resident Joe Biden started strong when he addressed White House Officials, telling them that he wanted to return to the core American values of “humility and trust.” Then he said this:
“I am not joking when I say this … if you ever work with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect … talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot … on the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
When I first hear that, I thought, “Hallelujah! That is precisely what we need–someone to take a hardline on proper behavior.:
And then I put my HR hat on and said, “but that’s terrible policy.” Here’s why.
To keep reading, click here: President Biden’s ‘Fire on the Spot’ Policy Is a Bad Idea for Your Business
I predict we’ll see more of this kind of nonsense, as people who grew up being taught harmful delusions such as “Critical Race Theory” enter the workforce. (In CRT, wanting your company to be color-blind is “racism” and making employment decisions merit based is “white supremacy.” Clearly nobody who believes such things should ever have the power to hire and fire, or they will get the company into well deserved trouble.)
HIs behavior and words to those White House government employees is going to have consequences as that type of job holder is extremely impossible to fire and he will have an extremely well-documented pile infractions concerning the exact same issue as they can continue to work even if they have multiple write-ups but not on the same issue. Why you think government workers are so unproductive, as they can complain about harassment for being written up and get the person who wrote them up in trouble while they continue their poor performance. Thanks a big part of the Swamp in government. Sorry for the sarcasm, but it is the only job that allows poorly performing workers to stay in place and get raises, vacations, save up sick leave over the years and we, taxpayers, have no way to deal effectively with their poor performance.
Government workers aren’t “so unproductive.” The US Government is required by law to be a model employer. That means that Fed career employees are entitled to Due Process when faced with potential adverse employment actions. The political appointees to whom President Biden addressed those remarks, however, are at-will employees — just like the vast majority of private-sector workers — who can be fired for little or no reason, so long as the firing doesn’t violate a small number of legal prohibitions. It’s good to have zero tolerance for disrespectful behavior, going from the very top on down. Just because some in the private sector are envious of the Due Process protections afforded our Government servants doesn’t make those protections bad policy. To the contrary, they prevent unnecessary turnover in the agencies that serve us Americans — saving the taxpayers money — and ensure a continuity of agency missions and services. That being said, President Trump failed to appoint Members to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews Federal firings, and — once reviewed — affirms almost all of them. As a result, employees that agencies have attempted to terminate have their appeals backlogged for multi-year periods of time. While the employees are off work and not getting paid, this prevents the agencies from filling those positions, which harms all taxpayers, including the 2 million Federal employees who are — of course — taxpayers too, and have to take up the slack for those unfilled positions.
^ All of this. (I see you, gb)
The problem isn’t in zero tolerance of disrespectful behavior. The problem is in who gets to decide what’s disrespectful. There’s no objective definition possible, so we’re talking about people being fired based on personal opinions. Or, worse, popularity contests.
“You’re Fired!”
Where have we heard that before?
I worked for the Federal government for about 12 years. In my experience, most workers worked hard. However, when I gave one employee a poor performance review, I was reprimanded by a higher-up manager. [ I guess that my employee complained about my review of her. ] Within a couple of years, I resigned from my Federal job and joined the private sector, where there are fewer protections for employees. At least, I can do my job as I see fit.
I like your approach, EHRL. I agree that racism should be stopped cold. And yet I can think of several occasions where I, having grown up with white privilege, said something clueless and rude without meaning any harm, and then realized that it did cause harm, and felt awful about it. In such a situation I would hope for a hard reset from the boss, a chance to rethink my words, and the opportunity to apologize to whomever I wronged. But if one warning didn’t serve to correct my behavior and I made the same error again, I agree that a firing would certainly be fair.
What’s interesting about this statement is that when something really, truly bad happens companies often tend to do damage control more than reprimanding the offender. This consists of basically gaslighting the witnesses or victims and somehow putting them in the defensive perhaps with a PPO. I love this concept Biden promotes, but the real world isn’t quite so fair.
Biden has been a Washington insider for 40 years.
If you’ve been happy with Washington over the past 40 years you’ll be happy with Biden as POTUS.
40 years go back to Reagan and cover a variety of Administrations, including both Bushes, Clinton, Obama and Trump. It would be hard to imagine a greater variety of leaders, governing styles, etc. I seriously doubt that there is anyone happy with everything that has happened in Washington in the past 40 years. Biden’s election represents a “change” one, just as did Reagan’s, Clinton’s, Obama’s and Trump’s.
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