The University of Connecticut, which is the flagstone research institution of higher education in our distinguished little state, is advertising for computer help from foreigners.
That’s right. Even though there are plenty of computer guys hanging around on Connecticut street corners waiting to be scooped up and transported to UConn to become computer programmer/analyst II application programming specialists, the hard-hearted personnel folks at the university are advertising for that job in the Boston Globe, which is located in a land far, far away.
Needless to say, UConn would be positively giddy if women, people with disabilities and members of minority groups apply for the job — especially if they live in Massachusetts and read the Boston Globe, which, by the way, does not carry a Cohen column or give you any important business news from Simsbury and East Hampton.
Hire Your Cousin
This is just one example of the decline and fall of loyalty and stickin’ to your own kind and hiring your cousin to work for you, even if he’s kind of dumb. That’s what made America great — and it’s going the way of the UConn computer jobs and city hiring in Philadelphia.
That’s right. The Philadelphia City Council is poised to dump its 50-year-old prohibition on hiring foreigners from Massachusetts and Connecticut — and even other places in Pennsylvania. In a guilty moment of shame and remorse, the Philadelphia plan would require foreign hires to move inside the Philadelphia city limits within six months — and learn the secret code that lets down the bridge so you don’t get eaten by the alligators in the moat when you get an itch to visit Pittsburgh.
Like most bad stuff. I suspect this shopping around and looking for smart, cheap help far from home is the fault of Republicans, who sit around chanting about “outsourcing” and even “privatizing” jobs that local government is supposed to do, as it says in the Bible, using the guys and gals who live down the street, belong to the union, and vote for Democrats, as God intended.
Boston Help Wanted
I can just imagine Gov. M. Jodi Rell and her GOP henchpeople sitting around scanning the Boston phonebook looking for replacements or honest, hardworking Connecticut government employees who deserve every penny of their substantial pensions and Swedish-style health insurance.
The Democrats, who belong to the Party of the People, inspired by Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, who occasionally outsources legal work to private firms, wants to discourage, if not outright ban outsourcing, through legislation that in part would require Gov. Rell to write down, in longhand, with a quill pen, every single piece of business and every single job she sends to firms from Massachusetts and Philadelphia and other far-away places.
Another very important piece of legislation roaming around the General Assembly would sort of, kind of, attempt to award government work to Connecticut companies, if their bids came pretty close to the lowest bidder — especially if the lowest bidder is from Massachusetts or Philadelphia.
The impetus for all of this reform and turmoil and economic justice was the decision by Gov. Rell and several consultants from Massachusetts to have her official portrait painted by an artist from South Carolina.
That’s right. Not South Windsor. Not the South End of Hartford. South Carolina.
By the way, Naugatuck just hired an engineering firm from White Plains to provide oversight on the $700 million Renaissance Place project. I don’t know where White Plains is. It’s probably in South Carolina.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
