This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Recent events in Wisconsin have raised issues about the nature of work and its role in defining an individual and a community. Lost in the debate about labor costs and the burden of public labor on taxpayers is a much more important and complicated issue facing our nation. That is the cost of not enough work or the cost of work that is meaningless and redundant on our culture and society.

Work is harder and harder to find, and more and more often the work that is available is low-paying and unsatisfying. Yet, work not only provides us a living, an ability to take care of our needs and the needs of our families, it also defines us, sculpts our values and brings us dignity and self-respect.

As a nation, we are obligated to make sure our citizens have the opportunity to work and to work at something that is enriching, valuable and meaningful. To suggest a community or capitalism is healthy simply because it boasts a robust means to outsource labor to the cheapest bidder, or reduce human ingenuity and creativity to mechanized systems that are mind-numbing and inhumane, or because it increases profit or the Gross Domestic Product is shortsighted and dangerous.

Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, Americans are not lazy, entitlement-crazed people. We are industrious, creative, hard-working, honest and decent people.

But as the income disparity between the rich and the poor widens, as middle-class families must work longer hours far from families for less and less money, as wealth is centered in the hands of a few elites, we lose the ability to realize the American dream: hard work and a productive, moral and enriching life to pass on to our children.

We are not looking for a free ride, but we are looking for an opportunity and a respectable life. It has to be in our best interest as a community and as a nation to provide this opportunity to our citizens and our children.

People who have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet are not engaged in the dignity of work; they are slaves to economic policies that too often reward the rich at the expense of the poor or middle class.

And protesters who cringe at the prospect of surrendering their scant ability to bargain for a living wage and economic conditions our grandparents took for granted are not enemies of capitalism. Their protests make them advocates for fairness and a recognition that the opportunity to engage in the dignity of work should be an inherent protection under the law.

Heaping disdain on the working poor or working middle class is a poor decision. Economic policies that make obtaining work difficult or impossible are dangerous to a free society and are irresponsible and immoral.

Terri Holland is co-owner of Cole Holland Training Center, a vocational school.