Showing posts with label Mid-Week at Work Query?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mid-Week at Work Query?. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Watching the mule auction this past Sunday brought me to a possible explanation as to why so many Western legal organizations like to feature cowboys in their propoganda.

And that's because it's honest, and manly, work.

Cowboy, 1888.   This is, for some reason, how lawyers often tend to see themselves.

It was Bates v. State Bar of Arizona in which the United States Supreme Court destroyed the professionalism of the legal profession.  In that 5 to 4 decision, the Court found that a rule of the Arizona State Bar preventing advertising violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It further held that allowing attorneys to advertise would not harm the legal profession or the administration of justice.

They were wrong.

As was often the case in that era, the majority had its head up its butt.  In reality, advertising destroyed decades of work by the early 20th Century American Bar Association and drug the occupation of being a lawyer from that of a learned profession down to a carnival barker.

Recently I watched the Netflix uploaded episodes of the Korean television series The Extraordinary Attorney Woo (이상한 변호사 우영우). In it, every one addressed attorneys by their patronymic and the title "Attorney", even if they were personally familiar with them.  So, for example, every time somebody addressed the central protagonist, they did so as "Attorney Woo".   That struck me as odd, so I looked it up to see if that was correct, and found a Korean language site entry that stated off with a comment that was something like "unlike the United States, attorneys in Korea are a respected profession".

That struck me, as I hadn't really thought about it like that.  When I started off in this line of work, we were still somewhat regarded as respected professionals and its hard to forget that's now in the past.

The decline was in, however, already by that time.  When we were admitted to the bar, Federal Judge Court Brimmer gave a speech about civility in litigation.  I've heard versions of it many times since. When I first started practicing, advertising was just starting here, and it was the domain of plaintiff's lawyers for the most part.  It still is.

Bates got us rolling in this direction, but the flood of 60s and 70s vintage law school graduates did as well.  Too many lawyers with too little to do, expanded what could be done in court.  Lawyers have backed every bad cause imaginable in the name of social justice. That's drug the profession down.

How we imagine ourselves.

I think we know that, which is why I think we also go out of our way to associate ourselves with occupations that have real worth.  We like conventions featuring the West, both for defense and plaintiffs, rather than sitting in front of our computers in office buildings in Denver and Salt Lake City.

Nobody, that is, wants to go to the "2023 Sitting On Your Ass Asking Insurance Carriers For Money" conference.  No, we do not.  We want to go instead to the "2023 Blazing Saddles and High Noon Conference".  

But what are we really?

How everyone else sees us.

It's a real red meat question, but it needs to be asked.  To some extent, civil litigation started off as a substitute for private warfare.  But now?  Many people have asked if this is a virtuous profession, but beyond that is it, well, manly?

Many lawyers aren't men, of course.  But if there are occupations that exhibit male virtues and natures, is this one?

Our constant association of ourselves with occupations that do, and the use of language borrowed from fields that are, suggests we don't think so.

As we really are.

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Blog Mirror: From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out

While the thesis of the Great Resignation was recently seriously quested as to whether it was occurring or not, and we're now once again at record unemployment, it does seem something is happening, as the following Bloomberg article relates.

But what?

And a question. Save for those who can retire, how does a person just "opt out"?  I've never seen that explained.

From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

The Great Hesitation?


Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground

Job quits are not unusually high

So states The Economist.

And not just the economist.

Perhaps. . . but I think something else may be going on, which explains the caption of the entry here.  Let's call it The Great Hesitation.

The recent news stories on the Great Resignation are claiming its pretty much bunk.  But what was it in the first place?  Well, supposedly just what the name implied.  People were quitting their jobs in the post Pandemic world. 

Apparently, they aren't.

That doesn't mean something isn't going on.

Some personal observations.

A couple of months ago, in late summer, I tried a case in Denver.  The hotel I stayed in downtown had very little in the way of staff.  We were warned about that upon checking in.  It was also quite spartan downtown in general, and maybe that explains it.  Maybe they just hadn't added staff back, as they weren't anywhere near at capacity. . .maybe.

Countering that, downtown restaurants were back open, and they seemed fully staffed and plenty full.  Well, full, not hugely full as they often had been.

Further, however, it seems that the entire legal industry is experiencing an entry level lawyer shortage.

Not that there's a shortage of graduating folks from law school.  Not hardly.  There are lots of new graduates.  They're just not taking law jobs.  And that isn't a singular observation, it's extremely widespread.

This is also true of staffing positions for law firm.  Lots of openings. . .no takers.

So what's going on?

Well, maybe not resignations, although one newly minted lawyer I'm familiar with, who was mentioned in a draft post here the other day, is on her third or fourth position in just two years.  But some of those were temporary by nature (one definitely wasn't).

Rather, it seems fairly obvious, people aren't going back to jobs they once held, or they're holding off entering the job market entirely.

At some point, that probably has to end, but this is some sort of big social trend.  And it's been going on for a while.  We may have in fact just noticed it, and in part it may be somewhat amplified right now.

So what's up?

Well, a lot of what's up is what we've noted here again and again about the nature of modern work, and people are reacting to it. And the people who are reacting, are those at the entry level, or those who have been knocked out of work.  People aren't getting in, and they aren't coming back.  

Those who never left, have kept on keeping on.

The other thing that is going on is, I suspect, something that's been going on for quite some time.  And its a generational thing.

The World War Two and Silent Generations weren't given much option about working, but because of the war and developments in it, combined with the advance of certain types of (domestic) machinery, they entered work at a pretty advantageous time.  The World War Two Generation built the modern American work culture, although they did it when they were quite young.  And the Great Depression and the Second World War enormously amplified a trend that had been going on since the early 1900s, which was the migration from the country to the city.  The Silent Generation went along with all of this, as it didn't really have any choice. The Baby Boomers, in spite of initially protesting everything, fully embraced it by the 1970s, theirs being the last generation to enter the workplace in which 1) you didn't need a college education in order to get a decent paying job; and 2) a bachelors degree pretty much let you write your own ticket.

Things have fallen apart since then, although the generations that entered upper middle class positions haven't noticed or have excused it away.

It turned out, and turns out, that a bunch of the things Americans were told since 1945 about work, combined with economic policies in place since that time, have created a work life that people simply just don't like.  Shipping blue collar jobs overseas, amplifying the move to the big cities beyond what was already in place, and putting everyone in cubicle jobs didn't suit their tastes as it doesn't suit nature.

Additionally the inflating requirement for a college degree, combined with the forced industrialization of female labor has pushed the marginalization of young adults back to some degree.

Indeed, in the draft posts I have up here, I have this item, which I'll incorporate here as its somewhat relevant.

 Some time ago we took this highly unpopular view here in our Zeitgeist series.

Children and Forced Industrialization

You've seen them here before, and yes, here they are again.  Migrant farm couples, 1938.

I've come to be simply amazed by the degree to which Americans are now acclimated to the concept that the government ought to pay for things, well, related to sex in some way or another.

Joe Biden's economic "relief" bill, which really addresses a topic that no longer really needs addressing, includes a big boost for pre K childcare.

Why?

To make my surprise, if that's what it is, more plain, what that means is that money will come from taxes (and loans) to help pay for the childcare of people so that they don't have to pay for it, directly, themselves.  

More bluntly, this will make it easier, which is part of what is being boosted as a reason to do it, for those with low incomes to have two working parents, as the thesis is that otherwise they'll have to make economic choices that will be difficult.

First of all, while it makes me sound like a Marxist saying it, isn't it clear that what this amounts to is the forced industrial employment of women?  What hte goal really is, is to make it easier for working mothers to work, which rapidly equates into forcing them to work, which is essentially what our economy had done over the past 70 years.  That is, we've converted from the early industrial revolution economy of forcing men out of their homes to work from eight to twelve hours per day to one t hat now requires women to do the same.  In order to do that we've subsidized all sorts of things to the benefit, essentially, of industry, and now we propose to go one step further.

Indeed, the irony of this is that this is where Marxist and Capitalist come back around and meet.  Early Marxists sought the dissolution of marriage and the collectivization of child care.  That has been regarded s horrific, but that's exactly what industrial economies have done over the past seventy years and the Biden Administration proposes to knock it up a notch.

This isn't just.

It isn't just to force women to leave their children in order to work.  It likewise wasn't just to do that in the case of men, but the level of subsidization evolved into force was lower in that case, although still very real.

It also isn't just to tax people in order to pay for the children of others, except in dire emergency.  People like me who have paid for and raised our own children are now being asked to pay for the care of children we don't remotely know, including children who are raised in circumstances which we wouldn't approve of.  If, for example, we can be taxed to pay for childcare for these children, can we also justly require that they be raised with basic sets fo values, including the value of a two parent home, which quite a few won't have?  No, certainly not, we won't be allowed to suggest that.

I feel this way, I'd note, on a lot of programs in this area, the long lasting ones which provide examples of why going down this path is a bad idea.  I've mentioned the "free and reduced" lunch and breakfast programs before, which directly transfers the duty of feeding children from parent to government.  I know that it had good intentions, all of these things have unthinking good intentions.  The proposals to wipe out student debt or provide free college education also have good intentions, and also are all massively subject to the law of unintended consequences.  What they also are, without it really being thought out, are subsidies for industry in varying degrees.

I know that the ship has sailed on many of these things, the strong evidence against doing them notwithstanding.  It's almost impossible to go back, once these steps are taken.  Americans may imagine themselves in some quarters as being rugged individualist, but even people who imagine themselves to be real libertarians acclimate themselves to such things pretty quickly.  But it is interesting to wonder what would happen if things went the other way.  I.e., if, save for K through 12 education itself, the government simply got out of this area entirely.  Feed your own children, provide for you own children, no subsidies for childcare of any kind, and not even any governmental bodies that seek to enforce child support orders.  Leave it up to the individual.

It'd be really rough for some at first, but I suspect pretty quickly a lot of the old rules would rebound once the burdens returned to the individual.  It might even do more economically than proposals to raise minimum wages would, as lots of families would be back to one breadwinner.

But no, we're just going to keep in marrying the government and making it the big parent.

I should note that probably right away, if anyone reads this, there will be a claim that this is radically traditionalist or something, or maybe anti feminist.  Feminism, I'd note, is a term that's now so broad to pracitically not have a meanning without further refining, but in any event, none of that is intended.

Indeed, I'd note that its already the case that the public sector has, in some instances, taken care of this much the same way that it took care of health insurance during the 1940s.  It's a recruiting incentive.  Some big firms of various kinds have in house daycares so their female employees don't have to worry about finding one and still being able to get to work.

In addition to that, at least by my observation, it's also the case that workplaces have becoming much more child friendly over the years, particularly in recent years.  I never observed children in working spaces when I was  younger.  Never.  Only farms and ranches were the exception.  Now I see them all the time.  Its not unusual at all for female employees to bring children into the office for one reason or another, often for long hours, and for that to result in very little notice.   Therefore, I really don't think that the claim "women will have to choose to go childless" is true, although that no doubt has an economic aspect to it. The poorer you are, the fewer the options.  It's one thing to bring your child into a business office. It's quite another to your job at the bar or restaurant.

I also don't think that this would ipso facto mean an increase in abortions.  Indeed, the current legal trends are towards increasing restrictions in this area as both men and women support increasing restrictions.  And social trends seem to suggest that younger people are less interested in acting like their grandparents who came of age in the 60s and 70s in this area in general.

What I do think, however, is that it forces choices up front and therefore vest "moral hazard" where it ought to be vested, at the individual level.  That probably reemphasizes some old values while combing them with the new economy, which should be done.

It probably won't be, however.

That pretty much guaranties that this blog won't be receiving any Radial Feminist Of The Year awards.

Following that, we ran across this item on Twitter:

I don’t want to work. I want to be home with my baby and I can’t afford it. I hate that. I hate it so much.

My point would have been a different one at the time I first noted these things, but they're still relevant to this one.  Lots of people who would have entered their full adult years in their late teens and then gone on to pretty stable adult lives by their mid 20s, now are in college and university for many years instead by necessity.  Some are pursuing careers that they really want to be in, both men and women, but many are there by economic force or compulsion  The reason that's relevant is that they've become acclimated to it, and at the same time know that jobs they've trained for that they really dont' want won't be all that much when they obtain them.  

The solution?

Well, maybe they're making it now.  If much of the old economy was remade in a much more local, direct, fashion, it would not be a bad thing.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Did you work January 1?

Laborer working a press, January 1, 1920.

Yesterday was a Wednesday, but I didn't post a Mid Week At Work item because it was a holiday.

But I did go out to see if I could find a parts store open so that I could buy oil to change the oil in my truck, as it was overdue.  I found that all the chain stores were open, so I spent my day doing that.

When I say I spent my day, I mean it.  I haven't changed my own oil for awhile so I couldn't find a tool I needed and had to go to the store twice.  And it was a cold day and the 3500 won't fit all the way into the garage, so it was a project.  I bought a fuel filter too, but I'd forgotten that getting to the 3500's fuel filter is nearly impossible, so I didn't change that, even though I have the water in the fuel system light on.  Chances are a I have a loose connection.

Anyhow, so I spent the day doing something that I thought would take me just half a day, which was a disappointment, but probably not as much of one for people who worked a full day.

Did you work?

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Mid Week At Work: Job Rated. From when all trucks were work trucks.


Pickup trucks are still used for work, of course, but they've actually become the most popular single line of vehicle in the U.S.. . . at least for the time being.

As that has occurred, they've become lighter duty.  Not that there still aren't fine trucks being made, there are. But rather, there's some really light trucks out there as well.

In 1948, when Dodge declared that its trucks were "job rated", they were all stout.  Even their "Station Wagon", intended for urban use, was pretty stout compared to any other similar two wheel drive vehicle offered today.

Monday, September 3, 2018

Labor Day, 2018. A Query

 

I'm curious, amongst those who stop in here, of the following:

1.  How many of you work a job entailing manual labor?

2.  If you presently do not, how many of you have worked a job entailing manual labor?

3.  How many of you had parents or a parent that:
A.  Had worked a job entailing manual labor;
B.  Worked principally in a job entaling manual labor.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

A Mid Week At Work Query: How Do You Decompress?



Earlier this week we ran a distressing item on the distressing items in the most recent issue of the state's bar journal.  We didn't discuss every article in that issue, distressing or otherwise.  One of the articles was entitled Take Two Weeks, There Will Always Be Work.  The article counseled that lawyers should take two weeks off each year, and it's wise counsel.

The article also noted that a recent study determined that our colleagues in Canada now take "only" two to three weeks each year, which is down from an entire month in the summer and two weeks in the winter in the 1970s.  Man, that must have been the golden age. . . .Having said that, a lawyer I used to have a fair number of cases against once told me that lawyers in his county took December off at one time.  What with the holidays, late hunting seasons, and the end of the year, they didn't work Decembers.

I can't even imagine that occurring now.

 Some folks relax by riding.

I'm one of those people who bring the vacation statistics down.  I didn't take a vacation this year. . . or the year before.  I have taken two weeks off in a row since I started practicing law in 1990 exactly ones, and only once.  On a couple of other occasions, maybe as many as four times, I've taken a week off.  It just doesn't seem to happen.

That is bad, I'll omit.  But it's common in the United States.  We hear of vacation time becoming less and less used all the time.  And while it may be just me, it seems to me that the more self employed or professionally employed a person is the more likely it is that they won't take their vacation time.  That has an impact on a person and it is bad.

 William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, apparently cold relax at the office.

People need to decompress somehow from their job stresses. . . at least we're told that.  And of course vacations aren't the only way that's done.  There's hobbies, avocations of all sorts, sports of various types and the like.  It seems to me that most people I know have something along these lines they do. 

How about you?

Nellie Tayloe Ross relaxed by farming.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

A Mid Week At Work Query: What is the meaning of your job, (or does it have one)?

I suppose the title says it all.


When people speak about career fields they often attach a meaning to them, as in "serving people", "helping people", and the like.  But these terms can just be camouflage for fields in which the reality is much different and are sort of a workplace delusion used by people to justify the existence of their line of work and perhaps rationalize their place in it.  In some cases, however, the descriptions are very real.


What about your work?  Does it have a meaning, or at least a meaning to you?  If so, what is it?


Wednesday, October 11, 2017

A Mid Week At Work Query: How do you organize your week (and how do you stick to it)?



I'm curious, if you have the sort of job where you set your own schedule or tasks, in whole or in part, how to you manage that?

Do you reserve somethings for a certain day?  Do you have a day always dedicated to catching up, or something else?

Let us know.