Lost dignity of work

The oldest employment rule in the book is it's better to have a job when looking for another job. No one can argue that truth except of course if you're someone who needs to close one door to open another or you're stuck in the crosswinds of structural change.

Fast forward to the present or wake of the Great Recession. Employers are taking the current employment rule to the streets, according to today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/business/help-wanted-ads-exclude-the-long-term-jobless.html?ref=business

While not hiring the long-term unemployed is understandable from the employer point of view, especially the point about incompetence, there's something fundamentally wrong about denying someone work simply because he or she doesn't have a current job. This slope started with the advent of credit checks to deny applicants work.

Try going a little deeper here or beyond the surface of basic dollars and cents. Those who haven't worked for a long time generally need or want to even if they have to depend on public assistance. To be denied this desire can lead to mental or emotional problems. Or the loss of basic dignity.

It would serve large employers and their leaders well to evaluate whether the value called the dignity of work still exists in their workplace. Chances are if it doesn't exists then it becomes easier for HR folks and lawyers to list current employment as an essential for consideration.

Let us never forget that there are human beings behind these laws and rules even though it's difficult to recognize at times. Is the dignity of work a leadership responsibility?

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Just do something, please (Part II)

While the last TGR post laid out fallacies of taking a macro-approach to the jobs issue, this installment speaks to why it's nearly impossible to find actionable common sense among leaders in the public square. Following is an anecdote to help explain the case.

A client and friend runs a small business in Decatur, GA. It's a 25+-table restaurant that's been extremely successful for more than 15 years. Family owned and operated, this business represents what traditionally has defined the American Dream. Man/wife find local niche, decide to take risk and then establish customer base highly loyal to the niche. Pricing premium serves as no obstacle due to high quality product and delivery rewarded by customers willing to pay again and again.

This isn't to say that managing the business has been a bowl of cherries. Between trying to remain cash flow positive to keeping uninsured employees from walking out the door, the challenge is palpable -- hourly, daily and weekly. The basic difficulties, combined with personal physical toll, create complexity that the conventional "9 to 5" worker never experiences. Anyone out of the roughly 50 million independent small business or "free agent" workers who own their own companies in the United States is familiar with similar difficulty.

To compound the situation, no special interest or lobby has my friend's back. Plenty of organizations, such as local chambers of commerce and the Small Business Administration (SBA) pay lip service to the plight of small business. At least one political party likes to wax on about how small business creates 70 percent of the nation's jobs. Yet very little empirical evidence ever makes a difference when stacked against a system that's rigged to reward big business, big labor and big government. This reality is showing no signs of hope and change anytime soon. No one currently in the presidential race has the credibility to stand up for small business despite what they may be spinning.

It wasn't always this way. Our nation's founding fathers all worked "in the fields" so to speak. Necessity was the mother of invention. Jefferson and Franklin were land owners who invented everything from the dumb waiters to plows, bifocals, stoves and clocks. Going back to post-World War II, some veterans returned to start general stores, many of which were given rise out of debilitating injuries or chronic illness. The modern day version of this type of entrepreneurship is absent or mediated to appear like it only exists on-line in the technology sector. Today's military veteran returns home with very few benefits, if any, and very little chance at starting a business due to lack of financing and exorbitant costs. There's something fundamentally wrong with this picture -- one that's distorted even more by negative profiles of people outside of large cities depicted as simple minded and intolerant. Recall Joe the Plumber from the 2008 election before the ensuing publicity circus.

Doing something in this context means removing more obstacles for Mom and Pop, identifying with their cause and standing up to take the (country) economy back. This isn't to suggest ignoring the global marketplace; it's more about getting down to the local core where many have re-congregated. That's leadership defined. Too bad no one with the pulpit seems able to make a difference at this level. Herein lies the key to unlocking value and more domestic job creation; not continuing to move the chairs around on the big business tax cut/debt Titanic. Good day,

JG

The Garlington Report (TGR)

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