Tom Bishop is the Marketing Program Manager at AutomatedQA, and is responsible for the company’s online campaign strategy, messaging and material development, communications and sales department support. To United Professionals, he offers experience in online strategy and implementation of community building and communications programs. Tom brings more than ten years in brand strategy, campaign management, market segmentation, research and data analysis, and business development, with expertise in Content Management Systems, SEO, database tracking and analytics. He has a great deal of experience in start-up companies that are positioned for rapid growth. He received his MBA from Boston University School of Management in 2002.

“I joined United Professionals because of its clear mission to defend the democratic principles that a fair working economy and a strong middle class are built on. Now that we have seen the open war being waged by corporations against those principles, organizations like UP are more important than ever.”

Karen Southall Watts [www.karensouthallwatts.com] teaches for Bellingham Technical College in the Business and Professional Development division of Continuing Education. She maintains a private consulting and coaching practice focusing on entrepreneurship and management issues. Karen is the author of numerous student workbooks, ebooks and articles that can be found online.

“After working in adult education for over a decade, I understand the time, energy and expense that people put into their professional development. I want to see my students and all other graduates go into a job market that recognizes and values their talents and efforts. I support the work of UP because I believe workers deserve employers who respect them as individuals, support them as members of society and pay them a living wage. I see UP as the natural partner of higher education.”

Tom and Karen both emailed UP with ideas. Their excellent suggestions led to their inclusion in UP’s newly-formed “Idea Committee” along with board members Trude Diamond and Barbara Ehrenreich and site editor Diane Alexander. Tom is now co-chair of the Website Team, and Karen is co-chair of the PR Team. Thanks to both of them for their volunteer work and continuing great ideas!

Don’t forget that UP dues are optional.

Please tell your friends to join!

The following is an excerpt from an article on Helium by Tom Bishop, UP member. Click on the link to read entire article.

“Struggling homeowners should not get a bailout just because everybody else has. Instead, struggling homeowners should be the first to be bailed out, even if they are the only ones.

The discussion over the mortgage bailout is just the latest surfacing of America’s ongoing class war, and the very wealthy have been winning it. They have devastated the working class, impoverished consumers, and robbed small shareholders. They provide most of the reelection funds for politicians, define mainstream political thought, and pick the winners in every policy debate. …”

http://www.helium.com/items/1358721-class-war-mortgage-bailout-wealthy-bailout-corporate-bailout-working-class-bailout

“The proposed ‘shovel ready’ jobs stimulus package does too little, too late for those of us who shovel information and business processes,” according to Trude Diamond, United Professionals (UP) board member. “What are we supposed to do? Wait until the road builders and bridge constructors start shopping again, and the retailers and service providers can afford to get bank loans to grow, and finally those businesses need white-collar workers and managers again? Wait for the “trickle-up” principle to work? By that time, we’ll be living in our not-yet-repossessed cars, hoping that someone will call our prepaid cell-phone with a job offer. And what’s to keep the businesses from outsourcing the kinds of jobs we do, anyway?”

Of course, the national stimulus plan wisely addresses blue-collar, build-the-infrastructure (which is rotting as we speak) types of jobs. The able-bodied, (mostly) young, (mostly) men who do those jobs are precisely the demographic that every nation’s leadership knows are most likely to join the rebel guerillas in the jungles—or city alleys and underground tunnels—if you don’t keep them productively busy.

But, as wise as the plan is to get “the young and the restless” back to work, it would be equally foolish to leave the unemployed educated professionals to their own and increasingly angry devices. Never mind the possibility of engineers hacking the power grid and Internet servers. It’s just bad for the nation to not employ its brain-trust. We can contribute significant, workable concepts and processes that will achieve corporate and public goals. When we have money, we educate our children to ensure the next generation of American leadership — rather than sending them off to work to help pay the mortgage now that Mom and Dad are receiving unemployment compensation and food stamps. The government can create information-worker and manager jobs, too. Schools need more teachers. Federal, state and local government offices need more competent communicators working in all their offices. Think of how effective we’d be as watchdogs over the ethics of elected officials or as agents of the SEC; recent events have demonstrated how many more of those we could use.

On the private-sector side, the business bailouts must demand job-creation—re-creation, really. Corporate bailout money should come with strict rules about bringing off-shored call center and software development jobs back home as a condition of receiving the stimulus funds. Now. Not over 12 or 18 months. Now. “Flash cut,” as we say about certain business system change-overs. You know … with the same speed we U.S. workers experienced when we were laid off from those jobs in the first place. “Here’s your pink slip and check for two weeks’ pay; the security officer will accompany back to your desk to clean it out.” That kind of NOW.

Stimulus by the Numbers: Too Little, Too Late for the Middle Class

United Professionals has found that, though the total cost of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 is reported to be $789 billion, only about $180 billion is direct spending for job creation, of which less than $30 billion will be spent in 2009. (Most of the $100 billion to be spent in 2009 is for aid and tax cuts.)

“In the entire bill, about $33 billion is directly targeted to white collar jobs,” says UP member Tom Bishop, “which includes $19 billion in Health IT to be spent from 2010 through 2016, and that is too little, too late for the middle class, which is reeling from rounds of lay-offs and years of downsizing and off-shoring.” Bishop notes that the rest is largely for science, defense, and energy research. One unknown is the $39 billion in aid to states for education programs, because states will apply this money differently according to their immediate needs.

The stimulus bill just signed by President Obama is a good start that we hope will put the brakes on this economic collapse. But it falls far short of sustaining and rebuilding America’s middle class, which has been so badly shattered before and during this recession.

“We urge people to visit UP at www.unitedprofessionals.org, read others’opinions and post comments on this critically important topic,” states UP board chair Bill Holland. “UP plans to initiate local discussion groups and connectivity to local news media outlets in the near future.”

Editor’s note: this is the first in a series by author Tom Bishop. You may visit his website at www.myleftone.com.

Chapter 1:

For the last several years, I have experienced just about every financial disaster that can happen to a person. You’ve heard about mass layoffs, business failures, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Families going through these situations feel extreme hopelessness and fear, and they come out on the other end somewhat different. A lot of their experiences are common. They’ve all heard bosses say things will turn around. They’ve all heard TV pundits call them whiners. They’ve all heard friends and family tell them they were being pessimistic, that it can’t really be that bad, that they were just angry, and that they should get a grip.

I heard these words, and it chafed every time. For me, the only upside to today’s global economic collapse is that I went through my trials three years ago, and view today’s downward spiral a little differently than most. Now, I can simply point to the television and say “See? I wasn’t making this up.”

This puts me in a unique position to share what I have learned.

I don’t offer these stories as someone who has been wildly successful in business. I do not come from outside the tenuous situation a lot of workers are in right now. I come from within it.

This series will illustrate my experiences and the lessons I took from them. Everybody who has been through a personal financial disaster has something to share from their experiences. That’s why it isn’t hard to find advice that will tell you to cut back spending, find a support network, and above all, stay positive.

I don’t see the need to repeat that advice. Much of it is common sense. And as for staying positive, you will have moments of absolute despair. It is not unhealthy. It would be unhealthy not to feel desperate, given the circumstances. It is healthy to share this feeling, and not hide it, with those who are close to you. It is also healthy to feel differently about things after the smoke clears.

There really is no going back. Your new experiences will become a permanent part of your personality. We are all the sum of our experiences, good and bad. What we take from these experiences, and what positive things we can do with that information, is what matters.

I guess that’s the first lesson.

I’ll tell you about me, and what I’ve been through. Or, what my family has been through, since my wife was and is always present in these experiences. A partner is someone we need — as Susan Sarandon’s character says in “Shall We Dance” — to be a witness to our lives.

During the past decade, I have been part of at least eight startup companies. None of them became a household name or an Internet sensation. These companies were more realistic. Some continued on to become marginally-sustainable businesses, while others crashed and burned completely. All of them brought new lessons about business how-to, and how-to-not.

In this series, I will discuss:

- Run For Shelter: How to see a layoff coming

- The Perfect CEO: What personalities and backgrounds make a good business leader

- Pick a Winner: How to guess whether a company will survive a crisis

- Patching the Quilt: How to craft a sensible resume from the shards of a career

- Climbing Back: The keys to opening a sustainable business

The next few years will make or break the livelihoods of many who have been trampled by the recent economic meltdown. What government does will play a role, as will what investors and business leaders do. After that, there are social changes, global threats, and even weather events. How these affect us will be out of our hands. Our minds were never designed to worry about everything. As individuals, we should only worry about what we can control.

That’s lesson two.

This is offered in the spirit of building a better community for people in the workforce and those who are temporarily out of it. For those who are lucky enough to still be in a job, the next installment will cover the ways to see a layoff coming.