> Coast Guard culinary specialists are critical afloat. But, on bases, contractors have taken away many shore billets culinary specialists need to recharge after a stint at sea. Lacking spots at kitchens ashore, Coast Guard culinary specialists have little choice but to spend their career constantly at sea, struggling to keep old or under-designed ship kitchens operational. And when they are lucky enough to find a shoreside job, they’re usually snatched away to temporarily fill in for an understaffed vessel.
The problem, as we are seeing in many other parts of the economy right now, is that if you treat your employees badly, they will eventually all quit, regardless of how good the pay is. Especially so if they are highly-trained professionals that are in high demand elsewhere, as in this case.
Indeed, and the surprise is that... it's a surprise to many.
I think inertia allowed things to go sideways for a long time in a lot of professions, without paying the price for it soon enough. It stayed unseen for long because those jobs are often not affecting directly the structure main goals, like sales, manufacturing or field agents. They are support jobs, and help the structure maintain its integrity on the long run.
So it takes time for the problem to be detected, and for the top to even become motivated to fix it. It's quite possible they didn't even know it was a problem, or didn't think it was important. Hell, the person currently in charge have likely arrive at the post way after the decisions to destroy those jobs has been taken, years after years. Each year, one small increment at a time.
We are seeing an extreme version phenomenon in the health system in France. Extreme because it touches more than support jobs. Hospitals are full of exhausted staff that are asked to make yet another effort, "just this once". Getting appointments for specialists now take months, even for repeated sessions. Doctors are making much less money than I do in IT, for much more work, responsibility and administrative pressure. This frog has been boiling for quite some time.
It was an easy to predict consequences of the shift of paradigm in the last thirty to forty years.
With the removal of companies middle layers, paths from operational positions to top management have basically disappeared. That means that at most companies, top managers have made their whole career there often starting in corporate finance jobs or at management consulting firms and have no experience whatsoever of what working for them as an employee is like.
Usually the army fares better here because it still promote from inside its own ranks but apparently it was not enough to avoid this.
Indeed, for the hospital it's probably part of the story: directors are now not required to have been doctors before.
Maybe having pairs (one doctor, one non doctor) for those jobs would be a solution.
But it's probably not the only problem.
France has a budget problem, it's been borrowing more and more, and producing less and less. We can't maintain our way of life without cutting some spending, and you do it where people complain less, or where consequences will be seen way down the road.
Sorry my answer was strictly about the issue with labour in the USA.
The French hospital issues are entirely different. I could a write an entire essay about it - I’m French myself. Most of it is due to brain dead management by the Health Ministry in the 90s. It was thought that by training less doctors, there would be less acts done and it would cost less to the sécurité sociale. The order agreed because it protected their revenue. Add to that that far too many acts which could be done by support staff have to be done by a doctor to be reimbursed and widely underpaid nurses and you get the current shit show.
The US has done much the same thing. Almost all graduate medical education (residencies) is funded by the federal government through the Medicare program. But despite increasing demand, Congress has held that funding roughly flat in order to keep Medicare costs under control. So we have a ridiculous situation where students are graduating from medical school but can't actually practice because they can't get matched to a residency slot. This is leading to delays in care and overwork for existing physicians.
Someone has given you a bill of goods. Any US MD/DO graduate will get a residency position, but there are a few every year that only apply for Orthopedics or Ophthalmology and don't select a backup IM/FM program and thus wind up unmatched. There are IM/FM/PEDS/Internship positions open, but they choose to pass and reapply next year. The only reason they couldn't get any residency is bad advising or an issue which is expected to prevent them from getting a medical license.
The Boomers climbed the ladder then cut all the opportunities out from below them and pocketed and spent the money and didn’t save for retirement.
As a whole, they are clearly going senile and mentally declining a lot faster than their parents. Also they’re selfish whiners. Most of em deserve cattle call retirement line up take your meds in run down projects they never bothered to upgrade.
There are many situations where jobs suck, or are dangerous, etc. In that case, the employer can make them suck less or pay a lot more. At some point, they will find people to staff those jobs. So I am not a big fan of employers talking about "labor shortages". What they mean is "we have this role, and can't afford to pay the market clearing rate for the role. Therefore there is a shortage." This is as much true for a government employer, non-profit employer, or private sector worker, as they are all hiring from the same labor pool, and workers have a choice as to who to work for.
Before you say that "no amount of money is enough", just think that if for some reason they can't have the workers be cooks on shore, they can just pay them a vacation for that same shore period. The cooks on shore could then travel, or take a class, or do whatever they want. If you could find cooks who would work on a mix of shore and sea, but not sea only, then rotate the staff and pay the cooks to do nothing. Obviously an extreme example, but I'm giving it to illustrate the point that yes, it does boil down to money in the end. It usually does.
Yep, in my country, we have a "labour shortage" in various industries...
...because those industries relied on migrants, offshore seasonal workers, and working holiday visa holders, to maintain staffing levels, at the lowest wages possible, with often shite working conditions - to the point of exploitation - because seasonal workers who paid a broker to get that job, and don't speak English, don't feel able to complain.
When Covid kicked the teeth in of these industries addicted to low wage labour, did they re-evaluate their approach and improve the working conditions and wages they offeredto attract domestic workers?
Haha no, they just complained about the government restricting international travel during a pandemic, and demanded special treatment.
Sucks when the free market sends you signals about your price point.
If you have a relatively humane set of worker protections in addition to the a straight-forward path to legal immigration, it's nothing like indentured servitude or slavery. It's just ... work.
It's fine to concede that the world isn't perfect - but saying that because you aren't well protected as a worker and that therefore immigration is wrong is nonsense.
And I wasn't asking for a magical pony with wings - I deliberately set the bar very low, "relatively humane" is table stakes.
Technically yes, but in reality, greed... greed never changes. And immigration regulations that are intended to protect against abuse of the system, are often abused to extort people.
E.g., you're from country X, living in a new country, Y, where you've bought a small business. Y is a desirable country to live in if you are from X. Your business is very low margin. You work very long hours to keep afloat.
But, an immigration broker also from country X gets in touch. They have many clients back home who would love to be in country Y. They just need a work visa, but the job has to be a) skilled and b) not able to be easily filled by an existing citizen or permanent resident of Y.
So here's the deal. The client pays the broker to be introduce to you. The client then agrees to pay you for a job - often there's a lump sum up-front, and often there's ongoing payments made under the table to the employer. You have to create a position that's suitably skilled of course, and you have to prove you couldn't fill the role locally.
So your corner store is now recruiting for a "retail and marketing manager", and you placed one advert in the situations vacant in a local newspaper, no-one replied. You are now able to recruit your retail and marketing manager from X, and they can move here knowing that they have a work visa.
It's a great deal - your worker got to move from X to Y, and you got an employee who, after their below-table payments to you, is likely working for far below minimum wage.
And here's the best bit - if you treat them like crap, and they decide to complain to the authorities, well, given that they knowingly participated in immigration fraud, which you have proof of, they're very likely to be deported and banned from returning. So they have a very strong disincentive to complain, no matter how you treat them. And thus you continue to have a good source of revenue and cheap labour until they've been in the country long enough to apply for residence.
And then, gosh well, you'll need another retail and marketing manager, won't you? Who pays a lump-sum upfront, and then kickbacks for two years.
Fixing this is a hard question - yes, we want workers being exploited to be able to complain, but we also don't want people lying and falsifying documentation to get a visa. So what do you do in these scenarios? Where do you find a balance?
So the country needs workers, has an immigration policy that restricts the flow of those required workers and is hostile and unforgiving towards those that do find their way into the country.
Sounds to me like this is not in tension at all with what I said. This country should provide a way for those required workers to immigrate without an "immigration broker" [shudder] to abuse and hold power over them.
The fact that a lot of governments are xenophobic[0] and/or want to erode workers' rights[1] means that many places don't have this - apparently this includes New Zealand. But it doesn't change that this is a way to virtually eliminate that sort of problem. It might seem like a lofty or unattainable goal, but we shouldn't ignore what is right just because it's hard to do.
[0] - or enact such policies to appeal to a xenophobic portion of the electorate
[1] - or were elected with help from wealthy people and corporations who benefit when workers have less rights
> This is the dirty side of the "open immigration" - both illegal and legal.
At least legal immigrants can be reached by the government and have their rights explained to them in a language they can understand. Unfortunately, most countries don't do that by default, and if people are lucky some sort of NGO (usually unions) steps up.
The core problem anyway is a lack of enforcement of labor regulations, first by a lack of employer audits, followed by a subsequent lack of punitive actions against employers found to violate regulations.
» Although food companies are prominent examples of how rapid inflation is being passed from producers to consumers, the trend is evident across a wide variety of industries. Executives from banks, airlines, hotels, consumer goods companies and other firms have said they are finding that customers have money to spend and can tolerate higher prices.
[...]
» Over the last year, the price of food eaten at home has soared 13 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with some items spiking even higher. Cereals and bakery goods are up 16.2 percent from a year ago, closely followed by dairy, which has risen 15.9 percent.
In this case it might be more literal since line cook was one of the jobs with the highest covid casualty rate. IIRC higher than frontline medical workers in the US.
Dick's hamburgers in Seattle starts at $20/hour and pays education benefits. And at the end of your shift you can just go home. And if you don't like the vibe, you can quit.
Seems like not a great deal to get yanked around by the coast guard for years for an extra 4 bucks an hour.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment, you have to factor in the fact that room/board is included in the military and it certainly isn't in Seattle. That's probably around a minus 8/hr for the Dick's job.
Being a sole chef on board a Coast Guard ship is a much more challenging job than being a line cook at a fast food restaurant, as it includes all the aspects of planning and logistics that would normally be management's duties at the fast food place.
In fairness, the benefits are much better though; McDonald's isn't going to pay for your entire college education based on three years time in service.
Unsure why you chose McDonald's, but those employees are eligible for $2500-$3000 tuition assistance - with good standing and 30 hours a week. Even more assistance if they apply for targeted scholarships.
True, so that's one benefit, but it's also one shared by any other service member including those in positions with far less responsibility and difficulty.
Keeping a ship fed while at sea for months is a hard task.
The GI Bill is not "one benefit", it's like "the richest benefit in the history of benefits". It will pay all your tuition and fees for a four year college degree, and it'll pay a book stipend, and it'll pay you housing allowance on top of that.
Fair, I should've phrased that better. What I mean is that it's not unique to the ship's chef posting, but a general benefit for any enlisted member of the armed forces.
It's also not something that most people place enough value on to serve in bad conditions for three years to get, judging by the US military's difficulty in recruiting.
That's on top of a fully qualified CG Culinary Specialist potentially being able to get a high enough salary in the private sector to match the GI Bill's tuition cost, without needing to spend time away from home or dealing with austere service living conditions.
Of course this doesn't mean that the only option is to increase salaries. The Coast Guard could also try to substantially improve the quality of life in the post and make it more attractive in that sense. It's a post that's been taken for granted for far too long.
The current approach clearly isn't working, despite the GI Bill.
That's a racket enabled by the absurdly high cost of tuition in the US. In most countries in the world, higher education is free, and their societies and militaries haven't collapsed. And people don't start in life as debt slaves either.
You cant take your kids or partner into that room. That is a big one. You cant invite friends over. And the way you clean and use the space is controlled by your boss instead of having privacy.
There's change in the air on that one. Minneapolis, for one, commonly adds service fees to restaurant bills and shares with the back.
Some referenda in a couple days will determine ending the minimum wage exemption (which would be a shot across the bow for tips and thereby the imbalance between front and back of house). Fought heavily by large restaurant industry players.
Seattle and WA, where Dicks is, has not had a tipped minimum wage exception for many, many years. And also, Dicks is not a restaurant with wait service, so I have no idea why a tip would be expected.
Even without the tipped minimum wage exception in WA/OR/CA, tips are still socially expected for wait service in the West coast, so waiters would probably continue to earn more in Minneapolis.
Everyone on HN seems to be missing that there's a hell of a lot of people out there who would gladly sign themselves up for 4yr in the bottom of a ship if it means they never have to flip a burger for someone on HN.
As an aside, pretty much all the "but you have to put up with <insert military structure here>" gripe that anyone can come up with has a "but you don't have to put up with <uncertainty of civilian life>" on the other side of that coin. People who are good at picking up on what the organizational goals are as well as the goals of the various parties they are subordinate to tend to fit really well in military life and there are a lot of these people out there.
> Everyone on HN seems to be missing that there's a hell of a lot of people out there who would gladly sign themselves up for 4yr in the bottom of a ship if it means they never have to flip a burger for someone on HN.
But that pay includes room and board (I think? Hope? I assume you don't have to bring your own boat) but it's also darn close to some of the McDonald's ads I've seen.
I think the real kicker is there is/was a group of people who would do 6 months on the boat, 6 on shore and were happy with that setup, but now they can only do on the boat or just give up and go work on land.
Not to mention pretty insane post-career benefits. I've had to hire more than one wildly unqualified person because higher-ups have a hardon for veterans.
In the USA, most civilian workers are eligible for Social Security retirement payments after 10 years of work. But payments only start when you actually retire at age 62+. Whereas military pensions start as soon as you retire from the service. So there are people who enlist at age 18, retire at 38, and then go on to have a second civilian career while simultaneously collecting a military pension. It's a pretty good deal for those willing to take the risk and stick it out.
The pay is 7 days a week, 8 hours a day for the salary portion. Saturday & Sunday are all overtime hours at time and a half. Weekdays are typically 11 hours, so three hours per day at time and a half.
That's the base wage plus 62 hours of overtime pay per paycheck.
And then people act like it is an unsolvable problem. Maybe we just treat people better and make their job more tenable? No? Okay. It will keep being a problem then.
It's hard to convince people to treat each other well when they've made it part of their identity that some types of people shouldn't be allowed to get ahead, or exist, and that you shouldn't be allowed to NOT have an unwanted pregnancy and therefore child.
They see a labor force gaining power and they decide the "correct response" is to just decimate any power the labor force might gain. I don't understand it. This is america. We are ungodly wealthy. You can have your cake and eat it too, you can treat employees well and still make stupid amounts of money!
Most of the US population is too fat, too criminal, too sick, too dumb, or too drugged out for the military. "Only 23% of Americans aged 17 to 24 are eligible to join without being granted a waiver."
Waiving some of the rejection requirements doesn't help. Most of those enlisted below standards don't make it past the first year.
The U.S. Army is trying a 90-day pre boot camp training program.[1] There are two tracks, one for the fat ones, and one for the uneducated ones. The educational track focuses on word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and arithmetic reasoning. Enough practical literacy to follow the simpler Army field manuals. The fat track has the troops on this track losing 1 to 2% body fat per month. Those who can't meet the minimal standards for enlistment in 90 days are released.
The people with these qualities are victims of systemic problems. Underfunded education, poverty, abuse, criminal justice that just throws everyone in jail.
We fix those things, I guarantee the army will have much better recruits.
If you cleansed every conviction for petty possession that alone would solve the problem. But radical evangelicals hold senior positions in the services, and they don't like people unlike themselves.
Then we have other crimes of poverty like not paying parking tickets (no money for the meter, aggressive local govt parking restrictions to exclude undesirable poor people), driving unregistered (because they're broke but you're an unperson without a car) etc. And of course, driving while black.
This is one of those comments I have difficulty reconciling with my experience. Ex-cons and former addicts seem to be a substantial part of the evangelical churches I've been familiar with.
Of course I do not know any highly-placed military officers, but the officers I have known do not seem to be and would not describe themselves as religious. They all have sort of a mentality I am not really prepared to put my finger on. Generally, their whole world and interpretive lens centers around the USM.
The presence of 'saved' individuals sadly does not seem to alter their views of the damned.
The USAF and USMC are notoriously problematic with both evangelical/baptist and Mormon cliques. In the USAF this is on top of an already toxic culture -- as evidenced by the ongoing hemorrhaging of pilots. (I could reference many reports but e.g. [1] will do.)
The steady push towards religious prominence in military affairs is hard to miss [2][3]. Now your CO can invite you to his Church and his prayer service, and you'd best understand that your performance appraisal is the stakes. Probably not a good idea to mention your support of trans soldiers. It's all part of the broader culture war of course.
Many good officers hold the line against sectarian creep, including (or even especially) devoutly religious members, but the pressure to be Christian is growing.
>Many good officers hold the line against sectarian creep, including (or even especially) devoutly religious members, but the pressure to be Christian is growing.
Maybe I'm in the wrong community, but I don't see this at all. My experience for the last several years is that a preponderance of the guys I work with is lapsed Catholics.
I have heard, however, that the Navy, and particularly officers (increasing at higher ranks) is comparatively left-leaning and secularist.
There are many communities in a huge military force, and obviously there are many Catholics too, both devout and lapsed.
I don't think I could characterise any of the USN leadership (O5 and up) as at all left leaning, though they have obviously travelled widely and generally worked with people in far flung places, unlike other branches.
At what point do you think personal responsibility kicks in? Everyone has the option to eat healthy - the messaging on healthy diets is everywhere. Everyone has the option to study - Khan Academy is better than most private school instruction. It is free. Broadband is subsidized or free for poor families. Food is subsidized for poor families.
At what point is it a failure of the person and not the system?
This logic would then suggest that the parents are responsible. Why are they not more deliberate about the health, education and general welfare of their under 18 children?
How can it be personal responsibility when there’s enough of these people to create an entirely new boot camp model? If it always was personal responsibility then why is the system changing? Personal responsibility cannot be blamed when this country has so much poverty and lacking in opportunity for young poor children.
The costs of eating healthy are high. 2 years online schooling for most kids coming out of high school has lowered overall comprehension levels. Parents working long hours put in little effort to see that their child is active, healthy, and studious. No role models, no healthy lifestyles, no belief in a future.
The lack of physical activity is down to the parents. Generation X raised their kids with strict rules and a high safety concern. Can’t play outside when you’re not allowed to cross streets or climb trees.
And when "all your resources" is $35k a year because school is stupidly overpriced, and most of that has to go to rent because the country refuses to build affordable housing and you have 2 young kids because your state voted that sex ed wasn't allowed to say anything other than "sex is a sin and you should stay a virgin" which is laughably stupid?
What if the parents are overworked and underpaid, resulting in limited time and material resources - is it still an issue of "personal responsibility"?
I used to think this, but it's so broken as you apply it.
I aslo didnt realize the arrogance that is embedded in it as well as the role that chance played in my good financial position.
My best friend is a chemical engineer. He's studied 2 or 3 magnitudes harder than me, but the last 20 years didn't favor Chemical Engineers as much as software engineers. He's done well or plenty good, but to reduce the question of economics to a sense of personal responsibility as if those who are not financially stable -- deserve it, because they are lazy or not aware -- is a gross understatement and exactly why there is a such division in this country.
Yet some people live in food deserts and can't readily access reasonably priced healthy foods. 19 million Americans have limited access to a proper store (https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts) and unhealthy foods cost poor Americans less than healthy foods in both money and (more importantly) time.
> Broadband is subsidized or free for poor families.
and yet during the pandemic school districts had to drive school buses acting as hotspots into poor communities in order to help the ~15 million public school students who had zero internet access but had to participate in remote learning. (https://all4ed.org/publication/homeworkgap/) Millions more have some form of internet access, but don't have internet speeds or devices capable enough for online learning. In Alcona county for example 60% of the students don't have reliable internet access at home.
The system is failing a whole lot of people. That doesn't absolve people from personal responsibility but it's wrong to pretend very real problems don't exist and influence people's actions and outcomes.
> Everyone has the option to eat healthy - the messaging on healthy diets is everywhere.
Healthy foods have been hit by inflation, and if you grew up on food stamps you may never have had access to the right amount of healthy food to make it through childhood with a decent diet.
Having good education resources doesn't make up for living in a food desert, having a parent that's working two or three jobs to make rent and doesn't have time to cook, having neglectful or abusive parents, or having parents that don't know that these resources exist and even if they do can't access or understand them.
I agree that these resources exist, but actually being able to practically implement them is different than them existing.
The typical person on HN is probably educated enough and is in a position in life where these things aren't problems as adults, but that's not going to help a kid that is still living with parents or in a situation that they do not control.
Ball reform, to keep low level nonviolent accused out of jail so they can hold down a job.
Social housing, widely distributed low rise apartments run by the city or state to ensure we can house everyone. Avoid high rise or dense social housing clusters.
Tax the wealthy, increase pay for teachers (not administrators), pay teachers overtime. Build more schools, and provide nutritious food for every student both because it's the right thing to do but also to build knowledge of what healthy food looks like.
Vacate convictions for things like possession.
Those are the simple ones, there's plenty more we could do.
But, this is all the exact opposite of what I've seen from electorally successful anglosphere[0] politicians.
Do you think you could convince people to vote for that?
[0] I live in Germany now, but my german language skill is only good enough to tell me that politically the AfD hate me and Die Partei are having a laugh
The core issue we have here, IMHO, is a completely weakened and abused working class of the US in the name of efficiency gains with all sorts of costs externalized on them. It's not everyone, but much of the population has been herded into this weakened position, ripe for economic abuse.
Yes but this population by and large also WANTS this. If you give them an alternative to vote for, one that says they will help, that population instead votes in a buffoon and eventually DOES WHAT THE OTHER POLITICIAN SAID THEY SHOULD DO ANYWAY
Yes, that is true, however line cook is not the only opportunity in the military - even though it is the subject of this thread (broadly). The point I was hoping to illustrate is that only 23% of the overall population being eligible for the military is not exactly dire given that we need less than 1% to maintain the status quo of what is - even if "most powerful" is debatable - the biggest military in the world.
And of course, I certainly wish that people were/had more opportunities to be healthier and more literate in the US in general.
This is something the US Army at least has recently started trying to tackle. If you fail to meet the education or fitness requirements there's a 90 day course to help you reach those goals: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2022/10/11/the-army...
I'm neither American nor involved with any military - but this came up in a podcast I was listening to recently, as a potential solution to recruitment problems that the US Army was having recently. It's a fairly good one, IMO, and certainly a more reasonable one than hoping people will decide on their own to "lose weight, be taught to read and write"
The military will accept recruits who have previously used marijuana (and some other drugs). But they need to pass a urine test when they actually enlist.
On immigration forms you have to say, in one question, whether you have ever used, possessed, distributed or sold illegal drugs. Basically asking people to lie, I guess.
I don’t know how it is phrased in army recruitment, but if they are willing to take the fat and stupid, they might also allow the honest.
I would disagree. If you work in any position that requires a clearance or will at any point (the further your career goes the higher the probability) it's far easier to be honest out the door and skip any headaches. People you think are your friends or colleagues, will dime you out when OPM sends someone to interview them. Let's also not forget that OPM will interview people that don't like you. Anyone with a clearance can actually request their adjudication documents and you'll see things you would never have expected.
I looked up the vessel mentioned in the article (USCGC Oliver Henry) to get an idea of how large it was. It led me to the Wikipedia entry for the namesake Coast Guardsman himself, Oliver Henry.
Henry started serving in the Coast Guard as a mess steward, which was an all-black rating while the armed forces were still segregated. Due to his his pre-service work as an auto mechanic, he was the first Coast Guardsman to transfer from the mess steward rating to a motor machinist mate. He ended his career as a warrant officer.
The mess steward rating has been renamed to "culinary specialist". Clearly it's no coincidence this particular boat was chosen to reflect this interesting article. His Wikipedia entry is worth a read:
The answer is obvious: shore billets, and not being moved between them too often unless you ask. Not being at sea for long tours, more often than 1/3rd of the time. Three and six month deployments instead of twelve.
This is not done because big $$$ contracts and outsourcing is seen as more important than capability or people by those in Congress. There's no one providing kickbacks and dark money campaign financing if you have Navy ratings cooking food ashore or buying produce (skills they will need to later transition to civilian careers).
Though untrue, the 'cook' position is commonly known as the position-of-last-resort in many armed forces. As in, you're too dumb to be trusted with a gun, here's a spoon. It's not true, but the perception persists.
It's not a cook shortage, it's an incentive shortage. I'm guessing coast guard cooks have a pretty shitty time. It's better than nothing, but there are just better employment options these days.
This is the United States reaping. There was a time when all but literally every cook and steward was a Filipino national. This was possible because 1) that nation has a strong tradition at sea, and 2) a post-war agreement between U.S. and Philipines allowed them to enlist. This agreement ended in 1992, and anyone who entered under that old program is retired.
> This unique system of enlisting foreign nationals, primarily Asian men, to serve in domestic and food service positions would remain in place for the next 100 years.
> In 1901, President William McKinley signed an executive order allowing the U.S. Navy to recruit hundreds of native non-naturalized Filipinos to serve in domestic and food service positions. As a result of these territorial acquisitions and McKinley’s executive order, hundreds of Filipinos and other Asian nationals would join the Revenue Cutter Service in the ratings of steward, cook and boy.
> However, in 1947, the United States and Republic of the Philippines signed an agreement allowing the U.S. to once again recruit citizens of the Philippines for voluntary enlistment in the U.S. military. Enlisting Philippine nationals for domestic service on Coast Guard cutters continued for another 20 years, however, these men could choose to change to a non-food service rating or pursue an officer’s commission after gaining citizenship. Finally, in 1971, this practice was discontinued and all enlisted ratings were opened to Filipinos that qualified by means of education, prior experience and security qualifications.
I visited the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum in San Diego. The officer's mess had pictures on the wall, all with Filipino wait staff.
I didn't understand why that was the case, so asked the (ex-)officer/docent who was nearby. He pointed out the 1947 change, and added that previously black men were the stewards, but since integration in the military opened up other jobs, fewer black men wanted to be a steward.
“All but Z” basically means “approaching but not equal to Z”, like the range (-infinity, Z). So when X is “literally every X” it means “approaching “literally every X”, but not quite “literally every X””
Personally I’ve never been a fan of “all but Z” as a phrase — I prefer “[very] nearly Z”.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted for what's probably the best explanation here of how to parse that phrase.
It's extra tortured because of the "literally", and the original "all but" is an odd phrase to start with, but in the end I knew exactly what it mean and didn't even blink at it.
As a native speaker, I interpret it the same way as you.
The most common usage of this form is probably the idiom “It’s all over but the shouting,” meaning a foregone conclusion that still has some steps to go through before it becomes official. Historically, this phrase comes from electioneering where there is only one viable candidate standing for office: The competition is practically completed, but the actual voting (the ‘shouting’) has not yet occurred to ratify this result.
How many countries coast guard are "military" like USG with global deployments abroad? Seems like they just share the same issue as USNavy of being over deployed while undermanned.
Well, it's difficult to compare any other nation's military to the U.S. because only a few superpowers attempt to project power overseas. But other nations do have armed coast guards, such as Italy. They are pretty comparable in terms of mission, equipment, and armaments.
I'm pretty sure that one of the levels of Dante's hell is working a ship's galley in rough seas. Trying to keep your nausea under control despite the lack of fresh air and not get burned by all of the hot, sloshing liquids is only for those who have very sturdy sea legs and a high tolerance for burns.
I’m guessing whoever downvoted you hasn’t had to live off MREs for extended periods of time.
We didn’t care about having to do the grunt work for the cooks when the alternative was not having hot chow. Plus they didn’t really care too much about our pilfering as long as we kept it somewhat reasonable.
This is why the US armed forces focuses so heavily on logistics. Giving your soldiers fresh, basically home cooked, familiar meals in literally the desert does wonders for their morale, and keeping morale high has an absurdly powerful effect on soldier effectiveness.
The culinary degree is not the short order scramble eggs type cook (and my apologies to short order cooks reading this - I know you do a lot more than that).
A culinary degree also covers food safety, nutrition, sanitation, menu planning, a bit of accounting (purchasing, inventory, storage), and other topics.
This isn't a four year STEM bachelors degree, but you want to make sure you have someone who isn't mixing utensils, going short on provisions, or spoiling food.
I am a trained military lab tech, military chef and I now do computer things as a civilian.
My military training included all those things. When you are feeding a war / humanitarian effort / training you have very little budget to provide a meal that hundreds will want to enjoy in a safe manner.
Don't minimize the knowledge/ effort required to do this.
I hope that I didn't trivialize the skills of a cook (too far). I recognize that they have an incredible job with a wide range of responsibilities and are responsible in part for the health and morale of the entire ship's crew.
The skills for being the only chef on a 24 person cutter compared to a ship with a hundred or several hundred and an entire staff (and longer deployments https://youtu.be/d2_wBfXBM1Q ) places additional demands on that skill set (or even up to the several thousand with an aircraft carrier, though that's not coast guard - https://youtu.be/w5th1yNwatQ and https://youtu.be/nBWWusUzdWk ).
It's not like the crew can decide to go to a different restaurant when out at sea.
> (This also assumes that being a cook on a ship is simple, which it probably isn't.)
The ship you are on is going on a 3 month deployment with a stop in port somewhere between 4 weeks in and 6 weeks in (depending on weather). The ship has a crew of 24 people ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-class_cutter ).
Plan the menus, determine the provisions needed initially on ship and the additional supplies that need to be available when in port mid way through the deployment.
Make sure that the menus meet with the necessary requirements for nutrition. Two of the crew have nut allergies and one has a low sodium diet.
While the crew total is 24 people, it is possible that others will be brought on top the ship in situations where it is warranted - the provisions need to be able to account for up to an additional four people for a week.
You are the only cook and will need to be able to prepare three meals for the entire crew and have an overnight snack available. The ship runs on coffee, it should be better quality than burnt fuel oil.
The cook is essential for crew morale (consider being on a ship for 3 months and having a cook who burns all the food). Food safety is also of high importance - having any number of the crew unable to do their duties because of food poisoning is a significant impact on ship function when there's only two dozen people and little overlap.
Can they just contract out to civilians or even foreigners? A cook from the Philippines for example, give them American pay and it would be pretty fair. There is even a history of Filipinos serving in the US military for varying reasons.
The Marines used to have a system for allowing civilians cook for the military. It's awful and I wouldn't recommend it. In-service cooks are much better and usually very skilled.
Hardly. Cooks generally wind up managing inventory--that's a quartermaster-type job and you need some brains to run that. If you screw it up, you screw up the mission completely.
The fundamental problem is that the Coast Guard is always chronically underfunded.
Napoleon Bonaparte offered to set someone up for life if they could come up with a process for shelf stable (or rather, wagon stable) food. “An army marches on its stomach” has been military wisdom for at least that long.
What I didn’t know is that the same year he published a book describing his process, someone in England figured out metal cans.
The germ theory had not been worked out at this point so he knew it worked but not the mechanism.
Which is to say I believe everyone understood that boiling made things safe or for longer. It would be almost 50 years before people heard of Pasteur’s work with fermentation (and how to stop it).
That segment starts at 16:57 (after development of the Swiss pike, changes in military tactics, mass mobilization in France, leading to the need to feed large mobile armies.)
This being Burke, it's not until 20:40 that it gets to setting up the competition and Appert.
At 24:10 is the transition to talking about tin cans. After discussing a machine to make paper, at 26:06 it leads into the chain of events that resulted in (at 27:49) that French book being translated into English, patented in England, and started (at 28:17) making preserved canned foods - because they were better at metal than bottles.
That was cause pillaging took time and effort. Fortunately we have solved that problem and can feed military without having to torture it away from locals.
Because this is the coast guard, and like most other large services, most of the things can be centralized and standardized.
I live in the balkans, and the military here (during conscription times) had standardized everything... they took a few cooking-inclined conscripts, gave them the recipe and food items per person and they cooked the food. Everything was precalculated. Some people are still so fond of "military food", there are actual military cookbooks for sale, with recipes such as "military beans" (vojnicki pasulj): https://secanja.com/vojnicki-pasulj-po-receptu-jna/ (including the tables of nutritional info)
I don't think the problem here is a lack of centralization or standardization. The US's military logistics are well known for successfully (and unsuccessfully) applying both, and it's unlikely that USCG cooks are making custom three course meals for their ships.
It's possible that the Coast Guard places high value on "good food" as part of their morale.
It's also possible that the nature of USCG operations prevent them from standardizing food onboard, since it sounds like part of this particular ship's mission brought it to various ports where supplies were not guaranteed.
Lockdown brought this home to some people and seeing those at the privileged end of society realise that teachers, nurses, checkout operators etc are what keeps their world turning was darkly amusing.
It seems to be forgotten fast though, sadly.
Lol teachers? I don't know about where you live but where I live teachers couldn't get out of the classroom fast enough.
Few professions discredited themselves as much as teachers over the pandemic. Spent a good 2 years in many places screaming "We aren't essential, shut the schools!" never mind the impact on the kids.
Whatever your view on teachers, it’s pretty apparent that having kids at home 100% of the time makes parent’s life more difficult. This is part of the reason I was saying teachers are valuable.
My view on teachers not wanting to hang about or even leaving the job is that I would too if I was them.
Why stay in the plague pit for approximately minimum wage and the abuse they were copping from parents? They aren’t paid enough to care, but for some reason, most do. Parents were calling teachers from early in the morning until late at night, 7 days a week and wanted remote parenting over Skype.
I’ve been trying to talk my wife out of being a teacher, and the reasons pre-date covid.
Teachers aren't on close to minimum wage where I'm at. Try high 5 and more often than not 6 figure incomes.
Like I said, no profession has done as much to discredit their importance during the pandemic as teachers. Where im at the effect students has been catastrophic and still they endlessly bitch.
4-year degrees are almost completely useless filler (think about it — that's 5000+ hours of potential training). Most "degree" requirements could be stripped down maybe 90% and contain the same or more job-specific content.
An intense 8-week course would prepare most people for most jobs better than a college diploma requirement.
The bigger problem is that we have more people retiring than entering the workforce. This demographic collapse has been forecast for decades. COVID just pushed us ahead on the curve with some early retirements.
I wrote about this [0] and welcome input on how my thinking might be incorrect.
I work in multiple industries and am struggling with recruiting labor that requires years of training. I welcome creative ideas on how to have my companies succeed in this environment.
Fixing immigration is the only near term solution.
This is not a problem for labor, but for Capital and institutions used to obtaining labor on their terms.
If you need labor trained in your industry, train them. If you can’t attract labor, you will have to pay them more. Not you specifically, but in general.
[redacted broad statement on immigration and working conditions, as it is a complex topic and not all jobs and situations are the same]
> If you need labor trained in your industry, train them. If you can’t attract labor, you will have to pay them more. Not you specifically, but in general.
From the article:
> Recognizing the old military adage that “an army travels on its stomach,” the Coast Guard is pushing hard to fill the gap. An enlisted recruit with a culinary degree can get a $50,000 bonus, jumping the recruit and apprentice ratings to enter the Coast Guard as a full-fledged Third-Class Petty Officer. A culinary certificate holder gets $45,000. An untrained Coast Guard recruit with an interest in tending a kitchen can go to culinary school, and, upon completion, get a $40,000 reward
That is exactly what the Cost Guard is doing - the untrained recruit can go to school, have tuition covered, and on completion get a $40k bonus.
Pay is not the problem. I am offering competitive pay. Tugboat captains with a Master of Towing require years of sea time. More are retiring than being created. I am currently training deckhands. It will be years before they are ready. Meanwhile, I am keeping boats less utilized than they could be.
Fixing immigration would allow me to hire qualified captains from abroad. It would similarly benefit other kinds of companies.
I am offering lots in the way of flexibility. This is a very illiquid labor market compared to most industries. There are simply much fewer candidates. My company's biggest disadvantage is that we have very irregular voyages (we colloquially refer to this as "tramp steamer" work). This is in contrast to work in the oil industry, where a credentialed captain can work a very regular schedule and be guaranteed to see family regularly.
This means that our ideal candidate is likely to be very young or beyond the years where he or she might want to stay home more.
I inherited responsibility for running this company two years ago due to a death in the family right in time to face this demographic crisis. I find that most maritime companies that are not big enough to have a large labor pool are having the same problem. We are all competing for a shrinking pool of labor and doing anything we can to attract them.
[editing to add]
A lot of the retiring captains simply cannot unretire due to health concerns. A captain is required to have an annual medical certificate. Many captains in their late 50s have heart trouble and get removed from service. It turns out that spending 24 hours a day for 2-4 weeks at a time in an environment where one cannot get any cardio, sitting in a chair, and having plenty of food leads to heart problems.
A lot of the younger candidates sharp enough to pass the tests can get a much more comfortable job anywhere else. (I certainly chose programming because I did not enjoy being hip-deep in fish growing up on commercial fishing boats.)
We have researched this a bit. We are working with a staffing company that claims to know how to execute the process. It is not yet clear to me if we should be outsourcing this or trying to do it entirely ourselves.
Any ship using US deckhands will need US command crew (Jones Act). Immigration might open up deckhand positions, but not master positions until they naturalize.
Yes. I don’t expect fixes to immigration to resolve constraints with Jones Act. I do expect it would make other large parts of the labor market more flexible and relieve pressure on positions constrained by Jones Act.
As someone in the industry, what changes would you make to the Jones Act to better enable you to fill the roles you’re having a challenge filling while still meeting the merchant marine industry capacity national security concerns the Jones Act attempts to solve for? I would pay to read this as a blog post btw. Policy must evolve to meet the needs of society.
Edit: no rush! I understand time is at a premium and in short supply.
I would not want to subject myself or love ones to the quality of services that Medicare pays for. From having visited a few, it seems like the system depends on desperate immigrant women from very poor countries.
Apparently, not unlike this coast guard situation.
At the prices being offered, because Americans have better options, is the whole statement. Some combination of price increase, quality of life at work increase, or loss of better options would need to happen to increase labor supply (from Americans).
I would work in a nursing home, but not at a price that 95% of people can afford. Probably 99% of people. But that is due to personal circumstances. Based on wage statistics, nursing home workers’ wages have lots of room for improvement.
It is basically competing with the lowest paying jobs. Hence back to my original comment about Medicare “coverage” not being a meaningful indicator of benefits one will receive.
> It is basically competing with the lowest paying jobs.
Because you're looking at the lowest level of the job (CNA, which requires a high school diploma plus a few weeks of specialized education). Compare home/nursing/hospice RN wages:
Edit: I'm "posting too fast" so we'll have to stop here.
But if you're aware of a nursing home where people are "rolling around their death beds in their weeks old shit filled diapers" you should report that place to the authorities. Some of them are basically scams and aren't even trying to care for patients.
But quality of life in a nursing home is affected by overburdened CNAs, hence s5300’s comment:
> weeks old shit filled diapers because nobody gives the slightest fuck about them & they don’t have enough money to pay somebody to.
The volatility of day to day tasks like cleaning and laundry and trash removal etc are what’s going to suck for people in nursing homes.
Also, pretty much all of those $100 per hour listings are independent contractor or per diem or something that does not make them comparable to a $100 per hour W-2 salaried position.
Americans would ABSOLUTELY do this job if 1) the actual money in the system went to them instead of MBAs at the top. These companies charge the states $12k a month or more! They then give you a room, and one nurse who has like 30 people to take care of and therefore cannot give you the care and effort needed.
Where the hell is the money going? Because it's not going to services rendered.
Lack of willing employees is certainly going to be a growing problem for nursing homes. They ought to recruit more retired people who want part-time jobs to supplement their income or just stay busy. Those workers might not be willing or able to change diapers for bedridden patients. But they can do light tasks like delivering food and medication, data entry, watering plants, etc. Obviously this can't be a complete solution but can help a little at the margins.
The problem, as we are seeing in many other parts of the economy right now, is that if you treat your employees badly, they will eventually all quit, regardless of how good the pay is. Especially so if they are highly-trained professionals that are in high demand elsewhere, as in this case.