Anyone up for a job with the above warning attached? There are lots, of course, in the National Football League. Although the NFL has always downplayed the harm caused by head injuries, it’s finally putting out notices and brochures that comport with overwhelming medical and scientific evidence. Concussions, particularly multiple (two or more) concussions, cause permanent brain damage. The league continues, however, to take a hard line on disability claims of former players who now have dementia and related-conditions.

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I’ve done several posts on cursing in the workplace. (Click here, here, here, and here.) Wall Street firms, known for their unwritten cursing-with-abandon practices, have been under the gun lately because of all the emails that have been reviewed as part of various ongoing investigations. It’s clear Wall Streeters can curse better or worse (depending on your point of view) than sailors. Thus, according to the Wall Street Journal, firms are cracking down on profanity, especially when it comes to emails.

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St. Vincent provides this week’s song. Though some have interpreted it as being about a romance gone bad, it’s hard for me to see it that way, particularly in light of the video below. It’s about employees (or actors) out of work, who must endure humiliating interviews. “You’re a supplement, you’re a salve. You’re a band aid, pull it off. I can quit you, cut it out. You’re a cast signed broken arm. You’re a liar and that’s the truth.” Have a look and listen, and see what you think.

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For over 40 years, race discrimination claims have been primarily asserted by minority employees: African-Americans, Hispanics, and members of various other racial or ethnic groups. On the rare occasion when a white employee alleged discrimination, it was called “reverse discrimination.” The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, composed of six conservative Republicans and two liberal Democrats, has increasingly placed the spotlight on discrimination against whites.

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Yesterday, significant parts of Arizona’s new and controversial immigration law were ruled invalid by a federal judge. (Read here.) Undoubtedly, there will be an appeal, so who knows what will eventually happen? Not many people disagree with the proposition that there should be a federal overhaul of immigration law. But Congress isn’t about to act on this before the November elections, and it’s unlikely Congress will act on it after the elections.

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We’ve all seen hopeful day laborers milling around and waiting for a potential employer to come along and give them work. Given our long-standing recession, all day laborers don’t look like the stereotype we usually think of. There’s a whole new look for the day laborer as so masterfully demonstrated by this video:

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According to the New York Times, manufacturers are desperate to hire workers again. In Cleveland, where 40,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during the Great Recession, only 4,500 jobs have been added since the first of this year. More would have been added if manufacturers could find qualified applicants. In one company, six machinests are urgently needed to run computer numerical control machines. Fifty people applied for these jobs, but none were qualified. None!

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The news has been dominated recently by the leaking of at least 90,000 documents and/or pages of classified information on the war in Afghanistan. Neither the government nor an employer is pleased when secret information is leaked. I’m not sure he had leaks in mind when he made this statement, but the wise and often witty Winston Churchill may have had a splendid solution for minimizing the harmful impact of leaked information.

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On October 14, 2009, I did a post on the value of zero tolerance policies: 0. The recent firestorm surrounding the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod by the U.S. Department of Agriculture validates the 10/14/09 post as well as anything possibly could. Most of what has been written about the Sherrod debacle has focused on race and politics. This post focuses on employment and human resources issues. (For a similar post, see Dan Oswald.)

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I recently attended a high school reunion. It had been 20 years since the last one. The week before, I studied, on and off, my senior yearbook. I remembered a lot of my classmates, though I have rarely seen them since graduation. I studied the pictures of those I didn’t remember as well very carefully. Prepared, I attended the reunion.

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Much is written about work-life balance, particularly today when spouses and significant others are trying to work multiple jobs to keep their families afloat. There’s work (although not always right now), and there’s life. The balance is always the problem — in good times or bad. This song by Maxwell, subject to different interpretations, is a poignant reminder of the regret and sadness that can remain when tragedy strikes while life is out of balance.

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The death of George Steinbrenner has brought a deluge of news coverage and opinion about the New York Yankees’ long-time owner. He was controversial and sometimes hated. He was also successful. His view of management was simple: results first, people second. One wonders if he would have been just as successful had he used a more employee-friendly approach to management. We’ll never know, but I’m inclined to think that with the kind of money he was willing to spend on talent, he would have been successful no matter what. In any event, the following quotes from Steinbrenner shouldn’t become the mantras for most people who seek to lead, as they represent BS rationalization for someone who likes to abuse people over whom he has authority.

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Perhaps the one thing of interest that hasn’t been covered on this blog about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is a one year period of time when she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall in the late 1980′s. (For my other posts on Kagan, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.) All of these posts have been designed to predict what kind of Justice Elena Kagan would be when it comes to labor and employment law. As previous posts have pointed out, any prediction is more of a guess because of Kagan’s scant record on this subject.

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This is a repeat HR song of the week. I used it several weeks ago to emphasize the work our military men and women do. Nineteen also seems appropriate for this long Fourth of July weekend. It deals with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s a reminder of the sacrifices Americans have made for over 230 years. I wish there were no more war, but since that’s apparently impossible, I am thankful for those who somehow conquer their fear, risk their lives, and accept the call to duty, whenever it occurs.

Since I began this blog in late 2007, I have done two posts on Independence Day, one for 2008 and one for 2009. This year’s post is a speech made on July 4, 1946, by John F. Kennedy when he was a candidate for Congress. In a sense, it is a patriotic history lesson with Independence Day as its backdrop. Given when the speech was made, Kennedy doesn’t mention Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. If he had given it today, these wars would have undoubtedly been included, since he pays tribute to all Americans willing to risk their lives for the cause of independence, no matter the war.