This Labor Day the United States is embroiled in what could, very easily, turn into a double dip recession. Millions of Americans are receiving umemployment benefits and millions more find themselves under employed or working in jobs that don’t reflect their skill-sets. Some estimates place the real unemployment rate at 22%.
It is telling, that on Labor Day number 12 on Alexa’s top 30 search terms was ‘Make Money Online.’ The point is that Americans are desperate for work. The fact is that millions of Americans want to work and are perfectly willing to do any number of tasks, but after 80 years of relative prosperity we may simply be unable to remember how.
According to Wikipedia, the purpose of Labor Day was originally outlined in 1884 as “[a holiday] to exhibit to the public ‘the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations.’”Since then, membership in trade and labor organizations (which once stood at nearly 40% of the American public) has fallen to just over 12%. Clearly, the esprit de corps of working class Americans is lacking something.
As the son and grandson of union members, I propose that what is lacking is a common understanding and acceptance of the values that once made working class Americans the most powerful influence in the United States and the world. What is lacking is work-ethic.
Work-ethic is more than just a willingness to work. Work-ethic(s) are those values that make it possible to work for, with and to the benefit of others. In The A Game’s last post our President, Matt Smith, recounts his observation that the problem resides not in the older or younger generations, but in the middle generation where, as parents, we have failed to instill appropriate work-ethic values in our children.
As parents we’ve taken our work-ethic values for granted and neglected our responsibility to give our children the best educations we can. As true leaders, our first responsibility is to admit it when we simply aren’t adequate to a task because we lack the skill, knowledge or time to complete it. We cannot begin to re-build America’s work-ethic and economy without first acknowledging that we need help.
The A Game is designed to be a resource for parents, educators, workforce advocates and employers who recognize that re-building the American work-ethic starts with leaders like them; it starts with a desire to help our children bring their A Game to work.