Her description of certain union positions rings true to me because I recall that the Stamford Youth Foundation (Stamford, Connecticut) could not staff the variety and volume of after-school activities that it would have liked because union contracts required it to pay every teacher for the extra hours worked after the regular school day.  This deeply bothers me.

I am not against labor unions, and I believe they serve a useful purpose in being a check-and-balance on abusive management behavior.  However, the notion that volunteerism must be stamped out if there is a worker ready, willing, and able to do the same job for market-rate pay is wrong-headed.

One of the fundamental issues in all societies is the question of when and how much someone should be paid for performing a task.  If we believe that every activity that is currently the subject of volunteer work, or perhaps below minimum wage work (like the cutting of a neighbor’s lawn by a 12-year-old wielding a lawn mower) should be converted into unionized, market-rate wage-driven work, we will significantly reduce the number and variety of goods and services we can offer to one another.

The one story in Malkin’s op-ed piece that particularly troubled me was the reference to a complaint by union officials against volunteer firefighters who built sandbag barricades to protect the city from record flooding. Ultimately, the reason governments at all levels are in deep financial trouble is that they have wildly overpaid unionized workers for relatively low-skilled tasks, or for tasks for which there should not have been premium pay.  As I have said in previous blogs, I do not blame the unions for trying to get the pay and benefits they received, but I deeply blame the government officials who caved in to these demands.

As a society, we need volunteerism at all levels.  There has to be a zone of activities that we will do without expecting to be paid by the recipient of our services.  This zone should include character-building community projects by such organizations as the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts, emergency services by first responders and other volunteers in the event of a disaster, and charitable work.  If someone wants to donate services, as my daughter does when she performs at senior citizens homes, she should be able to do so.  Taken to a logical extreme, the position attributed to SEIU and other unions would suggest that a unionized musician charging the senior citizen home market rates should have the exclusive right to deliver performances to senior citizens.  This is an outrageous position, and I hope our government officials never allow it to become the prevailing view.

Two organizations, the Pine Street Foundation in California and the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, have each done reported studies which have concluded that dogs can reliably detect various kinds of cancers, such as prostate, breast and skin cancers, because tumor cells give off different odors from regular cells.  It will be quite interesting to determine whether their reliable detection is such that they can detect the presence of these diseases even earlier than more high-tech alternatives like 64-slice CT scans or MRI’s or nuclear magnetic resonance systems.  Dogs apparently have demonstrated as well that they can detect the imminence of an epileptic seizure minutes before the individual subject to the seizure has any symptoms.

If this research is supported and built upon, this could revolutionize medicine by providing much lower cost alternative ways of detecting diseases than the technologically-based solutions commonly used today.  At this stage, the medical establishment still treats these breakthroughs as experimental, and, while interesting, not ready for mainstream use.  However, this is an area that probably deserves more funding and a more serious investigative effort.

My understanding is these dogs, which are Labrador retrievers and Portuguese water dogs were not specially bred, but were trained at a relatively low cost and for a relatively limited period of time to achieve detection rates above 85%, with detection errors in the form of false positives occurring only 2% of the time. One interesting question is whether the dogs, with more training, could increase their detection rate and reduce false alarms to near zero.

When we think about dogs this way, we also start to open our minds to the potential of other animals to help us with tasks which have challenged us previously.  One social entrepreneur found a way to use rats’ sensory capability to detect land mines. Of course, we all remember the metaphor of the “canary in the coal mine.”  But dogs clearly have more potential to be our best friends than any of us had previously imagined.

Unemployment is psychologically devastating.  I know: I was unemployed for several months in early 1979, when I left my law firm and was trying to secure another legal position.  I was asked to look for another job because I was told I would not be made a partner.  My stay on the unemployment rolls was brief, but terrifying.  As a result, I empathize with anyone who has lost his or her job.

However, the news media do a disservice to those who are unemployed by giving the impression that their future is totally out of their control, and that giving up is a reasonable response to the situation. I have watched many people lose their jobs.  In fact, my first law client was an African-American with a sixth grade education, whose employer had wrongfully terminated him.  He was 43 years old, married with 11 children, and lived in a desperately poor part of Chicago.  Four years elapsed between his termination and his court-ordered reinstatement, but he found ways to cope with his situation and earn a living to support his family.

Those who transcend despair do so because they find small ways of taking control of their destiny. In his best seller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People , Steven Covey tells the story of Victor Frankl, a concentration camp victim, who found ways to assert control in an environment in which he appeared to be absolutely powerless.  Covey’s conclusion is that “it’s not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”

How do people who successfully cope with unemployment? First, they find or create income-earning opportunities, even if they are small or part-time.  I have watched people become dog walkers, funeral home greeters, taxicab drivers, tutors, market research survey takers (a job I did when unemployed after college), personal trainers, traffic crossing guards, temporary construction workers, house sitters, baby-sitters, and musical performers, in addition to those who secure minimum wage work as waiters or retail clerks.

Second, they learn new skills.  Many people have learned from friends how to sell on eBay and Amazon.com.  Many people will teach others how to sell items online, and those who learn can earn income and new and marketable skills.

Third, by working in temporary assignments, they audition for potential new employers.  Our long-term part-time baby sitter, who got a little incremental income from us every year, started with a temporary baby-sitting service and worked twice for us in 1993.  After that, we hired her directly, and she secured a small, but steady, income stream.

What many stories about unemployment miss is that people have the ability to get employers to create jobs for them. Those who do temporary work for an employer and develop and demonstrate skills the employer desperately needs are much more likely to get jobs created that match their skills than if they sit back and wait for a job to be created.

Fourth, they are reliable, courteous, and disciplined in managing their lives when unemployed. Someone I know worked recently as a recruiter for a temporary staffing firm.  He was astounded by the unreliability of many people for whom he was trying to find temporary work.  They would get an assignment, and then fail to show up for work.

Fifth, they volunteer in the not-for-profit sector to serve others less fortunate than themselves. Although the purpose of their volunteerism was to help others, they often secured full-time positions.

Sixth, they use or build support systems. In the 1930’s, African Americans in Harlem devastated by the Depression banded together to prevent any of them from being evicted.  They would hold rent parties to help the friend closest to eviction get current on their rent. Those who cope best with unemployment are more focused on building or drawing on support resources in times of economic disaster.

There is even a barter system that has been created in economically-depressed communities called TimeBanks.org, which helps match people with different skills with people that need those skills.  For work an individual does for others, he or she secures “dollars” that can be used to “purchase” services such as child care, transportation, home repair, and even companionship. This kind of exchange helps people connect socially with one another, learn new skills, and reduce their cost of living.  It keeps them active, and gives them a sense of control over their future, but creating a new support system for them.

Finally, they treat unemployment as a gift as well as a setback.  At Pitney Bowes, during my tenure as CEO, we went through a transition in which we wound down and ended our manufacturing operations in Stamford.  Many good manufacturing people had to leave the company.

I recall two encounters: one in Greenwich and one at a gardening store in Stamford.  In Greenwich, an angry custodian at a school at which my son was playing chess told me that I had ruined his life by the company’s decision to wind down Stamford manufacturing.

In Stamford, a different gentleman approached me and thanked me for making the manufacturing transition decision, which forced him to realize that he was much happier doing outdoor gardening work.  He discovered that many people needed more affordable landscaping services.  He had started a landscaping and yard maintenance business with another laid-off Pitney Bowes employee, and was happier than he had ever been in his life.

The news media does a very poor job telling a balanced story on the issue of unemployment.  They foster the myth that when unemployment occurs, the only way out is for someone else to create jobs for people.  As a result, an unemployed person comes to believe that the future is out of his or her control.  That’s devastating and morally indefensible.  We owe those displaced by unemployment  guidance on how to increase their likelihood of securing reemployment, and how to restore their sense of  and self-worth and self-control.

Our country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over many decades to reduce or eradicate poverty.  Governments at all levels have been part of the effort.  There are many explanations as to why these efforts have succeeded, if at all, only marginally.  As a member of the National Urban League board, and its former chairman, and as a person who has worked closely with many community-based non-profit social service organizations in Southwestern Connecticut, I have some thoughts on the subject.

The National Urban League, which will celebrate its 100^th anniversary in 2010, is a wonderful social services and civil rights advocacy organization, which has developed its programs through the benefit of rigorous research, experience from nearly 100 years of service delivery at its nearly 100+ affiliates, and incredible insight from leadership teams headed by great leaders like Whitney Young, Vernon Jordan, John Jacaob, Hugh Price, and the League’s current brilliant and accomplished leader Marc Morial.

I have become familiar with the Urban League’s affiliate programs, and visited one of its great affiliates recently.  The Urban League delivers services under many government-funded programs for such deep-seated problems as early childhood development, educational achievement gaps, health disparities, workforce skill gaps, foreclosures on homes, and the challenges of needy families.  Its advantages, as is the case with all high-performing non-profits, include the ability to react flexibly and in a deeply-personalized way to the problems in confronts in helping individuals and families.  It achieves phenomenal results in serving 1.3 million Americans a year in getting them ready to work, helping families avoid mortgage foreclosures and improve their financial literacy, providing vital child care and cash disbursement services to needy families, helping children with pre-school and after-school programs, and helping reduce health disparities.

However, when they, or other non-profits, provide human service programs through government grants, government creates a lot of inflexible, dysfunctional rules for program operation, and often mandates not only the software programs to be used, but the specific versions and process steps.  Usually, the software is outdated, is heavily driven by compliance, rather than program effectiveness, and requires a great deal of inputting by clerks and administrators. 

The other attribute of government programs is that there tend to be many of them and that they deal with pre-defined micro-segments of the communities they are serving.  Because of the inflexibility and complexity of the rules for program eligibility, an inordinate amount of effort is spent identifying the right program to help someone, and figuring out how to cobble together a holistic assistance package from multiple programs.  Governments do this because they do not trust anyone to spend government money without a lot of oversight, and because they are overly sensitive to small amounts of waste. 

On this last point, I think that career and politically-appointed government officials have always had acutely sensitive political antennae, but this sensitivity was accentuated by the 24×7 media environment, the blogosphere, and the excessively partisan political environment in which we operate today.  Governments are far more cautious in developing and implementing solutions that they were 40 years ago because the poisonous environment in which they operate.

Aside from the added cost and complexity of government, which we have less and less ability to afford, some individuals who need help cannot get it because they fall through the cracks between programs, or because the program rules have not anticipated their particular needs.  Organizations like the Urban League are effective precisely because they are close to the people they serve, seasoned and capable service providers, and highly flexible and cost-effective in the way they deliver services.

When governments micro-manage them, many of the advantages of using non-profit service providers are lost.  We need to hold service providers responsible for results when public money is used, not try to micro-manage how they do their jobs.  We need a complete rethinking on government delivers services, one which takes a lot of the micromanagement out of government.

On March 18, I spoke at a retirement party for one of the members of my executive assistant staff, Connie Telesco, an event that was truly one of the most special I have ever attended.

Retirement parties are a great tradition at Pitney Bowes.  They celebrate the career and life of the person honored in ways that recognize the person’s contributions to the company, enable friends and family to come together and strengthen relationships, and reinforce company values.    Connie’s party, through the superb leadership skills of my former executive assistant MaryJane McDonough, had all of those elements.

However, this event far surpassed the already high standard of Pitney Bowes retirement parties.  Connie, who served at the Company for 42 years, after having joined the Company right out of high school, is married to John Telesco, a Vietnam war veteran.  As the U.S. engaged in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, Connie remembered the inadequate emotional support U.S. citizens gave to John and other armed forces personnel when they were serving in Vietnam.

She investigated alternative methods for providing support to our armed forces personnel, and found the anysoldiers.com web site.  She began at a simple level: baking cookies and shipping them to personnel stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But she went far beyond that.  She broadened the range of items she sent, and even found ways to get items from others, such as athletic equipment and other kinds of foods, to the soldiers, sailors, and marines.

As one of the speakers, Dave Nassef, himself a Marine veteran, said: “In your mind, you were sending cookies.  To those receiving the cookies, it was an act of love.”  That remark contained a profound message.  When we give to others, it is often not the dollar value of what we give, or even the permanence of the gift, but the emotions conveyed by the gift.  As Dave noted, the mail call each day is a very emotional time for combat participants and a time that can energize or depress them.

When Connie started her efforts, she did it with no one prodding her to give, and was not doing it as part of a local, community, or company community service effort.  While she has won a Company Volunteer of the Year award because of her long and deep commitment to community service, this was truly an inspiring entrepreneurial effort that has made a big difference.  The difference came not only from what she did herself, but what she eventually inspired others to do.

We think of entrepreneurs as individuals who start successful for-profit businesses.  However, some of the best entrepreneurs are those who develop a new way of delivering high-impact charitable giving.  By that broader definition, Connie has to be a role model of successful entrepreneurship.

I called the President of our town baseball program and offered to donate a box of baseball equipment my younger son had outgrown, including metal bats, small-sized baseball gloves, and some other odds and ends.  At the bottom of the box were two torn baseball gloves, one of which was what I used when I was growing up.  To my surprise, he wanted everything, including the torn gloves.  When I asked about the torn gloves, he informed me that the program shipped torn gloves to Polish micro-businesses that repaired and resold them.

After that, whenever I spoke to potential donees of used items, I asked whether there were similar opportunities with other items.  The answer is yes.  I spoke to Wayne Elsey, the founder and CEO of Soles4Souls,  a non-profit based in the Nashville area, which collects old shoes and ships them to emerging markets to be refurbished and resold in those markets by micro-businesses.  He told me that he ships a few million pairs of shoes a year, but that he is touching just a small part of the potential market opportunity for shoes.

In the past, my wife and I would have donated our shoes to a local thrift shop, but we learned that, with the exception of sports-related footwear like children’s-sized ice skates or bowling shoes, Americans do not like to buy and wear used footwear.  As a result, much of what gets donated is not re-used and ends up getting discarded.  U.S. footwear marketers also do not like to compete with marketers of used footwear.

However, in emerging markets in which the cost of new footwear is too high for the average consumer, refurbished footwear is a great option.  The refurbishing and remarketing process creates revenue and profit opportunities for individuals and families, and the footwear fills a critical market need.

I am going to find out how many other market opportunities there are like this one to contribute used and unwanted items to micro-businesses that can refurbish or remanufacture items to be remarketed either here in America or in emerging markets.

We tend to believe that newer is better in all cases, but I know from my Pitney Bowes experience that some of our older equipment is more desirable for certain customers because it is more affordable, but, more importantly, because it has features and capabilities that we no longer provide in our standard products because an insufficient number of customers valued them.  However, there are niche markets where these features and capabilities are highly-valued.

There are many good reasons to support efforts like the shipment of baseball gloves to Poland or the shipment of footwear to emerging markets.  The efforts not only make consumer goods affordable for more people and provide business opportunities for individuals and businesses that refurbish them, but the re-use of these items conserves resources and avoids waste disposal.  Over time, we become better stewards of nature’s resources.

I hope to do a lot more with this insight and match more donors to worthy donees.  Anyone reading this who has information about potential opportunities should comment on this blog.