It starts with the company heads in look how good my company is because we suported charities. You should use our company because we are so nice.
The fact that a employeer insists that you send the card back in even if you do not want to give is wrong. The United Way only manages where the money goes. They claim that 90% of the money that you give to the United Way goes on to charities. That means that they are charging a 10% handeling fee, that is a waste. If I like the tie you shoe charity and I give $100 through the the united way they will get $90. If I give it direct then they will get the full $100.
I have had some battle with personal, and have come under some attacks because I refused to fill out the united way card.
Giving should be done chearfully and with out being forced to.
I do give to charities that I have some knowledge of and approve the work they are doing.
I haven’t seen such a universal outpouring of distaste since I posted about the time I got drunk and kicked Mother Teresa.
The company is definitely not EDS/HP and unless MeanOldLady is in OK I doubt it’s her employer either. Judging from the similarity of stories here and in the other thread, I suppose this is just how they operate everywhere.
Today we got another threat email, this time from the executive VP who is next in line to the CEO. He gets bonus points for implying that some of our laid off former co-workers might benefit from the United Way’s help.
My current employer is a bit more of a soft-sell. 20 years back though, when I first started at the job, it was VICIOUS. As in if you didn’t pledge, you would get called into a very high-up’s office and asked point-blank if this was a stand you really wanted to take. The implication being that they would REMEMBER this, come evaluation / raise / continue-to-be-employed time. It was infuriating.
My experience was similar to Mamma Zappa’s; in the last few years however, not even the ‘required’ attendance at the kick off meeting is required any more. I work for local government and maybe that’s the reason, but someone has backed off on the UW pressure lately. I love it.
In the wake of the scandal when the UW head or some bigshot took off with his mistress to Europe a few years ago, a cubicle mate of mine stopped his automatic donation and hasn’t been back since.
p.s. I never gave to UW; I have my own charities I give to and there ‘one check covers all’ does not speak to me.
Yeah, at my first job after college, I worked for a Jewish nonprofit providing job placement and vocational training to recently arrived Soviet refugees. We got pushed to donate not only to United Way, but also to the Jewish United Fund. At the time, I was trying to pay off student loans and living in a roach-infested studio apartment, while making a salary low enough that a) it would have qualified me to receive income-based services from my employer’s other programs; and b) the moment most of my clients got their first jobs, they were making at least as much as I was.
Needless to say, for those reasons (and because my mom had once worked for a United Way-funded program and been unemployed for a prolonged period when I was a kid after United Way drastically cut their funding), I was not about to give money to United Way or to JUF.
The HR Director sent me a letter with thinly veiled threats that I had one week to join my colleagues in the team spirit by donating, and the donation could be any amount. Several colleagues suggested that I just tape a nickel to the pledge card and send it back via interoffice mail. But by then it was a matter of principle. I wrote her back that according to the Jewish conception of tsedakah, I considered my charitable activities to be a private matter.
She never bothered me about it again, and when layoffs started shortly thereafter, I started looking for a new job and found one in short order. A nasty unionizing battle followed, and I’m glad I got out of there when I did. The whole United Way campaign was just one symptom of the fucked-up management of that place.
Monitor their conversations for mentions of someone called the “Four-armed emperor”. If you hear this phrase, it’s time to break out the flamethrowers.
I think cyclonic torpedos or virus bombs would do it for sure, but I’m too fond of some other parts of the planet.
It’s purifying flame at close quarters, then. Just as well, I’ve always wanted to shout “My craft is death!” in the office. Time to annoint the storm bolter and chainfist.
My company does this as well. What really sucks is that they’ve set it up in such a way that it’s easy to give, but to NOT give, you have to contact HR and let them know that you aren’t. They claim it’s got something to do with how the United Way web site works, but I think it’s BS.
The whole United Way racket is primarily for PR on corporate stewardship and also allows them to claim that they’ve given to way more companies (under the United Way umbrella) than they actually have. In other words, because the United Way gives to X, Y and Z foundations, the company can claim on their Web site or marketing materials that they donate to United Way, plus X foundation, Y foundation and Z foundation. So it seems like a convenient way of padding the numbers of charitable organizations they give to without actually having to go to the trouble of giving to them directly.
I used to work for a big company that did a large charity thing every fall. My last year there, they asked me to head it up. There was this list of a bunch of really awesome charities. Whatever your pet cause was, it was likely on there. Included were statistics such as how much money went to administrative costs, websites where you could find more info, etc.
Contributions were deducted from your paycheck, and if you didn’t specify an organization, it went to United Way.
Employees in my department had never seen the list before, and had always assumed it was just a United Way drive. I thought it would be fun to have a week of different fundraising events, each day focusing on one or two different charities, with the payroll deduction forms available if anyone saw anything that moved them.
One higher-up in my department FREAKED. OUT. She’d run the program in the past, and had never mentioned the other charities. She called me into her office every day and got more and more obstinate and threatening. She finally just came out and said that she didn’t think any of “our” money should go to starving kids in Africa when people were in need here in our community. Ok, whatever. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I don’t find it terribly objectionable. Then it comes out that her daughter works for UW and is about to be let go.
Wow… I know the job market is tough and people are understandably hesitant to make any waves. But if this is as bad as it sounds I don’t know how long I’d be able to stand for it.
My company has a confidential and anonymous line for reporting ethics violations and the like. You might want to look into whether you have an option like that. Ours is run by a third party outside of our own HR department, which would be a good thing in your case, since it sounds like your HR is part of the problem.
IMO, you are dealing with a Hostile Work Environment, and I hope you’re able to do something about it.
When companies push me I just lie and say “Oh but I gave money already.” They come back “you should’ve done it through us,” and I say “Oh OK I’ll remember for next time, too bad I already gave money.”
Or I say
“Oh but I gave all my money to the “heart fund.” My mother is dying of heart disease, perhaps we could give money to that instead, that way you’ll actually be helping your employees.”
Both of these little “tricks” work like a charm to get employers to shut up and stop badgering.
One could also fall back on religious beliefs as there are plenty of biblical versus to justify the giving of charities as an act of itself and not to be publicized. Thus you don’t give to charities that do so, or I give all my money to my church that redistributes it according to my beliefs.
We’re in the middle of our campaign drive now, with high-pressure tactics from all levels of management. But unlike at my previous employers, we have three options for our contributions:
1- our company’s Employee Assistance Fund, which helps employees of our company if their house burns down or they get terminal cancer or something;
2 - our company’s Literacy Foundation, which has donated millions of dollars to literacy programs, especially for adults; or
3 - the United Way
That would not be a hostile working environment. I have worked in H/R before and that isn’t how it’s defined.
A hostile working environment is not the same as an UNPLEASENT working environment.
A hostile working environment is one that would upset an “average” person so much that this would make him incapable of completing his working requirments accordingly.
It would be easy to show that this employee was doing his job and doing it well. So obviously he is capable of doing his job, thus it’s not a hostile environment, it is simply an UNPLEASENT working environment.
However you’d like to define it, Furious Marmot’s employers seem to be implying that one’s future employment status is directly related to actions not having anything to do with one’s job performance. Substitute sexual favors for charitable contributions and you’ve got big problems here.
If that isn’t hostile, it sounds at least unethical to me.
The company I work for doesn’t strong arm us quite so severely, but they are pretty fucking annoying. We are required to attend some big production at the beginning of “GIVE OR HAVE YOUR VILLAGE BURNED DOWN!” season, which is a series of slides about how necessary it is to give, and why we’re a super awesome charitable organization, followed up by what I presume is supposed to be a comical play (written and acted out poorly by the People In Charge) about how necessary it is to give, and why we’re a super awesome charitable organization.
It all goes downhill after that. Blitzkrieg e-mail “reminders” laden with puns, signs plastered about the work place, a sadist-designed break room with glitter on the tables, “GIVE!!!” fliers on the fridge. I don’t want to have to look at that crap when I’m trying to grab my sandwich. And who put glitter on the tables? Is that supposed to make me want to donate to charity? Yes, I can think of nothing more delightful while eating than having ground up pieces of glass near my food. I’m still amused by the little mailer about it in my snail mailbox yesterday. I thought we were supposed to be some Super Awesome Green Company. Why did they print out fliers for that? The receptionist also gives announcements over the PA system reminding us about what fundraising activity is going on, and that it’s always a good time to give.
The rub is that the threats are implicit and contextual: “The CEO and [terrifying HR head] took time from their busy days to discuss this with me…”, “I’m so disappointed about the particiation rate…”, “We are all so fortunate to have jobs…”, “In these hard times many people are out of work right here in OKC…”, “Maybe you have friends who have been helped by UW…”, “Good community relations help the financial health of our company…”.
All of these kinds of statements are likely objectively true and if pressed on it, management could simply say that people were being paranoid. There is no quid pro quo in any of it. The fact that it comes from a corporate officer who could destroy your life with a single word is what makes it sound bad.
I’d call it unpleasant and not nice but not unlawful. It seems carefully scripted to run up to the line, but never over. Very similar to what they do with PAC donations.
What sort of employers are these? I’ve never worked anywhere where it was even suggested that the employees give to Charity X, let alone practically forced at gunpoint to do so.
Large, faceless employers who feed on people’s souls in real life, but then force everyone to give all their money away so the company can suck its own dick about how much it supports the community.