If You’re Unemployed, Just Die Already

Posted May 25, 2011 in Labor and Employment by Arthur Buono
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So, companies with jobs to fill won’t hire people who need jobs. This makes so much sense it must have come directly from our vaunted B-school system. The more I think of it, this has got MBA written all over it.

     
  • Employers shunning the out-of-work, courting those with jobs
  • "Unemployed need not apply" not an illegal policy
  • As employers compete employed labor, cut your best deal now
  • Copy this link to share with friends: http://bit.ly/kAut7P

 

Unemployed Chopped Liver; Good News if You Have a Job

Is such a policy legal? Well, it’s not illegal. It’s a (mostly) free world, after all, one where you can hire whom you choose. Civil rights and employment discrimination laws must be observed. But "unemployed" is not a protected class, even though such a policy might have a disparate impact on historically underemployed protected groups, like African Americans.

Is this policy smart? For the last few decades at least businesses in our economy have gone through repeated cycles of downsizing, "rightsizing" (another McKinsey-word if ever there was) and restaffing. Especially where public companies are concerned, these moves are never laid to horribly screwed-up management initiatives, but to the economic cycle.

Yet by the new standard, someone who’s laid off simply because demand for widgets has temporarily waned can never be hired back. Well, if someone can’t get a job because they don’t have one, maybe someone who has a job should not be subject to layoff, because they have a job! Or how about this, simply refuse to work for any company that needs workers. Sounds very Groucho Marx.

If and when our economy stops slipping gears, this policy will weaken as companies scramble to fill the need for workers. In the meantime, if you’re smarting from this policy, contact your elected officials and maybe they’ll create some corporate welfare program of tax breaks for hiring unemployed people. If employers are ignoring unemployed persons as a supply of labor, employed persons should be able to demand higher wages. If you have a job and you’re being courted, be remorseless in demanding superior compensation. Your new employer will be when cutting your pink slip.

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