For every solution, we have the Federal Government.
From the WaPoo, we have this lovely sign of the apocalypse:
Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Now the story points out that the letter does not have the force of law, and is meant to be taken as a “suggestion”. However, anyone who has ever had to deal with a regulatory agency knows that today’s suggestion is tomorrow’s mandate. And since this idiotic suggestion opens up a whole new avenue of enforcement opportunities (i.e. new budgetary considerations), I fear we can expect this coming soon to an employment application near you.
Also from the article:
The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.
Now, on one hand, I’m trying to think of what job you could perform without reading skills or math skills. I mean, even the person running the fryer at Mickey D’s has to know how long to set the timer for, right? And a basic knowledge of chemistry made slow days as a stock clerk infinitely more interesting. (Bombs, anyone? You couldn’t bowl with frozen turkeys and two liter bottles of soda all the time.)
But then, on the other hand, I think of the misspellings we see on fast food signs, or the time when we had that “special” person making our customer service experience a memorable one, courtesy of a public education system that will, when pressed, admit that it doesn’t even do as well as it used to (when our grandparents had to learn LATIN and actually read the hardcore literature prior to a successful matriculation, and now we’re lucky when the kids get out knowing where their own state is located on a map). I know, I know. These dedicated experts will always tell us that the answer is to pay teachers more, but I find myself less and less convinced by that reasoning. (And before my friends who are teachers decide to jump down my throat, yes, I understand that there have been other developments changing how you do your jobs, and expecting much more from you than should be expected, but in an age where so much knowledge is literally at our fingertips, how can you be in any way complacent with the almost constant dumbing down of your charges?)
It may be endy, but it certainly isn’t funny. When government is the only employer, then it will be appropriate for the government to dictate what the minimum requirements for employment will be.
Taxes, Stupidity, and Death 
To be fair, the cited WT article does say a violation is possible only if the person didn’t graduate because of a disability, not merely because they didn’t graduate.
However, you are as right on as one can be when you say today’s suggestion is tomorrow’s mandate. Especially in this political climate that creating a new class of victim. The social and economic victim. Since the lower-economic class is seen to be preyed upon by the upper-economic class, when the “victim” seeks employment from the “perpetrator”, it will be considered an “economic assaul”. Mark my words. we will see the term economic assault within a year.
Bardus in dui!
The answer seems pretty simple to me. The intellectual qualifications for a job should be determined by the employer.with blatantly unfair practices subject to legal remedy.
If an employer can demand a Masters degree for certain jobs, they sure as hell can demand a high school diploma.
I don’t care if it is digging diches or being the barista at the local latte stand. Any employer has the right to expect a minimum amout of intellectual competency for any job.
If you require them to write specific intellectual requirements for certain jobs, then you can’t ever expect the employee to do someone else’s job in a pinch, and once again, the government saddles someone else with an unfunded mandate increasing the cost of doing business.
Its the kind of thing that makes me want to buy a wood chipper and pay a visit to the jackholes who dream up this nonsense.
Odd, BiW, I thought I was actually agreeing with you but now your latest comment has me gobsmacked. When I worked in corporate, each job had a set of prerequisites that one had to fulfill in order to do the job. It was the only orderly way (if we ignore cronyism) to guide employees from one job level to another.
Are you saying the qualifications for a job should not be documented by the employer? I’m VERY confused by your latest comment.
Rutherford, not every job should be defined by a set of qualifications.
You should be able to have a stock clerk in a supermarket move from the bottle room to receiving to getting carts from the parking lot without having them be able to say “It isn’t in my job description.”
I’m beginning to feel like Mitt Romney talking to Obama. — “You’ve never worked in the private sector, have you?” 🙂
The situation you describe is covered thusly:
“Responsibilities include stocking shelves, sweeping floors, collecting shopping carts and other duties as may be determined.”
Since stocking shelves requires the ability to read then a high school diploma is a legit applicant requirement. (That of course may still be debatable since most high school dropouts have adequate reading skills.)
Rutherford, you’ve never worked with unions have you?
They want every duty spelled out explicitly, and the current labor authorities in government are very sympathetic to unions.
Not to mention that fact that there is often no detailed job description for such jobs. I know. I worked all through high school and into college at the local non-union supermarket.
My duties were NEVER put into writing. I started by doing whatever the stock clerk on duty with the highest seniority told me until I WAS that guy.
Valid point about unions. I was lucky enough never to have dealt with them but I have heard it can be so ridiculous to the tune of the guy that brings you your light bulb can’t be the guy who screws it in.
Thanks for the clarification.
BIC
Off topic but I wanted to leave this here.
Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson are obviously wicked men, with no redeeming value. Inhuman.
I have to be careful, because I find myself of the opinion if we had another unnatural disaster and it happened in certain precincts, I am almost sure I will feel very differently than I did 9/11 after the last ten years, and there is something twisted about that.
Even the presence of these vile Pfesser and Huck types make me go cold and get mean. Rutherford I find completely unedifying anymore. He’s not much better. No doubt, it would be healthier to find another hobby. Like a dope fiend to the meth, I find myself coming back for the fight because I can.
Just as I was numb to Al-Qaeda deaths, feeling justice had done, I shed no tears, felt no pain when George Tiller bought a blast to the face. I only condemned the act because it provided ammunition to the abortion on demand proponents who relish in butchering babies. That act alone may have caused more long death and that is why the act must be condemned, but certainly not because some mass murderer was dead. There is always a contemptible butcher willing to take their place for the right price, and sure enough, some predator stepped up. Last I heard, she had been stopped by legality.
But as to Tiller, good riddance – the world is for the better since he lays cold.
I mention Tiller, because Alan Colmes and Eugene Robinson are cut from the same cutter. If either just happened to drop dead on TV, I would say the same.
Good riddance and spit.
Off topic indeed. I knew BiW was an attorney. I didn’t know he was also collecting fees as therapist.
January is not yet a week old and your rage is off the charts. Take a break dude. See if your cable system carries MeTV. It has all the old shows we watched growing up as well as some classic commercials. It’ll calm your nerves and bring you some peace.
Seriously, dude.
Actually, I unwound tonight with some epidodes of Torchwood. I do loves me some Gwen Cooper. Shapely, with that great Welsh accent, and terrific shot.
It was like Christmas for a kid.
Yeah, take it easy Tex. Save your outrage for Palin who still hasn’t atoned for her hand in Giffords’ shooting. Right R?
These are your peeps.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/01/05/partisan-politics-santorum-stillborn-baby/
Rutherford, that wasn’t for the therapeutical purpose. I don’t go seeking friendship or therapy in a room of total strangers. I’m neither that lonely, needy, strange, or clingy. Truthfully, I participate in these barroom brawls out of sheer boredom while my wife finishes her career in another town. I don’t need to watch anymore videos and TV than I already do, and I should be actively pursuing recapturing my life. Slothful enough as it is. I thought you realized that?
My purpose was to explain honestly to a man who had responded to me on your blog about sensitive and controversial subject matter, as a matter of record that I didn’t want recorded on your blog. That wasn’t for you, but BIC.
The unvarnished truth about how fed up I am about those who feel free to make sport of the heartbreak of others about small disabled children, or in this particular case – dead children.
Now, if you think that is seeking therapy, so be it. I looked at it as sharing an honest opinion with man of like mine about social subjects. I probably should have just emailed it.
But since your gallivanting around the blogs, I will say this to you and yours:
It’s nauseating to even be remotely associated with that kind of evil that makes sport of life’s cruelest heartbreaks. I can’t really explain or put in words how you and your ilk disgust me anymore – is has moved from pity, to anger, to contempt.
Now you know.
Tex, after I read BiW’s piece at The Hostages, I told him back at my place, decent people, liberal and conservative, find heartbreak in what the Santorum family went through. Colmes and Robinson, at least in this case, are the exceptions, not the rule.
🙄 like mind.
regards jobs etc. we cannot allow ourselves to fall even further behind other nations in the blue collar sector and the regulations and inflexibility that is running the show is only going to assure we head to the back of the line.
It is kind of a long piece but I’d recommend it to all. I would especially ask Rutherford to scan it and place the words GOP,Romney and some of the next generation of potential non (D) POTUS names where it says Obama.
The power stretch is one with some dangerous snapback.
Whence recommending an article it is rumoured that leaving a link is helpful…
City Journal
Free hits BiW hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.
Tigre, first, they’re not my peeps. Second the article actually overstated what Santorum did. If I’m not mistaken, he brought the baby home the morning of the funeral, not the night before. This is what I heard him say in a public statement. (He was with the baby at the hospital throughout the night before.)
There’s only one valid Palin-Santorum comparison and I plan to write a brief post about it later … and it’s not what you’d expect.
Got to get in another Palin dig, hey roughneck?
Maybe you can explain to us how Trig got his name from his disability again. That was the first indicator to me, you’re a coward and sick puppy.
I guess you missed the “not what you’d expect” part of my comment.
If it ain’t a confession that the left has no boundaries when it comes to personal attacks, it’s what I’d expect.