Off Topic Commentary: The Grocery Strike (10-15-2003)

You know, this really should sicken anyone who has to work for a living to make ends meet in America's Behindest and Too Damn Expensive City otherwise known as San Diego when you hear anyone representing Clear Channel, a basically useless radio station company that plays cookie-cutter formats and brain-dead Top 40 pop formats across four stations, tells anybody that they're not worth over $15 an hour when the cost of living in San Diego is well over $21 an hour just to make a decent living.

Roger Hedgecock, host of KOGO 600, and also a highly-paid announcer (because he deserves it for bringing in the ratings) is off his rocker when he says that the pay of the striking grocery workers is basically overpaid according to the skills used in the trade. Well, Roger, I can easily say also that many of the radio programmers, based on the skills they are taught in broadcasting schools, aren't worth more than $15,000 a year judging how poorly the stations in the Clear Channel cluster are programmed and how the lack of diversity and new music have teamed up to put many Wherehouse and Tower Records stores out of business because radio is not playing the diverse selection of new music as they should be playing in the first place. Instead, staitons like KGB, z90, 92.5, KOOL, and others are playing genres that are basically cannibalizing their sister stations, while ignoring genres that are not represented to get listeners who think the selection of FM stations on the dial suck. The music directors at Clear Channel don't know jack about educating themselves about new music, what makes people tune out, what gets them to tune in, and not knowing when a song is too old to be played anymore. The programmers don't know jack about hiring jocks who can relate to the songs, have a warm delivery, and have brains of their own to research and discover sounds and programming that we San Diegans would like to hear but is not available on the dial.

Other overpaid people at Clear Channel include programmer Brian Schock who let 91X go down the drain in the ratings while upstart 94/9 beat it in the quarterly ratings for the first time in its history, Mojo Nixon who is annoying enough to just make $15,000, Diana Laird of 93.3 and 90.3 who turned the stations into ghetto dumps with wall-to-wall redundancy and boredom, the morning team at KGB who should make just a total of $15,000 between the five of them, and anyone else who thinks that all San Diegans want to hear are the same 100 songs everyday.

So, as for a spokesman for Clear Channel telling the striking grocery workers at Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons, that they should be paid about $10 an hour, a wage that's just below the poverty level in San Diego, this shows you that Clear Channel has no clue how the economy and musical culture of San Diego works. Clear Channel screwed up the radio culture in the past five years. Now, they're telling the grovery workers that they should get paid basically minimum wage for working a 40-hour week? I don't think so, "Cheap" Channel.

Yes, we seen the cost of health care go up up and away, and I'm paying $200 a month for some shithole Blue Cross coverage that discriminates against overweight people. If I have to pay $200 a month for health coverage, I think that the workers at the grocery stores should get a raise and use the extra $200 a month or so to dump their store's idea of a health plan and to shop around for a better choice of health coverage that suits them better. They could save money with a deductable plan.

Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons, like Clear Channel, as well as Wal Mart, Target, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, etc., are basically overbloated companies who care more about their stockholders than the people they employ. $6.75 an hour won't cut it in San Diego. We're all paying for the cost of food stamps, Medical, subsidized low-income housing (which I'm against because it discriminates against the rich), to subsidze the working poor. Isn't it time we got the minimum wage up to a level that would help underskilled people, who don't have the time or luxury to go to school, to get a decent $21 an hour wage to help get them off the government's dole list, to save money to go to a decent school, to help pay for family expenses, and to pay for rent (which should be limited to $300 a month, who the f-ck can afford a g-ddamn $1,500 one-bedroom rental!) in America's Behindest City.

People think that anyone that is paid $16 an hour is overpaid for their skills. Guess what? The people who provide health care are grossly overpaid, as well as anyone in the medical and real estate professions who are sucking the economy dry with overpriced services that are more than five times according to their skill level. You can't get away with $1,500 rentals in San Diego if there's a lot of underpaid underskilled workers flooding the city; you're just adding to the problem by building oversized units that the majority can't afford. Medicines cost too much in America, while the greedy companies export their medicines to Canada where their prices are regulated; it's time medicines are also regulated in America as well. The health care pros are all overpriced and are doing their part to drive up the cost of health care, which is going to double in about four years.

Now, let's get back to Roger Hedgecock. What does he have against unions if unions are by force helping the workers live better in America by forcing their employers to spread the wealth they helped them earn. Working is a team effort, not who gets $7 an hour and who gets $7,000 an hour. That's not America, this is legalized sweat shop slavery. I think that anyone who works minimum wage should be unionized, get a base salary of $21 an hour, and help get California out of the economic slump. What does California get in return? Simple. Higher incomes pay more taxes. Higher incomes mean less doles of financial aid to pay for health care, food stamps, and housing.

Here's what Roger sez in Jimmy Valentine's Flashfax: "Unions figure seniority is the measure by which folks get rewarded…the longer you can hang around, whether you perform good or not, the more you should be rewarded. And union folks get real nasty. A photographer gets a late lunch and a grievance is filed (forget the 4 alarm fire). Unions are a dis-incentive to be excellent….because if you are excellent you still get paid the same as the slob-olla who naps on the job. Sabotage is not out of the question. In fact unions look dimly upon employees who excel or go the extra measure to finish a task or do it great….makes other union members look bad."

Well, Roger has some good points there, but what about the folks in the Clear Channel building who have no incentives for programmers and music directors at your radio station cluster to be excellent, in fact, they get to take naps on the job and nobody cares. I don't see anyone at KGB or 91X going the extra mile to play fun new music for their respective formats, in fact, the just like to be lazy all the time by playing reruns of the same old songs every day most all of the time. In fact, I like to apply for work at Clear Channel just to be a KGB-FM programmer that basically does nothing all day and earns a lot of money. I don't see them actively pursuing something better to program than reruns of their stupid morning radio show. It's the same old shit everyday. Now Brian Schock has the job and I'll bet you that he'll be sitting on his ass in CCSD all day doing what is basically a useless job as KGB programs nothing but reruns of old broadcasts everyday. That's what got 91X going down the tubes before Schock got reassigned to KGB.

These radio folks are overpaid louts! These jocks are stupid gits. A monkey can select better music. They are lucky to have a job. I have to pay my own health benefits. Radio folks should let real music people run radio. Why don't the CCSD folks go back to school. Fill in your own blank.

I'm too long on this topic, but while there is so much to do about these overpaid and underskilled and ungrateful Clear Channel San Diego radio folks, I can't help but being thankful that I don't have to pay them for their "services rendered." I can listen to better radio on the Internet originating from radio clustered cities better than San Diego.

I may go shop for ice cream at some dump like the greedy ungrateful clerks at Stump's Apple Market on Ashford street who think they deserve pizzas half price but won't reciprocate the same if and when I shop at that dumpy old style market dating back to the 50's. The clerks are cows, they smoke like chimneys outside, the young girls are dimwitted, the young dudes don't care about you, the food selection sucks, they all think I owe them a living. Guess what guys? I'm shopping Keil's instead. But on my way to Keil's, I'll stop by Ralphs and give the bald headed fart manager the finger.