gttalbot

Nice!

When I had done the presentation at Facebook's @Scale NYC conference last summer, I talked the powers that be into using more specific numbers, and they allowed it for the paper too.

Taking 25 years to.build this facility is milking it on an almost astronomical scale. There is no incentive to get anywhere, which is apparently why executives there are being charged criminally. Hand waving about "many government contractors" is bull. This is a shitshow. I love the Columbia River Valley.

So they have spent these billions and achieved essentially nothing. Pretreatment and high level waste vitrification are "deferred". The most dangerous parts of the job, which are required to even start work are deferred. How is this contractor still in business?

The situation at that level is far more dire. A non-union garbage truck driver doesn't have a house. Can't afford a family. No health insurance. No retirement plan or pension.

And if you go to any large company, you'll find that it's the same there unless you're in the upper "employee" caste--you're working for a contractor company, and have the same bad deal.

For all the discussion of diversity, any pathway out is pretty much closed. Even if you're in a historically disadvantaged group, the large company doesn't want to set a precedent that would establish the contractor group as employees. So the large company will block training and advancement, extracurricular networking opportunities, etc.

And historically disadvantaged minorities will be overrepresented in the contractor group because of both economic and educational disadvantage.

And to throw salt on it, arbitration agreements that you are forced to sign to work will preclude you using a class action suit to try to fix it, like Microsoft's testing group did in the 1990s. (Thank you Roberts court.)

This is why people motorcycle as well, fwiw.

AstroTurf much?