Equal Employment Opportunity Amendment

Young people, I hope you are well acquainted with the E.E.O. amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It arrived in 1972. I needed it in 1970.

I worked for a newspaper. They had two wage scales in force. One for men, one for women. The guys I worked with in the back shop preparing the newspaper for the photographer and the press got more than twice as much money as I did. I worked harder than they did. And that's a fact!!

The production manager knew it and he went the General Manager one day

and tried to get me a raise. He came back with the great news that I would now get $.05 more an hour than before. Oh, Happy Day!

They really did know that I was valuable so I was the only one who was allowed to write my hours worked using a pencil on the time card. Everybody else had to punch in. The production manager hinted vaguely that I could stretch every three hours into four hours and nobody would take me to task. In other words, my cheating would be condoned because they knew I really wasn't getting paid what I was worth.

I wasn't raised to be dishonest, so I couldn't do that.

But I did enjoy the job. The guys were a lot of fun to work with. Howie would amuse me at times by rolling one eyeball round and round while the other one stayed in place. I've never

seen anyone else do that. And Floyd used to swivel his hips like crazy when the bosses weren't looking. Howie told me confidentially that Floyd killed a six-pack every night, and Floyd told me that Howie's lake cabin wasn't as nice as he described it. Frank was in charge of the huge

so-called computer that printed out the text for the news and such. Frank was on the phone to

Chicago almost every day because he had so much trouble with that computer. It was no wonder that Frank went gambling every Friday night. Herb, who quietly kept to himself,

pasted up the want-ads and took a swig of his "cough medicine" several times a day. I was left

to guess what that cough medicine really was. Then there was Jake who also kept quietly to himself at his work station. One day he came up to my drafting table and said, "I don't drink,

I don't smoke and I don't chase women!" I replied, " And you don't brag much, either, do you?"

One day, before work started, a couple of girls put a bottle of laxative on his table.

To make this report more interesting, I will mention that one day Stan, the photographer, invited me into his dark room.

They were a great bunch, including the ladies, a few of whom decided to go on a sit-down strike one morning in the coffee room. (they, like me, were grossly under-paid) They were told where the door was and they came begging to get their jobs back.

I found out later that the EEO Amendment wouldn't have done me any good. The publishers would have known exactly how to use the loop holes to their advantage.