Non-electoral and non-spoils of election public service jobs anywhere in the US are all pretty much the same in structure and internal politics. I can't swear it's entirely different from corporate, but I've picked up in general there's a very different baseline attitude.
Very few jobs in corporate America have a generational component, for one; second, we actively recruit from minorities just by existing at the clerk and caseworker level. Not in an anti-racist/equal/social justice sense, but because if your family has been getting benefits for any length of time, you not only know the system, a lot of people want get into it literally because they see sucky caseworkers and want to make it better. And on the social level, if you're committed to the whole helping people thing, it takes a while for overwork to lessen what you get from job satisfaction when every single day you are, quite literally, assuring people get to eat and get medical care. When I interviewed people for emergency food stamps, I knew without a doubt that they were getting their EBT cards adn going to the grocery store and getting to eat that night.
For as long as I was a caseworker, I recruited the fuck out of my clients. I had applications on my desk with a handout for both us and the state hospital and I'd break down the benefits and everything if they seemed interested. A lot of people are completely floored when I tell them how many caseworkers and supervisors were either on benefits or from families on benefits. It's one of the reasons I like the nepotism/experience factors; nepotism hugely benefits people who start off in casework and in this particular arena, it evens out the playing field for minorities and women who are usually educationally disadvantaged. We don't require a college degree until you get pretty high up, and even there, fifteen years experience and having worked with half the agency kills dead a college degree in most non-specialized jobs.
I'm not saying that it's a haven of perfection or the bias doesn't also cause real problems, but there is this; in my testing job, our unit has I think around thirty people (this is weird because of recent changes in hierarchy and contractors, so I'm not sure how some qualify even if they work with us) and only four white males. That is the largest proportion of white males I have ever worked with in almost ten years with the agency; the majority is usually female and usually Hispanic and Black females from the same poor to lower working class background I have. My experience is not universal, but it is also far from unique when it comes to social services.
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Very few jobs in corporate America have a generational component, for one; second, we actively recruit from minorities just by existing at the clerk and caseworker level. Not in an anti-racist/equal/social justice sense, but because if your family has been getting benefits for any length of time, you not only know the system, a lot of people want get into it literally because they see sucky caseworkers and want to make it better. And on the social level, if you're committed to the whole helping people thing, it takes a while for overwork to lessen what you get from job satisfaction when every single day you are, quite literally, assuring people get to eat and get medical care. When I interviewed people for emergency food stamps, I knew without a doubt that they were getting their EBT cards adn going to the grocery store and getting to eat that night.
For as long as I was a caseworker, I recruited the fuck out of my clients. I had applications on my desk with a handout for both us and the state hospital and I'd break down the benefits and everything if they seemed interested. A lot of people are completely floored when I tell them how many caseworkers and supervisors were either on benefits or from families on benefits. It's one of the reasons I like the nepotism/experience factors; nepotism hugely benefits people who start off in casework and in this particular arena, it evens out the playing field for minorities and women who are usually educationally disadvantaged. We don't require a college degree until you get pretty high up, and even there, fifteen years experience and having worked with half the agency kills dead a college degree in most non-specialized jobs.
I'm not saying that it's a haven of perfection or the bias doesn't also cause real problems, but there is this; in my testing job, our unit has I think around thirty people (this is weird because of recent changes in hierarchy and contractors, so I'm not sure how some qualify even if they work with us) and only four white males. That is the largest proportion of white males I have ever worked with in almost ten years with the agency; the majority is usually female and usually Hispanic and Black females from the same poor to lower working class background I have. My experience is not universal, but it is also far from unique when it comes to social services.