The didn’t contain edibles – just tissues to soak up their little adolescent crocodile tears.
And a prepaid cellular phone so they could call Their Mommies … if the job got too hard.
Yes they are. My last two jobs were small- to mid-sized companies, and the day-to-day labor force was almost exclusively temps. Few make it past the 90- or 180-day probationary period, as any absence or tardiness is a “mark” against you, even when the temp in question gives weeks advance notice that they have to take their kid to the dentist or doctor or some such.
Yeah, I’m not blaming the workers at all. But most managers stroll through the line once in a while.
Most every worker in every industry learns that calling out blatantly illegal practices to management never works out well. Those managers are not dumb, just immoral.
And then when these companies go tits-up because they can’t attract decent employees due to their shitty, shitty HR practices…
They blame “Liberals” or some other bogeyman.
Tax breaks? How about BRIBES?
This was on “All Things Considered” this afternoon.
The blame is being laid on the Temps by the Employers. “Oh, little-Miss-special can’t show up to work on time because of her kids. I guess she has other priorities than work!” I’ve heard this out of full-time employees up in Carpet World (front-office Management), who have Sick Days and Floating Holidays, or undifferentiated PTO, and only work 9-5, Monday-Friday, in a plant that damned near runs 24/7/365.
Ah, so they are entitled assholes. Who will they blame when the company folds?
On a related note (IMO) let’s recognize the 13th anniversary of the last time congress raised the minimum wage.
“Marking the 13-year anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase in the U.S.—a meager boost from $5.15 to $7.25 in 2009—progressive campaigners on Sunday urged congressional Democrats to make another push to raise the national pay floor as inflation continues to diminish workers’ purchasing power.”
You don’t get it. The two companies I’m talking about are not going to fold. They’re chugging along, doing fine. Because there’s a never-ending revolving door of temps looking for work. I worked for the one company for close to two-and-a-half years, and every Monday (that wasn’t a Holiday), there was a fresh crop of two to three dozen new Temps getting their on-boarding and orientation.
By the time work actually started on Wednesday, maybe 90% showed up. By the end of the first week, maybe 50% are still working. By the end of the first month, maybe 10%. 90-days? If even one of those temps is still working there, it’s a miracle.
But come every Monday morning, there’s a fresh crop of two to three dozen new Temps getting their orientation.
And that business/employee model works for them. Is it the best? I don’t think so; as Maintenance, it caused us no end of headaches, like service calls to the line…to refill a tape gun, because the Temp has never seen or operated one before. Or how to change a filter in a Shop Vac. Where to find a mop/broom. Or how to operate their assigned machine.
We would joke (bitterly, over many, many beers after work) that we weren’t Maintenance Techs, we were Life Coaches.
But the company still puts out product, and makes money.
I’d bet they’d make more money if they had Temps last more than a few weeks. Onboarding and recruiting isn’t free.
My daughter worked for an airline company in Hong Kong. They got rid of all their old employees. Because they’re all cogs, right. Whoops. One knew that you had to renew a permit for a website, so the booking site was down for the busiest week of the year, when they had a big promotion. Guess they really saved money, didn’t they?
You’re probably right. I probably misremembered some of the things I heard about Foxconn. I figured if good companies share best practices, then perhaps evil companies share worst practices: which officials give you the best value for your bribery dollars, what’s the minimum number of widgets per ounce of gruel, which type of step stool is best for allowing your workers to reach the assembly line. That sort of thing.
And I would NOT take that bet. But it’s the model they’ve settled on, it works for them (like you say, not as well as it could with a better model). Like the guys said in The Matrix movie, “There are levels of survival we’re prepared to accept.” Stupid, foolish, counter-productive in the long-term.
But I’ve seen multiple companies go through this very same process. One lost almost all of the long(er)-term employees, the ones who knew how to run the machines properly, who cared about the process and the product, took pride in doing their jobs. What they got in exchange is a revolving-door stream of temps who don’t really give much of a shit, but do well enough to get product out the door.
Good coverage by NPR, even if it doesn’t answer the burning questions to our complete satisfaction.
[…] manufacturing plants are notoriously difficult to get access to by people who don’t work there.
[…] we found out it’s relatively easy in some cases to get documents, you know, where if you’re a minor, you could basically, you know, pick an age and say that you were older. So these workers can be very vulnerable to exploitation because they’re working without authorization, and, you know, they’re often very hesitant to speak up.
[…] these staffing agencies can often have their own lax hiring practices. […] sometimes companies can kind of use them as a buffer if there’s, you know, unsavory hiring practices, and they can say they didn’t know what was going on because the workers came from staffing firms. But we did speak to former workers who were working alongside some of these younger minors and told us that there was no way that they looked old enough to work […]
MARTIN: So to your knowledge, are any children working there now?
ROSENBERG: Well, we were not able to confirm if there are currently children working there.
[…] the state attorney general’s office declined to comment to us. But after our story came out, the Alabama state department of labor said that they would investigate the issue and that they hadn’t been aware of it previously before our reporting and that they were coordinating with other agencies like the U.S. Department of Labor to look into that.
It seems to me, as a layman, that the Alabama Dept. of Labor should post a man to the factory immediately. God forbid that there’s a child who may amputate his arm today or tomorrow.
Hyundai appears to deny the allegations altogether (paywall, but not much other meat to the story).
“Currently, we have no evidence that there is any truth to these allegations,” Dana White, a spokeswoman for Hyundai, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
“Hyundai does not tolerate illegal employment practices in any Hyundai entity,” she said. “We have policies and procedures in place that require compliance with all local, state, and federal laws.”
Reuters stood by its piece.
~Max
Apparently not the only one. I was disgusted to read the investigation in the Nee York Times and hope the action mentioned here will make a difference.
This ain’t just an Alabama thing. I’m a Southerner and people down here do not like this kind of thing at all. In my entire life I never saw or heard of anything like this happening, and I worked some crap jobs when I was young and unskilled (vs being old and unskilled now).
This is Corporate, and it is done in N.Y. to a huge extent. I think the people who are responsible should be thrown under the jail, but they have these big 'ol pockets for big 'ol lawyers.
The worst places are these chicken killin places, the conditions appear to be worse than the middle ages. But those are mostly children of illegal immigrants and they are scared to death to say anything or complain about working conditions.
And stupidity.
Sorry to bump, but I’m sure everyone will be interested in the heavy fines that were levied against the companies supplying underage workers. They’ll never do that again. (my bolding)
“Our investigation found SL Alabama engaged in oppressive child labor by employing young workers under the minimum age of 14, and by employing minors under 16 in a manufacturing occupation,” Kenneth Stripling with the U.S. Department of Labor said. “Employers are responsible for knowing who is working in their facilities, ensuring that those individuals are of legal working age, and that their employment complies with all federal, state and local labor laws.”
SL Alabama paid a fine of $30,076 issued by the court.
At the same time, the Alabama Department of Labor announced fines of $17,800 each against SL Alabama and JK USA, an Opelika temporary employment agency.
Just to show Alabama politicians are on top of this:
Last week, 33 members of the U.S. House of Representatives- none representing Alabama - signed a letter calling on the U.S. Department of Labor to look into the use of children in Hyundai’s labor supply.
None of these kids were Real Alabamians.
ETA: that’s sarcasm, in case it’s not obvious to all.
I consider those fine amounts to be on the low side.
Looks like the politicians Alabama voted into office are doing exactly what their constituents wanted them to.