Walker walking backwards with Drug Testing during Labor Shortage, and Business is moving forward.

The recent court decision stopping work requirements for Medicaid recipients made it perfectly clear why: Medicaid wasn't designed to be a jobs program, it's a healthcare program. 

As I've mentioned before, the inhumane idea of withholding their health care to force people to work is beyond cruel, it's unthinkable, Dickensian. Yet it's being treated as another brilliant idea by Republicans dead set on blaming someone for something, anything, including the sin of unemployment.  

Now add to that, drug testing for health care and even food stamps, which is weaponizing the politics of resentment:

DWD: Pre-Employment Drug Testing Program Helps Workers Move from Dependence to Independence by Secretary Ray Allen: We have nearly 100,000 jobs available on Wisconsin's JobCenterofWisconsin.com website, and approximately 89,000 individuals in Wisconsin are unemployed. That’s right, we have more available jobs than we do people to fill them.

Not exactly. It makes more sense that during this worker shortage, businesses won't be so quick to walk away from a drug using job seeker, especially experienced potential employees. 

Something else. Wouldn't the state be giving "health care" to treat drug users anyway? 

Check out this great point by point easy to understand assessment of the jobs picture now and in the future by Manpower Group's Becky Frankiewicz. At about 2:30 into the clip, drug testing comes up, and Frankiewicz reveals that companies have changed their minds about using drug testing as a disqualifier. 

In other words, Scott Walker is going in the opposite direction of businesses. Which makes his policy strictly ideological and a waste of taxpayer money and time. But that's how it has been for 8 years: 

1. 46 percent of businesses are finding it difficult to find skilled workers, up from 14 percent right after the Great Recession.

2. 61 percent say communication skills, written and verbal are most important now.

3. Finally and long overdue, half of the companies are training workers, up 34 percent over the last 4 years. They have to build their own talent. Walker would have the state finance part of that instead.

4. Relaxing education standards. Because jobs and skills are changing so quickly, it's much more about what you can do, than about what you did in the past.

5. Borrowing the talent, meaning hiring free lancers and independent contractors.

6. Relaxing drug testing and criminal background history.

7. The workforce of tomorrow is actually the workforce of today. Yikes.

Manufacturers answer to Walker's Job Training, Drug Testing, Minimum Hours Labor Scam? Automation Push!

There’s nothing wrong with automation. It’s inevitable. Which is why so many economists are kicking around the idea of a “basic income” for the possible under and unemployed labor force of the future. No one is sure what the tech and information economy will bring, or how many good paying jobs will be created, so a backup program like a “basic income” is getting some attention now. 

Which makes Scott Walker's plan; drug testing/minimum hourly requirement/job training such a blatantly cruel scam and business knows it.

Check out what's really going on behind the scenes and just how seriously business is taking Walker's "reforms:" 

A concerted effort to boost manufacturing productivity in Wisconsin is gaining momentum … The Transformational Productivity Initiative (TPI) consists of a diagnostic assessment and strategy implementation … to boost their productivity, in large part, because of ongoing labor pool issues.

Job Training, or Dropping People from Food Stamps and Health Care? It’s a way to dump Wisconsinites from safety net programs, saving money that Republicans can hand out to keep companies in our state, real "free market-like."

While we know the malarkey over the “skills gap” was a business con to import cheap foreign labor, it’s now morphing into an corporate image saving conversions to automation. Nice to know Walker’s effort to job train isn’t being taken seriously by big business in Wisconsin. So how do manufacturers see us, family supporting real human beings?

Kelly Armstrong, director of sector strategy development for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (said) “TPI is a long-term solution, and being more productive and efficient is part of the solution to the talent gap, the body gap and the skills gap,”

Randy Bertram, director of sustainability and operational excellence at the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership, said “There are workforce issues that aren’t going to change any time soon and this will at least partially offset a decline in workforce participation. Companies are making fairly significant investments in automation technology.” Productivity depends in part on the efficiency of workers, but a larger influence is technological advancement.

With Industry 4.0, also called the fourth industrial revolution, companies are utilizing sensors and “smart” machinery to make their manufacturing processes ever more efficient ... TPI is working with Wisconsin manufacturers to implement the groundbreaking productivity-boosting practices. 

Productivity Flat in Walker's Wisconsin, who knew: And the truth continues to dribble out:

“Productivity equals prosperity,” said Lee Swindall, vice president of sector strategy development with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). “But we’ve been literally flat in manufacturing productivity since 2004. I was flummoxed. We have a major productivity problem.”

Despite wage growth being almost nonexistent in Wisconsin, we're being told...

What’s more, the combination of rising real wages and declining productivity is a recipe for inflation.

Sorry Republicans, can't "Blame Obama" for lower Labor Participation Rates!

Republicans are the first to brag about their states low unemployment numbers only, but first to trash similar Democratic numbers by bringing up their sometimes lower worker participation rates. We're talking about people who are out of work and not looking for a job. Republicans like to suggest they're lazy and too dependent on overly generous safety nets.

Wrong.

The Great Recession changed a lot of things in corporate America. The biggest adjustment came when business decided to cut the number of full time workers so they could rely on cheaper parttime seasonal labor when demand increased. But that's just one factor.

Pay attention Republicans, because recent analysis explains why labor participation rates are lower, and have been trending that way for some time. Brookings Institute:

The disappointing trend in participation is almost certainly linked to longer term trends in society and the economy that have pushed down participation rates among prime-age men and, more recently, prime-age women. The President’s Council of Economic Advisors recently analyzed the long-term trends (here and here). It notes that most of the participation decline since 2007 has been concentrated among men. This is not surprising, since the prime-age male participation rate has been trending downward since the mid-1950s.

Some of the long-term decline in this country is traceable to declining employer demand for relatively unskilled workers engaged in physically demanding jobs. Part of it, too, is the result of shifts in family living arrangements and in women’s role in the labor market, both of which have reduced the central role of prime-age men as the principal breadwinner of a family. (Also) many Americans entering employment every month were jobless and did not report looking for work in the previous month. 

Beside societal changes, certain occupations will also increase or decrease participation rate numbers as well. Which means it's hardly the bragging point some want you to believe it is, right Scott Walker?  The chart proves you can't "blame Obama," since the declining rate has been going on for the last 56 years.

Myth: Obama's Welfare Nation causing Low Labor Participation Rate!

Hanging out at the Conservative Tribune online I found out why the labor participation rate is so low; retiring baby boomers. Look at the graph and years of high participation, it's pretty obvious.(the image was already blurry)

The story itself never made that claim, but instead whined about the participation rate and blamed Obama, saying he was successfully turning the U.S. into a welfare nation.

I'm posting this because I thought it was funny, and because of the blatantly juvenile way they went after Obama:

The U.S. workforce now has the fewest number of laborers since 1978. For the first time ever the number of Americans 16 and older who can work but don’t has exceeded 93 million.

Obama’s plans to turn the greatest nation into a welfare nation appear to be working.

The participation rate in the economy has dropped from 62.8 percent to 62.7 percent, a 37-year low. The BLS determines the number of workforce-able people as those who are 16 years and older. 

But what about all of the millions who can work but don’t? The BLS claims that the largest factor is the aging baby boomer generation (H/T cnsnews.com). “The baby boomers’ exit from the prime-aged workforce and their movement into older age groups will lower the overall labor force participation rate, leading to a slowdown in the growth of the labor force,” explained the BLS.

Here's the next line, and the lunacy that is the right wing...

But then, none of this should really surprise anyone. Obama has been increasingly encouraging illegals and able-bodied-but-lazy Americans to join the welfare state and let the U.S. government care for their needs while they sit on the couch and watch reruns. And vote Democrat.

Share this if you think Obama is intentionally ruining our great nation by encouraging Americans to depend on government handouts instead of their own God-given ability to provide for themselves.