Contract Workers

From “Womb to Tomb” to “Outsourcing” and “Contract Workers” !
The Evolution of Human Resource Practices and Philosophies.

Over the past three decades we have witness major changes in how organizations of all types and sizes have changed their philosophy about their employees. GE is an excellent example of these changes.

“Womb to Tomb” was the preferred human resource philosophy of the 1950’s to 1970’s. The underlying premise was that companies should hire professionals out of college, provide training and then offer benefits, like pensions, holidays, healthcare that would lock them into becoming loyal, dedicated employees. The assumption is that this would provide the required talents and commitment.

“Outsourcing” was the prevalent approach in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was the common practice to seek out the lowest cost labor whereever it was and reduce the “long term/ expensive” professionals and management.
First of all companies stopped training and relied on getting their candidates from professional schools or pirating them from their competitors. Then they moved from pensions to 401K programs placing the responsibility for retirement on the employee and not the organization.

Now we are in the “Contract Worker” phase where every employee must recognize that they control their own destiny and should not be committed to anyone or any organization and just focus on themselves. This is being accelerated with the advent of the 401K programs and the demise of the pension plans, as well as the most recent changes in healthcare. Healthcare is now like the 401K where each employee must purchase and pay for their own healthcare.

“Everyone is on their Own!”

The results of outsource and contract worker human resources policies are that all employees must develop their own personal strategic career plan and be continually focused on assuring that they get the best deals possible and not be concerned about the organization. This means that they need to think and act strategically about themselves and their future, be entrepreneurial about their won careers. Company loyalty needs to be low on their priority list. If their current employer doesn’t meet their career and personal needs then they must be able package and sell their services and talents to those who provide the most attractive career and monetary offering.

I am not saying that these changes are the best nor that they will continue since they have very negative consequences for both the organizations and the individual, but it is the current practice and everyone must recognize and adapt to it, until a need human resource “fad” comes along.

Bill Rothschild, CEO Rothschild Strategies Unlimited LLC and GE Alumni

©2015 Rothschild Strategies Unlimited LLC All Rights Reserved

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Early Television in Schenectady, New York

GUEST POST BY KEN KINLOCK

Recently I read in a daily history blog that on May 13, 1928 that “WGY-TV in Schenectady, NY began regular television broadcasting”

Having once worked in Schenectady, I had heard other things about television (and radio) both before and after that date. Matter of fact, We updated a WebSite about early radio history.

http://www.ominousweather.com/VacationFrenchRiviera/Entertainment.html#WGY

1928: General Electric establishes an experimental electro-mechanical television station, W2XB, at its factory in Schenectady, NY. The station broadcasts a moving image from a “camera” using a Nipkow disk with a 24 line resolution. The star of these early transmissions was a 13″ tall Bakelite statue of Felix the Cat slowly rotating on a turntable. In addition to the statue of Felix the Cat, W2XBS also broadcast images of a human subject. These broadcasts were used by GE engineers to test the new technology. In 1942, W2XB becomes WRGB, sister to radio station WGY.

The regular television broadcasting was not only local, but sent to New York City also. Wonder where it was rebroadcast from? At that point, General Electric owned a significant portion of Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Other owners were Westinghouse, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and United Fruit Company.

Above picture is from 1939 and shows the General Electric Broadcasting station in the Helderberg Mountains near Albany, New York.

A block diagram of the GE electro-mechanical television system, Radio News, April 1928.
Note that two radio transmitters were used in these experimental broadcasts. The visual image was broadcast on experiemntal shortwave station W2XB operating on 37.33 meters (7.7 MHz) and the sound was broadcast over radio station WGY operating on 379.9 meters (790 KH).

1928: On September 11, 1928, W2XB (video) and WGY (audio) broadcast American first television drama, a 40 minute one-act melodrama titled “The Queen’s Messanger.” Because the TV screens were small, only the actor’s face or hands were shown. Three “cameras” were used, two for the actors faces and a third for the actors hands or stage props. The play had only two characters. A female Russian spy and a British Diplomatic Courier. Four actors were used. Two for the character’s faces, and two for their hands. Amateur radio operators in Los Angeles and Pittsfield, Mass. watched the experimental broadcast on home built television sets. In a story published in the Washington Post on September 21, 1928 under the headline: DRAMA IS RADIOED THROUGH TELEVISION, these radio operators reported: “Results only fair due to fading in 21 meter band, voices very strong with occasional glimpses of faces.” General Electric took a number of staged publicity photos of the event and a short clip of the “broadcast” was included in a GE produced newsreel.

Divesture of RCA. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations, resulting in the company’s decision to divest itself of RCA. The newly separate company signed leases to move its corporate headquarters into the new Rockefeller Center in 1931. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , founder and financier of Rockefeller Center, arranged the deal with GE chairman Owen D. Young and RCA president David Sarnoff. When it moved into the complex in 1933, RCA became the lead tenant at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, known as the “RCA Building”.

 

RCA Building in NY City

570 Lexington Avenue went to GE. It was used as a “Executive Offices” until 1974 when General Electric corporate headquarters moved from Schenectady, NY to Fairfield, Connecticut.

30 Rockefeller Center (known as 30 Rock and now as the COMCAST Center) not completed yet. Opened in 1933.

RCA (also known as Radio Victor Corporation of America) owned 570 Lexington Avenue but 570 not complete until 1931. NBC was never there. Radio Victor, one of the most powerful of the postwar radio companies, owned the National Broadcasting Company and the R-K-O theater chain. Its headquarters were at 570 Lex until 30 Rock was completed.

Prior to occupying its location at Rockefeller Center, NBC had occupied upper floors of a building at 711 Fifth Avenue. Home of NBC from its construction in 1927, until moving to 30 Rock in 1933.

 

Wanamaker building? That was where Sarnoff received broadcasts from the sinking Titanic.

Was TV broadcast by WRCA or WNBC?

Was WEAF (owned by AT&T) involved? AT&T was the only company who could have laid the cable. WEAF became CBS. On April 7, 1927, a group of newspaper reporters and dignitaries gathered at the AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories auditorium in New York City to see the first American demonstration of something new: television. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover provided the “entertainment,” as his live picture and voice were transmitted over telephone lines from Washington, D.C., to New York.

From “Early Television” http://www.earlytelevision.org/NBC_prewar_programming.html

When RCA introduced their television sets at the 1939 Worlds Fair, NBC began regularly scheduled television broadcasting. The schedule consisted of about 2 hours of broadcasting in the afternoon, and an hour or so in the evening. Much of the programming was done using remote pickup equipment. Sports events, plays, and other events were covered.  Even in 1939, NBC conducted audience surveys to help determine their programming. A 1940 article in Electronics magazine summarized the data from the surveys. The first television commercial was broadcast by NBC in 1941. NBC even broadcast television from an airplane in 1940.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 1941 ruling that the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) had to sell one of its two radio networks was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943. The second network became the new American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which would enter television early in the next decade. Six experimental television stations remained on the air during the warÑone each in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Schenectady, N.Y., and two in New York City. But full-scale commercial television broadcasting did not begin in the United States until 1947.

By 1949 Americans who lived within range of the growing number of television stations in the country could watch, for example, The Texaco Star Theater (1948), starring Milton Berle, or the children’s program, Howdy Doody (1947). They could also choose between two 15-minute newscasts:CBS TV News (1948) with Douglas Edwards and NBC’s Camel News Caravan (1948) with John Cameron Swayze (who was required by the tobacco company sponsor to have a burning cigarette always visible when he was on camera). Many early programs such as Amos ‘n’ Andy (1951) or The Jack Benny Show (1950) were borrowed from early television’s older, more established Big Brother: network radio. Most of the formats of the new programs: newscasts, situation comedies, variety shows, and dramas were borrowed from radio, too (see radio broadcasting and television programming). NBC and CBS took the funds needed to establish this new medium from their radio profits. However, television networks soon would be making substantial profits of their own, and network radio would all but disappear, except as a carrier of hourly newscasts. Ideas on what to do with the element television added to radio, the visuals, sometimes seemed in short supply.

Between 1953 and 1955, television programming began to take some steps away from radio formats. NBC television president Sylvester Weaver devised the “spectacular,” a notable example of which was Peter Pan (1955), starring Mary Martin, which attracted 60 million viewers. Weaver also developed the magazine-format programs Today, which made its debut in 1952 with Dave Garroway as host (until 1961), and The Tonight Show, which began in 1953 hosted by Steve Allen (until 1957). The third network, ABC, turned its first profit with youth-oriented shows such as Disneyland, which debuted in 1954 (and has since been broadcast under different names), and The Mickey Mouse Club (1955; see Disney, Walt).

The programming that dominated the two major networks in the mid-1950s borrowed heavily from another medium: theater. NBC and CBS presented such noteworthy, and critically acclaimed, dramatic anthologies as Kraft Television Theater (1947), Studio One (1948), Playhouse 90 (1956), and The U.S. Steel Hour (1953). Memorable television dramas of the era most of them broadcast live included Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty (1955), starring Rod Steiger (Ernest Borgnine starred in the film), and Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men (1954). By the 1955 television season, 14 of these live-drama anthology series were being broadcast. This is often looked back on as the “Golden Age” of television. However, by 1960 only one of these series was still on the air.

From here on out, just refer to the WIKI. It is a long and beautiful story.

LIKE it, LOVE it and I will write more.

Comets 2 vs. Marlies 3 (SO)

The Comets returned home after a three-game road trip and claimed their first point in seven tries in a 3-2 shootout loss to the Toronto Marlies at the Utica Memorial Auditorium on Wednesday night. Despite outshooting the Marlies 37-22, the Comets suffered their seventh consecutive loss.

Jon Landry (1-0-1) and Darren Archibald (1-0-1) provided the goals for the Comets while Richard Bachman was in net with a successful 25 saves. Hunter Shinkaruk (0-2-2) tied Jordan Subban for the team lead in assists with a two assist night. The special teams played well, as the power play unit scored and the penalty-killing unit enjoyed a perfect 5-for-5 night.

The Comets surrendered the first goal of the game for fourth straight game when the Marlies struck 9:54 in the first period. Nikita Soshnikov scored his 12th goal of the season when he ripped a breakaway slap shot past Bachman.

It looked like the Comets would head to the locker room down by 1 but with just 17 seconds left in the period the power play came to the rescue. Friesen was able to connect with Shinkaruk, who made the pass to Jon Landry at the top of the slot. Landry wound up and fired a slap shot that snuck through traffic and evaded the glove of Bibeau for his third goal.

The next goal of the night came when penalties were called on both teams that led to 4-on-4 hockey for 24 seconds. Ryan Rupert jammed a loose pack into the net at the 9:14 mark of the second period for the 2-1 lead.

With seven minutes left in the third period of the game, the Comets were able to tie the game once again. As Darren Archibald fell to the ice he was able to successfully whack a Hunter Shinkaruk rebound past Bibeau’s foot.

A high-energy, fast-paced overtime proved to be fruitless as neither team could score on a plethora of chances.

After Soshnikov scored in the first round of the shootout, neither goaltender would allow another goal to give the Marlies the 3-2 shootout decision.

With the shootout loss, the Comets record falls to 16-15-3-3.

The Comets head to Syracuse for a 7pm Galaxy Cup showdown on Friday before returning home to host the Albany Devils on Saturday at 7pm at The AUD.