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Just Job Wars

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Clarissa

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I especially like it when people go, a propos the Kavanaugh circus, “but it’s JUST a job interview!”

Well, duh. These are job wars. The rules for the job wars are being set right now. And as I keep saying, it always starts with folks it’s easy to despise.

So yeah, it’s just a job. It’s just a promotion. It’s just tenure. Sounds pretty unimportant until it’s your job, your promotion, and your tenure.

Oh, it’s only going to touch the icky people? This can’t possibly happen to the good, righteous, mousy little me? Yes, absolutely, let’s keep holding on to that. In the meantime, let me go delete a bunch of posts from a decade ago just in case I ever need to start searching for a job.

9 responses to “Just Job Wars”

  1. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Instead of the essay I was going to write in your comments, I leave you with this:

    The slippery slope has already fell down in an avalanche so your argument would have little traction with the vast majority of working people, including many white collar office workers in the United States.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I don’t think that the vast majority has yet had to provide documentation of which parties they visited as teenagers for decades ago. This is not the end of the line. It’s the beginning.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        For faculty hires here we check credit rating, status of any civil suits including divorce proceedings, and more. A faceless committee looks at this and then tells the department whether or not they approve of the person. If they say there’s a criminal background that should disqualify them, then there is, no questions asked, and THAT allegedly protects their privacy. This is the kind of thing Kavanaugh is for. I was a union organizer in graduate school and yes it hurt my career. Etc. People in politics really get vetted.

        It’s not just a job, it’s a lifetime appointment to the supreme court. It is also not a criminal investigation. The question isn’t did they commit prosecutable crimes but who are they. Once again, it’s one thing to hire an IT expert, another to tenure someone, and QUITE another thing again to give someone as much power as Kavanaugh is about to be given. What he’s gotten out of DOES matter at this level.

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      2. Z Avatar
        Z

        He offered the calendar (as though that would prove something). Have you ever been visited by a G-man investigating someone who has applied for a job with CIA, NSA, any branch of military intelligence? I’ve had them show up to ask all sorts of silly things. Was this college roommate gay, did this high school classmate criticize the government, ever mention the possibility of subversion, express solidarity with Palestine, etc. And this is not new.

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  2. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Is Rosenstein fired, expecting to be fired or offering his resignation?
    The Latest: McCabe says Russia probe could be ‘at risk

    NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (all times local):

    12:01 p.m.

    Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe says that if Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein leaves his post, it puts the special counsel’s Russia investigation “at risk.”

    The Associated Press has confirmed that Rosenstein is heading to the White House with the expectation that he will be fired. Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia election meddling and has been the probe’s chief public defender.

    The development comes just days after reports that in the days after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Rosenstein had raised the idea of secretly recording President Donald Trump and of invoking the 25th Amendment to have the Cabinet remove the president from office.

    McCabe says in a statement that he had “no role” in providing information of “any kind” for those news reports.

    __

    10:50 a.m.

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expecting to be fired Monday at the White House, after critical comments about President Donald Trump.

    That’s according to a source familiar with his thinking who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

    It follows reports Friday that Rosenstein floated the idea of secretly recording Trump last year and that he raised the idea of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump as unfit for office. Rosenstein has denied the reports.

    10:40 a.m.

    President Donald Trump has not decided whether to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for reportedly questioning the president’s fitness to serve.

    Trump told Geraldo Rivera in an interview aired Monday that he’s looking at what, if anything, to do about Rosenstein’s reported actions. The New York Times first reported that in 2017, Rosenstein had proposed secretly recording Trump and suggested his removal from office. Trump laid blame for the controversy at the feet of his attorney general.

    “He was hired by Jeff Sessions,” Trump said in the interview, which was aired on “Fox & Friends.” As for Rosenstein’s future, Trump says, “We will make a determination. It’s certainly a very sad story.”

    Rosenstein issued a pair of denials, saying The Times report is inaccurate.

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  3. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    Clarissa, there is nothing to suggest he is undergoing an unusually intrusive or degrading job interview process that is inappropriate for the job he is seeking and that is some harbringer of processes in the future when for many people, they are already there.

    For example:

    Many hotel chains will ask for your social media accounts ids to be a front desk clerk. If you want to work for many retail chains or a hospital chain you have to be pee-tested and agree to random pee-testing. Do you know how many job applications for retail stores repeatedly ask in several ways if you are a thief or if you take drugs or if you’ve committed a crime or demand you submit to a credit and background check?

    If you want to work for the government, you have to be fingerprinted and they do a background check and god help you if you can’t find the dead supervisor from 20 years ago at the hospital that no longer exists.

    I walked out an interview many years ago because they sprung a non-compete on me at the interview. If you want to work for H&R Block they also make you sign a non-compete. Fucking sub shops try “non competes.”

    And all of those jobs pay far less, have less prestige, less power, and less longevity and security than a Supreme Court justice. In effect, you are arguing he should be better treated and under less scrutiny than a goddamn sandwich artist.
    You think of course, “He’s a white collar worker who uses his mind.” But that should mean more scrutiny rather than less, if at all.

    And it’s ridiculous to act like this guy is being persecuted when he is not pro- worker’s rights himself at all and would love to go back to the 19th century.

    Gorsuch thinks firing a trucker is justifiable even if staying with his truck meant he would’ve died of hypothermia. Kavanaugh thinks OSHA shouldn’t apply to someone getting drowned by a killer whale in front of an entire audience opinion, here (dissent)

    And I’m supposed to care about some slippery slope argument about social media and terrible job interview questions and processes in this context? Let him live by these rules instead of whining “omg I was young”, “waah, what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep” (did I mention that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were two years apart at that high school).

    There’s also mugshot sites and in some jurisdictions every interaction down to traffic tickets is easily searchable and accessible online to the general public. Of course with the other people you simply never get a call back and of course it’s standard condition of employment for many that states if an employer discovers anything about you after a background check or any lies, they can fire you for cause at any time. Actually most states are “at-will.” So “OMG the horror of this interview process for a lifetime sinecure” is not going to register.

    Who the hell has a job for life now?

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    1. el Avatar
      el

      \ Who the hell has a job for life now?

      After all the talk about courts, the answer was clear – life prisoners in jail.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Look at my most recent post. Ten years ago, I would have asked the question. Completely in good faith, just to be helpful. Today, I recognize that it’s a horrible, deeply harmful thing to do. But in the past, I might have asked it. I don’t remember doing it but I have no proof I didn’t. I’m sure 10 years from now, the question would be considered even more unacceptable and extremely harmful than it is now. If somebody decides they want my job, it will be super easy to accuse me of asking it in the past, long before I knew how wrong it was.

      I’d so much rather be pee-tested than be ideology-tested on past actions I don’t even remember but can’t disprove. I can comply now but I can’t present any evidence that either my urine or my ideology were clean according to today’s standards 20 years ago.

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  4. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    What Does it Take to Satisfy Character and Fitness Requirements?

    Keep in mind the ABA is talking about character and fitness to be admitted to the bar in any state, graduating even from the bottom of the shittiest ABA accredited law school to be an ambulance chaser… You’re going to tell me fucking Kavanaugh is ill-served by this process?

    Among the items that bar examiners will review are your credit reports, income tax returns, and records relating to any civil litigation or criminal prosecution you’ve been involved in. If an applicant has ever failed to live up to a financial obligation, it will likely be discovered.

    One item you should have in hand before you even apply for the bar is your own credit history. Credit histories can be wrong. You do not want to find out after the bar has already red-flagged your file that you were the victim of an inaccurate credit report.

    Past-due debts, bankruptcies, failure to file or pay taxes, failure to pay child support, and bad checks are among the items that may raise a red flag. If you want to learn more about this issue, two Florida cases, Florida Board of Bar Examiners re: J.A.F., 587 So. 2d 1309 (Fla. 1991), and Florida Board of Bar Examiners re: M.A.R., 755 So. 2d 89 (Fla. 2000), illustrate the type of financial irresponsibility that can result in denial of admission.

    Several bar examiners stressed to me that the amount of debt is not the most important thing. “It is not the debt itself that causes an applicant to have problems but how the applicant incurred, dealt with, and resolved the debt,” noted one. For example, bar examiners typically take a far dimmer view of someone whose bankruptcy resulted from massive credit card debts than from illness, divorce, or a failed business.

    No matter how you acquired your debt, the worst thing that you can do is nothing. As one examiner explained, “In evaluating financial irresponsibility, we do not require applicants to be current with all creditors, and we do not serve as a collection agency, but we do require honesty in dealing with creditors and do not look favorably on attempts to deceive or hide from them.”

    Lack of candor. Many grads are caught by surprise when they are called out by the bar for lack of candor. Bar officials will double-check everything their investigators find against your law school and bar applications, and if something significant is missing from either, you’ll find yourself in a world of trouble….

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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