On Friday, March 1st, many workers will be notified that they will be furloughed from their employment. They will find a cardboard box and fill it with their personal stuff and head to their car without a prospect for returning anytime soon, if ever.
Think about what the means to a person. Today, you are working on repairing and renovating a ship at Newport News, preparing it for another cruise at sea on a vital mission. Friday, whatever it was that you were doing toward that end is declared unnecessary.
Today, you are working on software for the Joint Strike Fighter, developing an upgrade or a fix for the new program. Friday, you can pack it in and hope that somebody knows something about where you left off. You were in the process of documenting when there was no more time remaining and your effort was determined to be unaffordable.
Consider the personal impact of someone declaring that your contribution is no longer needed. Your purpose is unnecessary.
A counselor says, “You must align your abilities with a higher yield and better purpose, something that is necessary.”
What? Today and the days before, you worked diligently and responsibly believing in your purpose that someone else decided is no longer worthy. They may have thought about it rigorously, but in the instance of the congressional sequestration, there was no diligent thought. It is just an arbitrary command.
Sorry you are finished.
The trouble is that everyone have abilities and capacities to perform useful work. There is plenty to be accomplished. The public and private sector partnership and system is intended to align people with their highest yield and best purposes and opportunities. When people are without work, that is indicative that the system is failing, and that leadership is failing.
No reflection on you, but there is a reflection on leadership for which they receive a failing grade.
“FORGET COMMANDER IN CHIEF. MEET MAYOR OBAMA - Darren Samuelsohn and Scott Wong write for the hometown paper: "He sounds like the mayor of America, pulling out new facts and figures to warn about the threat to teachers, cops and airports in your backyard if the sequester cuts go through this week. But what President Barack Obama doesn't mention: The new stats he released with great fanfare Sunday night could have been unveiled long ago, since they're nothing more than the result of a formula he signed into law a year-and-a-half ago.”
Scott Wong, Politico
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