A Protected Minority

I was listening to NPR just now, and there was a story about an effort to make the unemployed a protected minority. It would become illegal to deny a job to someone solely because they had been unemployed. In tough economic times, when 10 percent of the country is out of a job, I'm sure this bill may resonate with many people.

I'm not one of them, though.

Yes, it seems wrong to--as a news article I read stated happens often--place a want ad that states that "unemployed need not apply." That seems a little unfair. On the other hand, while many people may have been furloughed from jobs, there are also a lot of people who are unemployed because, to be frank, they weren't good employees. Even people who may have been TOLD that they weren't being fired, that it just came down to the fact that there were five people who had jobs and that three of them had to go, even those people may have been fired via a layoff. After all, in the fictional situation I mentioned above, TWO of the five employees kept their job. If the laid off had been one of the top two in his/her role, he/she would still have a job.

With that in mind, if I'm screening job applications, and someone's been unemployed for four years, whether it's wrong or not, I AM prejudiced against that person, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. After all, I wonder why this person hasn't worked in four years. Has the person gone on interview after interview but not landed a job? That suggests a certain inadequacy. Or has the person NOT gone on interviews? Unless they have a valid reason for dropping out of the work force (i.e. Staying home with a child or sick family member, or volunteering in Africa, something like that), then that suggests laziness.

So I don't think it's wrong to look at the application of someone who's unemployed with a certain critical eye.  No, you shouldn't automatically toss the application in the trash, but it SHOULD be legal for me to consider that employment record--or lack thereof--when making a decision.

Great. I've just made 10 percent of the people reading this mad at me!