Employers – DNC-Consulting

Employers and Employees – The Battle is Waged: The Fight is Important

Employers throughout the world, including Disney, American Express, Wells Fargo, and thousands more, have begun to battle their employees. Unionized shops, the battle has been waged for 50 years and shows no sign of relenting. Only recently have other employers joined the fray, not to help employees but to rid themselves of employees. These businesses are fighting employees against their employees for the company’s culture and soul. Couched in many a buzzword, political stance, and archaic practices, the employers want to rid their workforces of those they despise, and the battle is legal!

Make no mistake, what the employers are doing is immoral, unethical, and disastrous to those employees unfavored, but the actions remain perfectly legal, and this is the point we must understand. Laws have been changed against the majority for the selectivization and advancement of the minority. The fight is important because you might be next and never know your termination has been affected, but not enforced until it is too late. This article intends to raise awareness, not cover every particle in the fight or catalog every avenue an employer might take to attack an employee. Imperative to know and remember, as long as the actions are against individuals, no laws are being broken, and the employer wins when they can make the situation untenable, and the employee on the out quits or is forced out under a miasma of quasi-legal terms, so it appears that employee was treated fairly.

Never forget, a lawyer’s job is to make the illegal appear legal, and the legal appear illegal, so a judge must decide. Add in judicial activism and legislation from the judicial bench, and the trouble becomes apparent quickly. Unfortunately, the lawyers’ training has shifted, and the legal mind’s quality has slipped under the weight of many of the topics discussed herein. The vicious cycle can only be broken when the collective beliefs of the majority are re-established, not to the demise of the minority but the growth of the entire society.

Culture and Politics

As long as people have banded together into organizations, societies, governments, etc., there has been the push and pull of politics. All of recorded history bears truth to this fact. People have beliefs. They express these beliefs through representatives who rise and fall in different leadership positions, and societies change according to the expressed beliefs through which a society is governed (law). Pick a governing style (Communism, Socialism, Representative, Direct or Indirect Representation, Monarchy, Theocracy, etc.), and you will find the collective beliefs of the people expressed in how long a leader remains in power or the stability of the society so governed. Politics happens and is best described as the push/pull of collective beliefs expressed by populations. Economies rise and fall based upon the collective beliefs, expressed in the stability of the society and the government leader’s length of time as leader.

History has shown when a governing leader is short-lived, it is generally because they refused to follow the collective beliefs of the population, giving rise to the credit ratings of stable governments and societies being higher than for those who are changing leadership every couple of weeks or months. Those leaders who can tread the waters of public opinion maintain their jobs and, many times in history, their heads by following the collective beliefs in the morals of the people. The US Dollar’s stability is one of the strongest reasons this currency is one of the world’s benchmark currencies. Politics did that, and politics are the push/pull collective beliefs expressed by the citizens to their government leaders. The process is messy and needs to be messy for a reason; only in the expression of two divergent points can a healthy middle ground be established, and society can grow.

Culture is not politics, but politics and politically minded people can influence it. If politics is a society’s expressed beliefs, then culture is the expressed moral convictions as lived by a community. For example, many institutions have been built on the law that coveting (envy) is wrong, but the practices of the people living build a culture that accepts graft, bribes, and other incentives that, while violating the law, are accepted. Make sense? The closer the culture is to following both the letter of the law and the living of the law provides for a stable and influential culture to invest resources into.

How does one change the collective beliefs of a society and the living practices of that society; first, you capture the children. Bad ideas do not go away, they are either replaced with good ideas, or the bad ideas go into hiding, awaiting the time they can make a new appearance. Everything modern society is facing has been faced previously, and the difference is that the seeds for the current dilemmas were planted more than 100-years ago, but the bad ideas first captured the children. Why have these bad ideas advanced so rapidly? The education of children in social customs, collectively shared beliefs, and individual duty, has been eroded and attacked mercilessly since “progressive education” (the refusal to teach children to read, write, and perform math) began in the late 1800s with Dewey, who called functional illiteracy “Progress!”

One of the first words plasticized, twisted, ripped apart, and then put together to fuel tyranny through modular language was the term progress. Unfortunately, language has continued to suffer relentless attacks since the late 1800s, and more words have suffered the same fate in the modularization of language. Consider with me the history of Tea. Tea plantations in India were ruled by the iron fist of laws drafted in America and marketed with women in distress to the consuming nations geographically distant to where the crops were grown. The tyranny of slavery is the same tyranny we face with modular language. Nobody realizes this because to mention this connection is frowned upon by those making money off the tyranny of language. The tyranny of modular language fueled the oppression of entire populations to fuel an empire. The language led to actions (afternoon tea) and a host of other practices, words, and social customs to fuel the demand for Tea. Unfortunately, the tyranny of modular language also fueled hot wars in China, more geographically distant suffering from the population consuming Tea.

Language – Plastic Terms

Diversity, what is it; what does it mean in practice versus meaning from a dictionary; what value does it have for a business? Equity, same problem, fewer answers, more confusion. Inclusion, same problem, confusion, chaos, and eventual destruction. These are, but a small sample of current buzzwords strung together and causing problems in businesses. There are entire word classes set apart for plasticization, which sound good to the ear, and that people love to rally behind, but these terms cover a hidden agenda. They have been weaponized to destroy, not lift and build—tyranny through modular language, plastic words.

American Express is a perfect example of how DE&I efforts (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) have been weaponized to pick away, through politics, the non-politically affiliated, those who show up to their employment and merely want to work their job. The University of Phoenix is another company long captured by, and suffering from, DE&I tyrants. Both American Express and the University of Phoenix began their DE&I journeys with the best of intentions. Still, the result remains the same, the minority classes bring politics anathema to good order and discipline into the company, initiating change cloaked in DE&I. The result has been the discouragement and disenfranchisement of employees. The DE&I champions crow and cheer for these people leaving as it injects more DE&I hiring, and the new employees realize that unless they are politically affiliated, read that as aligned to a militant tyrant in DE&I, they too will be out of work very shortly.

Language matters, and when terms are plasticized, the only result is destruction and tyranny. Consider the teachers in the Albuquerque Public Schools System or the employees of the State of New Mexico; both populations stress DE&I initiatives under various names but with the same purpose. Who are the enemies of DE&I; those who do not wear their politics on their sleeves, acting as emotionally charged smart bombs of the media. Even if a person holds some of the DE&I beliefs, if they are not militant in their beliefs, they are ostracized by their language, judged, and removed from employment.

When the patients rule the asylum, the problems for all patients in the asylum double and triple, not improve. The same result occurs when the vocal minorities of a population gain power that is not theirs, and they make no concerted efforts to rule fairly and justly. One of the truths about any revolution is that those who initiated the revolution rarely (if ever) get to enjoy the fruits of their rebellion as they are so focused on fixing what they perceive as injustices, they miss that they have become worse in action than those they deposed.

80-20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule is known by many monikers, but always it is the same rule, in different wrapping – 80% of a population will be controlled by 20%. In standard terms, the minority is setting the culture for the 80% to follow, and they hope you will never realize you are stronger without the vocal minority than with them. Take the recent changes at Disney. There is a vocal minority demanding change, couching the changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the Disney business model is about to self-destruct. The same is true of American Express, where if you are male and white, you are not welcome. But, if you are one of the members of any number of protected classes, you are welcome. When politics interferes in professional pursuits, 80% will always suffer under the tyranny of the 20%. What happens when the vocal minority becomes the majority, they fang themselves to death, and nobody is left to care because that 80% majority has left them to their own devices.

It should go without saying, but I will make plain, I am not against diversity. I do believe that diversity for diversity’s sake is wrong, immoral, unethical, and anathema to good order in a society. Diversity of thought should be preeminent as the diversity of thought transcends skin color and lifestyle choices. Diversity of thinking includes the desire to see all succeed on merit, character, and individual action. I abhor in the strongest terms picking a person solely based on their gender, skin color, religious preferences, disability status, culture, or any variable that supersedes accomplishment, education, and learned skill set. The same is valid for inclusion and equity; when people cannot compete solely upon achievement, education, and intellectual skill sets, this creates an imbalance in the population.

Hence roadblocks to education must be removed, character-defining and building experiences should be shared and taught, and achievement recognized. What is missing from schools from K-12 and up; is accomplishment, education, and learned skill sets. What has replaced these; is DE&I, where the vocal minority is destroying with no thought for what replaces the institutions, societies, corporations, and more. Iconoclasm in its most destructive form has taken over employers, and these companies are committing suicide to pacify, tranquilize, and placate a small population at the expense of all.

Inherently, change is not bad but growing, productive, and useful change requires inputs from a diverse population. Inclusion is not inherently a bad thing, but the current demands for inclusion, only for the sake of inclusion, make the activities of the vocal minority lethal to the entire social body. Equity is a prerequisite for society to grow, develop, and be stable long-term. This is why societies built on slavery, or those muzzling 50% of the population, are inherently ripe for hostile takeovers.

The actions of the vocal minority in employment right now are precarious at best, suicidal at worst, and permanently immoral and unethical. The models they promote have no substance and enable unfair, unjust, and unequal systems. Worse, companies that flout their customer base, which is the largest stakeholder in any business, will find smaller profit margins and higher expenses as employee churn increases.

One truth that should give hope to the employees affected is that when the minority becomes the majority in a body and does not have any substance, they destroy themselves. C-Leaders, are you sure you want to take the company you have been placed in control over down this dangerous path? On my first day at American Express, new hires were introduced to the rich, proud, and stable company history and core values. How sad it is to witness how fast this company has fallen! Who will replace these companies? Will their replacements learn from the failures of the past?

© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

Circling Back: Going the Extra Mile in Customer Service

It is no secret; I am a doctoral candidate. On Facebook, I advertised my dissertation to find participants to engage in my dissertation data collection. My dissertation is all about the role of the trainer in call center training. I am looking to answer some specific questions about what a trainer does, their role in training, and flush out details about the role of the call center trainer in establishing genetic memory. My first ad on Facebook, believe it or not, received more direct respondents than my second or third attempts. That the respondents accused me of being fake, a troll, and committing several bodily functions on their timelines bothered me greatly.

When mentioned to representatives from Facebook, who could see the comments and the original ad, the representatives reflected less care than I would have ever imagined. Yet, Facebook claims to be “customer-centric,” “customer-driven,” and “customer-obsessed.” LinkedIn, AT&T, Sprint/T-Mobile, Bank of America, Navy Federal Credit Union, and many other companies make similar claims and act similarly, where the professed policies are disconnected from reality, and the only person who suffers is oddly the customer. Then, the agents representing these companies are then asked to “go the extra mile for the customer.”

When going the extra mile was first addressed, leadership, training, business processes, and organizational communication all were aspects to the foundation to helping an agent “go the extra mile.” More needs to be discussed on “going the extra mile” and delivering upon the promises made by leadership. However, the discussion is useless unless followed swiftly by concerted action; thus, this article asks for and directly inspires action.

Compounded Leadership Failure

Let’s begin with reality and address the 300# gorilla. To the leaders of companies, customers are listening, and they are not stupid! Whether you believe this or not, your customers do, and they do not like what they see. AT&T, LinkedIn, and Facebook regularly inundate me with the voice of the customer surveys, new products, performance surveys, surveys, surveys, surveys. These are not the only companies demanding answers and resources from customers, but these companies are especially egregious at this practice. Tell me, why does nothing ever change in customer approach, customer service, customer care, and the voice-of-the-customer always appears to fall on deaf ears?

Leadership never collects qualitative and quantitative data and then uses this information to make change, drive visible customer affecting policy shifts, or even act like the customer is worthy of being listened to. How do we, the customers know we are not being heard; the agents do not have the ability to affect change. I called Xfinity/Comcast; I have an issue, I get nowhere with the agents, but I am still expected and offered multiple times the voice-of-the-customer survey to help improve customer relations. I invest my time in completing the survey; I even indicate a return call to discuss the scores is acceptable, only later do I discover that the voice-of-the-customer data is never worked, customers are not called, and the company does not care.

If you are sending a survey out, you need to address the survey results. Publicly with your agents, transparently with your shareholders and investors, and clearly and openly with your customers. By refusing to do these things, the leadership failures in demanding customer resources to complete surveys are wasted, compounded, and the customer is listening! Worse, the customer is sharing this information with other customers and is openly looking for options to replace you and your company! By publicly claiming “customer-obsession,” “customer-centricity,” and “customer-first” propaganda (e.g., marketing promises), you are making a commitment. Failure to honor that commitment delivers a “Used Car Sales” pitch, and lawyers and politicians become more trustworthy than you and your company. Customers are tired of “Lemons” when paying for cherries; is this clear enough?

Who is your first customer?

To every person claiming the first customer is a service or product purchaser, you are WRONG! Your first customer is your employees. Yet, employee abuse remains central to employee churn. Asking your employees to “go the extra mile” for an external customer and not seeing the business first go the extra mile for them is disheartening at best to your employees.

I am intimately familiar with a well-known company, its operations, and its customer commitment. The company does an excellent job in employee relations, which leads to year-over-year success with external customers. But the company has some deep-seated problems they are working on, and because they are honestly working on these issues, I am willing to give them anonymity for their efforts. One of the most fundamental issues this company has is in product delivery; the operations in the warehouse prioritize outbound (customer shipping of products ordered) to the exclusion of quality. The products are more important than the people, which is a growing pain for this company.

By forgetting that the first customer is the employees, this group churns at phenomenal rates compared to other business units. Why? Because of the insanity of being left out of customer service. Company benefits, time-off, vacation policies, “swag,” free merchandise, etc., none of this compensates for irrational operations that fundamentally treat the employee poorly and in a confused manner. If your company is “customer-focused,” then employees are top priority, and in making them top priority, they look after your external customers more efficiently, more expertly, and they will build a fatter bottom-line through “going the extra mile.”

When was the last time your employees were honestly engaged in voice-of-the-customer surveys and results? When was the last time the employees knew they were the top priority in your business? When was the last time operational policies and procedures were adjusted to remove confusion about employee worth and value? Tell me, are your shareholders and investors treated better than your number one investor, your employees? If so, your shareholders should be raking the current leadership over the coals for robbery and theft. Reduced bottom lines because of employee treatment should be a significant issue of discussion by the shareholders and investors, for this is nothing short of robbery. You are compounding another leadership failure through employee abuse, which increases costs and lowers bottom-line performance, e.g., robbing the investor and shareholder because you have refused to provide your first customer simple customer recognition, let alone service.

Going the Extra Mile

Before a supervisor, team leader, director, or other leaders in your business organization asks for an employee to “go the extra mile,” rate that leader on this question, “Have they already walked two miles with the employee?” If not, that person is asking for the impossible. No extra efforts can or ought to be sought when leadership fails to first show and do what it takes to walk two miles with an employee.

Want to know a secret? When the leader first walks two miles with the employee, that leader never has to ask anyone to “go the extra mile,” EVER! Your best leaders, your followers, are the people who, instead of looking forward first, make it a priority to look sideways. These leaders are experts at lifting the talent needed to look forward to a higher level. Looking sideways includes value-added training programs, professional paths to progression, recognizing and praising efforts honestly and frequently, delegating assignments and tasks, and being actively engaged in delivering “customer-centricity” to the employees. As a supervisor, team lead, director, etc., your first customer is those who follow you; what have you done lately to prove customer obsession to them?

By the way, your first customer is listening, awake, and actively engaged in either growing or leaving, all based upon how you treat your first customer. I suggest taking heed of them.

If you want to be part of my dissertation research, please reach out to me using the following email address: msalisbury1@my.gcu.edu. Please help me help you and your company through value-added research.

© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the photos or images used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

NO MORE BS: Have You Heard?

Duty The following is a recap of several stories that should have been big news, but since the corporate media is practicing “Biden Behind Covering” (BBC), I doubt this news was heard anywhere. However, this information is critical, and I have included the links if you want more than my paltry summation of the story. I encourage you to always hit the links included in the articles I publish, so you know where I get my source materials.

Judge for yourself the importance of the following, but I encourage you to judge wisely, for America is in deep trouble!

Inflation Definition: Formula & How to Calculate From the NCSL regarding the future of finance, we find a curious article, “Do State and Local Governments Need to Worry About Inflation?” The simple answer is absolutely, as the continuing pension crisis will be multiplied as inflations grows. How much is inflation up, a year ago inflation was 4.2% less than it is today. But that is a statistic that doesn’t carry the real weight of the problem. If you owed $100 last year, without interest calculations, you now owe $4.20 more. That $10.00 steak is now $10.42, before taxes. That tank of fuel, before all the taxes, is $0.42 more expensive than a year ago, and inflation was already hurting America. The way inflation works is comparable to running on a freshly waxed floor in your socks, you have to exert more effort to maintain your same spot, forget slowing down, or stopping for that will include falling. Let me reintroduce you to a term used in the early 1970s, stagflation. Stagflation occurs when the inflation rate is so out of control, no new jobs are created, employers are looking to cut employees left and right to maintain shareholder profits, and the entire economy grinds to a messy halt.

Inflation may erode PTI's political capital - Newspaper - DAWN.COM Risk managers across the financial system are looking at the government on the Federal, State, and Local levels and are not liking what they see as inflation continues to grow beyond the Federally approved 2% annual allowed rate. As taxes adjust for increased inflation, it will require more money to pay taxes to maintain current levels, as inflation depletes the value of dollars saved. Thus, every government is looking at their “Rainy Day” funds, and are watching it depreciate as inflation increases, and this is happening before a penny is even spent.

Vaccine From SHRM, we find the next astounding piece of news, the “EEOC Gives the Greenlight for Limited Incentives for COVID-19 Vaccinations.” Mandatory vaccinations are illegal in the United States, currently. However, incentivizing vaccinations by an employer has now been made acceptable. Do you see a problem with this EEOC ruling? Did you notice how slippery the slope is between employers incentivizing vaccinations and mandatory vaccinations? During periods of higher inflation, how much value is $500, from an employer to vaccinate? Other employers are allowing employees to sticker their badges showing they vaccinated and can stop wearing a mask in public. No sticker, you have to keep your mask on. Slippery slope? Colleges, K-12 Schools, and other organizations all have a hodgepodge of rules for mingling in a post-COVID government mandated lockdown, as the “New” normal.

Do you see the problems with employers picking winners and losers based upon vaccination status? How long before those who cannot, or will not, be a guinea pig for a useless vaccine, that is shrouded in mystery, and which has zero long-term studies completed, for a viral disease with a 99.02% chance of survival, are shown the door because of risk averse insurance policies? I have some concerns with this decision and remain convinced that the EEOC has been bought and paid for by parties unknown. Their last several decisions have left me seriously concerned. Watch the bureaucrats, they are sneaky! Plato 2

Virginia Allen, writing for The Daily Signal, provides the next piece of news that should be wall-to-wall with parents marching. “California Public School Gives Third Graders Assignment About ‘Place on Gender Spectrum.’ Let that sink in for a moment. 9-year-old students are being asked to choose where they place themselves on the “gender spectrum.” What the heck is a “Gender Spectrum?” At 9-years old, I was more interested in getting better at little league than I was about anything else, except my paper route. A quote from the article sums the problem nicely:

“The school board is completely indoctrinated. Many teachers are completely indoctrinated. … You cannot change their mind. The only thing you can do is vote them off [the school board] and let them know there are consequences to teaching children inappropriate things for their ages.”

When your politicians are no longer afraid of the citizens they afflict, tyranny has begun to reign! California is a perfect example of what happens when the populace checks out, the politicians stop fearing the ballot box, and power concentrates under a single party. Now, ask yourself, is this the America you want for your kids and grandchildren? I know my answer! Apathy

Cal Thomas also writing for The Daily Signal, presents the scariest topic of all, “Ministry of Truth 2.0.” Consider for a moment, you make a comment in a grocery store, an off-hand comment to another person, the next day a person from Homeland Security is knocking on your door to discuss your passing of disinformation, who possesses the legal authority to place you under arrest, no evidence needed, and you are guilty until reluctantly allowed to be innocent. From the article:

“Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is reportedly considering the development of tools that would help America’s children discern truth from lies and know when they are being fed “disinformation.”

Millstone of Designed Incompetence If you have not read, or listened to, George Orwell’s book 1984, you might not recognize “the Ministry of Truth,” which is the propaganda arm of the government who rewrites history to what the government says it is, and not what actually happened. Would someone please explain to me who appointed the Homeland Security Secretary the harbinger and decider of truth and lies? When the media cannot even get the truth right, how will a government, senate appointed, person who serves at the pleasure of the current sitting US President know, recognize, or even understand truth? When the media allow truth to be “subjective to circumstances, environments, and cultures,” how will bureaucrats be able to discern truth?

Tell me, how will the tools be protected from the bias of the tool designers? One of the biggest issues in modern research is researcher bias; yet somehow the secretary of Homeland Security can magically control bias to protect the tools from the opinions, knowledge, experiences, and politics of the designers. Exactly how will this occur? Do you recognize how slippery this slope is, and how dangerous? Why

As a homeowner in a town that is within 50-miles of the southwest border, the continued blind-eye being turned to the southern border infuriates me. Please, follow this link, and then consider what is being said. Do not look at the politics of the situation, do not listen to the political leaders and political commenters. Listen to your heart, your gut, your conscience, and tell me, if the 9-year old girl was your sister, cousin, daughter, what would be your response? From the article we also find the following:

“The cartels are making an ungodly amount of money on a daily basis, somewhere to the tune of $15 to $25 million a day in just the trafficking and smuggling of human beings. That doesn’t include the narcotics. We’re seeing, for example, fentanyl, 5,000% increase in fentanyl coming across the border.”

America Is Crying Digital Art by Deborah Vicino Want to hear the truth about the problem on the southern border, let’s talk about “got-aways.”

“Got-aways” are individuals that are crossing the border illegally that don’t want to get caught. They don’t want to go through processing because they are either a gang member, someone on the terrorist watch list, a convicted sex offender, [or] a violent offender. These are people who know that once they are caught, they will get turned right back around because of their record, because they have a record in the United States.”

From January to June, the Border Patrol, through all their efforts, have lost around 200,000 “got-aways.” These are people seen on cameras, who have eluded apprehension, and are now roaming American streets. A convicted sex offender was given a small baby to help him cross the border. Where the parents of this child are, no one knows. So, even when they get caught, we still have problems getting rid of the vermin mixed into this humanitarian crisis. How many terrorists from non-South and Central American countries have slipped through as “got-aways?”

Knowledge Check! America is being taken for a ride by the Cartels who run the Southern border! This is the truth, and anyone trying to tell you something else is selling snake oil and trying to make a buck off the tragedy that is the US Southern Border. Like all evil and conspiring people through history, the innocent are the shields covering the criminal actions, these children deserve better, but they will never have a future until America becomes a land of laws again, where the Rule of Law is honored.

Can you hear the Statue of Liberty weep at how are laws are being manipulated by the drug cartels, for the glorification of single-party rule and fiscal return on investment?

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

Shifting The Employment Paradigm – Or, Hastening The Trend to Stop Knowledge Loss

Several mainstream academic and corporate researchers are reporting a trend in employment, shifting from an employer-employee relationship with fixed costs to a non-traditional or contractor based workforce, where costs rise and fall as needed to fill business needs. American Express recently announced a huge layoff; other business organizations are also scaling back employee hours or executing mass layoffs. Since the New Year (2013), several business organizations have announced reductions, under Federal Government pressure, making full-time employees become part-time employees with less than 20 hours a week scheduled. Before implementing mass layoffs and the inherent drain of knowledge resulting from those layoffs, business leaders would do well to research shifting from employees to knowledge-based contractors, which has proven profitable and unencumbering to the ebb and flow of transition and to the uninterrupted, well-ordered processes of success as well as solving the unintentional consequences of unresolved patterns of cost escalating loss.

Consider the costs, not simply dollars and cents, but intellectual cost, productivity costs, time lost, and more that is now draining the resources of these organizations. The fixed employee costs are too egregious to be borne, but the need for the work of the employee remains. The fix to the problem continues to lie in disconnecting the employee and connecting that same worker to the organizational brand as an independent contractor.

For example, Company A employs 200 people. Federal Government Regulations declare that the new fixed income costs have risen to $10,000 per employee, totaling $2 million annually. Company B is a direct competitor to Company A and employs the same number of people, but 175 of these employees are contractors with various length contracts for specific work projects, hour of the day specified, and wages. Company B, according to the IRS, employs only 25 employees at the same cost per employee of $10,000 totaling $250,000. The advantages are obvious, realistic examples abound, and the process is slowly advancing. It is past time to hasten this work.

Consider the loss of intellectual power during a mass layoff. This is a potential (Blue) cost and the impact is measured in final (Green) cost outlays. John Q. Worker, has been with Company A for three years and has moved from production labor to supervisor, mainly by his competency in keeping production running smoothly. John and his senior team members have been groomed as subject matter experts and are recognized for their professionalism and work knowledge. John’s team is laid off along with several lower ranking members of other teams. The knowledge drain in production creates a debt into which training, time, and other company resources must be poured to recover the loss of knowledge when John and his team were laid off. In a down economy, how does Company A recoup the loss of knowledge? What happens if John and his senior team members, who all work well together, approach Company B and offer their knowledge for sale?

This single cost reflects a vast amount of organizational resources that will require double the cost outlay to replace. How is the investment doubled? John was just one person; however, the doubling of the investment comes from the immediate lack of knowledge coupled with the need to train a replacement on the job. Layoffs only work in boosting short-term profit margins but remain a permanent lose-lose situation for the business organizations due to the intellectual drain, the doubling of costs to replace and restructure, and the need for business to continue. Needs of business do not go away when employees are laid off. Yet, how many of these now doubled costs would be an issue if John was changed simply from an employee to an intellectual worker, in fact, all those who were laid off. John and his team would remain in their current roles performing their skills and talents with freedom and independence, and the company would gain a powerful resource for improving production as well as taking a straight loss and turning it into a permanent gain.

This is the power of the independent contractor model. Layoffs are straight loss scenarios: employers lose, employees lose, communities lose, states lose, and ultimately the entire society loses. Jobs lost in New York make for tougher times in California. Collins (2001) wrote, in his book ‘Good to Great,’ about this cycle of layoffs and the destruction caused. If American Business cannot or will not choose a different model to embrace, other than employee/employer, the American Experiment is doomed to fail; doomed because the same problems inherent in ‘Right to Control’ are the root causes to runaway government power grabs, compensatory spending problems, and theft of public resources for personal gain.

Other thoughts from Collins (2001) include the following gems for consideration, regardless of your level of leadership.

“Mergers and acquisitions play virtually no role in igniting transformation…” This means that changing organizations through merger or acquisition does not correct the core problems in an organization.

“Technology … has virtually nothing to do with igniting transformation…” Adopting new technology does not change core problems.

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness … is largely a matter of CONSCIOUS CHOICE.” [Emphasis mine]

The final quote from Collins (2001) is the perfect thought: choose greatness, free the employee to become an independent contractor. This brings about the final conclusion discovered by Collins (2001): “… Good to great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment…” Collins (2001) declares this is possible because the workers were empowered with the dual culture of entrepreneurship and discipline. Other authors and business researchers are drawing the same conclusions. When the employee is empowered, truly empowered, the organizational leaders are free to drive the company because the people problem is solved and the freedom to use their skills and talents as a contractor perfects the processes and procedures.

Shift the paradigm, free the employee, and watch the business become great.

How does Company B from our example manage all the contracts? The HR team contracts two-contract lawyers for contract design. One full-time IT person engineers the contract website where the prospective contractor creates a contract using options personally motivating to the contractor. Upon legal endorsement of the validity of the newly created contract, the head of the HR Team, working in concert with the head of the department, makes operational changes to meet essential requirements, which are presented to the potential new contractor for negotiation and agreement. Upon reaching an initial agreement, the document goes back to HR Legal Team for final review and approval. Once completed, the new contractor signs with the department head and work begins.

References

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. (1st ed.). New York, New York: HarperCollins.

LIC and the Labor Unions – Or Ideological Passion Drives Violence

Low Intensity Conflict or LIC is a misnomer; those who have become a victim of the barbarous cruelty of those practicing LIC find nothing “Low” about the experience. The conflict is intense, the actions brutal, and the practitioners remain cunning adversaries using and employing willing dupes to hide the true depths of moral decay inherent in their societal destructions and depravations. Many confuse LIC in trying to describe the actions of unbridled violence committed by ideologues under the banner of terrorism. The US Military Joint Chiefs of Staff define LIC as:

“A limited political-military struggle to achieve political, social, economic, or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psychological pressures through terrorism and insurgency. Low-intensity conflict is generally confined to a geographic area and is often characterized by constraints on the weaponry, tactics, and levels of violence (Tinder 1990).”

Some will proclaim loudly, mostly due to affiliation with or money from labor unions, that LIC is only limited to those more commonly perceived as terrorists, i.e., car bombers, hijackers, and rioters, and that labor unions are not terrorists, but are organizations with the sole purpose of “Protecting the Workers.” This article will prove the lie behind this fallacy and the charade will fall. I contend, if labor unions were truly for the worker, their names would be changed to ‘Human Resources,’ dues would never be mandatory, and the personal and political power of independent organizations would come to replace the useless and power hungry monstrosity referred to as labor unions. LIC 2

As the definition demonstrates, LIC requires a “… Political-military struggle to achieve political, social, [and] or psychological objectives, ” along a “limited” front or axis. Labor unions have always used the “Plight of the Worker” as their political and military casus belli. As the basis for their actions, this excuse, the “Plight of the Worker,” also provides a limited but effective axis to justify their foul and loathsome acts of violence and degradation. Throughout the history of the world, in every age, every society, in every single polity on the earth, children, women, men, all engaged in working conditions that were horrific, found themselves being exploited by power-hungry people, and/or were brutalized into serving others through war or other oppression. These historical facts and political bents formed the modern labor pools the Industrial Revolution utilized to initiate the manufacturing of commodities. By forming a collective, using violence to create news and through forced subscriptions, labor unions were born. Upon forming an organized labor society, union members did three things: one, they changed working conditions in every organization employing people; two, they created the largest ‘Ponzi Scheme’ in history; three, they transformed politics into a beast which they can control by making a little news. This took time, essentially from the late 1800’s to mid 1930’s. The actions taken employed communistic literature, sympathetic rich people, and power mad activists to make a bad thing look good and appeal to the greater populace as respectable. Taken one at a time, the following evidence is clear that the political-military struggle is all about power and not about employee health, wealth, or societal improvement. Taken together, these three items showcase a dastardly design with the intended purpose of transforming a capitalistic society into a communistic community.

Changed Working Conditions

OSHA, MSHA, NLRB, Child Labor Laws, Education Mandates, and many other federal and state labor regulation boards were created through the insistence and political powers of labor unions. This includes the most egregious law of them all, the Federal Minimum Wage Law. By forcing the Federal Government to override state law, labor unions formed the first federal government overreach into the freedom power grab we face today. Every single labor law, for good or ill, has been drafted, pushed, and violently fought through the actions of labor unions. The very arguments swirling around the current president regarding class warfare, the individual mandate, and the freedom power grab have their beginnings in the labor union. As stated, LIC must employ a three-pronged attack to justify the actions of those making violence, the fingers of the attack being political, social, and psychological. For example, the injury of children working on looms was horrific and reprehensible and all societies now have child labor laws. To pass child labor laws during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, labor unions exploited children, who had been seriously injured, and those, who were young with mutilated bodies permanently deformed, by submitting their photos and stories to newspapers to begin the psychological war justifying the violence they created, such as destruction of private property, beating shop and business owners, and breaking laws with their organized crime efforts. Enraged people then began the political and social war to change the laws. But what laws did we get but forced federal governmental education of all children, and more power went from individuals and states into the federal coffers all in the name of “Protecting the Children.” Parents were pushed aside, the needs of families thwarted, and child labor laws were deemed good for society as a whole. The ‘Ripple Effect’ or the ‘Laws of Unintended Consequences’ meant that labor unions gained significant power, authority, and from these early gains, launched massive labor union growth, but not development.

Ponzi Scheme

Bernie Madoff has been given the title of running the largest ‘Ponzi Scheme’ in the world. Yet, he is inconsequential compared with labor union organizations. The Federal Security Exchange Commission FAQ’s on ‘Ponzi Schemes’ outline perfectly the points of this argument providing a wonderful base for the argument and can be found by clicking the link above.

Labor unions are organized as a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ with “Little or no legitimate earnings.” Labor unions must finance themselves. Labor unions do not produce a good or service for sale; so all monies generated originate from forced dues paid by members. These members are people struggling to earn sufficient money through their employment. Even when not working, many union members still have some dues mandated by the unions, which must be paid for membership to continue. From the SEC definition alluded above we find this tidbit, “In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.”

Consider the incredible bill of goods sold to new union members about retirement benefits upon reaching the age of retirement. Because the benefits of retirement are convincing, thousands of union members gladly pitch money into retirement; few of these union members will actually have a usable retirement fund. The disparity rests in several factors, namely, fraud and theft of the pension, mandates and restrictions, and union leadership. The number of pension managers getting caught raiding the pension accounts has grown and continues to grow leaving the pension bereft of funds and the retirees bereft of benefits paid for.

Union leadership receives big money as compensation for managing their unions. For example, Andy Stern as head of the SEIU (2006) was earning $249,000 plus a lot of lucrative benefits while the majority of his union membership earned less than $30,000 a year. Yet, every dollar Andy Stern “earned” came from the forced dues of his members. Ponzi Scheme, the top and early investors get benefits and everybody else gets to pay for them. The worst part of this entire scheme is that the Federal Government turns a blind eye to the scheme because of all the forced dues being pushed into political election campaigns. If you doubt this, consider this tidbit: SEIU, just SEIU, donated over $28 million to Obama’s election campaign in 2012. This is not to single out any particular union, but considering all union donations, comparing leadership wages versus union worker wages and benefit packages is irreconcilable and practically impossible.

Transformed Politics

A major shift in politics took place in 1907; labor unions began making large inroads into the political arena. While labor unions had been around in an on again/off again pattern since the early 1870’s, the American Federation of Labor under the capable leadership of Samuel Gompers began the most recognizable labor union model still in use today. Coordinating strikes, creating coalitions, and banding under a single banner, many of the smaller less organized labor unions achieved political power. While Samuel Gompers’s death and the ‘Roaring 1920’s helped reduce the power of organized labor, the Wagner Act brought organized labor into the federal government’s embrace in the middle of the ‘Great Depression;’ the labor union was reborn as a political powerhouse.

The Wagner Act is also called the National Labor Relations Act or NLRA. This single piece of federal overreach came through the militant actions of the railroad union’s demand for, through force, violence, and political subjugation, many good and many bad items. For example, the NLRA set forth what has become the standard 8-hour workday that some call “good,” and demanded an employer cannot interfere with the workers forming a union that many call “bad.” By their unlawful actions, the NLRA stomped on states’ rights, removed individual rights, and set the stage for the current fiasco in Washington State where labor unions are forcing Boeing to transform their plant located in South Carolina, a ‘Right to Work’ state, into a forced union membership plant, transforming politics incredibly, innumerably, and ignominiously.

LIC The next part of the LIC requirement to prove the case of labor unions being terrorists comes directly from the definition of LIC. “… Often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psychological pressures through terrorism and insurgency.” Any Google search on the terms ‘labor unions and violence’ will pull down millions of hits on the correlation between labor unions and their violent beginnings, violent actions, and current levels of violence towards non-union members, non-union political leaders, non-union lawyers, and other members of society who speak against union membership and the compulsory dues. Political leaders, judges, and high-ranking members of society all turn a blind eye to the violence committed by unions. This violence is always organized, sanctioned by the highest leaders in the union organization, and applauded by these same leaders.

A marvelous example is the ABC World News Article by Alan Farnham entitled, “How Nasty Can Union Violence Get and Still be Legal.” Another case in point is the illegal imprisonment or borderline kidnapping of security guards by the Longshoreman Union and violent activities during a recent strike in Longview, Washington. Since the SCOTUS ruling in 1973, many courts have turned the proverbial ‘blind-eye’ to violence performed by unions during strikes and also performed during protests not connected to strikes. Like a spoiled child screaming in a grocery store when told ‘No,’ unions move quickly down the chain from diplomatic actions to violent revenge, when told ‘No’ again. Terrorist activity and labor unions are inseparably connected.

Finally, we come to the most chilling part of the LIC definition and the terrorist connection to labor unions. “… Low-intensity conflict is generally confined to a geographic area and is often characterized by constraints on the weaponry, tactics, and levels of violence.” National borders formerly confined labor unions, but with the movement of labor unions being documented in the recent Egyptian struggle to replace Mubarak in power, we see geographic areas being violated. The AFL-CIO is documented as having its hand in the recent spate of civil disobedience and unrest in the Middle East; this violence has left thousands dead, millions injured, and is employing levels of violence rarely seen outside of civil war. Weapons, tactics, and levels of violence by the protestors and the government continue to escalate. A mobster in Chicago from the movie “The Untouchables” is credited with this saying, “If they pull a knife, we pull a gun. They send one of our guys to the hospital; we send one of their guys to the morgue. THAT’S the Chicago way!” This is also the labor union way of dealing with any and all obstacles to their agenda: violence, more violence, and even more bloody violence.

It is important to always remember, labor unions are organized and sanctioned terrorists. There is no difference between an ideologically driven person who straps on a semtex vest and explodes himself in a shopping area or airport and a labor union member. No significant differences exist between these two ideologically driven individuals. None! Consider the recent violence in Michigan over the state moving from forced unionism to ‘Right to Work.’ The union’s disgruntlement turned violent, people lost resources, people were injured, private property damaged and destroyed, politicians threatened, “blood will be spilled,” and ideologically driven people become violent on demand.

Additional Links:

This article was compiled and presented on Michelle Malkin’s Blog, it has video’s and additional links to other sources: http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/05/happy-labor-day-top-10-union-thug-moments-of-the-year/

If the truth about LIC and Unions is not made clear above, this link has been certified and shows the case more clearly: http://www.unionfacts.com/crime-corruption/union-leader-fraud additionally links from this article span into election year activities and individual cases of fraud and corruption.

Finally, this article continues to deal with union violence and asks some good questions: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/08/22/why_do_we_accept_union_violence__99205.html

Reference

Tinder, A. J. L. (. (1990). Low intensity conflict. Informally published manuscript, Air War College – Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Retrieved from http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA241060

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