People or Profits at the Pharmacy

Please join me over on my Examiner.com site for this week's "Underpants" - indeed, the big girl underpants are ON - and as for the for-profit be retail chain pharmacies...Game On!http://www.examiner.com/article/pharmacist-charge-of-profits?cid=db_articles

HR Underpants Special Comment #8

And the continuing Saga - HR Underpants Part VIII :-)  What evil lurks in the hearts of Corporate HR?  Only the Shadow knows :-)

Please check outjaundicejames.com  for the Question of the Day:  

Answer #8

You hit it the nail on the head. These “changes” don’t happen in a vacuum - or more precisely for our subject today - Monkey See, Monkey Do.  (Or, if you’re KO, It’s “Minkey See, Minkey Do)  There are associations in every sector that chat about such things.  I think we have a “mutual friend” in ALEC, who I suspect also incites these “employees be damned” policies.

The Society for Human Resource Management releases newsletters.  I have written more than one missive to them and am no longer a member of “SHRM” because of some of their “positions.” They were absolutely off the chain freaked out about “card check” and the hand-wringing over “Obamacare” is laughable.  Local HR professional societies get together - with or without the “Chamber of Horrors and Commerce.”  

Further, HR consulting firms are a dime a dozen, some specializing in “streamlining”.  I think these hatchet men and women in “business casual clothing” should re-brand their organizations, hire Mike Huckabee as a spokes model, and call it what it is - “Scream-lining?!  The “best practices” can be bastardized by anyone with an “agenda.”

Sadly, many of these policies are developed without proper thought and testing – never mind using any data other than the financial data.  These cobbled together “ideas” result in miserable employees most often and many times they are removed or amended after the damage is done.  If I had a dollar for every time “A Decider” shrugged and replied, “Well, it looked good on paper” I’d be living in Key West now.  Employees who would be affected by these changes are rarely included in the discussions.  

In places like hospitals, cost-cutting and data-skewing methods can be down right dangerous.  As an example, floor nurse staffing levels are heavily influenced in some facilities by the accountants.  These bean counters try to use only the “number” of patients on a floor - rather than using a matrix to take into account acuity (how sick a person really is, how much care a patient needs), experience of staff, support of managers, integration with other departments, etc.  When nurses unionize, this is one of their top talking points. They are right.  The data proves that just counting “Bodies in Beds” is dangerous and shock of shock - actually increases healthcare costs - not to mention mortality rates.

An interesting dynamic in this “throw cost-cutting shit on a barn and see what sticks” Corporate Policy and Procedure mentality is the role of unions. Many companies with both union and non-union employees have had to up the ante and adjust wages, work rules, benefits, and exempt/non-exempt positions, or have learned (nearly too late) that the changes they wish to implement will create two “classes” of workers.  It is a PR nightmare for companies whose union employees “have it better” than their non-union counterparts. 

It’s sad when workers resent unions instead of realizing the unions are integral in the “checks and balances” in Corporate America. 

Happy Corporation Day!

The GOPher Myth

If an opinion is repeated often enough, and perhaps by the "right people," it becomes fact.  Talking heads opine that a corporation’s “only” job is to make a profit.  This is wrong. 

As an adult, my “job” is to provide food and shelter for my quirky little furry family.  It does not mean I can steal dog food from the co-op and take my neighbor’s home by force.  I would go to jail, I would not pass “Go,” and I would not collect $200. 

As human citizens, we have rights and responsibilities.  People of good conscience embrace this “prime directive” of the social contract.  Progressives tend to take the latter as seriously as the former.   GOPhers tend to focus on the former and ignore the latter.  Corporate Citizen-GOPhers Super-Size this. 

Corporations worship at the altars of "The Market" and the ratings agencies; they blindly embrace the dogma of shareholder value.   At present, “The Market” is acting like a horny teenager strung out on Red Bull and Pixie Stix.  Its behavior is not that of the infallible “invisible hand” which Grover and the Muppets claim creates and controls our economy.   This "economic creation myth" must be challenged.

“The Street,” routinely rewards bad corporate behavior.  News of an impending reduction in force (i.e. massive lay off) sends stocks soaring.  A factory is shuttered in Detroit and moves to Mexico - share prices rise.  Day traders, by definition, do not put long term consequences of these actions into the equation.  Traditional measures of corporate health are tossed out the window.  Price to Earnings? Irrelevant!  This is not Midnight in the Garden of GoodHair and Evil, this is our national economy.  This is insanity. 

If strung out teenagers are driving our economy an adult needs to step in and take away the keys.  Corporate America needs to take responsibility for the ill-behaving man-child it created and if it will not (and it will not) We the People must demand our representatives in DC put on their big person underpants and take action.  The invisible Red-Bull wielding hand had its chance -and it has failed us.  

    

Low (or no) taxes, record profits, and obscene amounts of cash on hand have not produced economic growth or jobs.  In the past decade, the Corporate GOPhers have received nearly everything they have bought and paid for (lobbied for) and yet – where is the growth, where are the jobs?    This myth has been busted Adam and Jamie style.

As we observed yesterday, they also “need” to poison the planet - THEN they will create jobs.  Next, they will laser-focus on some other "government injustice preventing job-growth" like OSHA, fair labor laws, minimum wage or some other item on ALEC's "model legislation" agenda.  THIS they will decry as the reason they cannot grow, invest and create jobs.  They will continue to assert that present conditions are "too uncertain."  (The Myth of Uncertainty will be addressed in a separate piece in the near future)

Years ago, Hillary Clinton was sharply criticized for her ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ assertion – I believe Madam Secretary is quite correct.   Why is Corporate America really sitting on the sidelines?  All the traditional “MBA-type conditions” for companies to invest and hire are present – low interest rates, large talent pools, cheap labor, cheap technology, large tax breaks, low tax rates, big incentives, a global marketplace, efficient transportation, low tariffs, a plethora of cheap real estate, etc.  The component missing is consumers - and this is a Catch-22 of their own creation.

Corporate GOPhers have sent a clear message on the dog-whistle frequency – get HIM out of the White House and we will play ball, we will jump back in, we will engage.   Until then, we will take a short term hit for a long term gain.  We will bring the economy to brink of ruin if it means we can have our way in the next White House.  The Pack (that mythic group you may have read about on Progressive Underpants) once again lifted its leg on all of DC and reminded the Nation who is really in charge.

It is time the myth of “existing solely to make a profit” is questioned with the same skepticism as other quasi-religious myths.  We are in heated disagreements about the wrong myths – it’s not Creation v. Evolution that is responsible for where we are as a nation – or as a world community.  It is the myth of profit to the exclusion of all else that we should be challenging.    

Clarence Darrow…there’s a phone call for you.