Let’s get serious about “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.” Why is it that when people get fired too few of us actually care as to why the person was fired? Why are we so eager to move on instead of investigating the problem? We have a group of individuals “Chronically Unemployed.” Why are they unemployed? What did they do to get fired or “Left Behind.” We don’t leave anyone behind at war. Are we truly interested in fixing unemployment or are we just providing lip service? How much lipstick can we put on this unemployment pig?

To lower rates of unemployment, we must tackle the problem at the roots. Everyone undergoes a background check and the history revealed in your employment record is almost as important as your credit score. Anyone with unresolved employment disputes could be forced to compete at a tremendous disadvantage. This history never goes away and it is shared from corporation to corporation. We have a duty to get it right. The individual is powerless. He or she is unable to resolve the problem with any level of fairness. We are denying “Due Process.” An innocent and good person can be fired at will and left to survive at the mercy of their next employer. How many innocent people can’t pass an employment background check based on incorrect information? We don’t ask and the corporations don’t tell us. Due process is denied.

With any unresolved issue, the new employer can now be prejudiced by discovery. There is no mechanism to address controversial issues of the past. Individuals are marked with scarlet letters. Basically, innocent people can be forced to swim against a rushing tide that drowns them in debt as they lose the benefit of doubt. These individuals left behind become “Untouchable.” Plagued by their checkered past, they have no future and no chance to address the chronic situations that prevent future gainful employment opportunities. Untouchables form a solid core in unemployment that only inflate the numbers. Chronic problems prevent the real problems from ever being addressed. Employers can get away with murder and they often do. This encourages the unchecked practice. Society don’t care enough. We should go to war to fix the chronic problems. The “Untouchables” just disappear until all hope is lost. They resurface in the crime statistics.

If we are serious about improving unemployment in America, we must address “Chronic” and “Acute” unemployment from different perspectives. Chronic cases need interventions on a much greater level. Acute cases just need to find new opportunities quickly. Chronic unemployment needs more education, greater assistance, and advocates in the system to fight for them if they are ever to have the hope of productive employment again. Chronic cases don’t need jobs, they need opportunities to start businesses so they can be rehabilitated. We have a duty to ask, “Why?”

In short, instead of providing “Lip Service” we must go to war for these people to address rising unemployment. If someone did something that clearly earned this status, they know they have earned their negative status and must pay a price. They dig their way out like an ex-con after doing their time. Conversely, if we permit one innocent to be discarded, that’s a crime. We should go to war for them and address the real issues? Where can someone “Untouchable” get justice or a job? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, “To deny a person the right to work is telling them they have no right to live!” The death penalty painfully applies in employment. Some on this “Death Row” are innocent. America, this is a crime we can fix with a winnable war.