Developers Lament Work Ethic

After losing a couple of super projects, one issue has surfaced above all other reasons for the failures: lack of a work ethic.

Arkansas’ economic developers have touted the state’s “work ethic” in the past to mean non-union and low-paying jobs, but that’s not what we’re referring to. We trust the state has realized the folly of that kind of business recruiting.

A trained work force would be a plus, and the state is heading in the right direction to meet the needs of business and industry.

But in an interview with The Associated Press recently, Gov. Mike Beebe said the state had also begun taking action to pre-screen potential employees for auto parts manufacturers in the Delta.

Why? Not because they couldn’t be trained. Arkansans have no more or no less ability to learn than workers anywhere in the United States. No, it was because those unnamed companies were complaining that many workers quit after just a few days.

That can be a costly process for any company. And it’s a problem that’s been around for years.

“What they said was that they were continuously having folks work for four or five days, or sometimes two days or three days and then quit, just never show up again,” Beebe told the AP. “They were wasting time and constantly having to have a new crop of folks in taking their place.”

The governor said the state was now putting potential workers through a screening process that simulates working conditions to weed out employees who are not serious about that type of work.

Will that work? It could keep individual companies from wasting time and money to train someone only to have him not show up the next week.

But most of us learned a work ethic at home, not in a classroom. We were taught to expect to work and what was expected of us. If a large segment of our population doesn’t have those values, it is a failure of the parents and family.

Certainly teaching the value of work should be a priority in our schools beginning at an early age. But for many it’s too late, and Arkansans who want opportunities to work are suffering because too many others do not.