When Employers Step Up

My wife and I have two daughters. They are our middle ones, each of them very unique in our brood of four, the oldest and the youngest being boys. The elder of our daughters is metis, infant chosen and adopted by us and her older brother; the second born while I was finishing seminary, marking the beginning of our family’s journey in pastoral ministry. Youngest son, surprise 😀 five years later!

The early years of our family was like a traveling road show, early pastoral ministry and seminary for the first ten years never more than two years in one place! Although the sojourn seemed to provide no inconvenience for our healthy adventurous little ones, I recognize now it was thanks to my wife’s incredible management and mothering skills during those years, that they had a happy, noisy secure childhood, each of them beginning the journey they are on now.

It is in hindsight, from the vantage of many years later, that I recognize certain values, faith, lifestyle and career choices which are probably working out as per things they learned while they were little. Although we have and continue to advocate for freedom of choice in literally all things, it is interesting to note that they think we, their parents, have provided major influence. They probably subscribe to Proverbs 22:6 with more conviction than we the parents,Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray. We are gratified that they think they have had a good upbringing.

The subject of this blog is employment, or work as one might call it. Not only our children and even grandchildren by now, but all of today's society seems to self identify in terms of profession, or career, or at least job. When job goes missing the next images are of homelessness or freeloading. Nobody freeloads off us, but topic of work and related details are daily fare in this household still.

Our elder daughter lives in a downtown apartment by herself. She is a trained, accredited pharmacy technician. She has been at her current non-union place of employ for at least 12 years, gaining reputation as customer service representative par excellence. She deals with the customers/patients and everybody knows her! Well qualified for this position, we are nonetheless aware the reason for her in this particular pharmacy is her relationship with her boss who is in a large East Indian Sikh family. This family-owned business includes no end of interns and pharmacy trainees, immigrants coming from that other country! My daughter, thanks to her relational skills, also brown skin, and perfect command of the English language is in unique position to train and work among these many. So she has a job, gets a good wage, but not quite adequate payment for the training responsibility she carries each day. Even so, she is aware she may not have this esteemed job were it not for her boss! So she labors on, either in exasperation or enthusiasm, depending on the day, often with great drama, and like every other employed person, also affected by lifestyle choices she makes alongside the job. Both socially and professionally, this job is her life.

Our younger daughter is on the autism spectrum, Asperger’s as per diagnosis only 6 years ago. She has an undergraduate music degree, almost perfect pitch, sings in a community choir, and works at a local grocery store, union job, courtesy clerk permanent part time! She too has been at this employ for a long time. This menial job of packing groceries, returning shopping carts, packing food hampers, facing shelves, etc. etc. has yielded also a natural training responsibility. By now she has seniority in position, and all new hires receive their early orientation and job demonstration from her. Her non-threatening personality becomes an easy training environment, much appreciated by supervisors and fellow workers. She returns home from a day at this physical job often exhausted but satisfied by her contributions to a day at the grocery store. 

Two very different daughters, two very different and also similar work environments. One has her job because of special circumstances and relationship with the boss. The other's job 'got learned on the job' with managers aware of her autism, including her attention to detail and unique method of communication - a healthy unionized workplace. This is my daughters at their places of work.  

As indicated in previous blogposts and evidenced in my profile, my faith perspective is christian evangelical, and my political orientation is socialist. This is the vantage from which I reflect on these jobs and these employers, and of course our daughters. Even with life-stance and points of view in place, far be it from me to pontificate  that one workplace is better than the other. As a christian father of our two daughters I am grateful when employers show honor and respect to their employees, and of course my wife and I take pride in our children doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. As a political father I think it important to communicate appreciation for healthy workplaces including lobby or influence for that wherever possible. More important than union or anti-union workplaces is the attitude and orientation of employers. I hasten to add, however, that when employers or workplaces become unhealthy or toxic, then the union environment is essential. There is a time and a place for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

Beyond this, my thinker (😏) has just received yet another refresher on - something more important than all of this. Yes, a couple sentences from Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize 1984, Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, recently died, remembered for helping to find an end to that country's Dutch colonial Apartheid. We in our westernized society, says Tutu, are conditioned to evaluate one another and especially our children according to successes or the image of success, “But success is not all-important to God,” says he. “God freely, graciously, chose you, chose me, chose each one of us to be His children. It could not depend on whether we were good. It could not depend on our ability to impress God, on our success.” (God has a Dream, Doubleday, 2004, p. 35). Even as a political activist with monumental human rights accomplishments, he was known for his pastoral warmth. His go-to reference was grace (yes that nice pious word) as found in Ephesians, same as my ending of my last blog post. Here it is once more a poignant reminder to me and perhaps to all of us reading here. For each of us the occasion is right to take yet another read of something so simple and so basic.

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  (Eph 2:8-10)

I wish, I wish we could evaluate ourselves and our children a little more according to this standard.