Where Have All the Workers Gone?

One of the stories in today's Wall Street Journal 10-Point (a daily WSJ eNews update), has to do with Americans traveling again. An accompanying article carries the headline "Travel Is Back, but Airline and Hotel Workers Are Not." 

In separate article, the same theme rears its head. Railroad gridlock is bogging down U.S. farm shipments. Why? The railroads can't find workers. "Delayed trains and scarce railcars are impeding crop shipments this spring, causing grain-storage facilities to fill up, backing up fertilizer shipments and temporarily shutting down production at ethanol plants. Railroad operators said they are working to fix the problems, but struggling to find enough workers."

Where have all the workers gone? When I did a quick search, the first thing I saw is that a large swath of jobs require Covid vaccinations in order to work there. This may be a contributing factor to many employment situations including the childcare worker shortage. On that particular front there was a push a couple years ago to require childcare workers to have 2 years of college experience. I personally think having experience as a mom would be better than college. College costs money so working parents will make even less money going to work if they pay more for childcare.

When you add up childcare, suitable clothing and transportation costs, one wonders how necessary that second job really is. Especially after taxes. And maybe this is another part of the labor shortage.

I saw a Tweet today that says the problem isn't a shortage of workers, but "a shortage of jobs that aren't awful." 

So here's the another question. Are there systems in place to import workers? Yes, there are. But then we face the next hurdle, the dearth of affordable housing. The lack of housing stock is creating a new housing bubble. Prices are going up faster than wages, and faster than builders have time to build them. (And they have a shortage of workers, too!) 

Here's a Tweet about the restaurant trade. This comment was in response to a comment about high school baseball games being cancelled because of the shortage of umpires. "Same thing with the restaurant worker shortage. People have spent years talking about flipping burgers like it’s the lowest form of existence, and treating people who do accordingly. Now those people are mad that no one wants to work anymore."

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows.

Kim Ng Becomes First Female General Manager of a Major League Sports Team

What does a GM do in Major League Baseball? To find out, watch Brad Pitt in Moneyball. Or, if you prefer, read the book. It's a good book and I've read it twice. (And if you listen to audiobooks, I'll loan you mine.) Essentially, the General Manager handles the business of negotiating player contracts, the dollars and sense.

This past week the Miami Marlins announced that they were hiring Kim Ng as their new general manager, thereby making her MLB's first female GM.  

When I saw the story trending on Twitter I had several immediate thoughts. First, when did the Florida Marlins become the Miami Marlins? I guess I'd not been paying attention as much as I should. Second, this is an interesting breakthrough. When will women be accepted as umpires?

I raise this latter question because my cousin Theresa was mentioned in a 2011 ESPN story titled Women Umpires Are Striking Out In MLB and again in this 2012 story in Women's Voices for Change.

In 2016 I addressed this umpire issue in a blog post titled Major League Baseball: Some Things Have Changed and Some Haven't in the Umpire Business. In that story I noted that women have served on the Supreme Court. Women have served as heads of state (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) and women are CEOs of major corporations. But there are no female Major League umpires. Why is this? Are baseball's rules more complicated than the U.S. legal system?

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The Kim Ng has many interesting features, one of them being that four years ago the Marlins became the first Major League team to have a black CEO, none other that the highly respected Derek Jeter. 

Ng comes into the role with a strong resume, 30+ years in the business. On Twitter the show of support has been massive, not only for breaking the gender barrier but also being a minority. Even Michelle Obama Tweeted her enthused response to the move.

"I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next General Manager," Ng said in a statement. "We are building for the long term in South Florida, developing a forward-thinking, collaborative, creative baseball operation made up of incredibly talented and dedicated staff who have, over the last few years, laid a great foundation for success.

You can read ESPN's account here: 
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30310018/miami-marlins-hire-kim-ng-mlb-first-female-general-manager

Congrats, Kim.

Major League Baseball: Some Things Have Changed and Some Haven't in the Umpire Business

Technology has changed the world of baseball in both fundamental and incidental ways. Watching the Cubs-Indians World Series it became apparent that one of the side effects of technology is the shift in power that was once fully in the hands of the umpires. That is, until cameras could capture every single angle and transmit all these perspectives to a single location for instant review, the umpire's authority was unchallenged. It could be disputed but in the context of the game itself the ump made the final call.

In today's world, the power has shifted away from the umpire to some extent. If he makes a bad call, the manager of the team that took it on the chin could challenge the call. The verdict was determined elsewhere, and the ump's role marginally reduced to being a mouthpiece for the verdict. Sure, the umps still make all the calls, but they've got their butts covered.

This undoubtedly proves to be a liberating change for umpires. I know from first-hand experience how brutal it can be to make a bad call. Somehow the umpire's word had such total authority it was as if it had been etched on two tablets by the finger of God.

When I was seventeen I was asked to be a Little League umpire, no doubt because I played on the high school team and knew the rules of the game. I was fair, earnest and it also paid a few greenbacks to boot.

Two of my most memorable experiences as an ump were the bad calls I made. I wrote about this here in 2009, but you can read the pertinent material here in this excerpt.

My worst call came on a windy day at Hamilton Field. The infield was dusty and the count two balls and a strike. Just as the pitch was released, the wind threw grains of dirt into my eyes so that I was temporarily blinded. I could see that the ball, when I got my vision back, had gone over the backstop so naturally I assumed (don’t EVER assume when you are an umpire) that the kid fouled it off. I shouted, with confidence, “Strike two.”

The reality is, the ball had hit the plate and gone over the backstop. And everyone saw it as plain as day, except the ump. The parents went berserk. Naturally, when I discovered what had happened it seemed only right to change my call to make it correspond to reality. Then, the other team’s went berserk, and trust me, there are very few closets to hide in on a baseball diamond.

My second bad call went like this. The batter hit a dribbler to the right side. The first baseman came forward to get it, picked it up clean and swung around to tag the runner on the back as he sprinted past. I made a mistake, however, by not running out toward the mound to get a better angle on the play. It looked like he tagged the runner, but from where I was standing he might not have done so. I called the kid out.

The first base coach and the manager arched their backs in amazement, shouting, “He missed him by a foot!” Whereupon, having failed to learn from my first bad call experience, I changed the call to “Safe!” I cringe to think of it. When you change a call there is No Mercy. 

The common denominator in both these instances was this: the parents went berserk. O.K., the coaches did, too. The worst of it was that everyone behaved as if the umpire did not even have permission to change the call, even when everyone saw it with their on eyes.

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I share all this because there's another part of Major League Baseball that has not changed and maybe ought to as well. Let's set it up this way.

Women have served on the Supreme Court. Women have served as heads of state (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) and may even serve as our own soon. Women are CEOs of major corporations. But there are no female Major League umpires. Why is this? Are the rules more complicated than the U.S. legal system?

This glass ceiling in the umpire business strikes me as strange. Can you imagine if black ball players had never been permitted to cross the color barrier? I'm unsure what the risks are. It's already verboten to hit an ump.

The reason this notion is fresh in my mind is because I have a cousin who was a professional umpire. Theresa has been one of a handful of women umps in professional minor league ball. Here's a 2012 article addressing the situation. In 2011 ESPNW investigated the progress of women referees and umps in a range of pro sports, underscoring the challenges and abuse they've had to overcome.

So tonight, while the Indians try to break free of "the curse of Rocky Colavito" and the Cubs fight for their first championship in 108 years, ask yourself the question: Why can't women be umpires?

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My apologies to friends who live in Chicago... I will be rooting for the Indians tonight. Go Tribe!