In teaching, it’s a fairly common policy for “long term” subs to get paid a much higher rate than normal subs. The higher rate kicks in on say, your 30th consecutive day in the same classroom. It’s not at all unheard of to reassign a sub for that one day to another class to prevent that. It’s really crappy, because you are basically holding the kids hostage “Oh, we aren’t willing to pay you what we pay a teacher, and we won’t fire you if you do a crappy job, but all these kids will see their education permanently weakened. And that’s on you.”
There are many things an employer can do cumulatively together to show disfavor for an unwanted employee and conversely favoritism toward favored employees. At the last place I worked, the favored employees would chill out with their smart phones or girlfriends in their cars for hours at a time while the unfavored employees toiled away inside the building. Favorite employees would get mainly flexible hours, day shifts and weekdays and unfavored employees would work mandatory nights and weekends, etc.
Shits are given in (some) countries outside the USA because of things like unions and socialist politicians, whose power depends on what they can do for working people. Those things do exist in the USA, but (except in certain very delimited domains where unions retain some power) they have very little power or clout.
It is never just out of the goodness of people’s hearts. It is about countervailing, balancing, powers. In the US, almost all the power is in the hands of employers, and few people seem able to even imagine that it could or should be otherwise.
Think about this for oh maybe 2 seconds.
Boss takes me out for a company event, buys me booze then gives me a BAC then fires me for being drunk?
First off pensions are vested for that very reason. So even if I were to be fired I don’t lose my retirement benefits.
Secondly after the wrongful termination suit I would be enjoying a much nicer retirement with all that extra cash.
I remember reading about a company, (catfish processing plant) that didn’t allow the workers to use the restrooms. The workers had sued because there was only a men’s room, most of the factory were women but the supervisors were men. After installing the new ladies room they didn’t let them use it. The court ordered that the women have facilities. Not that they could use them.
I read about a plant where the bathroom stall was in the middle of the work floor, with the partition reaching only chest high, so supervisors could make sure there was no ulterior motive for the break.
I have quite a bit of experience with upselling. You would be surprised how often it works.
(1), A lot of people don’t actually know what they want to eat. They only think they know.
(2), Even if they do know, it’s impossible to think of every menu item at any one sitting. Upselling very well may remind you of something that you like, but just hadn’t thought of at the moment.
I have heard of low entry level jobs harassing black female employees with hair dress codes that specify no ponytails or braids or cornrows, and hair cannot be above a certain height, AND no short hair or shaved heads or a minimum length for women. Which basically means the only hair style a black woman with hard hair can wear is straightened and processed, no natural hair(afros, corn/cane rows, dreads etc)
They use this to fire someone if they are sick of them, and then hide behind the slimeball defense that they enforce this fairly across all races. I think Six Flags was in the news for it.
Jesus Christ, that’s not a work place, that’s a sweat shop!
This is less about employers than about government labour regulations that work to actively discriminate against workers AND lead to the increasing casualisation of labour in this country (Australia).
As a ‘casual’ worker here, you are not entitled to sick pay, holiday pay, or any other advantage afforded to salaried workers. BTW, I have worked at this and another job for ten and five years respectively…essentially full time. Not exactly ‘casual’ in the true sense of the word.
When I first started working, casual employees were given a tax-concession, so that a flat rate of 17% of earnings was deducted and this was a compensation to account for the lack of things like sick pay and holiday pay. It worked well…perhaps too well for the gummint because NOW…
…all workers, regardless of their employment status are taxed at the same rate (dependent upon your income).
You have a day (or weeks) off sick…no pay.
Your company closes down for public holidays, Xmas, Easter, Passover and other major Jewish holiday events…no pay.
Your computer system at work decides to shit itself and IT isn’t able to fix the problem quickly? Tough titties…no pay.
Long service leave is not compulsory for casual employers…for everyone else, ten years service is rewarded by (something like) 3 months paid leave. If you are ‘casual’, it’s up to the employer’s discretion if you get it or not.
Wanna buy a house or take out a loan? No matter how long you’ve been working, it’s not gonna happen.
A LOT of jobs available in Aus are casual only nowadays, because it dramatically cuts costs for the employers, but makes life fucking tough for the employees.
Here’s one where they hired a woman with dreadlocks, then instituted a new policy that banned them, and told her to cut them off:
I’m sure that’s what they said. Maybe they believed it – they are young and naive. But we all know who it was a huge win for, and it wasn’t the students.
You should pay people who work for you.
So, it’s good that the company works their employees like slaves, because that’s what unskilled workers deserve? Is that what you’re saying?
I’d say that the employer-- a highly profitable, successful company, according to the article-- should not take advantage of economic desperation. The jobs are easy to fill, true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s OK to fire somebody for wanting to take time off to be present at the birth of his child. I don’t think it’s OK for OSHA to be so toothless as to not have any enforceable ergonomic guidelines.
There is an element of self-interest in the belief that employees should have protection from predatory employers. When employers refuse to pay a living wage, their workers will make up the difference through charities and government assistance. And when they have unsafe work practices, some percentage of their workers will permanently become economically unproductive and a further drain on services, until they die early.
Even if we accept that the people working as pickers dropped out or didn’t pay attention in school, that doesn’t mean that the company should take advantage of those regrettable choices. And if companies won’t take that seriously, their customers should and boycott. And if the customers won’t give up their low low prices, the government needs to get involved.
An example: Nancy Selgado was advised to apply for food stamps by McResources. A company worth billions wants taxpayers to pick up the slack. That’s you, in case you haven’t noticed. Even if the McCounselor at McResources wasn’t following the McRules, it is obvious by McDonald’s paying a 10 year, full time employee minimum wage that they are OK with your tax money filling the gap so they don’t have to.
Again, not true. These students did little truly useful work for the companies. They worked side by side with the scientists, likely slowing them down. It was 160 hours (4 weeks full time) of supervised time, giving them tremendous exposure in the field, but not enough time to be independently productive. About 80% of them were hired by the company they interned at as soon as they graduated.
I’m sorry some interns have it bad, but unpaid internships as a concept and in practice hardly become the slave labor some describe it as. For many I know, those internships changed their lives.
Sometimes it’s even because of business owners who realize that a healthy, happy workforce works out better than a sickly, unhappy one. Barcelona’s Eixample (the chessboard part of the map) was designed to provide very good housing to a growing population, rather than having the rich trying to move into the pre-existing towns and the poor fill up shacks in between: the lowest levels were better housing (less stairs to climb, higher ceilings), the higher you went the worse the housing, but always good. The people who built the area got money, the people who moved in got good housing. New Lanark in Scotland or the industrial “colonies” of NE and N Spain come from similar lines of reasoning, although in that case all too often (not in New Lanark) you ended up owing your soul to the company store.
That’s my experience WRT interns as well. When I was no longer able to accept unpaid interns, I had a few offer work-arounds where I would pay them and they’d return the money to me. I explained about taxes and such, so I couldn’t help them out.
No, I’m not saying they deserve it or that it’s good, I’m just pointing out WHY companies can and do those things. If one person is pretty much identical to another unskilled worker, what’s really in it for the company to make things better/ more livable / etc… for them? If the unskilled person in question doesn’t like it or can’t do it, the company can replace them easily and for cheaper than if they actually coughed up the time off, cushy chairs, etc…
Nobody deserves anything really, and if you screw around in school and don’t manage to have any useful skills through education or experience by the time you’re an adult, the expectation is that your life is going to be tough and your job will probably suck pretty badly. That’s not rocket science.
Again, only so far as these people are valuable to them as workers. There’s no cost to the company if the workers go to charities or government assistance, but there is the company foots the bill for those services.
There needs to really be a way to get companies to internalize those costs without necessarily making it be some sort of forced mandate that companies will fight and/or creatively shirk at every opportunity.
Hey- I tried hard in school, much to the detriment of my popularity and social life, in the knowledge that it would eventually pay off. In large part, it’s why I make a pretty good salary these days. I don’t feel particularly sorry for other people who didn’t try hard in school for whatever reason.
“Truly useful work” … a variant of “true Scotsman,” I believe. I’m not suggesting that you pay them the same wages you pay actual working scientists. But this freebie work sets all kinds of bad precedents for workers, however well intended.
There are lots of people who end up as unskilled laborers for reasons that have nothing to do with how hard they tried in school.
Allow me to translate bump’s libertarianspeak into terms normal people can understand…
See, business is a special aspect of human life where morality does not apply. If a business can do something, it WILL do something, good, bad or indifferent, and it’s no use getting all whiny and moralistic about it, because in business, unlike all other aspects of life, amorality is a good thing, somehow.
Law of the jungle, baby!
If you are not like me, then logically you must suffer. It just stands to reason! Why isn’t everyone like me? I’m so cool!
Businesses continue to be amoral.
But if it’s costing ME money, sure, I’d like to see some way of forcing businesses to be more moral.
I’m all right, Jack!