“Since then it’s been decreed that the sun is highest at one o’clock.”
“Who decreed that?”
“The Soviet government.” –One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
When an absurdly pompous government creates tragic circumstances for its citizens, one healthy response is to make jokes about it. Solzhenitsyn has Buynovsky doing just that, implying that the Soviet government believed itself so powerful that it could change the very laws of nature.
We’re going to need to joke a lot here in America as well. As many of you have commented on our past coverage, “The American Worker is going to be the one to bear the brunt of this overhaul”.
But if there’s one thing that I truly admire about Americans in comparison to the people I knew in the Soviet Union, it’s that we don’t just joke. We fight. We fight for freedom. We fight for workers. And we don’t take crap from out of control government bullies.
And the right thing for the staffing industry to do today is not hang up our hat and say that the government made it too hard for us to do business. It’s morally wrong to let go of workers, and we should do whatever it takes to not let that happen. Even if that means violating the spirit and yes the letter of the tidal wave of laws that threaten to consume us.
Example? Under the new health care act, companies will be required to provide health care to full-time employees by 2014. As many of you in staffing know, that will make it uneconomical to employ the vast majority lower end workers on a full time basis. Solution? It starts with creative measures like limiting workers in your employ to less than 30 hours and partnering with competitors to keep those same employees in a different job to make up the hours.
I know a lot of the Huffington Post types will read this and say hey Gregg that isn’t ethical, that all I really care about is staffing industry profits.
Let me tell you something about ethics. You don’t give a hungry man a stone and tell him how beautiful houses are made of it. You don’t give the freezing widow ice and tell her how great it is in hot weather. You don’t fire the temp worker and tell him how righteous it is to obey employment laws.
In America the staffing industry will not give up. We will not lament as Solzhenitsyn did that “Writing letters now is like throwing stones into a bottomless pool. They sink without a trace.” We will fight for what is right.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Gregg,
Love the sentiment! And you could not be more right. This incredible industry will certainly find ways to not just survive but thrive amid all the regulation. I don’t know if it will be by ignoring the law, but the staffing industry will continue to be a provider of jobs for millions of Americans who want the flexibility and opportunity temporary work offers. And with the 12-month look back looking like a reality, I’m hoping we see a boom in the staffing industry.
David
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thanks David…btw hearing great things about your recruitment website designs.
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This is not the forum for a political argument. This article reads like a blurb from FOX news. There are positive and negative impacts on the staffing industry, its companies and employees by “Obamacare” AND lack thereof. Instead of complaining and blaming the government, how about being innovative and working towards a solution? Articles like this make me want to unsubscribe from this newsletter and focus on those with educational content.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Erik:
I certainly agree with you. The only way to react to this new legislation is to figure out how to benefit from it and grow overall staffing penetration into the workplace. Many European markets have both mandatory health care provisions and greater staffing penetration than the USA.
While the ultimate effect will not be known for sometime, if approached creatively, there are opportunities for a blended PEO/Staffing/HR Services company to really take advantage of a massive triggering event for many employers in the market. The staffing industry needs to position itself as the “good employer”- as an easy way for companies to comply. Good things will then come to industry interms of growth. It really is a potential margin raiser.
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Jeff/Erik … some staffing companies will do well under the law for the reasons Jeff mentions. The people that are going to get the shaft the worse, it’s workers whose jobs are already only marginally viable. There is a moral imperative to minimize that.
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Greg- you got that fire in the belly. Give us a few of the talking points that we can use to spread the gospel of the benefits of considering a staffing agency now or in the future for a company that has never considered it before. Under the new health care act, companies will be required to provide health care to full-time employees by 2014. How should this shake them up? and our solution is?
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hi Mac
For me the most important benefit i get from using good recruiters is that have that hunter mentality that gets me the people i need.
Internal recruiters just can’t get the job done because they just aren’t out there where the tire meets the pavement enough and they don’t enjoy the same motivations.
A good staffing agency will save you a ton of money by helping you avoid the wrong hire and cutting out all the overhead.
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I am in total agreement with Erik. A discussion among staffing professionals is not – as Erik puts it – the “forum for a political argument.” Obamacare is now the law and the business community needs to work with new legislation.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Greg – Keep it up. I don’t know why this isn’t the forum for a political argument. You are correct in everything you say0. The law passed to help those less fortunate will end up hurting them. When all employers must pay for health insurance for everyone there will be fewer jobs for everyone.
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You really need to read the law you blab like an upset child but offer no alternative. And since when did compassion become such a bad thing most temp workers need health care just like everybody else since when are they less of a human just because they are temporary ??
If you just complain and offer no solution then you are the problem and one of the reasons that laws like this are out in to place
Just like affirmative action there was a systematic problem and there needed to be a solution if you have on way of improving the conversation then stay out of it .
Hot debate. What do you think?
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As the author of your underlined “American worker is going to bear the brunt of this overhaul.” I feel I should weigh in on this. I spent 4 hours yesterday reading congressional testimony regarding how this law is going to change my business model. It is still very much up in the air whether this brings this industry more business or less. It does bring business more regulation and administrative expense that will result in higher fees charged and higher prices passed onto consumers. In a global market this makes America less competitive as a whole and initial reports state that it will cost up to 800k jobs. I know we need an overhaul, but putting it on the backs of businesses only leads to higher fees and higher prices for goods and services. This is a simple understanding of bringing goods to market and can be seen with a correlation to the gas industry. Gas prices go up and so does the price of doing business. Taxes (and this is a tax) go up and it costs more to do business, thus raising prices. This should be a state issue and not a federal one. I ask anyone that is for the Affordable Care Act as it presently stands to show me one entity of the federal government that is run that is not in trouble at this current time? Medicare? Social Security? Postal Service? Why in the world would we want the goverment to be in charge of anything that is service related? Especially our health?
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While I understand most people think/know it is not “politically correct” to discuss politics (or religion) in a work/professional setting…it does make me wonder how else we would get folks in this industry take notice of the likely outcome of this to our business. Should we have this discussion elsewhere…a newsletter for teachers? retail workers?bank employees? No one else but the staffing professionals would care about the effect this will have on us as a business. It is exactly the right place to post your thoughts on it both pro and con.
It reminds me of the impact of the initial requirements the goverment wanted for the I-9 form. The law was written in such a way that it would of created such chaos for the direct hire recruiter and it needed to be fought…to get the word out back in the late 80′s was a lot more difficult than it is these days…I remember dialing for weeks on end!!
So I say “Rock on Gregg!!” because the other nice thing new technology brings us is a delete button
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Whether we agree with the sentiment of this article or not, the euphemistically named “Affordable Health Care Act” has a very clear impact on the staffing industry. I’ve read the impact of the law from several different sources and by and large the negative ramifications far outweigh the positive ones. As far as those arguing for more compassion; it is not the duty of the state to decide what is compassionate and enforce it, that is a choice best left to the individual. Like the minimum wage laws, the affordable healthcare act will only push low skilled workers out of the labor market when employers are faced with the choice to hire or layoff due to increased costs and that is far from compassionate.
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Exact Joshua. Your minimum wage analogy is right on as well.
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This is a very interesting discussion that, while focusing on the impact of AHCA on staffing firms, is really pointing toward the more fundamental question of how staffing firms will behave and perform in the future–a future replete with many shifts and disruptions/innovations in work and workforce intermediation. AHCA is just one component of a dynamic set of changes the industry will be adapting to. I really liked Erik’s comments, including: “The staffing industry needs to position itself as the “good employer”- as an easy way for companies to comply.” For me, lots of food for thought (including given that I’ll be heading to the SIA Healthcare Staffing Summit next week–a segment of staffing firms for which AHCA presents new challenges but also new opportunities).
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Andrew…i think you know i value your contributions over here at Staffing Talk and yes you and Erik make a good point about positioning, but …
Erik writes that “There are positive and negative impacts on the staffing industry”. This reminds me of what i was taught to say about the Soviet Union: “Every system has its good points and its bad points.” Just what planet is he on. Staffing business owners, nearly 100% of them, know that the impact will be a disaster for lower end workers.
Also, is it really so bad that we have one little voice, one tiny little voice in one not so tiny industry, offering a voice different from that of MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, NYTimes etc etc etc, all of which have long since abandoned their mission to strengthen democratic processes and have turned their news pages into editorial columns?
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I seldom leave a response, however i did some searching and wound
And, if you are writing at additional places, I’d like to
up here How Staffing Companies Can Save the American Worker
from Obamacare. And I do have 2 questions for
you if it’s allright. Could it be simply me or does it look like some of these responses appear like written by brain dead people?
keep up with anything new you have to post. Could you list
of the complete urls of all your social pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?
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