Thinking Entrepreneur

An owner’s dispatches from the front lines.

I just read about the proposal that would make it “an unlawful employment practice” if a business with 15 or more employees refuses to hire a person “because of the individual’s status as unemployed.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I do understand how this started. Some businesses have been advertising job openings with a stipulation that the unemployed need not apply. I understand what these businesses are thinking. It is usually a safer bet to hire people who are already working — both because they are going to leave their jobs only if they really feel good about the opportunity and because they haven’t been fired or chosen to be laid off because they were the least valuable people around. But those aren’t the only possibilities.

Obviously, there are plenty of good people out there who are unemployed through no fault of their own. I have hired some, and they have worked out well — very well in fact. Putting “unemployed need not apply” in an ad is appalling and cruel. It’s also foolish. Talk about bad public relations. And talk about lazy. A hiring person can’t even take the time to go through some résumés from people who are unemployed? If these hirers worked a little harder and looked a little deeper, they might actually find someone who has what they need. My guess is that most of these ads are from recruiters who can’t justify their existence by offering candidates who are out of work — that wouldn’t be “recruiting.”

But the proposed solution to this problem in President Obama’s jobs plan is a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

It is not hard for me to imagine that someone could think this proposal is a good idea, because most people have never run a business. But there are some problems with this desperate attempt to help the long-term unemployed. First of all, it probably will work — at least for lawyers. Every out-of-work lawyer will find plenty of opportunities to extract money from small-business owners (the bigger companies have lots of lawyers to defend them): “Settle with my client, or we will sue you.” And it hardly matters if you are guilty or innocent. Either way, you have to waste time, energy and money defending yourself, which of course the contingency lawyer knows. Do you realize how expensive it can be for an employer to defend even a baseless claim? How do you prove your innocence? And the bottom line is this: Even if this goes through, it still won’t compel business owners to hire someone they don’t want to hire.

Who are the biggest losers in this scheme? Everyone. This is just one more reason for a business owner to avoid hiring anyone (there are other reasons, as well). Remind me: What is the purpose of the president’s jobs bill? In the article, I read that some “Republicans and some employers criticized the White House’s proposal. I get the Republican part, but … some employers? Some? How could any employer not be concerned about the exposure to frivolous lawsuits? Maybe it’s the employers with fewer than 15 employees, since they would be exempt. And what kind of sense does that make? They can do whatever they want? Think about that for a moment. Why is it O.K. for them to discriminate but not the employer with 20 employees? That is even more ludicrous. It occurs to me that because I have more than 15 employees I am being discriminated against! Whom can I sue? Maybe this is the only way to make money today.

Let me make something perfectly clear. I am not a right-winger, a left-winger or even a libertarian (at least not yet!). I am just a business owner with 110 employees navigating a difficult economy. I have hired some people of late, and things are slowly getting better.

Because I don’t like to complain without offering a suggestion, here is my idea: on the job training. Make every politician who has never had to make a payroll work in an H.R. department for a week. He would gain a different perspective. For most of us who are trying to grow and hire, the “help” they are offering is starting to get discouraging. Please stop.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b3a83f1219cdbebc4eae13709637438f