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.

Importance of the Secret Ballot -- Then & Now

If the rally we attended this past weekend is any indication, we will be hearing a lot in state and national campaigns about "card check" -- the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. This bill, introduced last month in both the House and the Senate, strips workers of the secret ballot process when it comes to unionizing. Instead of a secret ballot, union organizers would need only produce cards allegedly signed by a mere majority of the workers to turn an open shop into an airtight union shop. This bill has many people who value their freedom and their right to a secret ballot fighting mad.

Rep. George Miller of California is one of the House sponsors of card check. In introducing the bill, he said: "The current process for forming unions is badly broken and so skewed in favor of those who oppose unions, that workers must literally risk their jobs in order to form a union.... Even when employers don't break the law, the process itself stacks the deck against union supporters. The employer has all the power.... The Employee Free Choice Act would add some fairness to the system ."

But a few years ago, Miller was one of 16 congressmen who lectured union organizers in Mexico on the importance of the secret ballot: "As members of Congress of the United States who are deeply concerned with international labor standards and the role of labor rights in international trade agreements, we are writing to encourage you to use the secret ballot in all union recognition elections. We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose" (emphasis added).

I'll let you draw your own conclusions. But suffice it to say that President Obama, who first introduced this legislation two years ago when he was a senator, owes a heavy campaign debt to the unions -- as do many of the sponsors of this misguided legislation.

Mexico, by the way, now requires a secret ballot.

Source: Congressional Record, March 1, 2009