It's Time For A Compulsory National Service Program

I have for a long time been a proponent of compulsory national service, especially for those between the ages of 18 and 25. If I had had that option when I was in that age range, I would have welcomed it.

National service would line up with what President John F. Kennedy said in the 1960s,"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Recently I was pleasantly surprised to read in Arnold Rampersad's biography of the African-American author Ralph Ellison that "Ralph called for the formation of a kind of compulsory national service, in which youths could choose either military or civilian involvement."

It wouldn't be a bad idea to extend participation to able-bodied individuals in their 30s and 40s as an alternative to welfare-to-work programs which only line the pockets of for-profit workfare company executives and do little to nothing to improve the economic and employment possibilities for people in need.

Here would be a golden opportunity to offer on-the-job training, coupled with a living wage. The program would not only provide candidates in the program with meaningful work experience instead of low wage, dead-end jobs, it would benefit the country as a whole, especially the many infrastructure projects that need to be done.

I see so many people--young, middle-age, and beyond--who hang out on street corners or building stoops instead of being involved in productive activities.

If the Republicans are truly serious about reducing the welfare rolls as well as crime (and recidivism), they should get behind a national service program. It would be one of the best things that could happen to this country.

Donald J. Trump, The Terminator-in-Chief

Donald Trump is one of about 28 successful people interviewed for Harvey Mackay's We Got Fired!...And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us (Ballantine Books, 2004).

Others interviewed for the book include boxing legend Muhammad Ali, talk show host Larry King, entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg, and tennis star Billie Jean King. Trump's is the lead interview.

At the time the book was published, Mackay was, and probably still is, a syndicated columnist and motivational speaker.

"In the early 1990s," Mackay remarked as a preface to the Q&A interview, "Trump was in the red. Not millions. But billions." Among the setbacks were his failing Atlantic City casinos.

"Although [Trump]was never in his life actually fired from any job," acknowledged Mackay, "Donald Trump experienced far worse. The financial community and the press pulverized him." This happened at a time when he was having a lot of financial woes and was an easy target for his enemies.

Mackay, in total awe of Trump's financial wizardry, referenced Trump's book, Trump: The Art of the Comeback, in which "he chronicled perhaps the greatest personal rebound in financial history." That led to his hit NBC-TV reality show, The Apprentice, which premiered in 2004 and ran for ten years with him as the host.

According to Joshua Green, the author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, 2017), "Mark Burnett, the show's creator, had originally sold the concept to NBC as one where Trump would host The Apprentice for only the first season, after which he would give way to a succession of iconic business moguls, such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, or Martha Stewart." Following the airing of episode one, NBC decided, said a network executive, that "we want more Trump." And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Mackay, in a brief phone interview, asked Trump how he went about firing people. Trump told him that "I've fired people slowly, letting them down gently over a period of months and even years. And I've fired people on the spot. Whenever you terminate someone," he continued, "the end result is always the same. They always hate you. There are certain people whom I've not only eased out over a period of months, I even got them new jobs. [Italics mine.] Then I found out that they still hate me."

Did Trump try to find new jobs for former FBI director James Comey and former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara after he fired them shortly after being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States? I'm certain that he didn't.

Customer Service With Courtesy And Know-How

It's been a while since I read the late journalist Nat Hentoff's Boston Boy, a memoir of his youth, but I remember a section of the book regarding a Boston candy store where he worked. The store management required all employees to master from cover to cover the store's rule book before they could be promoted from,say, a stock person to a counter person.

I wonder sometimes how many stores today are as meticulous as that Boston candy store was about training their employees in dealing with customers (especially the difficult ones) as well as the merchandise.

Looking For Work Via Television

On city-owned WNYE/Channel 25 in New York, there was a weekly program called Job Hunt that aired right after the 2008 financial crisis that caused mass layoffs and housing foreclosures across the country.

Each week different guests would discuss a particular job-search topic and critique the job-search strategy of that week's job seeker who was someone the New York Daily News had profiled in its Monday career section.

As the job seeker spoke of his or her job search goals, they would appear on-camera from different angles. This approach reminded me of the time my mother went on TV seeking employment as a domestic worker. This was in the early 1960s when we were living in Los Angeles.

She went on the John J. Anthony Show, which was an advice show broadcast from a studio at 1313 North Vine Street in Hollywood. I think the show was on Channel 9, KHJ-TV. As I sat in the studio, I could see her image on the black-and-white monitors. They wouldn't show her whole face, unlike the Job Hunt broadcasts. The camera would focus on her hands, her mouth, maybe a side view as she was being interviewed by John J. Anthony's wife. Mrs. Anthony was so short that she had to sit on a telephone book behind a large desk.

In a far corner of the studio was the psychic Criswell, who might have been a regular feature of the show. His famous line before each prediction was "I predict...." Years later when I saw the biopic Ed Wood, about the world's worst film director, and starring Johnny Depp as Wood, the actor portraying Criswell brought me back to the time I saw him in the flesh.

After my mother's TV appearance, I vaguely recall her receiving a few job offers. You could say that John J. Anthony (1902-1970) whose real name was Lester Kroll and who at one time had been an actor, was doing back then a forerunner to today's video resume.

I often wonder if that particular show was recorded and if so, does it exist in some vault somewhere? For all I know, it might be on YouTube, like everything else these days.

A Tale Of Three Quarrels

In the Notes section of James McGrath Morris's Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2015), he quotes from an article that was part of a series called "Industry USA" that Payne wrote for the Chicago Defender in 1951. The series regarded postwar employment of African Americans in Chicago.

A plant manager (presumably white) is quoted as saying, "When two white people have a quarrel, it's just a quarrel. If two Negroes quarrel, it's a disturbance; but if a white person and a Negro quarrel, it becomes an 'incident.'"

Sad to say, more than sixty years later, that statement still applies.

English Speakers Need Not Apply

I have seen Help Wanted signs posted on the windows of several restaurants in New York advertising openings for a delivery man or a dishwasher but in Spanish only. Such signs give an English-speaking job seeker the idea that they need not bother to apply. To me this is discrimination. If it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, etc., then why are these signs permitted?

Finding Summer Jobs For Low-Income Youth

If Norberto Ellemberger has anything to say about it, the devil will find fewer hands--and minds--to lead astray this summer. That's because Ellemberger is the executive director of the Summer Jobs '86 Program, sponsored by Coopers and Lybrand, an international accounting and consulting firm.

Since 1981, the program, a brainchild of the New York City Partnership, Inc., has found employment for more than 100,000 low-income students between the ages of 16 and 21. Each year, a different company spearheads the program, bringing with it an increase in job offers. For example, last year when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was the sponsor there were 31,500 jobs filled, This year, Coopers and Lybrand, says Ellemberger, has pledges of 35,000 jobs from companies all over the five boroughs, with the majority of them in Manhattan.

The slogan for this year's campaign is that the city's youth are its "Greatest Natural Resource." And the fact that these are low-income youths has nothing to do with their capacity or willingness to do a good job. "I don't think the public perception of youth," says Ellemberger, a C & L general partner, "especially [those] coming from low-income families, is close to reality. [The public] always thinks about drugs, alcohol, pregnancy. I've been around these kids this year, and I'm impressed by the quality of the kids. Many of the ones I have met I can see running their own businesses in the future. Some other ones will be working for small businesses or large corporations."

"If you look at [the job situation] on a long-term basis," he continues, "there will be a significant shortage of labor in the future. The other day, the Port Authority [a joint government agency of the states of  New York and New Jersey] came out with a report saying that the 18 to 24 age bracket is going to be reduced by 25 percent by 1995. We'll be dealing with a labor market that will have fewer people available [to it]. The fewer people that we have had better be trained and skilled. Otherwise, we're going to have problems. Also, keep in mind that an unemployed kid of today may become the unemployed adult, therefore putting more pressure on the government for social services and the like. There are all sorts of ramifications."

So it is in the self-interest of the business community to provide jobs to qualified and motivated youth. However, Ellemberger is quick to point out that the Summer Jobs '86 Program "is not a charity program. We're offering tangible benefits to the kids, to the businessmen. Everybody benefits all around. The kids have an opportunity to establish more credentials in these companies, and the employer can use the kids in such a way that they can increase the productivity of their regular, full-time employees."

The companies participating in the program represent a wide range of the private sector, from general service industries to professional services. The size of a company is of no importance; if there is a job to be filled, a student will be placed in a mom-and-pop operation as quickly as he or she would be in a Fortune 500 corporation.

The name of the game is matching the right student with the right employer. That is done by one of the five public agencies receiving and processing student applications. Only those students who meet the hiring requirements of a specific employer are sent to the interview. The students hired by the employer receive no less than the current minimum wage of $3.35 an hour (although the hourly rate can go higher depending on the job duties), must work a minimum of  20 hours per week, for a period of at least seven weeks. The employer upon entering the program must agree to those terms.

Ellemberger, as the commander-in-chief of this awesomely massive endeavor, spends "most of my time carrying the gospel throughout the boroughs and to organizations, letting them know what they have available to them. Once they know, they take advantage of the program. Another obligation I have to this program is to show the kids that there is a lot of opportunity available. If they study, if they work hard, those opportunities will materialize."


This is an excerpt from an article that was originally published in the Harlem Weekly newspaper in 1986. This article deserves a follow-up piece.