Jobless Need Not Apply?

I just finished reading an article about a new form of discrimination by employers refusing to hire anyone who has been unemployed for 6 months or more.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110217/ts_yblog_thelookout/help-wanted-jobless-need-not-apply  Their reasoning? "Some employers have said they're unwilling to hire unemployed workers because they believe that if a worker has once been let go, that's a sign that he or she is probably not a great hire. "People who are currently employed … are the kind of people you want as opposed to people who get cut," one recruiter told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in October."  To borrow a phrase from my best friend, "Are you fucking kidding me?"  Damn you for losing your job because your company was mismanaged and went under, or your company decided it was better to outsource or layoff employees as a quick way to sweeten up their bottom line or increase annual bonuses for upper management.  YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT IS YOUR FAULT!  I personally know of at least one person who was so despondent about not being able to find a job that he committed suicide, leaving behind a wife and children.

Another laughable excuse: "If you've got a huge stack of submissions, and you want to get through them quickly, [you can say] 'OK, all the people who are not currently employed, forget them,' " Deutsch explained. "That's gonna cut down on your workload."  So laziness is justification for employers to exclude prospective candidates?  God knows I wouldn't want Human Resources or Management to have to do their job.

As if it weren't bad enough that a potential employee is cut during the screening or interview process because they didn't have their resume in an acceptable format or had their hair parted on the wrong side, employers are dreaming up these preposterous "reasons' to not hire applicants - regardless of their qualifications.  And don't kid yourself: age and sex discrimination are still very much alive and very pervasive.

I might be a little more understanding of employers if the employees at their companies were so remarkable that it justified these contemptible measures.  However, six-figure income Vice Presidents who do nothing but sit around "sexting" reciprocal female employees are hardly what I would call the cream of the crop.  If I owned a company, I would never put up with technicians playing foosball during working hours, system administrators who sleep on the job, or managers who furnish their homes with expensive equipment courtesy of the company.  What about the incompetent schmucks who "misplaced" a vial of VX Nerve Agent at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah (west of Salt Lake City)? http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51134945-76/dugway-king-base-deadly.html.csp If employers don't expect any more from their current employees than the effort it takes for a snail to leave a slime trail on a linoleum floor, why do candidates have to pass such rigorous but idiotic interviews and why are people who are jobless for 6 months or more rejected?

Companies with a "God" complex are screwing with people's lives and it has got to stop.  Shame on you!  Please pull your heads out of whichever orifice you have it shoved into and start acting like reasonable human beings.  What is going to happen to business if this disgusting approach is not checked?  Our companies are going to be staffed with nothing but drooling, inept blockheads.  Is it any wonder why companies like GM and Chrysler, AIG, and Goldman Sachs, etc., needed to be bailed out?