Anniversary: North Regional Libraries, Where I Began...

cross-posted with my librarianship/writing blog:

Twenty years ago, on May 9th, I started my first full-time job.

It was a new library building in a new type of library: a hybrid large-public/community college library that supported the public reading (popular titles) and the academic (research books and journals).

It started just as the Internet exploded on the scene, before emailing took off and the demands for computer use increased.  Back then the job was answering questions and finding articles off these newly networked online databases and making sure nobody was looking at porn in the far corners of the second floor.

It was my first full-time job.  I had a workdesk and a staff lounge with new furniture and carpeting and chairs with rollers and everything (except a computer at each workdesk: computers back then were expensive, we had to share a staff computer to get work done).

So much has changed over those twenty years.  Nowadays I suspect most of the college students and the public will come in with their own laptops and tablets to use instead of the public machines.  I'd like to think the circulation numbers at North Regional has kept up (there *is* a nice-sized retirement community across the street so...), although Northwest Regional *was* the circ-checkout king of the system when I left Broward Libraries in 2003...

I hope to go back this year to the library's 20th anniversary.  It started when I did.  I'd like to go back and see who's left, who's coming back like I am, who's saying farewells and all...

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Anniversary: It's Been Five Years...

...and four of them a long long struggle to recover, but still...

Yeah, back on Dec. 17 2008 I lost my employment with Pasco County Libraries.

Between then and now was a long struggle: filing for unemployment, filing for WIA re-training funds, taking more computer classes, job-hunting, tweaking resumes, job-hunting, not getting interviewed, never getting interviewed, not even getting looked at by the retailers for part-time (the sins of getting a Masters degree education, you make yourself overqualified for a sh-tload of part-time jobs) work...

It was hard as hell on my family, especially my parents who helped out financially as best they could, and they couldn't understand why no one would even interview me for office work or anything like that.  My twin brother once chewed me out (on our birthday no less), accusing me of being a lazy-ass living off our parents' largess.  They couldn't understand I was up against 60, 100, 150 (!) applicants for every job opening (it wasn't just the unemployed I was competing with, it was employed people looking for something stable during uncertain times), and that I was going up against HR departments being finicky with who they interviewed (younger and cheaper were better, less educated and less prone to look elsewhere were better, etc.).

I found a part-time job in 2009, but it was will-call... By 2010 I put in for the Census work, but that turned out to be shorter than I expected... 2011, nothing, not a peep.  Things picked up by 2012 with 5 different libraries and computer-oriented workplaces interviewing, but I ended up not making the cut...  I finally got a part-time with a tech firm doing contractual installs for offices, but that was will-call as well... by Christmas 2012 Dad threatened and began plans to ship me up to my older brother's in Maryland (WINTER?!) to look for work in what he felt was a better employment environment.

Thank God this January I had three libraries interview me one right after the other... with Bartow, GOD BLESS THEM, offering me a job as their Reference and Computer training librarian.

I'd like to think I'm doing well here, that I'm fitting in (truth be told, my struggles losing a job and then trying to find one has left me with a bad case of "Oh GOD Don't Let Me Eff Up" that's got me more jumpy about how I'm doing than usual).

But in the meantime, while I've gotten out of unemployment purgatory, there's still Seven percent of Americans (and that's just the official numbers, the real numbers are far worse) stuck in unemployment, with clear evidence that the long-term unemployed (those out of work for more than six months) are really screwed by HR offices and companies who won't take in experienced older workers or anyone viewed as a hire risk.

We need a Jobs bill in this country.  We need to force companies to turn their record profits into more jobs or at least better wages for existing employees.  We need to make the economy based on employment, not stock options.

To everyone out there still looking for work, I hope and pray the best for you.  If you need help looking, check at your libraries for job-hunting help and resume tips.  Stay active in politics to vote the right people - the ones pushing for REAL JOBS, not tax cuts for companies already rolling in profits - into office at the state and federal level.  Hell, GO to the local political (okay, go Democrat, because I honestly think the Republicans would ignore this issue or defame it) offices and sign up to run for state office on a Jobs-Jobs-Jobs platform.  The more candidates we've got out there pushing for real job creation, the better our chances.

Good luck.  Here's hoping your anniversaries for firing fade quick and for hiring come quick.

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We Need More Than Encouragement, We Need Assistance If We're Relocating People To Where the Jobs Are

The sluggish economy is still a big issue, despite Congress' and the media's inertia on the matter.

One problem has been the fact that some regions of the nation are free of the ravages of the Great Recession, and have healthy employment numbers with sizable job markets... but lack the numbers of people willing or able to live in those markets and fill those jobs.

Yglesias' article on the matter jumps straight into the numbers:

In the metropolitan area centered around Yuma, Ariz., the Bureau of Labor Statistics believes that the unemployment rate is a terrifying 31.8 percent. Just a bit west is El Centro, Calif., with America’s second-highest jobless rate—23.6 percent. Yuba City and Merced, both also in inland California, come next, with unemployment rates of over 14 percent.

Drive about 800 miles north of Yuma and you’ll come to another small metropolitan area, centered around Logan, Utah, where conditions are very different. In the Logan area, the unemployment rate is just 4.6 percent. It’s as if the full employment economy of the late 1990s were still in swing, while Yuma’s joblessness is worse than the Great Depression.

Lack of mobility is hardly the cause of macroeconomic distress in the United States. But it’s not helping. And it turns out that the population has grown more moving-averse over time. This aversion appears to be particularly concentrated among the native-born working class and especially men—not coincidentally the precise group that has suffered the most severe downward pressure on wages.

Part of the reasons for the lack of relocation is that the ones hardest hit by the Recession - the middle-class families - are tied down by various obligations: homes they can't sell "above water" (home values haven't returned to what they were back in 2007 when the crash hit) are big obligations.

Yglesias takes the opportunity to point out how mobility in previous economic cycles actually helped the economy:

But the existence of good reasons not to move doesn’t explain the decline in mobility. Back in 1985 over 20 percent of the population moved. That number fell steadily to 11.6 percent in 2011 before ticking back up to 12 percent last year. What’s more, even if you just look at interstate moves, a lot of the shifting doesn’t appear to be related to a search for employment...  This is bad for unemployed people in Rhode Island and Nevada who perhaps could be getting work in Vermont and North Dakota. But it’s also bad for the broader economy. An outflow of unemployed people from high-joblessness regions would reduce pressure on state and local budgets. And in the low unemployment areas, the arrival of more workers wouldn’t just fill job openings. Their presence would make local labor markets more efficient and would spur investment, as the new workers need places to live, places to shop, and tools to work with. That in turn increases demand for goods and services nationally as regions that produce capital equipment or primary commodities get a boost.

In some respects, it would be in our nation's interests to get some funding going to 1) help families relocate to jobs, 2) help families pay down mortgages on homes so they can afford to sell the homes as part of the relocation effort and 3) help communities with sizable job openings entice relocators and provide social services to help families adjust to the moves.

So, of course, Congress ain't doing much on this because it doesn't help them repeal ObamaCare for the 42nd time.

/headdesk

If the voters of this nation had any collective common sense, they'd vote into office in the 2014 midterms politicians sworn to pass jobs bills.  Any jobs bills for our returning veterans would help.  Any jobs bills fixing our broken bridges would help.  Any jobs bills helping families move to where the jobs are would help.

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You Know Booz Allen Hamilton Could Have Hired Me Instead of Snowden, And I Work Cheap

It's true.  During my 4-year-long journey through the bowels of Unemployment Purgatory, one of the companies I put in for was Booz Allen Hamilton.  They had openings for some basic tech, some writing/editing skills, some research skills.  And I sure as hell wouldn't have cost $200k oh okay $112k the amount Snowden was signed for.  I could have gone for $79k tops, and I wouldn't have spilled my guts at $79k.  If they paid me $40k, then yeah maybe I'd be a little disgruntled, but I can live on $79k...

Even though I'm now gainfully employed, I still get updates from Booz Allen with opening notices.  I haven't seen one yet for "Whistleblower" position, I guess it's gotta clear HR first and... okay, I kid.  I kid.  I... why is that unmarked white van in the parking lot aiming a seemingly empty Pringles can at my wifi router...?

As the debate on what Snowden did continues, I have to 'fess up that in some respects I'm... underwhelmed with the nature of the issue.  While the "ZOMG TRAITOR" crowd are screaming treason they can't actually prove specific harm: Snowden and his ally Glenn Greenwald seem to have calculated how to release this info to leave some wriggle room for pleading out to a misdemeanor whenever the trial on his whistleblowing ass begins.

Basically, this is what I'm getting about all this:
1) Snowden proved that some of the people testifying before Congress about our intelligence gathering lied, and someone's head is gonna roll for it.
2) Snowden's choice of Hong Kong/China as a safe haven is about as stupid a place to go than maybe Cuba or Venezuela.  China's record on Big Brother behavior is worse than the United States.  Snowden, in your next life of whistleblowing, go someplace scenic like, oh, Czech Republic, Sweden, Costa Rica maybe (Costa Rica's got a good human rights record, yeah?  yeah...?).
3) The real issues are being ignored: our entire intelligence gathering system is bloated, under-managed, primed for abuse.
While there's no evidence of serious abuse under Obama's tenure, you can't always trust the guys in charge whenever a new executive rolls into the West Wing.  There are far too many people with the power to classify documents as Secret: hiding way too much information that would otherwise give us transparency into government functions.
Instead of hiring into our government to have some bureaucratic means of accountability, our intelligence gathering was farmed out to private vendors who don't answer to a lot of oversight.
The NSA gathers all this data but has no manpower to evaluate it: that would normally be the CIA, but there's still a lot of bureaucratic in-fighting over who does what and having third-party vendors handle all that data brings in too many meddlers.
Our FISA court is entirely one-sided: only the government's argument for wiretap warrants are given, there is NO ONE arguing against the need for a warrant - which is probably one reason why the FISA court rarely refuses a warrant request.

As it stands right now, the best we can hope for is a serious honest dialogue about our intelligence gathering, its impact on our Fourth Amendment right to not have some tech geek snicker at our DVD purchases, and honest reform to make the FISA system more balanced and more accountable.

...But with this Congress, I'm willing to bet we'll just get more "Blame Obama" investigations out of the House and dithering from a Senate that doesn't want to get blamed for "weakening America's security".  /sigh

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Income Inequality

This is something that has been posted a few months back but only now is circulating the blogosphere:

The problem of income inequality in the United States has been with us for a long time: for at least the last ten years (if not the last thirty or more) wages have been frozen for most American workers, while the top one percent of the employment bracket (the CEO level) continued getting raises and bonuses and comp packages and Golden Parachutes (even when those CEOs were screwing up their companies: SEE the Twinkies company going down in flames while the executives paid themselves off).

Just to note: it used to be as recent as 1978 that executive (CEO) pay was only 35 times that of the average employee.  Today it's roughly 380 times, partly because average employee wages haven't grown but mostly because executives have been paying themselves (via friendly boards or manipulated systems) more and more without consequence (politicians are bought, media are bought, unions are crushed).

The argument for high wages for high-level jobs (like CEO, or high-priced attorney, or esteemed doctor) is that it motivates people to work and empower themselves to achieve great things: the carrot rather than the stick as it were.  While that is a valid argument, there's a question of "how much is really enough?"  At what point does GREED become too much of a motivating factor rather than equitable compensation for good effort?  Where's the sense of proportion when it comes to taking a $5 million bonus while 2,000 other employees of your company gets a wooden nickel each for working as hard or even harder than that CEO?

There ought to be a way to fix this in a fair and equitable manner.  I'd argue for a wage cap on CEOs tied to their employees: that CEOs of large companies be paid no more than 35 times (like in 1978) than their average non-administrative employees.  Said cap to be phased into action over a five-year period, dropping from 380 times to 150 times in Year One, to 98 times in Year Two, all the way down to that 35 times by Year Five.  In the meantime, require that the average wage of those non-admin employees to go up, as a way of making that "35 times more" deal for the upper management less painful (so that it would make the CEOs more like 50 times paid more if those employees hadn't gotten raises).

The math might not be there, I know.  But somehow we've got to raise the wages for a majority of working Americans out there.  And we've got to make CEOs less greedy (based on that video's report, that One Percent of the populus has got 40 PERCENT of the nation's money.  THE F-CK?!)

This isn't communism (something for nothing).  It might be socialism: forcing the richest to take less so that the poor can get more.  Except for the fact we're talking about improving the wages of poor WORKING Americans, not some "handouts" to a nebulous "moochers and takers" society.  But what's the alternative?  Doing nothing, sitting back and basking in the "It's all Capitalism baby learn to love it" belief system is not the solution... The current system is broken: there's no judge, no force of accountability against the GREED that's corrupted our financial institutions.

Seriously, what is the alternative to capping CEO wages?

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Wrong Kind of Anniversary... Again

It is now four years to the day since I lost my full-time job as a librarian.

I've found some part-time jobs here and there, and I currently have a contractual job with an IT vendor needing desktop support... but it's not a full-time, 40 hours a week, with benefits type of job.

This year (2012) saw a lot more interviews by libraries than I've had since 2008 - six separate libraries interviewing, two of them interviewed me twice - and one can hope that the coming year will see more opportunities and with any luck an actual hire.

But in the meantime... still job-hunting... still trying to get around my writer's block to see about getting something published and marketed... still...

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Things May Change

For starters, my libertarian older brother may have a freak-out in about two weeks...

For another, you people in Maryland may have a crazy Floridian driver on your roadways pretty soon...

And lastly... damn, are ALL apartments in MD this expensive?!  I'm calling the Property Appraisers office, the land in Maryland is too rich for my blood.  How do you college students cope with off-campus living?  I swear...

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The Thing Bothering Me About Job Hunting

Other than the fact that my librarian background simply doesn't fit in too well with about 78 percent of the job market...

What bothers me is that *I* have to go to the employers for their job openings.  Offering my resume, typing in application forms, begging for interviews.  The problem is, each employer has their own requirements/requests for resumes... and different means of typing in application forms.  It gets frustrating that I gotta waste an hour or two tweaking each resume submission, or typing in a brand new application form.

Why can't we reverse the process?  Have all job search engines work the other way?  Have the human resources department come looking for US, based on our one standardized resume, no applications to fill, just come to us and take a quick look and see if we pass the preliminary before calling us for an interview?

I mean, THEY know what they're looking for.  The HR people can spot and keyword search within reason, and narrow the searches down and get us on the phone pronto.  Why have 100,000 unqualified people overwhelm a Human Resources office with half-assed resumes for one job, when the HR people can search a resume database, whittle it down to 5-10 people they like, and go from there?

Better still, at job fairs, sit the unemployed people down at a table, have our resumes displayed in front of us, and have the HR people walk by us and window-shop, pointing out "How much for that librarian in the window?" before taking us home for work and feeding?

Sigh.  It's been two years plus doing this.  We need a change of employment methods.  This current method, it just ain't working for me and 17 million other people...

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