public service were generally the best remembered.
When American presidents began to hold televised press conferences, he told a photographer that in the old days it took about 75% ability and 25% acting to become president. He added that he could see the day when that turned around, and that was before the internet and social media entered the scene.
Obviously, one of our best presidents, who happens to have been a local resident, would recognize the danger we courted with the election of our previous president and what we should learn from that. I am sure Truman would utter a stern warning to change our course as a republic.
- Niel M. Johnson, Independence
That’s the job
Leaders are responsible for their staffs. If the people in a U.S. senator’s office can’t locate something as simple as the salary of a federal government employee, it reflects poorly on the senator. Either Sen. Roger Marshall is hiring “morons,” or he doesn’t know how to do the most basic element of his job and train his people to be responsive to the public.
What will Kansans get fed up with first: Marshall’s incompetence or his lunatic political theories?
- John Gallogly, Los Angeles
Gitmo tragedy
As always, Bill Tammeus’ captivating style is exceeded only by his logic in his Jan. 11 commentary, “The time to close Gitmo was yesterday.” (7A) He continues to be an effective spokesman for those who have long decried the black eye on American justice — and would be even if he were not personally and tragically involved.
Now, 20 years after 9/11, the current administration has a perfect opportunity to salvage some pride by addressing the catastrophic mire that is the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. But as Tammeus writes, “Instead our government has simply added to the pain for 9/11 families and increased the humiliation all Americans should feel because of this failure.”
- Jim Bagby, Kansas City
Talk about trust
A freshman senator from Georgia, Jon Ossoff, has introduced an idea for a bill that could be a big step in the right direction. His idea is to require mandatory blind trusts for the assets of all members of Congress while they serve.
If every senator and representative had to place all investments (stocks, bonds and real estate holdings) in a blind trust and could not make trades of these assets during his or her tenure, it would be a deterrent to elected officials whose focus is personal financial gain.
- James E. Cox, Louisburg, Kansas