Hardly @ Work

My husband is taking some graduate management courses online. A discussion question the other day focused on ways to reward employees for doing their job. Silly me. I thought that's what paychecks were for.

Obviously, one of the problems we're facing as a nation is that the entitlement mentality has taken over the workplace.

Consider the New Haven, Conn., firefighter case. Yes, the one in which the Supreme Court overturned Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who pushed for entitlements in denying promotions to firefighters who had studied hard to pass a qualifying exam for a shot at 15 openings for lieutenant and captain. More than 100 firefighters took the test, and many of them failed, including 27 African Americans. Fearing a discrimination lawsuit, the city threw out the test results. Denied promotions, 20 who had followed the city's promotion rules and passed the exam -- 19 whites and one Hispanic -- filed a reverse discrimination suit. Echoing Sotomayor's reasoning in her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the firefighters who had passed the exam "had no vested right to promotion" (Hartford Courant).

Since entitlements aren't for people who work, I guess next time they won't study so hard.

Hilda Solis, the new Labor secretary, also is promoting entitlements in the workplace by pushing for labor unions on demand and an even higher minimum wage. Although the federal minimum wage is jumping to $7.25/hour in July, Solis is concerned that the federal wage is lower than that of several states. The inconvenient truth is that the cost of living varies greatly across this country. Believe me, $7.25/hour will go a whole lot further in Little Rock than it does in northern Virginia.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Solis trots out the tired argument that you can't raise a family on minimum wage. Inconvenient Truth No. 2: Minimum wage is a starting point. If someone who's been working full-time for more than a year is still making minimum wage, there's a problem. And much of that problem can be solved by a little personal initiative -- to ask for a promotion, find a different job or improve the job skills.

The irony is that President Obama, Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Solis didn't get where they are by entitlements. They worked hard to achieve their success. But now, they're basically telling the next generation there's no need to get an education, to work hard, to achieve. The government will take care of you.

And silly me. I work for a living.