Tom Vazzo

It's just that society has a lot of these sort of challenges for them that it's hard to get a job if you can't get a job you can't pay for rent so you're back into this cycle of going with the gangs because you can't survive on your own

And so fundamentally, then to your question, so owners, managers, supervisors need to recognize that the working poor of America have these challenges, that they're good workers.

Not that they don't want to do the work, just that they either got to go see the parole officer, they have to sort of go back and sort of do something different to get rent paid, they're dealing with their kids, doing all sorts of things. And so it's about hiring people, leaning in and investing with resources.

Not a lot of resources, but resources that if someone needs to go take care of their business, that they're allowed that day off. Let me just back up. To summarize, if you're looking for this workforce, it's a good workforce, but you recognize you've got to do it a little bit differently. You've got to know that they have their challenges. Let me give you this one quick story.

So at Homeboy, we have all sorts of jobs filled with our population that we serve, right? And so there was, I've had a number of executive assistants now over the years here and Teaching them to be executive assistant in the for-profit world.

So one of them, young woman in and out of youth camp, youth jail here in LA County, mother at age 17, hardcore gang member, just sort of hated her life and very mad at the world. But through Homeboy, she's able to find herself and be a good mother. But she was my executive assistant with a young child living in a shelter, but she still showed up every day on time, did her work.

Well, we're a homeboy. We're a nonprofit. So we have a board of a director. And so quarterly, we have board meetings that start at 730 in the morning. And so she would get here at 6.30 in the morning, making sure the tables were set up, papers were in place, the water was out.

So I remember this one day, the night before one of our board meetings, her parole officer calls her up and says that she needs to report in to his office next day at 8 a.m. And she's saying, can I come at 10? Because I need to be here for the homeboy board meeting. I have a job. And essentially says, no, if you're not here by 8 a.m.,

I'm going to violate your parole, which means you go back into prison. Now, knuckleheads. Right. But so of course we're homeboy, we're saying, you know, go take care of your business. We'll be here. We'll, we'll, we'll get by. Right. But how many other businesses were sort of letter? Maybe they would let her off that morning if they knew the situation, but would she have so much shame?

She couldn't tell the situation. So my point is the people we work with, they want to do it the right way. There's just a lot of hurdles in place that, And us as employers need to recognize that we've got to treat people not the same, but individually, and give them the chance to do their job well. And if they give them that chance, they'll do their job really well.

Yeah, I understand your question. Let me kind of like flip it a little bit. I would say you as a business owner, hire the person you think is going to do a great job. So just as in your story, the single mom who has to hustle, you have a sense that that person is going to work hard. Pick the person who's going to work hard for you.

But also recognize that you're going to, just like my story, you're going to have to give them time off in different ways. You're going to have to sort of support them in different ways for them to do the job well. And that's it. So it's a mindset shift is, is what do you got to do to help somebody succeed in their job?

And what I'm saying is, well, you got to do help somebody who's been the working poor to see in their job is different from the college educated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah person who are more self-sufficient, have more of a safety net, have more resources, resources around. So totally different. And if I can say second lesson is that when you hire those folks,

It's very hard for us as humans, always judge. Let me, if you have time for another story.

So we at Homeboy, we're a nonprofit organization, mostly funded by two-thirds of donations and foundations, but 25% of our social enterprise business is a measly amount of government money. social enterprise businesses. We have a bakery, we have a cafe, we have a bakery. Artisan made bread.

Listen, there's nothing better to break down barriers of two rival gang members standing at the bread table, rolling dough, shoulder to shoulder, knowing how much bread they got to get done. You can't demonize somebody in relationship with, and that's why we have, we don't deal with gangs, we deal with gang members, right? That's why we have rival gangs working among themselves.

One of the businesses is we go to farmer's markets. We sell bread at the farmer's markets, and they're interacting with customers and all. So early on in my time, I'm trying to do management by walking around and getting to know people. And so I walked through the bakery, and I heard one of our best –

farmer's market guys george asked for his bakery manager for the for the weekend off now as you can imagine weekends are busy for farmer's markets and he's one of our best guys every no matter how much bread he takes out he always sells it he's got a good gift for gab and interacts with customers right and people come to see george and talk about him so uh and so we so the manager gave him time off and

I come up to him. I'm really a newbie at this point. I say, hey, what's going on? I'm like in a glib way. Hey, what are you going to do this weekend, right? And he says, I'm reporting in. And I said, reporting in? What's that mean? He said, oh, I'm reporting to county jail. And I take a step back and go, what do you mean reporting to county jail? Well, he owed money. And so back in L.A.

County at that time, when you come on a sidebar, nutty thing about society is we release tens of thousands of prisoners a year and they come out with debt, not just restitution costs, but parole costs, court costs, fines and fees. And so how do we think a prisoner in prison is making money?