(Note: I wrote a column about work back in 2003 that I just re-read and still like. So here it is, in celebration of Labor Day on Monday.)
There's a guy who visited with our editorial board a time or two several years ago. He'd worked for whoever was mayor at the time, then became involved in some government job-training program.
``Our goal is not just to get people jobs,'' he told us once, ``but good jobs, something besides being a janitor.''
He didn't exactly sneer when he said it, but the disdain was there in his voice.
A janitor. What a worthless way to earn a living, cleaning up after other people. I guess he wanted us to be sure that our taxpaying dollars were going to be spent on giving people dignity in their lives or something.
It was all I could do to keep from leaping across the table, grabbing his shoulders and trying to shake some sense into him.
My father was a janitor.
Certainly it wasn't his childhood career goal. But a lifetime of hard, physical labor - for a railroad, in a coal mine, at a gravel pit - had taken its toll. Washing walls and buffing floors for a hospital - indoors, no heavy lifting - were things he could still do.
And the job brought in decent money for a man with a sixth-grade education. It put food on the table and kept clothes on the backs of his three children so that they could go to school and give themselves a chance at a better life than he had.
That's the connection our job-training visitor wasn't making - one generation's feeling of obligation to the next. Once upon a time, people didn't expect to be handed the perfect job. They worked hard at whatever they had to so their children could have better jobs. And generation by generation, people's lot in life improved.
Alas, those who spend our money still don't get it. There was a remarkable - and I mean flat-out astonishing - story this week about disapproval in some quarters of President Bush's proposal for ``re-employment accounts'' of up to $3,000 for about 1.2 million people collecting unemployment compensation who are having difficulty finding jobs. As an incentive, any who got jobs quickly would be able to keep whatever was left of the $3,000 as a bonus.
Sounded like a pretty good deal to me. But the advocates for the unemployed - honest, that's what they call themselves - think the program would advance a ``very disturbing philosophy,'' which is that unemployed workers ``should be able to find a job if they look hard enough.''
That assumes, says Maurice Emsellem, public policy director for the National Employment Law Project, ``that there are jobs out there to get.'' Or, they will ``be encouraged to accept the lowest-paying jobs.'' In other words, the program might encourage people to accept jobs they normally wouldn't take.
Heavens. People might have to accept low-paying jobs or ones they normally wouldn't take. The history of the world is the story of untold millions of miserable wretches being crushed under the dehumanizing burden of degrading, back-breaking, soul-destroying, debilitating and humiliating work. And we're supposed to think it's a tragedy that the unemployed might get a couple of grand for taking a job they might ordinarily have passed up?
Please.
Yes, I have a pretty nice job these days. Indoors, no heavy lifting, and I get paid for what I like to do. But this post wasn't just handed to me by some ``advocate for the unemployed'' who took somebody else's hard-earned money and paved the way for me.
I spent three long years in the military just to be able to afford college. I have flipped hamburgers and hauled lumber, stood all day in the same place bending one steel rod after another, cleaned up the excrement left by animals in the zoo. I can't even count the number of jobs I've had that were ``the lowest-paying'' or ones I didn't like or both.
And I remember one bitterly cold winter living in a vile trailer with two other slackers and having to catch the bus to go and collect my pitiful unemployment check. A bonus to find a job - any job - sooner? ``Where do I sign up?'' would have been the only question I asked. The next job, right after unemployment, was in fact very low-paying and extremely not-what-I-would-have-liked. That was the final push that made me go back to college and finish my journalism degree.
That's the way real life is. Unless you have inherited wealth, work is something you have to do. But you don't have to treat every job like it's the last one you'll ever have. While you're putting food on the table and clothes on your back, you're allowed to try for something better.
But if everybody felt that way, I guess there'd be a lot of ``advocates for the unemployed'' themselves out of work. Let's give them a few grand each to just go away - what do you say?
