Labor Day Question: Why do We treat our employees like this?

I think most people can identify egregiously bad behavior by managers and owners when they see it. Most people probably say, Boy if/when I have employees, I'd never treat them like that.

Let's follow up on that. The other day a friend of mine put something online, "This is what I did on 9/11". Seems like the tapes had recently been moved into the public domain.

I think it's great that his family gets to see what he did that day. Folks with a bit of insight will realize that the audio and the video are a bit asynchronous, but it gives you a sense of the moment.

This public servant's experience extends to the larger population of air traffic controllers, and beyond that to the larger group of public employees - and not just in aviation. There's FBI agents, DEA people, CDC people, weather people, military people, health inspectors, food inspectors, the FDA - there's a lot of people out there, each with a lot of very specific expertise, doing their best for you and me.

They work for us. We pay them. We send people to Congress who set their budgets, payroll, and working conditions. That makes us the owners. Think about it.

Those people in the air traffic control facilities on 9/11? Like my friend in the YouTube? You furloughed them this year. At least, your Congress did. Then when your Congress realized they'd be inconvenienced by it, they carved out an exception for the controllers.

But the meat inspectors, the people who evaluate and test medicine and cancer treatments, the people who inspect cars and bridges, the people who fight our wars and set our educational goals, the people who hunt criminals and run our prisons - they're all still being furloughed by you and your Congress.

The way that sequestration works, is it gets progressively worse each year for the next nine years.

What would you call somebody who takes a day off on Labor Day, and then treats their own employees like that? I suppose misguided would be the polite term.