Today is Labor Day in the United States. It was established as a Federal holiday to celebrate “labor” in 1894 after the Pullman Strike where 250,000 railroad workers went on strike to protest that wages were being cut but not rents at their company housing or other costs in the company town.
With the lobbying of the railroad companies, the US Army was called in and 30 people died as a result of the violence. Six days after the strike was over, President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law.
Out of all that effort, Americans get one day off of work.
Whoopty doo!!! Crumbs from the American pie.
We have allowed our employers to gain too much power.
We—their most valuable asset—walk out of the door every day at 5pm.Unfortunately, many employers believe that their employees are replaceable and their ideas and technologies are unique. It’s the opposite. Ideas and technologies can be copied, but our individual DNA which collectively becomes the company culture cannot.
The difference between Apple and Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, Toyota and General Motors, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines isn’t ideas or technology. It is people. Despite this fact and an increase in corporate profits (red line in chart below), according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, wages (blue line) continue to be depressed. In other words, companies are profiting more while employees are getting less.
Why?
Many of us treat our employers like parents.
We rely on them to tell us what to do and when. We rely on them to give us an allowance for doing our chores. We rely on them to put a roof over our head and food on our table. We rely on them to take care of us until retirement. We rely on them to give us days off. This is a place of weakness and it’s time for us all to grow up.
But Jullien, “I have to pay my mortgage,” or “I need health insurance,” or “I can’t just leave even if I wanted to because of the economy.” These statements externalize the problem as the demands of our family, our employers, or the bad economy, when the true cause is within us—it is our choices and fear as employees that have allowed our employers to gain so much power.
Though “company housing” and “company towns” don’t exist in the same way today, many of us have fallen victim to the same trap that the Pullman employees did over 120 years ago. The easiest way for an employer to retain an employee for the long haul is to help them increase their cost of living by way of a 30-year mortgage and starting a family. Once that happens, in most cases, they have us until they don’t need us. Ask yourself, if you didn’t have a mortgage or spouse or kids, would you feel more empowered to make choices about your career?
We don’t need unions for power. We need to know our true value.
I’ve lived through teacher strikes and BART strikes in Oakland, CA and grocery store strikes in Los Angeles, CA and they’ve never made sense to me. A group of people begging for more from someone who doesn’t appreciate them. Even if they get more, they are are still unappreciated and now probably resented too. Why not seek another opportunity?
As an entrepreneur, I believe in paying individuals according to the value they create, not their tenure, title, education, or economy. While unions may help bring up the minimum value of a group of employees, it’s not always warranted if the value created by the employees doesn’t exceed what they desire in wages. Even still, the best way to create checks and balances with our employers is to know our individual true value and feel free to “take our talents to South Beach” or wherever we want to despite the economy.
As employees we have to understand that in any company, there are 3 types of employees—profitable, break-even, and unprofitable. Profitable employees always have options. Break-even employees have less options. And unprofitable employees oftentimes feel stuck.
1. A profitable employee creates more value than they take. These are the high performers. They can be at any level of the organization from the secretary to CEO. Any company with enough profitable employees will ultimately be profitable.
2. A break-even employee creates just as much value as they take. This is someone who brings in $50,000 in profit but then takes that same $50,000 in the form of salary and benefits. It can also be a secretary whose daily work isn’t directly connected to increasing revenues or decreasing costs, but without them, the organization couldn’t run efficiently.
3. And an unprofitable employee takes more value than they create. Many unprofitable employees hide in the middle of the organization. They do just enough to not get noticed or laid off, but they don’t give their best. According to this definition, a CEO can be an unprofitable employee too and in many cases, a lot of executives are overpaid and still manage to get large bonuses despite layoffs and consecutive quarters of losses.
Given these categories, which one do you feel you are? Whichever one you are is based on your mindset.
Hence, The Labor Day Manifesto
I believe that if all 156,000,000 of us in the US workforce (and the millions more abroad) embrace the mindsets below around how we relate to our employers, work, and money, the pendulum will shift from a fear-based economy where employers have all of the power and we are at their whim to a fairness-based economy where we are compensated for our results and feel free to make choices about where, when, and how we work.
1. We believe in working with companies, not for them. Nobody owns our time or talent except us. I am not just a businessman or businesswoman. I am a business in and of myself and I choose who I work with.
2. We believe employees create jobs too. Through understanding the basic principles of business and our roles, new jobs emerge from employees’ collective effort, not just companies or CEOs. On the flip side, employees’ collective effort also has the power to destroy jobs.
3. We believe that every human being ultimately works for themselves first. Having one client in this uncertain economy is dangerous for employees as it is for employers. Therefore, we seek to diversify our streams of income by leveraging our gifts, talents, strengths, and skills to create value in more than one place. Our full-time employers are just our biggest clients (rather than our only client or our only source of income).
4. We believe in being fully present when serving any client, especially our employer. We do not believe in cheating on the job—using time or resources provided by our employer for alternative or personal purposes.
5. We believe that the “Greatest Depression” is the gap between who we are and what we do. This gap breeds low performers and low quality work which leads to unsatisfied employees and ultimately unemployment.
You are the CEO of your life. If you want to capture more value in this world in the form of income, you have to create it first. As I’ve said before, your income will be directly proportional to the size of the problems you solve for others and your value will be based on what you can do that others can’t do.
I hope that you are enjoying your day off and that this manifesto inspires you to continue doing great work and create jobs even if you’re not a full-time entrepreneur or CEO.
Wishing you more happy hours,
