As an alum of the graduate business school at Tulane, I followed the events in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.  Three years later, it’s not just the weather that seems to have improved.  Last Thursday, Tulane cancelled classes for this week and ordered an evacuation of the campus on Saturday, with students who were unable to obtain a flight home from New Orleans being evacuated to Jackson State University in Mississippi.  The Tulane website has included a daily announcement from President Scott Cowen entitled “The Scott Report“, a “New Wave” column that includes items such as photos of the facilities crew cleaning up the post-hurricane debris, and a daily live chat.  Tulane’s executive team traveled to Nashville and has been in communication with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin throughout the crisis.

The press reports that since Katrina the levees haven’t been secured in New Orleans to survive a Category 3 Hurricane.  Fortunately, Gustav’s landfall was west of New Orleans with winds down to the levels of a  Category 2/Category 1 by the time of landing.  Regardless of the levee situation, which I hope the Army Corps of Engineers is able to resolve, it appears that there have been some lessons learned from Katrina and communication and evacuation plans at the municipal, state, federal, and university levels worked well this time.

In July, Richard Stengel, editor of Time Magazine, interviewed Bill Gates about his theory of Creative Capitalism.  A six-minute video from this interview is available on Time’s website.

Gates passionately believes that technology provides solutions to many of the world’s key problems.  He also believes that life changes due to technology can only occur where people can afford the technology.  In a speech that he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2008, Gates spoke about Creative Capitalism. In that speech, he defined it as “creative capitalism – an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequalities.”  Some examples of companies engaging in creative capitalism include:  (1) Microsoft – provides low cost or free technology to those who do not have access; (2) Crucell, a Dutch company that holds the patents on a cholera vaccine in the developed world but shares those rights with drug manufacturers in developing countries so that the drug can be manufactured and delivered at very low costs ($1/dose in Vietnam); (3) Iscar, an Israeli metalworking company, that locates its plants in areas where it can employ minorities such as Israeli Arabs; and (4) other companies such as Converse, Gap, Armani, Dell, and Apple that participate in the RED Campaign started by Bono.

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An act of Congress in 1894 made the first Monday in September a federal holiday, Labor Day, in celebration of the American worker.  The genesis of the holiday was a march on City Hall in New York City on September 5, 1882, by 10,000 workers who wanted to call attention to the issues of work conditions in America.  At the time, the average American worked a 12-hour day, 7 days a week.  The movement that culminated in the march on City Hall accelerated the birth of labor unions and the political power of workers and their unions.

In the years following the Labor Day legislation, cities and towns nationwide sponsored massive parades and events in honor of the American worker; those activities are no longer the focal point of the holiday.  Labor Day is celebrated by many in America as a symbol of the end of summer.  NCAA and NFL football traditionally kick off their seasons around Labor Day weekend and many Americans squeeze one last weekend trip into the dwindling days of summer.  There is little doubt that the American worker has made tremendous contributions to the development of our nation and as globalization of the work force continues, I think it’s important to remember their achievements.