Thursday, January 29, 2009

Remaining Competitve



My pursuit for employment becomes harder with each passing day. I am searching for a job in a climate where employers big and small are only laying off. While job cuts continue to pile up, many companies explain their layoffs in terms of “remaining competitive.” This week Target CEO, Gregg Steinhafel, announced the closing of a distribution center saying, “We are clearly operating in an unprecedented economic environment that requires us to make some extremely difficult decisions to ensure Target remains competitive over the long-term.

This term has always bothered me for being so subjective. What exactly do companies seeking to remain competitive hope to achieve in the contest against other companies? Is it a contest between companies to provide their employees with better healthcare, better wages, or better benefits? Or is it a contest between companies to see who can reach the summit of maximum profit?

Perhaps this current economic crisis leaves companies like Target with no choice except to layoff some employees in order to keep other employees in their jobs. However, I feel that US corporations have possessed an intense fixation on achieving greater and greater heights of profits long before this economic crisis developed. Obviously a company wanting to endure must generate a considerable profit to avoid the danger of barely meeting its budget. I guess the question I am asking is, “how much profit is enough?

Back in February 2008, the New York Times reported that Exxon Mobil cleared a net income (after expenses) of $40,600,000,000 billion dollars. When you deduce their net income by sequences of time, Exxon Mobil earned more than $1,287 of profit for every second of 2007. What if this corporation only cleared 20,000,000,000? My concern is that executives would perceive it as a sign of failure, which would persuade them to cut jobs and benefits so they could return or exceed the 40 billion dollar plateau. Maybe the problem is not amount of profit a corporation seeks to achieve, but with corporations vigorously determined to exceed rather than maintain a certain profit level.

While speaking at the United Nations in September 1963, President Kennedy encouraged the world ambassadors to participate in a more ethical contest saying, “The contest will continue--the contest between those who see a monolithic world and those who believe in diversity--but it should be a contest in leadership and responsibility instead of destruction, a contest in achievement instead of intimidation. Speaking for the United States of America, I welcome such a contest. For we believe that truth is stronger than error--and that freedom is more enduring than coercion. And in the contest for a better life, all the world can be a winner.

CJE

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Saturday, January 24, 2009

Lie To Me



I became unemployed back in December 2008 after being laid off from the hotel and after I submitted grades for the one history course I taught at Northern Kentucky University. I would have loved to teach enough classes to sustain a life, but I am unable to teach full-time at the university without a Ph.D. Nor am I able to teach at public schools since I lack my certification. Unfortunately, history is not in as much demand as science or math where one could hope to obtain an emergency certification.

I have always despised looking for a job and now I hate it more than ever. I detest job interviews for making me feel like I have to pretend to be somebody else while someone I have met for the first time is judging me. Subsequently, the employer drags out the agony while he or she takes two weeks to make up their mind. What is even more depressing is that now I cannot even obtain an interview. Now every hotel, bookstore, and coffee shop gives me the same cold response, “We’re not hiring right now.”

What I want is for them to at least recognize my effort by allowing me to fill out an application. Even if they’re not hiring, I would prefer they lie to me and allow me to pretend there is a chance a job may open up. Yet for them to instantly obliterate my hopes gets harder with each rejection. I have had some phone interviews with some charter schools, but those positions are months off and I needed a job yesterday. For now, I am doing my best to sustain my faith in the truth that, “whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”


CJE

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Reconciliation: Our Inevitable Destination


Keeping in mind the limitations of human institutions, today the country of my birth eradicated one of many enduring obstacles that aim to block the path towards our inevitable destination of reconciliation. Like rain in the desert, today quenched an eight-year thirst for those of us eager for truth and integrity. President Obama spoke powerfully the truth of integrity saying, “…As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals…” He understands correctly that we endanger our safety when we forsake our humanitarian ideals for the barbaric instruments of torture.

Yet more important than my eight-year thirst for change, today African-American citizens old and young witnessed a great harvest of seeds planted more than forty years ago. Non-violent civil rights activists planted those seeds by enduring the brutality of nightsticks and jail cells so they might cultivate the soil of their citizenship with the tools of the 1960s civil rights legislation. While researching my thesis I had the opportunity to meet one of those courageous seed planters, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Here was a man who survived the bombing of his home, the sting of bike chains and brass knuckles, while never allowing himself to succumb to hate.

Where do we go from here? For those who claim Christ, we must continue to temper our reliance on a fallen government. Though I believe this new administration will seek to implement Godly principles, it will not give itself fully to the will of God. Therefore, we cannot depend on Obama to bring us to our journey’s end, but rely on Christ alone. For it is Christ who makes possible the ministry of reconciliation that eliminates the barriers not only between God and man, but also tears down the walls between each other.

CJE

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