Support all American workers

Support all American workers

How serious are Ohio’s fire- men, policemen, teachers and others who want to repeal S.B. 5 in November? I wonder this because of how many foreign owned non-union vehicles were in the parking lot at the “Rally to Save Ohio’s Middle Class” in Columbus.

To me, anyone who supports collective bargaining via protest while sending profits to the coffers of foreign companies that go out of their way to bust unions on our soil is hypocritical at best. Especially with the second largest purchase Americans make outside of their home, their auto.

The Asian automakers introduced the two-tiered wage system that is currently hacking away at UAW worker’s pay and benefits. It is not hard to find facts on the Internet about the way foreign automakers avoid UAW shops here. To add insult to injury, U.S. taxpayers have subsidized more than $3.5 billion to build those foreign-owned assembly plants as they continue the assault on collective bargaining and the middle class in general.

How can anyone ask for others to support their cause yet blatantly show disregard for other union members with the same basic causes?

You can try to be part of the collective bargaining rights solution, but continued support of those companies who circumvent collective bargaining is part of the problem.

Barbara Toncheff, Chagrin Falls

Faculty Sabbaticals at YSU

In his column last Sunday, Ber- tram de Souza implied that YSU faculty take sabbaticals under the guise of doing major research. While I recognize that his column reflects his opinions, it seems to me that these opinions should have some factual basis. It is a fact that many faculty members at YSU take sabbaticals either to initiate a new area of research, or to learn new techniques in their own field, and much of their work could be called “major” research.

During my years at YSU, I had three sabbaticals. The first was at Carnegie-Mellon University with Sir John A. Pople, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. The second was with Professor Isaiah Shavitt at the Ohio State University. The final sabbatical took me for a semester to Cambridge University, England, where I collaborated with Professors A. David Buckingham and Peter Gill, and then for a second semester to the University of Florida with Professor Rodney J. Bartlett. All of these individuals are well-known and their work is well-respected in my field. Each sabbatical provided state-of-the art tools which enabled me to address new problems, and gave me a better background for interpreting on-going projects and planning future ones. My list of publications, which now numbers over 240 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, documents a trend of continuing work with these individuals long after the sabbaticals had ended. It also connects work done during these sabbatical to some of my most recent papers. Most scientists in my field would classify what was and continues to be done as major research.

Janet E. Del Bene, Ph.D., Warren

The writer is professor emerita of chemistry at YSU.

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