http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022495289
It continues
"What I am learning from my new station in life.
I guess I could of made better choices. I could of turned out differently in these my later years as I go over the hump of age 55. But I like to think I did the good things. When 2008 came around and the collapse of my working world and other like me occurred, I had the option of moving in with my elderly mother and taking care of her. It was a win-win, and I began to look for a job nearby the house that I could walk to. About 1/4 mike away was a big box retailer of the general building business kind, and I applied. I started off part time and took care of my mother also. When I did get a design commission, which was very rare, I took that on also.
What I learned is that there was a time when a part-time person could work part-time and that would be a fluid kind of thing. One week I would work 20, then 30, the approach 40, then back to 15. It was good. A year later I asked for full-time and got healthcare. It is half my pay. I gladly have it at even that rate. It is very good insurance. Dealing with my mother's medical problems and going to the doctor almost on a weekly basis with her, the charges of fees, who she could see, who she could not, who gets what, where does she go, how does she get referred...all these were almost a full time job in itself.
Then I began to put things together. The older, and I mean OLDER workers at the store are most generally liberal leaning, the younger ones, oddly very conservative. How could this be? Why would this happen. Now I know. We as Democrats offer NOTHING to them. Nothing in comparison to what the republicans spout as truth, promise or vision. We are on a treadmill of the status quo. Keep things running barely, pay the astronomical bills and that future? It's on hold. Now the part-timers can only work 29 hours. That's it. Period. No exceptions. A friend equally in my situation has a job at a call center and went full-time as I did. He oversees a call center team. The hours are explicit. No hours over 29.
This has demoralized the part-timers at my work, and at my friends work. The flexibility is gone. I have had conversations with pat timers that would make you cry. They have no opportunity to get another job as the hours are not regular. How do you get another job at a place that offers work when they want it, and work another job at a place that demand the same thing?
The new rule is now one of the biggest backfires to date of the HC debacle. But I know, I know, we are the stupid ones, as people here have all the answers. Agencies for that, people that help, why did you do that, why did they do that? We have heard it all before. Now we have entire swaths of part timers now locked in. With no way out.
I see my mother's life as the last of a dying way of life. She did get her medical bills paid, she did get her SS and MC. It took two people to do it, but we got it done. I do not know what to say about the new HC ****ery that is coming, as nobody really knows anything conclusively about it, as nobody really has read it. I do know what I see now. I see metered fees and carefully balanced edifices of amazing balance. One step here, you need to pay, even if you have a good plan, one step there, we do not pay for that.
We offer nothing of promise, the bigger picture. The republicans blast out lies, and actually we help them in our national strangulation of changes as we do not prosecute bankers, companies, banks, or any entity that has caused this nightmare. But we do make it harder for people on the edge, now trapped in a 29 hour work week. That should endear many young people to us.
One afternoon, last May, I went home on my lunch, made a bowl of soup for my mother and we talked for a couple of minutes. I left the room, came back 30 seconds later and she was dead. I am glad she went quickly, she worried about the paperwork so. "
