Dude, where's my job?

[MillCreek]

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/drug-use-casts-shadow-on-hiring-efforts-by-nations-manufacturers/

In healthcare, we still pretty much do a pre-employment drug test on all applicants as does the largest local employer, Boeing.  My HR people tell me that 'a substantial percentage' of applicants under 30 test positive for marijuana.  We have case law here in Washington that marijuana use is not a protected class for employment and you can be not hired or fired for using it.

[Firethorn]

Given its legality, do you at least specify in the employment stuff that marijuana, specifically, is still a disallowed substance?

Otherwise aren't you wasting both your and their time?

[dogmush]

Ah..freedom.

They are free to do as they wish, and those choices have consequences that they must bear.  Awesome.

I would recommend that those companies cast a wider net.  Perhaps recruit farther away and offer relocation assistance.  I'm sure there are enough folks somewhere in this country to make the boilers.

MJ use isn't super addictive.  Those folks, if they were hungry enough, would stop smoking for a couple months, shave their head, and get a job.  As far as the opioid use mentioned in the article, (which is harder to kick without help), perhaps we could divert some funds from police MRAPS to trying to figure out who is willing and able to be helped with that addiction and work a paying job into a rehab program.  Some are certainly Trainspotting-esque junkies, but some are otherwise working blue collar folks that are addicted to Oxy, and would come off it if they could, and had something to work for.

[dogmush]

Given its legality, do you at least specify in the employment stuff that marijuana, specifically, is still a disallowed substance?

Otherwise aren't you wasting both your and their time?

Marijuana is illegal everywhere in this country at the Federal level.  The folks smoking it on state laws are rolling the dice on the DEA not bothering to come get them.  I imagine there's a question similar to: "Are you a criminal?" that they have to check no on.  That should cover MJ use.

[Firethorn]

Marijuana is illegal everywhere in this country at the Federal level.  The folks smoking it on state laws are rolling the dice on the DEA not bothering to come get them.  I imagine there's a question similar to: "Are you a criminal?" that they have to check no on.  That should cover MJ use.

Powers not otherwise stated are reserved for the states.  A guy smoking weed grown in state under state law isn't something I think they want going up to the supreme court right now.  The Feds have enough trouble just trying to target the more problematic "legal" dispensaries.

And note that I said to have a statement in there to keep from wasting both their, and your time.  Hell, in the case of a business, their cost to drug test applicants that promptly fail.

MJ use isn't super addictive.  Those folks, if they were hungry enough, would stop smoking for a couple months, shave their head, and get a job.  As far as the opioid use mentioned in the article, (which is harder to kick without help), perhaps we could divert some funds from police MRAPS to trying to figure out who is willing and able to be helped with that addiction and work a paying job into a rehab program.  Some are certainly Trainspotting-esque junkies, but some are otherwise working blue collar folks that are addicted to Oxy, and would come off it if they could, and had something to work for.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of the MJ smokers, especially in states where it is legal, already have decent haircuts.  And, if it was specified that the workplace they're applying to requires them to abstain, that many would for the duration necessary to pass the drug test.

Getting people off of opioids is a complicated, fairly low success process, it is so addictive.

[K Frame]

The town where my Mom lived is/was a light industrial and transportation hub for many many years, and is still hanging on to that. They've done a good job of drawing in light manufacturing.

A company making diapers came to the area and set up a huge plant and said that they were going to employ close to a thousand people and were going to hire, as much as possible, from the local community.

That broke down pretty quickly when something like 60% of the applicants tested positive for a variety of controlled substances.

[MikeB]

With the standard urine tests Marijuana can be detected for 30 days or longer in many cases. Heroin, Cocaine, Meth etc. is most often not detectible after 2 to 4 days. It's very likely they are not hiring people that use marijuana and in fact hiring people that use much harder drugs even with the drug testing; those people will have just stopped for a few days to get past the drug test. Perhaps with the amount of states that marijuana is legal on a state level and probably more in the near future; they should stop testing for it and concentrate on the more dangerous drugs.

[KD5NRH]

Those folks, if they were hungry enough, would stop smoking for a couple months, shave their head, and get a job.

Problem is getting them hungry enough when the government will give them a grocery budget to eat better than a lot of full time workers do.  We can't even get people hungry enough to shave the crazy-homeless-guy beard, bathe, put on a free suit from one of the churches, refrain from using motherf___ing as verbal punctuation for an hour and go apply for something within their actual ability.

With the standard urine tests Marijuana can be detected for 30 days or longer in many cases.

I still say if there was a market demand for it, someone would come up with a 48 hour saliva or similarly simple test.  I don't care if even a delivery driver or heavy equipment operator wants to go get baked on Friday night and stay clean during the work week any more than I care if he drinks himself unconscious on the same schedule.  I do, however, want something I can check him with before putting him out on the job site on Wednesday morning when he staggers into the office claiming he had some bad Mexican food the night before.

[Doggy Daddy]

You all do know, don't you, that it's common to find synthetic urine kits at your local head shop or smoke shop so as to be ready for those pre-employment, post accident, or random piss tests?

[Scout26]

I still say if there was a market demand for it, someone would come up with a 48 hour saliva or similarly simple test.  I don't care if even a delivery driver or heavy equipment operator wants to go get baked on Friday night and stay clean during the work week any more than I care if he drinks himself unconscious on the same schedule.  I do, however, want something I can check him with before putting him out on the job site on Wednesday morning when he staggers into the office claiming he had some bad Mexican food the night before.

Ummm, it takes the body a while to remove the THQ and/or other chemicals from your system. Which is why some companies (like the ones I worked for) used Hair as the residue/byproducts from various drugs was deposited into your keratin.  So no "48 Hour" test is going to work.  And it's not your call anyway on the non-existent, physiologically impossible, "48 Hour" test.  Your insurance company wants proof that your drivers/forklift/Heavy equipment/Etc. operators AREN'T going out and getting baked/coked up over the weekend.   Because most can't limit their intake to just Friday night to Sunday evening.  

[zahc]

By discussing the drug thing, you have been distracted from the premise, which is the Myth of the Labor Shortage (Even Though Unemployment is Through the Roof).

It is currently fashionable to admit that you can't seem to hire or retain people, while also admitting that you don't know why and you don't know what to do about it. Contrast this with the willingness of companies to advertise that they can't do other basic things like make sales, ship products, or balance their books. This reveals that one of two things are going on:

--these businesses are clueless and probably run by stupid people, or millennials
--these businesses are manufacturing a crisis in order to agitate for some political handout

“We could take on twice as many projects if we had more suitable workers,”

Compare:

"we could grow twice as many soybeans if we had more arable acres"

"we could fab twice as many microchips if our factory had more throughput"

"our taxi fleet could collect twice as many fares if we could put more cars on the road"

Why don't we see articles like the above? Because nobody cares about your business problems. "We could make more money if we could make more money" is not news. Here are my suggestions for sufferers of TMOTLSETUITTR: if you need to hire more people, try to raise your wages, or use your existing people more efficiently, or retain the people that you have better, or invest in capital so that you don't need as many people, or lean our your operation to reduce waste, etc. etc. i.e. do the f'ing job that your MBA supposedly equips you do to and stop whining about your labor problems.

I swear that we are in a generation of business managers who just discovered that personnel management is important and hard, but what's more, they somehow think that it's only important and hard now, rather than having been important and hard since the beginning of time. Either that, or they are agitating for more foreign workers, which is usually the case, such as when California companies insist there is a programmer shortage every few months and they are all going to go out of business if we don't import more programmers, despite every programmer knowing about 3 people who are looking for work.  

[RevDisk]

Not that I'm overly sympathetic towards people dumb enough to use drugs when looking for employment...

But every time I hear "we can't find employees", through long experience, I can assume they are not offering higher wages or want an employee to have paid for specific or expensive training. I'm always vaguely entertained that every company I've ever worked for wanted above market performance for market (often below market) wages. I'd always laugh when they wanted top tier talent for average wages.

Not that there aren't good ways to getting cheaper employees. Last larger company I worked for where I had a hand in hiring, we had a clear progression path if we couldn't find talent. Toss folks on hell desk. Fire the dumb or lazy. Take the smart or hard working ones, promote them on other duties. Sure. Eventually they'll leave to get paid properly after they have the job for a couple years, but it's a cheap way of getting good budget employees. Only got a bit problematic if the hell desk got full up with people who do the job well enough to stay employed, but not worth promoting.  

[lupinus]

IE labor problems that's often whined about in the midst of stagnated wages and decreasing benefits. We've gotten better about it lately but we went through period of serious benefits cutting, particularly for new hires. Couple that with other crappy things at that time and we lost people left and right, and new hire retention was virtually non-existent. And all of the folks getting paid to run the *expletive deleted*it show couldn't buy a clue as to why.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[KD5NRH]

It is currently fashionable to admit that you can't seem to hire or retain people, while also admitting that you don't know why and you don't know what to do about it. Contrast this with the willingness of companies to advertise that they can't do other basic things like make sales, ship products, or balance their books. This reveals that one of two things are going on:

--these businesses are clueless and probably run by stupid people, or millennials
--these businesses are manufacturing a crisis in order to agitate for some political handout

You forgot #3: The "available" labor is composed mainly of people who don't actually want to work because handouts are easier, and millennials who have no concept of what an actual job is.

Case in point; I'm the fourth mechanic to be hired at the bike shop in the 13 months it's been open. 
The first one decided he should be in charge.  He was invited to go be in charge somewhere else.  Noticed he's now in prison.
The second just stopped showing up to work after a couple weeks.  Nobody seems to know where he ended up.
The third would show up 2-3 days a week, often around lunchtime, with no notice of which days it was going to be.  He's now mooching off his girlfriend full time.

It's about the most laid back work environment I've ever been in; if I'm 10 minutes late, there's a 50/50 chance I'll have the place up and running before the boss shows up, and then he'll show up with sodas and/or breakfast as an apology for being late.  If I have an opportunity to spend a full day with my kids, all he wants is to know the day before so he can save overnight shipping costs on parts I won't be there to use the next day.  General philosophy is "charge by book time, but take as long as it takes to do it right."  Load isn't heavy enough most of the time for that to be an issue if we're both wrenching, as one can focus on a tricky issue while the other steadily cranks through the routine fixes.  When it gets to that point, (we had two customers bring in a total of 9 rush-job bikes week before last - the expedite fees alone covered my pay for more than a week) then the tricky ones get set aside until the quick jobs are done.
Frankly, anyone who's held a serious job would see this as pretty close to a vacation.  Sure, the pay is low, but the stress level is as near zero as it can get anywhere I'm required to wear pants.  (And that may change as he's seriously considering Utili-Kilts as a shop uniform option.)

While there are certainly companies that perpetuate their own churn-and-burn issues, usually through a combination of poor hiring practices and awful corporate culture, there's also a huge percentage of the unemployed out there that need a serious reality check and/or a large, effective, hungry apex predator to thin the herd.

[Scout26]

By discussing the drug thing, you have been distracted from the premise, which is the Myth of the Labor Shortage (Even Though Unemployment is Through the Roof).

It is currently fashionable to admit that you can't seem to hire or retain people, while also admitting that you don't know why and you don't know what to do about it. Contrast this with the willingness of companies to advertise that they can't do other basic things like make sales, ship products, or balance their books. This reveals that one of two things are going on:

--these businesses are clueless and probably run by stupid people, or millennials
--these businesses are manufacturing a crisis in order to agitate for some political handout

Compare:

"we could grow twice as many soybeans if we had more arable acres"

"we could fab twice as many microchips if our factory had more throughput"

"our taxi fleet could collect twice as many fares if we could put more cars on the road"

Why don't we see articles like the above? Because nobody cares about your business problems. "We could make more money if we could make more money" is not news. Here are my suggestions for sufferers of TMOTLSETUITTR: if you need to hire more people, try to raise your wages, or use your existing people more efficiently, or retain the people that you have better, or invest in capital so that you don't need as many people, or lean our your operation to reduce waste, etc. etc. i.e. do the f'ing job that your MBA supposedly equips you do to and stop whining about your labor problems.

I swear that we are in a generation of business managers who just discovered that personnel management is important and hard, but what's more, they somehow think that it's only important and hard now, rather than having been important and hard since the beginning of time. Either that, or they are agitating for more foreign workers, which is usually the case, such as when California companies insist there is a programmer shortage every few months and they are all going to go out of business if we don't import more programmers, despite every programmer knowing about 3 people who are looking for work.  

Yet you completely ignore to other factors:

1)  The Regulatory Burden, and the
2)  Profit Pressure

And they both go hand-in-hand.

Sure it sounds easy.  "Raise Wages", then problem solved.  Right?  Wrong. 

The Regulatory Burden has eaten up most of what could go into employee wages, especially with skyrocketing healthcare costs.  12.4% of employee wages go into Social Security.  Another 2.9% goes toward Medicare.  Health Insurance premiums for group/employer plans have been rising as fast as the rates we read about for Obamacare, as all the mandates for pap smears for men and prostrate exams for women, along with the 85% insurance payout has put more pressure on insurance companies.   Then you have states like Illinois jacking up their personal (and business) tax rates by 2%.  There's no money left over "Raise Wages".  Those raises have been taken by the .gov.  Not to mention all the other taxes rising. (Property, as businesses aren't exempt.)

And there's still pressure to deliver a profit.  So it truly does become a question of "Can we still make a profit, if we expand/hire another person."  I know when I worked for Central States Trucking that we did turn away business simply because after running the numbers, it didn't make financial sense to take it on.  (New hires, additional equipment, etc.) That there was no money in it.    We did use those MBA educations to figure it out.  We also did Lean Events to figure out ways to reduce costs of various aspects by 10%.  But some still had to breakdown the Air Pallets, unload the containers, and drive the forklifts to put the pallets on trucks (or floor load the trailers as requested by a couple customers.)  All of which required labour.   Yet, customers would only pay so much.   I know that before I left CST, Land's End had been bought by Sears/K-mart and K-mart's logistics people* demanded that we reduce what we charged them by 25% or they would take their business elsewhere.  We couldn't and they did to UPS Logistics.  For a year.  Then I heard that UPS Logistics fired Land's End as a customer because they lost their ass on the deal.   They tried to go back to CST still demanding the same 25% reduction in price.  CST said "No".  Not sure who they ended up with, but someone will take the business, lose their ass, then fire them after a year or six months or however long it takes to realize it's a losing proposition, if they don't do their due diligence beforehand.


*- They are the biggest bunch of 'tards to ever walk the planet.   I think that K-Mart's Logistics was the only part/profit center of K-Mart/Sears to turn a profit since before they even merged.   

[zahc]

The Regulatory Burden has eaten up most of what could go into employee wages, especially with skyrocketing healthcare costs.

Respectfully :Cry me a river. Every time I go to the grocery store the prices have gone up another 5%. You want more people, you pay more, or don't. Your choice. Don't be surprised when only druggies apply.  Things are tough all over. The article admits that the job is dangerous and one mistake means somebody dies. Nobody wants to come work in your steel mill for peanuts. It's that simple.

Can't get employees at $20/hr? Try 25. Think that's outrageous wages for cashiers? Well I think lots of prices are outrageous but I recognize that's what I have the pay if I want the goods. Do you want cashiers or not? Prepare for the day that cashiers make $100/hr, because it won't be long until the money is worth that little.

My dad quit his machinist job in 1979 to become self employed, because he couldn't support his family on one income. I'm sure his boss called him a hippie slacker as he was walking out the door. He made $12/hr. Inflation calculators say that's about $42/hr in 2017 dollars. Welcome to the new America. We will all be millionaires soon!

[RoadKingLarry]

Sometimes just treating the employee like they are NOT a disposable commodity can help with retention.
a number of years ago A co-worker's fiancé got hired on at one of the company's call centers. She worked there a little over 90 days. Long enough to be beyond the probationary phase and was getting decent marks for her work. She decided the artificial stress being inflicted on the call center employees just wasn't worth the money she was getting paid so she tendered her two weeks notice.
Her manager, who had been in the position for about 3 years, told her she didn't know what to do with a two weeks notice. No one had ever given her notice before. The ones that didn't just stop coming to work had mostly just ran out the door crying.

[Firethorn]

--these businesses are manufacturing a crisis in order to agitate for some political handout

Indeed they are.  Take programmers.  There are plenty of American programmers out there.  Yet they fire the Americans to bring in Indians in on h1b visas, where you have executives signing that they can't find Americans to do the work even as they're ordering said Americans currently doing the work to train their H1B replacements in order to get their separation benefits.

The other thing I've seen is whining about not being able to find workers while offering crazy low wages not consimerate with the work.  Things like wanting a master welder for $8 an hour.  The place across the street offering $20 for even apprentice welders isn't having any trouble finding welders.  I wonder why?

[Pb]

After I was hired for my previous job, I was told the five applicants before me failed the drug test... 

[zahc]

So it truly does become a question of "Can we still make a profit, if we expand/hire another person."

Yep, makes sense, and sounds normal. We don't buy more soybean land because current land and bean prices mean the ROI is too far out. This is normal business. It does not mean there is a bean price crisis or land shortage crisis, although I'm sure you could find plenty of farmers who would tell you that we have both, and that we need more subsidies and whatnot.  Good bean ground used to go for $800/acre and nowadays it's more like $2k/acre, partly because of oil discovery. Meanwhile bean prices are weak due to the oil glut. Every business has it's struggle.

[AJ Dual]

What I always found strange was that all the low-level service-sector jobs I held when I was young in the 90's had drug testing.

Once I was in my IT/IS career, I was never tested again, and either through access of critical infrastructure, or the ability to screw up compliance under Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, or Dodd-Frank, I had the ability to cost the company millions. 

[Hawkmoon]

...

I swear that we are in a generation of business managers who just discovered that personnel management is important and hard, but what's more, they somehow think that it's only important and hard now, rather than having been important and hard since the beginning of time. Either that, or they are agitating for more foreign workers, which is usually the case, such as when California companies insist there is a programmer shortage every few months and they are all going to go out of business if we don't import more programmers, despite every programmer knowing about 3 people who are looking for work.  

It took you until the last paragraph, but you finally hit the nail on the head.

In summary, too many managers/bean counters think the way to make America great again is to put Americans out of work by importing foreign labor to undercut the American wage system and reduce the American standard of living.

[Scout26]

Respectfully :Cry me a river. Every time I go to the grocery store the prices have gone up another 5%. You want more people, you pay more, or don't. Your choice. Don't be surprised when only druggies apply.  Things are tough all over. The article admits that the job is dangerous and one mistake means somebody dies. Nobody wants to come work in your steel mill for peanuts. It's that simple.

Can't get employees at $20/hr? Try 25. Think that's outrageous wages for cashiers? Well I think lots of prices are outrageous but I recognize that's what I have the pay if I want the goods. Do you want cashiers or not? Prepare for the day that cashiers make $100/hr, because it won't be long until the money is worth that little.

My dad quit his machinist job in 1979 to become self employed, because he couldn't support his family on one income. I'm sure his boss called him a hippie slacker as he was walking out the door. He made $12/hr. Inflation calculators say that's about $42/hr in 2017 dollars. Welcome to the new America. We will all be millionaires soon!

And were does this extra money to raise wages come from??  Ever hear of Supply and Demand ??  Charge more and lose customers, then you have to reduce headcount ?   People substitute all the time.  Take a look at your grocery store example.  Portion sizes have been shrinking.  Prices have been rising.  People have been replacing name brand with generic or buying less grades of a product.  Or simply doing without.

Companies don't have a magic money tree they can go out and shake.


And yes, I will concede that many company's "People are Cogs in the Wheel" attitude doesn't help.  But the companies I worked for have (for the most part) continued to exist and grow without me.   Most of which treated me fairly well while I was there.   I blame the .gov tax polices for the tax treatment of dividends which made many companies focus on increasing Share price as opposed to paying dividends.

[lupinus]

As usual it is a combination of factors.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[MechAg94]

I am not sure what to add.   

-Treating hourly workers as if they are disposable when anyone who works with those guys knows it isn't remotely true. 
-Claiming that our Corporate Goal is World Class Performance while at the same time having HR tell everyone that our salary goal is only Industry Average.  What it really means is world class performance with minimal head count and pay.  I certainly understand the reasons, but griping is fun sometimes.
-It really helps when they tell all the employees that business is bad and there will be no raises 2 weeks after issuing the company annual report bragging about how well they did, what profits were, and how much growth they expect. 

One thing I have noticed is that bad employees tend to multiply.  If you have one employee who is not good, but gets promoted, he tends to hire other bad employees and it spreads.  Often they jump to other positions before long term effects hit home.