Chumph – Ethnic Cleansing the Government

What is going on at State Department is playing out all over the government as the Chumph assembles his Gestapo.

This is also interesting because of the announcement of Mr Tillerson’s exit from State…

 

Diplomats Sound the Alarm as They Are Pushed Out in Droves

 Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller.

Republicans pilloried Hillary Clinton for what they claimed was her inadequate attention to security as secretary of state in the months before the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Congress even passed legislation mandating that the department’s top security official have unrestricted access to the secretary of state.

But in his first nine months in office, Mr. Tillerson turned down repeated and sometimes urgent requests from the department’s security staff to brief him, according to several former top officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Finally, Mr. Miller, the acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security, was forced to cite the law’s requirement that he be allowed to speak to Mr. Tillerson.

Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department’s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.

The departures mark a new stage in the broken and increasingly contentious relationship between Mr. Tillerson and much of his department’s work force. By last spring, interviews at the time suggested, the guarded optimism that greeted his arrival had given way to concern among diplomats about his aloofness and lack of communication. By the summer, the secretary’s focus on efficiency and reorganization over policy provoked off-the-record anger.

Now the estrangement is in the open, as diplomats going out the door make their feelings known and members of Congress raise questions about the impact of their leaving.

In a letter to Mr. Tillerson last week, Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee, citing what they said was “the exodus of more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers from the State Department since January,” expressed concern about “what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, sent a similar letter, telling Mr. Tillerson that “America’s diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally.”

Mr. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has made no secret of his belief that the State Department is a bloated bureaucracy and that he regards much of the day-to-day diplomacy that lower-level officials conduct as unproductive. Even before Mr. Tillerson was confirmed, his staff fired six of the State Department’s top career diplomats, including Patrick Kennedy, who had been appointed to his position by President George W. Bush. Kristie Kenney, the department’s counselor and one of just five career ambassadors, was summarily fired a few weeks later.

None were given any reason for their dismissals, although Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Kenney had been reprimanded by Trump transition officials for answering basic logistical questions from Nikki R. Haley, President Trump’s pick as United Nations ambassador. Mr. Tillerson is widely believed to dislike Ms. Haley, who has been seen as a possible successor if Mr. Tillerson steps down.

In the following months, Mr. Tillerson launched a reorganization that he has said will be the most important thing he will do, and he has hired two consulting companies to lead the effort. Since he decided before even arriving at the State Department to slash its budget by 31 percent, many in the department have always seen the reorganization as a smoke screen for drastic cuts.

Mr. Tillerson has frozen most hiring and recently offered a $25,000 buyout in hopes of pushing nearly 2,000 career diplomats and civil servants to leave by October 2018.

His small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted or taking away their duties altogether. Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.

One of them was Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career Foreign Service officer who served as ambassador to Liberia under Mr. Bush and as director general of the Foreign Service and assistant secretary for African affairs during the Obama administration. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was among those asked to leave by Mr. Tillerson’s staff, but she appealed and remained until her retirement in September.

“I don’t feel targeted as an African-American,” she said. “I feel targeted as a professional.”

For those who have not been dismissed, retirement has become a preferred alternative when, like Mr. Miller, they find no demand for their expertise. A retirement class that concludes this month has 26 senior employees, including two acting assistant secretaries in their early 50s who would normally wait years before leaving.

The number of those with the department’s top two ranks of career ambassador and career minister — equivalent to four- and three-star generals — will have been cut in half by Dec. 1, from 39 to 19. And of the 431 minister-counselors, who have two-star-equivalent ranks, 369 remain and another 14 have indicated that they will leave soon — an 18 percent drop — according to an accounting provided by the American Foreign Service Association.

The political appointees who normally join the department after a change in administration have not made up for those departures. So far, just 10 of the top 44 political positions in the department have been filled, and for most of the vacancies, Mr. Tillerson has not nominated anyone.

 

Sessions Goes After LGBT Rights

Well… Jefferson Davis Sessions just went after LGBT people. Likely as part of an overall attempt to eliminate Title IV and Civil Rights Law.

The New Jim Crow for LGBT people.

Why Trump’s Justice Department Just Increased the Stakes In the Fight for LGBT Workplace Rights

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice on Wednesday undercut the stance of the Obama administration’s DOJ and another autonomous federal agency, by arguing that an existing law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not bar an employer from firing a gay employee because he or she is gay.

The filing came the same day as President Trump’s announcement that he would bar transgender troops from serving in the military. Together, the two actions fueled outrage from lawmakers, activists and other leaders who argue that the administration is seeking to roll back the rights and protections won by the LGBT community in recent years.

As a candidate, Trump largely avoided talking about issues related to sexual orientation, but often implied that he wouldn’t interfere with recent progress, even going so far as to promise gays and lesbians, “I will fight for you.”

Since his inauguration, however, Trump has been largely silent on the issue. Social conservatives were key to his election victory, and, notably, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has been a longtime opponent of extending job protections based on sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation is not explicitly listed in Title VII, which protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in July 2015 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is, in essence, discrimination based on sex. Because sexual orientation can’t be defined or understood without reference to sex, the commission held, discrimination based on it is “premised on sex-based preferences, assumptions, expectations, stereotypes, or norms” and therefore barred by the law. The EEOC’s ruling was hailed as a victory for the LGBT community at the time, and under President Obama, it became the interpretation that the DOJ abided by.

Trump’s DOJ on Wednesday challenged that stance, arguing just the opposite: that Title VII does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The DOJ’s opinion, filed in a brief in an ongoing legal case between a worker and his boss being heard by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, says “the sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination. It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”

The EEOC filed a motion in the same Second Circuit case just last month, reiterating its 2015 finding that Title VII bans bias based on sexual orientation.

In its filing, the DOJ acknowledged, rather frankly, that its stance on the matter contradicts that of its fellow government agency. “The EEOC is not speaking for the United States and its position about the scope of Title VII is entitled to no deference beyond its power to persuade,” the ruling says.

It’s true that courts are not bound by EEOC positions; they’re only required to honor legislation and the rulings of courts to which their cases can be appealed, including the Supreme Court. (It should be noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit made the same determination as the EEOC in a case in April.) But the EEOC’s decisions matter because the commission enforces Title VII, has the authority to bring lawsuits based on its rulings against private employers, and adjudicates cases brought by federal workers against federal agencies.

The DOJ meanwhile, is the defense attorney for the United States, so, in many ways, it’s just like any big employer that files an amicus brief in a case. But enforcing discrimination law in contexts outside of employment—housing, voting rights, disability—is part of the department’s mandate, meaning its stance on such issues carries more weight than other employers’, says Marcia McCormick, an employment law professor at St. Louis University School of Law.

Its filing in the Second Circuit case this week extends what has been a years-long debate over the scope of Title VII. The EEOC’s ruling on that matter in 2015 recognized that federal courts had concluded the opposite, but it said that those decisions were “dated.”

The EEOC’s stance on Title VII’s reach—spelled out in 2015—was considered a landmark decision because it gave gay workers extra cover in states that hadn’t passed their own laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. As of this April, 20 states have passed laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; another two have passed legislation against bias based on sexual orientation only, according to the Human Rights Campaign, meaning there are 28 states where gay employees can be fired for being gay.

The DOJ’s new stance on the matter says that determining such workplace protections should be done through Congress, not through the courts. Lawmakers have pursued that route before. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and, in more recent versions, gender identity) nationwide, was first introduced in 1994. Congress considered it at least 10 times in the following decade and a half, but it never became law. The current Congress, whose GOP leadership includes many social conservatives, seems highly unlikely to act on a similar bill.

 

The Real Reason White Folks in the Red Zone are Losing Their Jobs to Immigrants…Drugs

The meme is thousands unemployed by factory closings. Jobs taken by profiteering companies moving work overseas.

But why is it the companies which stay are having such a hard time finding workers?

The heroin/meth epidemic in rural America is doing more damage than just the never-ending overdoses…It is stealing people’s ability to work. Factory work can be dangerous, with moving machinery and heavy items being trasnsported from place to place. The transportation industry also uses rigorous drug testing because of the danger to the public of an impaired, bus, train, or tractor-trailer driver to the safety of the public. While off-work Marijuana use seems not to be a problem, a remarkably high percentage of at-fault accidents involve operators/drivers who are impaired by drug use.

I have heard this before from a friend who works for the FBI, where they had thousands of jobs open, and not enough people who could pass the background investigation and drug tests to get the security clearances needed.

 

Suburban kids are most likely drug users

As more Americans fail drug tests, employers turn to refugees

Inside a factory near this lakeside city, a man holding a blowtorch is putting the finishing touches on a plastic rain barrel that will soon make its way to a home and garden section somewhere in America.

He is Talib Alzamel, a 45-year-old Syrian refugee who arrived here last summer with his wife and five children. He can’t speak much English, but neither can most of the 40 refugees who work at Sterling Technologies, a plastic molding company based near the shores of Lake Erie. They earn $8-14 an hour.

The refugees at Sterling come from all over the world, from Syria to Sudan, Chad to Bhutan. And they’ve all passed the company’s standard drug test.

“In our lives, we don’t have drugs,” said Alzamel, who was hired within three months after arriving in Pennsylvania. “We don’t even know what they look like or how to use them.”

But for an increasing number of American-born workers, passing drug tests is a big problem.

The percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs has climbed steadily over the last three years to its highest level in a decade, according to Quest Diagnostics, which performed more than 10 million employment drug screenings last year. The increase has been fueled in part by rural America’s heroin epidemic and the legalization of recreational marijuana in states like Colorado.

With roughly half of US employers screening for drugs, failed tests have real consequences for the economy. More than 9% of employees tested positive for one or more drugs in oral fluid screenings in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. And the problem is even worse at places like Sterling Technologies.

“Twenty percent of the people are failing,” said Cary Quigley, the company’s president. “We’re seeing positive tests anywhere from marijuana through amphetamines, right all the way through crystal meth and heroin.”

Which is why refugees like Alzamel, despite some language barriers, are quickly snapping up jobs.

“The big factories … they have a problem with the drugs, so like every time they fire someone, they replace him with the refugee, to be honest,” said Bassam Dabbah, who works at a US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants field office in Erie. “The only barrier is the language, but they are picking it up very quick.”

The status of refugees in the US has been under scrutiny since President Donald Trump’s executive orders limiting the number of immigrants to the country. On March 6, Trump signed a new order that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority nations and reinstates a temporary blanket ban on all refugees.

But because of the increase in positive drug tests, the refugees who have reached America in recent years are finding a more welcoming hiring climate, at least for menial manufacturing jobs.

Nearly 6,000 refugees have settled in the last five years in Louisville, Kentucky, helping companies hire workers for jobs that had gone unfilled. Methamphetamine use is so high in Louisville that the number of people testing positive for meth in workplace drug tests is 47% higher than the national average, according to Quest Diagnostics.

Inside the White Castle food processing plant, where they make 50,000 hamburgers per hour, “it’s become like the United Nations,” says Jamie Richardson, a company vice president.
Antigona Mehani, employment services manager at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, says she can usually find a refugee a job within three days.

Employers tell her, “send us as many as you can,” she said. “I hear this every single day.”

CNN’s reporting discovered a similar dynamic in many parts of the country, from Columbus, Ohio, to Albany, New York, to a company in Indiana that supplies parts for Ford cars.
While many employers insist that drug testing keeps the workplace safe and ensures a productive and stable work environment, there is no conclusive evidence that it’s necessary for all jobs or that it lowers risks or reduces drug use.

And workers flunking drug tests is not a new problem, said Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation.
But it’s a problem that is getting worse, she said. Fay said employers are especially concerned about the increasing failure rates in “safety sensitive” workplaces, where a lapse by a employee under the influence of drugs could cost lives. “They’re frustrated for a number of reasons. In some cases they are having trouble hiring drug-free workers,” Fay said. “They can’t drug-test people every day, so there will be people who slip through the cracks.”

In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, some businesses have told Fay, “they see employees smoking pot on their lunch break and then going back to work.”

One oil and trucking company in Colorado did random drug screening last year and flunked 80% of their employees, mostly for marijuana, Fay said. Colorado’s Supreme Court has ruled that companies may fire employees who smoke pot, even if legally.

“They had to replace everyone,” she said. “The employer was glad he found the problem because his employees do extremely dangerous work. He was shocked and disturbed.”…

 

Wanted for Immediate Hire…6 Ninjas

By the Japanese Government! Fare of countless movies and fiction novellas, the Ninja now has a “Day Job”.

CALLING ALL NINJAS: JAPAN IS HIRING

Have you got kickass ninja skills but can’t convince anyone to pay you for them?

Here’s your chance. In an effort to draw in more tourists, Japan’s Aichi region is looking to hire six full-time ninjas. According to the Aichi Prefecture’s job ad, requirements include physical fitness and acrobatic skills. Successful candidates will be paid 180,000 yen ($1,600) per month.

Experts in the art of assassination, espionage, sabotage and other forms of irregular warfare, ninjas were 15th century Japanese mercenaries. The six present-day ninjas will have less deadly duties, performing for tourists, demonstrating the use of the trademark shuriken weapons—like ninja stars—and posing for photos.

Ideal candidates should “enjoy being under the spotlight, even though he or she is a secretive ninja,” Satoshi Adachi from the prefecture’s tourism promotion unit, told AFP.

Japanese language skills are not essential, Adachi said, but applicants must have a passion for the country’s history, the BBC reports. Those who make it through will perform in Nagoya Castle and other locations throughout Japan.

Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe pledged to boost tourism in the aftermath of the tsunami in the northeast region of the country five years ago. Attracting visitors is also particularly important in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Anyone over 18 can apply to be an Aichi ninja, and applications are open until March 22.

 

Silicon Valley Funds CBC Parties for “Diversity”

Perhaps I am a bit too cynical, but HTF does funding yet another cabaret make jobs for underemployed, and unemployed black tech workers?

And HTF is it that with 12% of the graduates in Computer Engineering being black, there is a “shortage in the school pipeline”?

Bullshit!

The way things are done in the tech business is you hire some competent recruiters (“headhunters”) to go and get what, and who you want to hire. There is no shortage of minority middle managers, tech staff, and senior tech staff – although you may have a hard time getting them to move to the West Coast whitopias anymore. That shouldn’t be an issue – because most of these companies have data centers and offices all over the east coast, and a lot of companies hire “virtual” workers…

I been in this business over 20 years, working in senior positions for startups, as well as big players and hold patents in the technology…I haven’t heard jack shidt from these people – although I do get calls from big eastern based companies.I know a couple of guys who read my blog are senior techies like myself…When exactly was the last time you got a recruiting call from Google or Amazon?

But I guess it is just easier to buy off the CBC with a couple of parties.

Under diversity pressure, tech courts minority groups in D.C.

Congressional Black Caucus chairman G.K. Butterfield warned that “talk is not enough,” in diversity in tech.

Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies are quietly funneling money to minority groups in Washington, including those affiliated with black and Hispanic lawmakers — a move that comes as the firms face growing criticism about the lack of diversity in their workforce.

The donations, known as “honorary expenses,” fund events like dinners and cocktail receptions where members of Congress and federal regulators are the guests of honor. The leader of the pack is Google, which spent a record of more than $490,000 on such expenses last year — devoting most of it to minority groups like the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, according to newly filed federal ethics reports.

Apple chipped in $1.2 million for an awards gala for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and Uber wrote a $10,000 check to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the disclosures show. It marked the first time either Apple or Uber reported any honorary expenses.

The recent uptick in these donations coincides with growing political pressure on the tech industry over diversity, as companies struggle to address complaints that their employees are largely white and male. The debate has taken root in Washington, including with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which sent a delegationto Silicon Valley in August to demand that the industry recruit more African-Americans.

The tech industry’s newest tactics don’t appear to have quelled the outcry from Capitol Hill, and they don’t sit well with some diversity advocates.

“We’ve had years now of campaigning and advocacy around the diversity problem … [but] the only thing that’s gotten better with these companies are their talking points,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of ColorofChange, a nonprofit that works on civil rights issues. The problem, he added, is “not going to be solved by throwing money at the CBC and other institutions.”

Asked about their spending, Apple and Uber declined to comment for this story. A Google spokeswoman said the company believes it’s important to “help policymakers understand our business and the work we do to keep the Internet open and encourage economic opportunity.”

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute serve as the educational and policy arms of their respective caucuses on Capitol Hill. While they’re technically separate organizations, many black and Hispanic lawmakers serve as board members for the nonprofit groups. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, meanwhile, is a nonprofit that provides scholarships and other support for African-American students at historically black colleges and universities.

The CBC Foundation, for one, stressed that the tech industry’s donations have gone to a good cause. They’ve allowed for “professional development briefings for our interns offering them real-world, first-hand exposure to careers” in key tech fields, Shrita Sterlin-Hernandez, a spokeswoman for the group, said in a statement. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund did not comment for this story.

But the checks can also double as powerful forms of leverage in Washington, where influence often is measured in dollar signs. “There are many ways companies and other organizations can establish a presence in Washington, and gain access to politicians. And one way to do that — that some people pay less attention to — is by giving money to a charitable cause that a politician is associated with,” said Viveca Novak, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics.

Such contributions are a “well-trodden path,” in the words of Novak, for established industries in Washington, from big tobacco companies to telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. The donations, in addition to supporting nonprofits, provide lobbyists with greater access to lawmakers and regulators.

And Silicon Valley certainly could use more allies in Washington when it comes to diversity issues.

Apple is almost 70 percent male globally and 54 percent white in the U.S., according to the company’s most recent diversity report, though the company emphasized that many of its new hires have been women, Asian, Hispanic and African-American. Google’s workforce is also 70 percent male globally and 60 percent white in the U.S., despite its own efforts to diversify. Uber, for its part, has not released a report detailing the composition of its employees.

Those poor report cards prompted the Congressional Black Caucus last May to launch an initiative dubbed Tech2020, hoping to pressure tech companies to add more African-Americans to their ranks. The CBC later dispatched top lawmakers to the Valley — including its chairman, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) — to make that point directly to executives at Apple, Google, Intel and other firms.

Butterfield sounded the theme again in September at the CBC Foundation’s annual legislative conference, where he warned that “talk is not enough. And we need more than an amen from the choir. … We want to see results.”

Tech companies have pledged to fix the problem, but as they invest in hiring initiatives, they’re also pumping big money into Washington. Over the course of last year, Google covered $150,000 in honorary expenses for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and provided an additional $95,000 in multiple checks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, according to an analysis of the ethics records.

Another roughly $150,000 in spending went to “various vendors” that aided events with women, black and Latino lawmakers, the records indicate. At the CBC Foundation’s annual legislative conference in September, Google played a key sponsorship role at a reception that featured FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, according to an invitation for the event.

Google has donated to the CBC Foundation before, but its “honorary expenses” for the group and other minority organizations have increased in recent years. Asked whether this amounts to a form of lobbying, the CBC Foundation stressed in a statement that the support benefits the organization’s mission: “Our sponsors and partners provide support to our organization because they share our goals of providing important opportunities for the communities we serve.”…More…

 

 

The Black Professional Minefield

If you are a black professional in America, the more than likely you work in an environment surrounded almost entirely by white people. I remember back in the 80’s, speaking before a group of 2,000 of my peers at a corporate conference and being the only black face in the room, along with a half dozen other minorities and women. An executive job in an American corporation is a Fly-Trap. You are there, but the chances of a lateral move to another company to move up, which is a common strategy available to white managers – is difficult, if not impossible. You probably can count on one hand the number of black CEOs, Presidents, or Sr VPs recruited by other companies for executive positions outside of the company in which they earned their position in the first place. An issue which makes the expansion of black CEOs in the Fortune 500 difficult.

It goes beyond just simple watercooler small talk in that black folks are more likely to be fans of Football and Basketball, while whites are fans of Hockey and Baseball. And you are never going to be able to explain the Black College Greek tradition of a Step Show. Being bi-lingual, speaking at least two English dialects…

And learning to love Broccoli and kale as a salad.

And yes, you have to put up with the occasional racial micro-aggression (typically born more of ignorance than anything else), as well as the full on racism. Nor are your white co-workers or peers going to get why BLM has resonance with you, who aren’t living in the poor part of town, aren’t covered in tats, or are speaking in the dialect of the lower class.

Being Black—but Not Too Black—in the Workplace

To be a black professional is often to be alone. Most black doctors, lawyers, journalists, and so on—those in white-collar positions that require specialized training and credentialing—work in environments where they are in the racial minority.

This comes with challenges. Beyond outright discrimination, which many still face, there are psychological costs to being one of just a few black faces in a predominantly white environment. In a study of black professional workers in a number of different occupations, I found that these employees worked to carefully manage their emotions in ways that reflected the racial landscapes they inhabited.

In particular, black professionals had to be very careful to show feelings of conviviality and pleasantness, even—especially—in response to racial issues. They felt that emotions of anger, frustration, and annoyance were discouraged, even when they worked in settings where these emotions were generally welcomed in certain contexts—think litigators interacting with opposing counsel, or financial analysts responding to a stressful day on Wall Street. Interestingly, this often played out at trainings meant to encourage racial sensitivity. Many of the black professionals I interviewed found that diversity trainings—intended to improve the work environment for minorities—actually became a source of emotional stress, as they perceived that their white colleagues could use these trainings to express negative emotions about people of color, but that they were expected not to disclose their own honest emotional reactions to such statements.

One of the most interesting recent contributions to this area of research comes from legal scholars Mitu Gulati and Devon Carbado. In their book Working Identity, they argue that while everyone needs to create and put forth an “appropriate” workplace identity, for members of minority groups—women of all races, racial-minority men, LGBTQ people—this becomes particularly taxing because their working identities must counter common cultural stereotypes. For example, black men may feel compelled to work longer hours as a way to repudiate stereotypes of a poor work ethic among blacks. To make matters more complicated, such strategies can backfire, reinforcing other stereotypes: Working those long hours may lead colleagues to assume that the workers lack the intellectual preparation needed for high-status professional jobs.

Carbado and Gulati also note that minority professionals tread cautiously to avoid upsetting the majority group’s sensibilities. Put simply, they can be visibly black, but don’t want to be perceived as stereotypically black. As Carbado and Gulati write, a black female candidate for a law firm who chemically straightens her hair, is in a nuclear family structure, and resides in a predominantly white neighborhood signals a fealty to (often unspoken) racial norms. She does so in a way that an equally qualified black woman candidate who wears dreadlocks, has a history of pushing for racial change in the legal field, is a single mother, and lives in the inner city does not.

The same is true for professional workers who are members of other racial minority groups. For instance, Latina attorneys may be able to advance further at work if they take pains not to speak with any trace of an accent. These are challenges in addition to the more well-known ones—the difficulties finding mentors of the same race, coping with racial stereotypes, being treated as a representative for one’s entire racial group.

So what does this mean for black workers in professional environments? First, it’s indicative of the degree to which race shapes occupational outcomes. In many circles, people feel more comfortable reducing racial issues to class-based ones, assuming that poverty explains much, if not all, of the differences between minorities and whites.

But for blacks in professional positions, issues of poverty are not the problem. Poverty does not explain biases in hiring, the need for particular types of emotional management, and the careful self-presentation that minority professionals engage in at work.

Second, all of this ought to encourage a rethinking of some of the existing efforts to create more diverse work environments. Do diversity and inclusion initiatives take into consideration how minorities placed in those environments feel? How can policies create not just more equitable hiring processes, but address the emotional toll of being a racial minority in a professional work setting?

In the current political climate, there is generally support for solving race-related employment challenges by focusing on job training and education—in other words, increasing human capital to improve access. Given the research, it’s also important to consider how to create better workplaces for the minority professionals who are already in these jobs.

 

What Not to Get That Degree In

Used to be, a college degree was a reasonably sure fire ticket to employment. Not in today’s America. Here are some numbers which are scary…

Interestingly enough – there are several engineering fields on this list. So much for “rebuilding” America. The majority of these are services oriented.

A Tin Cup, Instead of a job

25 college majors with the highest unemployment rates

The worst nightmare of a college student has got to be graduating without a job. And the college major that a student selects can actually increase his or her chances of getting stuck in an unemployment line.

College majors that are hampered by highunemployment rates include a variety of psychology degrees, fine arts and architecture. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce delved into U.S. Census Bureau statistics to determine the employment rates of 173 college majors; I crossed them against a list of the most popular college majors.

College majors with the highest unemployment

• 1. Clinical psychology 19.5%
• 2. Miscellaneous fine arts 16.2%
• 3. United States history 15.1%
• 4. Library science 15.0%
• 5. (tie) Military technologies; educational psychology 10.9%
• 6. Architecture 10.6%
• 7. Industrial & organizational psychology 10.4%
• 8. Miscellaneous psychology 10.3%
• 9. Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%
• 10. (tie) Visual & performing arts; engineering & industrial management 9.2%
• 11. Engineering & industrial management 9.2%
• 12. Social psychology 8.8%
• 13. International business 8.5%
• 14. Humanities 8.4%
• 15. General social sciences 8.2%
• 16. Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%
• 17. Studio art 8.0%
• 18. Pre-law & legal studies 7.9%
• 19. Materials engineering and materials science and composition & speech (tie) 7.7%
• 20. Liberal arts 7.6%
• 21. (tie) Fine arts and genetics 7.4%
• 22. Film video & photography arts and cosmetology services & culinary arts (tie) 7.3%
• 23. Philosophy & religious studies and neuroscience (tie) 7.2%
• 24. Biochemical sciences 7.1%
• 25. (tie) Journalism and sociology 7.0%

 

It’s Not the Education System That’s Broke

You hear this refrain frequently – that American companies can’t find qualified or educated workers. With the recent exposure that many companies automatically exclude the unemployed as potential employees – it’s becomming incresingly obvious that it is not the education system that is the problem…

It’s the companies themselves.

Some years ago many companies started using automated search engines which sorted resumes looking for keywords. The growth of the Internet has also meant the growth of potential resumes which a company can choose from. Keyword searches are based on the faulty idea that someone who is qualified for a potential position will include those words in the resume. So for instance, a candidate with an ITIL, Six Sigma, or PMI certification would include those terms in the resume. Since real work skills, accomplishments, and experience don’t translate to such simpleminded analysis – the impact of this was to devalue the experience of anyone who could actually do the job, and raise the value of folks who became certification whores.

Leading to the surreal environment where the self proclaimed “father of the Internet” couldn’t get hired for a technical job in the industry he created – or a guy who had actually designed and built bridges over rivers for 25 years…

Is suddenly “unqualified” for a job to design and build bridges, because he hadn’t built a bridge over a creek.

Enabled by the power of the computer, Human Resources folks were able to get very precise in developing requirements for potential hires. This meant developing skills criteria where no one, who wasn’t already doing the job for the hiring company (and usually even the person in the job couldn’t qualify for), could ever fit. Years ago, I took a job with a company which had developed a proprietary technology which was only utilized at that time in 3 other places in the world, including DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – which is a small group of really smart guys working on super secret technology projects), and MIT being two of the three other places. My advantage? I had at least read about it in technical publications. Recognizing that the pool of folks who knew anything about the technology was exceedingly small – the company had an aggressive internal education program to bring employees up to speed.

Today, companies don’t want to invest in training employees – believing that the alphabet soup of outside certification agencies is somehow going to produce qualified employees. It doesn’t, what it produces is a lot of employees with the common toolkits to work – which is a large distance from having the real functional skills.

Being in the tech industry means getting approached by headhunters several times a week, sometimes on resumes that are 10 years or more old. My last name is the same as a company which produces a very sophisticated software system. For years I’d get calls from breathless headhunters looking for programmers familiar with the system. Never occurred to these folks that if I was the guy who had created the system, and CEO of the company bearing my last name…

WTF would I be looking for a junior or mid-level programming job?

 

Racism Will Make You Stupid

In another of those Racism Making People Stupid Moments (the last one was Rush Limbaugh defending the violent criminal gang, LRA), yet another Republican lets his racism against President Obama get in the way of common sense…

Accornero, apparently is upset about “illegel” immigrants. Small problem with “Acornhead’s” logic though – more illegal immigrants have been deported under Obama than during Bush. Indeed, the number has risen each year during the Obama Administration, and by some counts, President Obama has deported more illegal aliens in 3 years than Bush did during the entire 8 years of his stolen Presidency.

The next problem with “Acornhead’s” logic is that “illegal” immigrants aren’t exactly our “enemy”. As in any group of people there are some illegal immigrants who are criminals, or commit criminal acts – but they aren’t here to kill the fatted calf (they are not as stupid as conservatives!)…

They are here to make money, the old fashioned way…

By working for it.

Suddenly, at least in the eyes of the froth-mouth right wing – anybody who wants a job and wants to do honest work for a living is “Public Enemy #1”, “traitors”, a “mob”. When the working folks of this country become the enemy…

I think we know who the real traitors are.

Harry Accornero, New Hampshire GOP Lawmaker, Accuses President Obama Of Treason

A Republican New Hampshire state lawmaker is calling for the formation of a commission to bring charges of treason against President Obama.

Harry Accornero (R-Laconia) sent an email to every New Hampshire state representative stating that President Obama “has crossed the line, and under Article III section 3 of our Constitution is guilty of treason by giving aid and comfort to the enemy and attempting to overthrow our government from within.”

“I am formally asking you to bring a commission of treason against Mr. Barack Husain [sic] Obama,” wrote Accornero in the email, posted by Blue Hampshire and obtained by The Huffington Post. “We have a President who allows our borders to be violated by illegals of any country while we are at war. He allows them work permits, access to our services and when apprehended by law enforcement refuses to have them jailed or deported.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Accornero said he had to act on the injustices he feels the Obama administration is performing.

“I’ve been contemplating this for awhile and just been getting fed up with what’s going on in Washington and what the president is doing to our country,” he said. “I wrote a few letters into the local paper and I sent it to Congressman [Frank] Guinta and it just falls on deaf ears.”…

 

SAT Scores Tank

The Writing/Reading part of the College Test has hot new lows. “Merde” – we are producing more conservatives!

One of the drivers of this is likely the fact that 27% of those taking the SAT don’t speak English as a first language. 10 Years ago that number was 19%.

I’m not a big believer that the College Tests, the SAT and tit’s competitor the ACT indicate anything more a than acculturation to the education model. Change the model, and you change the “important” skills. The issue here is we have a system which encourages kids to go to college, even though we aren’t creating jobs for them when they graduate. Perhaps the “problem” in American Education is finding a way to make it more reactive to market demand?

And perhaps we need on hell of a lot more Scientists and Engineers, and an economy which rewards people with those skills.

SAT Scores Fall as Number of Test-Takers Rises

Average SAT scores fell across the board this past year—down 3 points in critical reading, 2 points in writing, and 1 point in math.

This year, 1.65 million students in the high school graduating class of 2011 took the college-entrance exam, up from 1.6 million for the class of 2010, according to results released today.

The increase in test-takers can lead to a decline in mean scores, the College Board says, because more students of varying academic ability are represented.

Regardless of the drop in mean scores, according to a press release from the New York City-based College Board, the test’s sponsor, “there are more high-performing students among the class of 2011 than ever before.”

Each section of the test is scored from 200 to 800, with a 2400 for all sections combined being perfect. Critical-reading scores in this year’s report compared with last year’s dropped from 500 to 497, math from 515 to 514, and writing from 491 to 489, for an overall score change from 1506 to 1500—all statistically significant. Since 2007, the first year that College Board June cohort data are available, critical reading and math scores have each had a 4-point decline, while math scores have remained stable.

The new total test-taking figures show the gap further narrowing between the SAT and the rival ACT, which unveiled its numbers last month with 1.62 million students in the class of 2011 taking the test, an all-time high for the Iowa City, Iowa-based testing company as well. Last year, the College Board began including all test-takers through June of their senior year and did so again.

 

 

 

Them That’s Got… Jobs

<a href=”Ray Charles – Them That Got.mp3“>

I’ve gotten down to my last pair of shoes
Can’t even win a nickel bet
Because, ah them that’s got are them that gets
And I ain’t got nothin yet

I’m sneakin in and out duckin’ my landlord
All I seem to do is stay in debt
Because, ah them that’s got (yeah) are them that gets
And I tell you all I ain’t got nothin’ yet

That old sayin them that’s got are them that gets
Is somethin I can’t see
If ya gotta have somethin
Before you can get somethin
How do ya get your first is still a mystery to me

I see folk with long cars and fine clothes
That’s why they’re called the smarter set
Because they manage to get
When only them that’s got supposed to get
And I ain’t got nothin yet…

Another one of those things that makes you go….”Huh?” In an Americas with 6.5 million unemployed, and perhaps another 10 million underemployed or “discouraged”… The moron which came up with this one…

Needs to be fired.

Job listings say the unemployed need not apply

Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.

The New York Times’ Catherine Rampell said she found preferences for the already employed or only recently laid off in listings for “hotel concierges, restaurant managers, teachers, I.T. specialists, business analysts, sales directors, account executives, orthopedics device salesmen, auditors and air-conditioning technicians.” Even the massive University of Phoenix stated that preference, but removed the listings when the Times started asking questions.

The concerted shunning of unemployed Americans by prospective employers was a common theme that cropped up in the thousands of responses that poured in when we asked Yahoo! readers to share their experiences of unemployment for our “Down But Not Out” series.

Reader Susan W. said she was being treated “as if it were my fault I was unemployed, regardless of the fact that I had put out hundreds of resumes and applications.”

Legal experts told the Times that explicitly barring unemployed people from applying does not qualify under the statutory definition of discrimination, since unemployment is not a federally protected status like age or race. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently set out to establish whether employers were discriminating against certain protected groups because they are overrepresented in the ranks of the unemployed, such as African-American and older workers. (We covered that meeting here.) New Jersey recently passed a law barring employment ads that seek to rule out applications from those who are unemployed.

Even if the practice of weeding out unemployed applicants doesn’t fit the legal definition of discrimination, it sure feels unfair for the more than 6.3 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months to be told they are automatically disqualified for the few openings that are out there. “I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society,” Kelly Wiedemer, an unemployed information technology specialist, told the Times.

 

Homeless Guy Lands Radio Job After Interview

This guy has got “The Voice”, which takes a lot of years to develop. Having at one point in my life done some minor work as  a DJ and announcer – I can tell you it takes a lot of work to get this right!

A homeless voice has the sound of a fairy tale

The smooth baritone of Ted Williams became an Internet sensation yesterday when a Dispatch.com video compelled millions of viewers to take a closer look (and listen) at a homeless panhandler who sometimes works the Hudson Street ramp off northbound I-71.

Carrying a hand-scrawled cardboard sign touting his “God-given gift of voice,” an otherwise ragged Williams was recorded last month offering up his radiant pipes to an idle commuter for spare change.

That voice delivered.

Eclipsing the initial awe over Williams’ “gift” were the scores of phone calls that followed – media inquiries and potential job offers that could ultimately provide the one-time radio announcer with a second chance.

“My boss said to me: ‘If you don’t get him hired, you’re fired,'” said Kevin McLoughlin, director of post-production films for the National Football League. He contacted The Dispatchlast night in search of Williams.

“I can’t make any guarantees, but I’d love to get him some work.”

The 97-second clip – posted Monday on Dispatch.com and copied yesterday morning to YouTube by an anonymous user – was filmed on a whim by Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth III.

As blog entries, Facebook posts and Twitter exclamations turned viral, so did the calls from news producers at ABC, CBS and CNN, as well as national talk shows.

“We run into these guys at the exit ramps and we pretty much ignore them,” said Chenoweth, who was en route with his wife to the grocery store when he first saw Williams. “This guy was using his talent.”

 

 

 

 

No Longer Just Jose on the Corner Anymore…

Competition at the curbside…

Pinched Workers Seek Out Day Labor

High Joblessness Forces More People From Desk Jobs to Curb-Side Hiring Sites; a Bank Teller Takes Up Housecleaning

The face of day labor appears to be changing, with more women, non-Latinos and former white-collar workers taking up manual labor.

Amid continued high joblessness, employers say they are seeing more workers at curbside hiring sites, or seeking work through less traditional routes such as Craigslist, who before the downturn might have had full-time jobs.

Many lost desk jobs in the hard-hit auto, construction and financial industries. Some see manual labor such as housecleaning or hauling debris, where people are hired and paid per diem, as the only way to survive when jobs in their prior fields have become scarce.

 

Where’s the Money? Author Maps Out Highest Paying Locations

If you want to make serious money in this country as an employee – you’d better head for a Blue State, consider dealing with Northeast Winters, and get an education. The looming Megalopolis of Boston to DC is the place to be, although Seattle and the Bay Area are serious hotspots.

The Geography of High-Paying Jobs

The first map (above) shows the distribution of pay levels across all U.S. metro regions. The highest-paying metro pays more than double the lowest-paying one ($66,780 vs. $30,670). In fact, there are roughly two dozen metros which have half the pay level of the highest-paying region. That highest-paying region is San Jose ($66,780), followed by nearby San Francisco ($61,940). Greater Washington, D.C. is third ($60,090), followed by Greater Boston ($58,330), the Boston suburb of Framingham ($57,660), Bridgeport-Stamford, Connecticut ($57,340), Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of D.C. ($56,900), Greater New York ($56,250), Trenton-Ewing, New Jersey ($55,590), and Oakland, California ($54,590). Lowell, Massachusetts ($54,110), Boulder ($53,640), Seattle ($53,240), Newark-Union, New Jersey ($52,760), Hartford, Connecticut ($51,520), Durham, North Carolina ($50,480), Edison, New Jersey ($50,350), Nassau-Suffolk, New York ($50,190), and Anchorage, Alaska ($49,730) are all among the top-20 highest-paying U.S. metros.

This next map is of higher paying tech jobs, i medical, high-tech, and professional white collar –

The second map (above) shows the geography of pay for creative class jobs – that is, jobs in science, technology, and engineering; business, management, and law; health care and education; and arts, culture, design, media, and entertainment. The highest-paying region in the United States is San Jose (Silicon Valley), where the average creative class wage is $101,575. Greater San Francisco is next with an average wage of $95,472, followed by Greater New York ($90,101), Greater Washington, D.C. ($89,712), Bridgeport-Stamford ($87,747), Greater Boston ($86,681), Bethesda, Maryland ($86,485), Framingham, Massachusetts ($85,344), Napa, California ($84,959), and Oakland, California ($84,069). Four of the top 10 metros are in and around the Bay Area; two of the top 10 are in Greater Washington, D.C., and another two are in Greater Boston.

For those not familiar with the Washington DC area, Bethesda is a choice living area for people working in the region’s bio-tech corridor, which rivals that of the Boston region’s Framingham area. Check out the link above for a comparison of the various types of jobs across the US.

 

Nevada Republican…The Unemployed Are Spoiled And Don’t Want to Work

‘Nuf said…

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