4 OPINION Page 4 Wednesday, January 26, 1983 The Michigan Daily 4.. 4' Sinclair A Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Vol. XCIII, No. 95 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 I' Editorial' represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Coercing the refusniks N CsNG t 6 k'y ; tJ f J.c ' r o'er s r i I a HE REGULATIONS are simple enough: If you don't register for fhe draft, you don't receive financial aid. .The injustice is simple enough, too. Students must show proof that they have registered before they are eligible to apply for financial aid. As three anonymous University of Min- nesota students have pointed out in a lawsuit, however, the regulations assume the student is guilty of being a ffusnik until he proves himself in- *ocent. That makes the rules obviously un- constitutional. Although a federal judge has decided not to issue an im- mediate injunction against the regulations, he has agreed to hear the case some time in March. If the regulations are not struck down in court before they take effect July 1, the implications are ominous. SHow much is the Reagan ad- ministration willing to barter in order to enforce its will? What will stop the administration from taking the regulations a step further to threaten registration evaders with the loss of food stamps or welfare? As was the case in the ad- : ministration's cuts in social service programs, the draft regulations stop at the door of the poor. Rich students Monument t HE FEDERAL government, even at its best, seems to be running on ideas about 20 years behind the times. So it's fitting, in a way, that senators ;ire finally moving into the Philip Hart :enate Office Building, a monumental :monolith that was born outdated. The building really isn't an eyesore; qt's too bland for that. It looks, in fact, Mike it might be more comfortable sit- ling on the off-ramp of a 1960s freeway. tark -and boxy on the outside, its :avernous inner atrium has all the lignity and grandeur of the Fairlane Iyatt Regency. In achieving all this institutionalized ;rdinariness, however, those ingenious senators still managed to spend their ;sual inordinate amount, mostly by dlapping up enough marble to reach :he $137 million final pricetag. But now that they have a new white elephant to call their own, not too :nany senators seem willing to claim .wnership. Only a few have moved out :f their cramped Capitol digs, finding he new offices too dull, or isolated, or dust plain embarrassing, to inhabit. - Why was it built in the first place, the have little to fear; the federal gover- nment only has the means to get to those most in need of federal aid. Several universities have responded to this gross inequity by setting up alternative programs. Yale University students who refuse to register are still eligible for loans through the school. Students, however, must pay market interest rates for those loans. To their credit, this university's ad- ministrators have recognized the un- fairness of the rules. But so far, the University has refused to take a stand on the issue pending the outcome of the lawsuit in Minnesota and more serious discussion among officials here. The caution is understandable. But in spite of a tight budget and possible recriminations from Washington, the University need not buckle under to federal pressure. The University's purposes are not served when it becomes an extension of the policing arm of government. Nor should an educational institution help perpetrate the grossly unfair and unconscionable actions a government resorts to in or- der to prepare for war. Instead, the University can buck the latest marching orders from Washington and work to find funds for those who will otherwise suffer from a discriminatory federal government. o mediocrity inquisitive taxpayer may ask. Who really knows? In Washington, a little extra money and a lot of marble are a lethal combination. And the logistics are mind-boggling. The building, already 20 years out of date, was first discussed in the 1960s (20 years ago) when the senators presumably were operating on 1940s logic. What with that time lag, the original inspiration for the office may only be found hovering around somewhere near the Twilight Zone. Philip Hart, the late senator from Michigan, represented the best of his kind - a scrupulously honest, humane legislator. Hart's memorial, however, symbolizes the worst of the Washington lot - a set of warmed- over ideas hastily conceived. So the Senate has done the next best thing to creating a great building. It's built a lackluster building and namedit after a great man. Whatever its shortcomings, the Hart office building may wind up serving at least one function. It could become a lasting monument to government inep- titude. ,. r . _ . _.. ,.r _ , -_ _ ,.. _. 4 _.P High hopes for high-tech may prove to be unfounded 4 By Thomas Brom MILIPITAS, Calif.-City officials in this in- dustrial community on the southern edge of San Francisco Bay have pinned all hopes for their town's future on Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 1982-the computer. Like politicians, economists and some labor leaders all across "post-industrial" America, they confidently predict that the super-hero microchip of 1983 will provide an answer for the record unemployment crisis of 1982. "WE'RE NOT worried," said Milpitas city manager Jim Connolly when the Ford Motor Company recently announced it would close its last assembly plant on the West Coast here next spring. "There's an historic boom going on right now in high technology, and this city is getting its share in both corporate expan- sions and new start-ups. We've got 7,000 new jobs in the Oak Creek industrial park and three more high-tech parks under construc- tion." By converting salt marsh to manicured high-tech developments, Milpitas and neigh- boring Fremont are attracting the corporate spillover from the crowded "Silicon Valley" of Santa Clara County. The two cities are among the few places in the Bay Area where houses still can be bought for under $100,000, making them attractive to skilled electronics workers. For a handful of metropolitan areas-San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Denver, Houston and Boston among them-the much- ballyhooed transition from heavy manufac- turing to high technology appears to be working. But behind the public confidence, cracks are appearing in the facade of the "high-tech solution" that may leave millions of Americans disillusioned and permanently jobless. "MAYBE CONNOLLY'S not worried, but we are," says Charlie Jeszeck, research director for the California Labor Federation. "There's a recession in Silicon Valley just like everyplace else. The auto companies aren't providing enough retraining for our mem- bers, and these high-tech outfits don't like hiring union workers. We just had our eighth suicide in Fremont. I think there's a big hole in the safety net." With no clear industrial policy emerging from either political party, the free-market transition from an industrial to an infor- mation-based economy was bound to be a rough one. Trade unions in the basic in- dustries have taken much of the impact head on. They have lost members and operating funds and seen their political influence fade across the country. Former UAW and United Steelworker rank-and-file members now must compete for jobs with younger workers at half the wage-and-benefit package enjoyed in heavy industry. But union losses are not the only con- sequence of the high technology romance: " The Congressional Budget Office estimates microelectronics technology could cost the United States three million jobs by the end of the decade-15 percent of the / 7, r "7/ 7 / A , / /' V II %A 7 i 4 -'SI I T 'r t~r' 4 "VERY WARMING" manufacturing work force-and seven million by the year 2000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,, 300,000 laid-off workers in the auto industry alone will never be rehired. - The regional competition for high- technology companies is fierce, not only pit- ting states against states but counties against counties. The eventual fallout could be an even greater regional economic disparity than now exists. Milpitas, for instance, may well be saved by the 1982 "Man of the Year," but Detroit clearly will not. . The high-technology industry itself is changing, laying off workers as it introduces new, automated production techniques and consolidating into larger and larger units. In business jargon, the industry is "maturing"-but at great consequence to the job market. Few of these or other factors have been con- fronted adequately by the "Atari Democrats," those high-tech optimists who believe thatgovernmentsupport for new and often small information industries is a direct investment in jobs. In fact, a recent MIT study by David Birch found that although high-technology industries showed strong employment growth, manufacturing firms in general actually generated no net new jobs. The service sector was responsible for vir- tually all of the employment growth during the 1972-76 period, increasing its share of total non-farm employment from 67.9 percent to 70.6 percent. In California, Prof. Michael Teitz of the department of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, used unemployment insurance data to reach remarkably similar conclusions. Teitz found that more than 90 percent of the net new jobs in the young, small firms (which generated two-thirds of all new jobs) were in the non- manufacturing sector. DESPITE THE lack of substantial new jobs in high-tech industries, the California Emp- loyment Development Department and General Motors contributed $10 million for a retraining program in Fremont when GM closed its plant earlier this year. Jeszeck of the Labor Federation said the federation worked hard to pass a bill last August providing $55 million each year to retrain in- dustrial wokers. "But unfortunately the legislature thinks retraining is the answer to all our problems," he says. "We need jobs." 4 More than two dozen Bay Area electronics companies laid off workers this year and many others reduced work weeks and froze new hiring. Ted Gibson, a senior economist at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco; predicts the loss of 8,000 jobs in the industry statewide by June of next year. That leaves the huge service sector as the generator of most new jobs in the 1980s. Ser- vice companies, too, tend to be volatile, low- wage employers with high turnover rates. But with more and more two-wage families buying personal services, the industry really is booming. High-tech may be flashy, but production jobs just aren't there for most of the nation's 13 million unemployed. "The reality is that microelectronic technology throws people out of work," says Lenny Siegal of Pacific Studies Center, a wat- chdog organization in Silicon Valley. "If the U.S. invests in high-tech, it may get a larger share of the world market, but it will also worsen industrial unemployment here and abroad. It doesn't solve the jobs problem at all." Brom wrote this article for the Pacific News Service. T 10 TT'lC U 0 'T!1 rlrT TL Tl A T T XT. D. '!',XV?& ~ i~6 W n 1T14"TT 7; .fl\ T'TTdT ATr.T J