Kurt,

I received a message about HR Works' "Above & Beyond" Award.. CONGRATS! I'd like to say personally, as a soldier and industry professional, that it means the world to an employee to know they are supported by their employer in such a way. Companies like yours make this nation a better much place in more ways than one.

- Chad

Mr. Kurt Ronn,

Having worked with companies such as The Home Depot what do you think of this blog ?

Study of a company hiring workers when there is work.

They say that there is about 117,000 day laborers in the U.S. but I'm not talking about using the people that stand on the corner or in front of a home improvement store. I'm talking about: (these #s are from bls.gov)

1. 7.8 million unemployed in the U.S. "that would love to work."
2. 13.12 million youth in the labor force. ages 16-24
3. 6.1 million college students likely to work or look for work.

That's at least 27 million people willing to work !

I recently meet with a distribution company that, every day, gets orders in which need to be pulled from stock, have orders that need to be delivered and inventory that needs to be stocked. Yes they have 2 full time employees but at the end of everyday they asses the work for the next day and pick up workers accordingly.

I asked the owner, well where do you get workers like that ?

He said "you know I could go to the corner and pick up as many workers as I needed but I have a really hard time communicating with them, some won't work for less then $15 per hour and, frankly, I can't support them because I see the stress they are putting on communities."

"I have two sons who have a group of friends that I would, in the past, offer the work to but they have sense moved or found long term carriers. Then one day while I was talking to a friend of a friend who said he said he was going to find me a way to hire workers on an as needed basis without the idea of going to the corner. To make a long story short he started this free little community website called POSTaNEED where every day I can go an post work that I need done for the following day such as, " I need 1 worker to pull orders for a pay of $10 per hour." "I need one driver with their own pick up to make 5 deliveries for $15 per delivery plus gas." or, if I am getting merchandise in, I will post a need for a worker to put stock away."

"The business owner said, "you know, now that I am about to retire, if there is one thing that I can recommend to the new generations that will start a company or for people that have their own company, is to take big advantage of the people out there that want to work. In my situation do you know how much I was able to say by doing this ? Put it in to prospective for your business !"

"To tell you the truth I still use this resources because when I need my lawn moved, my house cleaned, painted or what ever I post it on the website and out of 27 million people, like you said, I will find someone that wants to work."

My Own Notes on This:

Further more, in my city, we have a day labor pick up site thats looks nicer then some parks and and to top it off it has cost the tax payers over $100,000 to maintain. Not to mention that in cities like Burbank CA The Home Depot was forced to build a day labor pick up site and pay $94,000 toward additional costs if they wanted to do business in the city. "Mountain View is considering a proposal to require Home Depot to pay $250,000 toward a permanent day labor center." - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286944,00.html

I have seen places where day laborers are standing in front of a 7-Eleven, U-Haul, and etc. When are they going to be forced to build a pick up site ? From what I have seen, POSTaNEED is FREE to use !

If more people had the opportunity to pick up work from a safe and legal environment, I think we would see a lot more legal people picking up jobs. Imagine if the tax funding that cities and private money, that The Home Depot were putting in to build day labor sites, went to promoting a new, better, way of hiring workers. All it would take is for The Home Depot and other companies like 7-Eleven, U-Haul, etc. to say they will help the day laborer situation by encouraging them to use POSTaNEED and the positive effects would soon follow.