Let me rephrase your question: Would you stick up for what’s rightfully yours, even if it inconvenienced others?
I can answer that question “absolutely yes” or “hell no” or “positively maybe”. It kind of depends on the circumstances.
If I dropped a bright shiny penny on the ground and a young child picked it up with obvious joy on his face, I doubt that I would get the authorities involved. Even though it is rightfully mine, I see no real reason to stand on principle for a pittance. If someone lied, cheated and stole from me things which I value greatly, I would be on them like nobody’s business.
If I were involved in a search and rescue mission, or employed as an aid worker in a war zone, my rate of pay would be somewhere down the list of shit to worry about.
Look at it this way. You are in a war zone. What else do you have to do today after work? Cruise for burgers? Or another way. Say you get home from your job as a contractor, and your neighbor’s house has been damaged in a storm. Do you help him, or do you demur, pulling out a contract and showing him where to sign?
I agree that when companies attempt to profit at the expense of their employees it is a Bad Thing. I really fail to see who profits here if Unit A does a bit more than the minimum, except for the folks it is their mission to help.
Well, there is the company that whatever government hired to put people there profiting from being understaffed.
Clearly Unit A does not follow the company line. You said they were bullies to Unit B.
[insert link to that big kid getting bullied slamming that other kid to the ground here]
Please, please stay out of aid work.
I getcha madmonk. Some bleeding-heart NGO perhaps? Possibly the huge one headquartered near me if the staff that I’ve met from there are anything to go by… So fuck Team A. And ignore the haters in this thread. You do good and I understand where you’re coming from. (Jeez, I’m paid for 7.5 hours per day but do 11 hours nearly every day, and I’m in fucking marketing. I’d do at least the same hours if I was doing something that actually mattered in the world.) And I love the comment you made to the ass - any repercussions so far?
To be perfectly honest, yes.
Being over tired and making mistakes, or low blood sugar and making mistakes can kill people. Emergency workers need to be rested and fed to work efficiently. Mistakes kill, being in too big of a hurry to be careful kills, rushing and missing the clue that someone is buried kills. I might drop it to a 30 minute lunch break, and at least 10 minutes every second hour for a drink, pee and sit down. At the end of my shift I would probably grab a meal, a shower and a 10 minute session doing nothing but laying there with my eyes closed, then work more hours. A meal, shower and 10 minute flake out is almost as good as a 2 hour nap.
Inconvenienced, yes.
But helping some in need of basic necessities that might determine whether they may live or die in a matter of hours/days? No.
Ravenman made an excellent point. A piece of paper stating break and lunchtimes is a poor judge of what is done in a real time situation. People in those situations should have a superior sense of judgment when it comes whether or not one should continue working or take a break. When there is a lull in the action, that would be the prudent time to take a break. But to hide behind a piece of paper saying that they only need to work 8 hours and have 60 minute lunches is not in the best interest of helping those in dire need of services. They are in the WRONG line of work. They should be replaced by those who care, and unit A should be pushing pencils in some safe, out-of-the-way place where their decisions do not directly affect the lives of others. Find a unit C that has the same spirit of unit B…ditch unit A.
I don’t know about the rescue efforts in Japan specifically, but I do know that in the US the states (like mine) who now charge people for search and rescue missions for avoidable situations cite overtime costs as a big reason why. Not as much as the costs of helicopters, but a significant one anyway.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the folks currently in Japan got paid overtime too.
I wouldn’t brag about that - apparently you and your company both agree that your time is worth nothing.
Maybe they are in the wrong line of work, maybe not. I’d make the argument, rather, that their employers are in the wrong line of work, and are idiots to have signed the contract (or abusive jackasses if they could reasonably believe they wouldn’t be able to allow their workers to abide by the terms of the contract).
Kind of a heavy day today, so not much from me.
First, a couple of details, the term contractors generally applies to people working for for profit companies, the term aid worker generally is used to mean someone working for a not for profit NGO. Salaries vary all over the place, but contractors generally make a lot more money than aid workers (with some blurring of the lines).
But it doesn’t matter, really. We have a job to do with a hard deadline. We are picking up and moving shop to another city. On date x our leases expire here, and on date x +1 we have to be operational in another town on the other side of the country. Both units A and B were hired to specifically faciliate that move.
I honestly can’t believe the attitude some people are taking here, but it helps me understand why we lost in Afghanistan, not enough people give a shit.
The members of the search and rescue team know well in advance what kind of “schedule” they might have to face. They choose this job knowing both the risks and the fact that it wasn’t going to be a 8 hours schedule after an earthquake.
However, it’s not the same situation here; especially since I don’t have the feeling that the kind of job they do consists in saving lives all day long. Being in a war zone doesn’t mean that you can’t have a mostly paper-pushing job. It’s not necessarily immediately critical.
They went there with a number of expectations : I’ll be in a war zone, I’ll be helpful (maybe they even accepted a lower pay than they could get otherwise just for this reason), I’ll be paid that much, etc… Hmmm…should I go or not? Let’s look : I’ll have a rather regular work schedule of 8 hours/day (maybe it will be sometimes more, but anyway, it’s the same about anywhere). I certainly can accept. It’s not like I’m going to be available 24/7 with insane hours and guaranteed burn off.
And now, it seems that they’re expected to pull 11 hours/day without lunch break. Sorry, it doesn’t fly with me. If they had been told in advance : look, in theory, you’re paid for 8 hours and there’s a mention of a lunch break in the contract, but let’s be real. The kind of job we’re talking about can’t follow a regular office schedule. You’ll be working 10-12 hours every day, 6 days out of 7, and frankly we don’t have time to stop for lunch. Despite being there to push paper, there’s really a lot of paper to push, and the paper being pushed in time is that critical. Are you really sure you’ll be able to handle that? If not, you’ll be better off staying at home in your comfort zone. We don’t need neither people who will burn out after two months nor people who will insist on working only 8 hours/day.
War zone or not, work conditions will be taken into account when accepting or not to work in Afghanistan or wherever. Whoever is hiring you certainly has to make absolutely sure that you understand what is expected from you. You might occasionally receive mortar shells or be lynched by locals is not the same as you’ll be working for a normally very safe place. You’ll be pulling 72 hours/week every week isn’t the same as you’ll be working peacefully 48 hours/week. And if it’s clearly stated, I expect that in general it could be written in the contract as well.
I’m not sure why people assume that by signing to work in a war zone, everybody is implicitly accepting any kind of work conditions. As a previous poster said, if Madmonk told them : “sorry we don’t have any money left at the moment, you won’t be paid for the next two months, also you’ll have to work 15 hours instead of 12 and sleep on the floor” do you think they would have a duty to keep working because they’re aid workers in a war zone? Is there an “I’m a movie-like hero” line in their contract?
I’m not sure why people posting here who don’t work in aid or relief, nor in a war zone, are thinking that people who do have a duty to accept any kind of work conditions on top of it, regardless of what their contract said.
This.
Fully agree with madmonk28’s position with this. Some jobs, by their nature, do not run in a nice, scheduled, predictable manner.
Madmonk, may I suggest you speak to your contracts department or manager and suggest adding a clause along the lines of “and such additional working hours as may reasonably be required by operational needs”, as well as a similar one for working duties. I’m going off memory here, but I believe that’s close to the wording of what we use to cover for scenarios where things go fluffy 5 minutes before the end of the working day.
Yeah, this is going to be my last post in this thread.
When I worked in Baghdad in 2006, I lost an employee a month. That is one guy every month who you won’t see in the lunchroom and never will be again. I had an employee abducted, tortured and beheaded. They dumped his body by our office so that every Iraqi working with us saw it on their way to work. All of them were Iraqis who took extraordinary risks to do their job.
The only way I know how to make that kind of horror and pain even remotely bearable is if the work is about something. I haven’t lost anyone on this deployment, but it is a distinct possibility and if I do have someone working for me killed, I bet it is some Afghan busting his ass to do the right thing.
So when I see a bunch of little cunts making base pay plus 35% danger pay plus 35% post differential, whining about not getting their full lunch, I think back to that headless body laying in the street that morning in Baghdad and my staff who set their jaws, rolled up their sleeves and got to fucking work.
Keep up the good work Madmonk …
Hope there is no fall out from your remark, seriously doubt there will be. I spent a year in Afghanistan and another in Iraq so I understand some of the difficulties you’re likely facing … please be safe.
Not trying to pick on you but you have a tendency to do this kind of thing a lot–you’ll come in to a thread and state your opinion when you have no real experience with it. And I think in general you tend over emphasize the power of a contract.
Just because it is unclear to me, the people you are talking about in units A and B are basically glorified movers, is that correct?
These are not people out saving lives and giving aid to people, though the office they are hired to move does.
Or is that way off the mark?
I only ask because the “Aid Worker in a fucking warzone” thing is getting played a lot here, but I think people are picturing something totally different than what is really happening.
Also, I realize that danger exists regardless of what work they are doing, just wanted clarification.
The mental picture of a rescue worker searching for people to save while his co-worker takes his scheduled break and let’s people die/suffer is what is being presented, but it seems like it’s more like guys moving an office and having issues.
I honestly don’t follow this. Who made money how again?
I have strong opinions about labor contracts and labor laws because my job is processing workers’ compensation claims. If the contract calls for 8 hour workdays, then that is what the workers should be expected to output. If the job calls for 12 hour workdays and the contract is written for an 8 hour workday, someone fucked up fundamentally and they’re trying to take out that mistake on the workers without compensating them. That is fucking bullshit, I don’t care if the job is washing dogs or being the president of television.
You sure seem to care a lot more about what I post than I would consider normal or healthy.
The directors of the NGO. They make more money when they understaff–just like any organization. You don’t seriously believe than non-profit really means that a company doesn’t make any money, do you?