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Welcome to the D&D work and employment thread! Back in 2016, I started the "Retail Thread", which has been going for a while, because there are a lot of political and social issues related to how and where we shop. I think that we should have the same thing, for employment. This is a thread to discuss the way that we work. I do want to steer away from being a chat thread, and hopefully it will not become a "haha dumb customers thread". I specifically want to talk about the political and social customs of the workplace. Where do you work now, and where have you worked previously? Multinational corporation, medium sized business, small business? Are you self-employed? Do you work as a contractor? Do you work for a government body, and at what level? What about non-profits or religious groups? What about worker owned cooperatives, or some other type of non-hierarchical business or organization? Has anyone worked for a family business? Who is working under the table, or perhaps for a not totally legal enterprise? I have worked for many of those categories, and I think most people have worked in varying roles. But people's experiences are going to be different---I was a "government worker" when I worked as an adjacent instructor in a community college district, but that is very different from having a full time federal government job! How do you feel about the possibility of democratic, egalitarian or decentralized work environments? Have you ever had experience working in one, and how much do you think they should and could be applied? What is the relation between the purpose of an organization, and the work structure? For example, has anyone worked at a big multinational corporation that was personally pleasant for the employees, or worked at a non-profit that had major issues of worker mistreatment (I have seen both). Have you had experience with businesses overtly or covertly trying to break employment law, either in terms of wages, hours, or worker safety? How did you respond? Have you experienced bias or discrimination in worker hiring or promotion based on race, gender, family status, etc? How much have businesses you worked for taken sexual harassment seriously? What about workplace bullying? Also, of course: what country/geographic area are you in? Because obviously employment norms and laws vary a lot from country to country. These are just a few of the questions we can ask about the social and political side of being employed. Its a good discussion to have, because (almost) everyone has work experiences, but we will probably be surprised at how different our work experiences are. I am curious what your experiences are.
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Aug 25, 2018 23:57
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I don't think there's really any reason not to have all businesses be required to be run in, at least, a representational democratic manner (i.e. employees can either elect or vote to remove managers). While it's not hard to come up with potential problems with this, I think they're greatly overshadowed by the plethora of problems with the current undemocratic way most workplaces are run. Personally, I've just interned under a financial adviser, interned at a national laboratory, and then spent all my post-college years working at a public state university as a low-paid programmer (specifically my wages started at 14.50/hr and gradually increased to the current 17.80/hr). I consider my job to be an immensely privileged situation (which is kind of objectively true, since I make over median wage for a 32 year old), and constantly feel thankful that I'm not stuck in the retail hell that some of my friends are in (even if I might not be making six figures like some of the people I knew from college).
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Aug 26, 2018 00:22
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Ytlaya posted:I don't think there's really any reason not to have all businesses be required to be run in, at least, a representational democratic manner (i.e. employees can either elect or vote to remove managers). While it's not hard to come up with potential problems with this, I think they're greatly overshadowed by the plethora of problems with the current undemocratic way most workplaces are run. I worked in a non-profit that was a consensus-based cooperative. It worked pretty well when it was under about 12 employees. At a certain point, the consensus model became too unwieldy and the non-profit transferred to being a more conventionally run organization, with an executive director etcetera. I certainly think they should have thought more before ending the experiment. But I also have seen that a democratic structure didn't solve all workplace issues. There was still a lot of gender and racial discrimination even in a democratic workplace.
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Aug 26, 2018 00:43
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I've been employed at small companies, and a very large company, and also self-employed both as an independent contractor and as a direct "I own the IP, I get the money" producer. In my experience small companies (sample size 3) are significantly more totalitarian and employee-screwing than large companies (sample size 1 and a half). I think there's a certain stigma against large companies these days that means they have to pay a bit more competitively than their small competitors to get equivalent quality of workers, and they're almost certainly more concerned about potential legal action if they try to screw employees (whereas small companies can eg. just dissolve and leave the last two months of paychecks unpaid - didn't happen to me but has happened to friends. I got "oh we can give you a big raise in a year" which I took as a sign to quit immediately; the company dissolved ~8 months later.) Being self-employed is pretty cool, but contracting sucks because dealing with people's nonsense expectations and demands sucks. The worst problem is you can't charge someone for the loving days it takes to get them to properly explain what they want, then if you price the work higher than they had hoped they can just walk away and you did days of work for nothing. I mean maybe you can, maybe I was just doing it wrong. If you can get work reliably it pays better than employment even taking into account those wasted days, but those wasted days still really grate, and for me the difference in cash value isn't worth the frustration. Self-employed where you literally just make the thing and own it is awesome but has a similar problem - I made a thing in like two days that made tens of thousands of dollars, I spent 8 months on another thing that I thought was better, that one made like $80. People are awkward. Also if you're working alone it's nice for a year or two but then you can go a bit stir-crazy. Also I'm not particularly driven, so I started abandoning projects to start other more interesting projects and then abandoning those ones, forever. A job curbs that tendency. (Location-wise, I did small and medium-large companies in the UK, large company in the US, and self-employed of both types in the US, Australia and UK. The location didn't really make much difference except that filing taxes in the US is waaay more of a pain in the rear end.) One surprising feature is that larger companies seem to be more open to financial negotiation than small ones, even though in a large company you're a replaceable cog [with a ramp-up time], and in a small company you might be literally a quarter of the entire company's productivity. I think small company tyrants have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, or a strange belief that they have you over a barrel, or maybe just don't want to acknowledge how important one good employee is to the company, but big company tyrants are more likely to recognize that we're all basically insignificant here and so's the money, so yeah whatever.
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Aug 26, 2018 02:05
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roomforthetuna posted:I've been employed at small companies, and a very large company, and also self-employed both as an independent contractor and as a direct "I own the IP, I get the money" producer. I think some of that might just be reversion to the mean. Like, with a small company, its dependent on the personality of one person. If that person is good, then you can have a wonderful experience, and it might even turn into a situation where they will go above and beyond for you, because it transcends being a business relationship. But if its bad...well, it can be really, really bad. In a larger company, it is likely to just be average, because one person's personality doesn't hold as much sway, and also you have a layer of bureaucracy telling managers what they can and can't do.
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Aug 26, 2018 03:04
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glowing-fish posted:I think some of that might just be reversion to the mean. Like, with a small company, its dependent on the personality of one person. If that person is good, then you can have a wonderful experience, and it might even turn into a situation where they will go above and beyond for you, because it transcends being a business relationship. But if its bad...well, it can be really, really bad. In a larger company, it is likely to just be average, because one person's personality doesn't hold as much sway, and also you have a layer of bureaucracy telling managers what they can and can't do. But yes, you can absolutely get better treatment in a small company than you can in a big one, too. But I'd guess it's like 10% are better and 90% are worse. Perhaps sector-specific too - I could easily imagine independent bars averaging better than chain bars for bartenders, because that's a relatively personal relationship, but in software the only way I'd trust a small company now is either if I knew the person, or if the company is deliberately subjecting itself to ethical constraints like it's an open-source thing or a nonprofit.
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Aug 26, 2018 05:54
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glowing-fish posted:I worked in a non-profit that was a consensus-based cooperative. It worked pretty well when it was under about 12 employees. At a certain point, the consensus model became too unwieldy and the non-profit transferred to being a more conventionally run organization, with an executive director etcetera. I certainly think they should have thought more before ending the experiment. There is no need for a consensus model. You can also just give employees the power to remove/replace leadership; they don't need to be involved in all decision-making. For example, the board of directors could just be elected by a company's workers (for probably the least directly democratic version of this). Edit: Basically, as I mentioned, there are obviously some new problems it causes and it doesn't solve all problems, but its undeniably preferable to the status quo (as opposed to owners/private shareholders, who certainly aren't inherently wiser and better at decision-making). Think of it this way - in a reasonable world, democratic workplaces would be the default, and the burden should be on others to prove that removing employee representation is necessary. I am not remotely convinced that shareholders/private owners are not only better, but so much better it justifies disenfranchising employees. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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Aug 26, 2018 09:02
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Complete democratic control over all decisions would cripple a business. Election of leadership is more important because just for organizational reasons, individuals to control and have ownership over certain domains of the business with people acting subordinate/in supporting roles to their decisions. If only for expediency because otherwise nothing would get done. Where I work, we are very communal. I emphasize that different jobs between tiers or management roles are not better than the other but are necessary parts of the whole. Managers have more responsibility in some ways and are paid more, but pay disparity is very low (<50% difference between lowest and highest) and its important to distinguish that responsibility and total duties affects pay more than simply rungs on a ladder.
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Aug 26, 2018 11:49
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I am a category B tenured civil servant in France - to be precise, a midlevel administrative customs officer ("customs controller, second class" is the full designation of my rank). I do not wear a uniform, never go out in the field and have replaced the badge in my wallet with a cool seal for the Magical Congress of the United States from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, that should give you an idea of how often I whip it out. Before I got here I was a certified high school teacher (category A government worker, A is higher than B is higher than C) up until I quit, and before that I was an intern in social work at the Lille City Hall. My very short stints in the private sector as a telemarketer and a private teacher, as well as my short college-mandated internship in the ministry of Ecology and Transportation are insignificant enough that I will not provide any further details about them. My current pay, after all the automatic healthcare, work and retirement payments but before income tax, is somewhere around €2100/month. Some €1500 of that is my official pay that is a matter of public record, the rest is a collection of opaque bonuses I get from being employed by the Ministry of Finance, working in the central administration, and some other minor stuff. I will definitely obtain a seniority-related raise in June of 2020, then 2022, and so on, or perhaps earlier if I pass examinations that get me in a new rank ("controller first class", "senior controller", or even "customs inspector" but that’d mean going to school for another year and leaving my current post). It is also possible - though unlikely given the current government - that I will also get inflation-based raises on January 1st of every year. All this is decided by law. For reference, my pay as a teacher was ~€2000/month, with €1800 being the official pay and the rest bonuses for being posted in a difficult school. And as an intern I got the legal minimum, €467/month lmao. Anyway. Being a tenured civil servant in France, I am for all intents and purposes un-fireable, no matter how incompetent and unproductive I am. Thankfully, even though I am lazy as gently caress, my work ethic is based on public service so I do more than the bare minimum. I can still be disciplined or posted in a lovely grueling job if I’m found wanting though. My pay is guaranteed, as is my eventual advancement in seniority. I am quite free to choose my posting - or at least, to apply for a job within my administration on any territory. Tenure ("titularisation") as a civil servant is most commonly achieved through success at a competitive examination where thousands of candidates apply for dozens of job openings. I remember writing a post about that at some point but I’m unable to find it. The French administration is characterized by a pretty rigid hierarchy and a deep attachment to rank. I report to a section chief who reports to a bureau chief who reports to a subdirector who reports to the director general of Customs and Excise, who reports to the minister. But I don’t expect this kind of chain of command to be uncommon in a structure that employs some 16,000 people. Still, I don’t really ever meet anyone above the bureau chief. We have competent and incompetent managers on every level of the pyramid, but I believe that the absolute worst are mostly successfully kept away thanks to the rank requirements on the most sensitive postings. A lot of stuff, including reorganizations and office closures are decided by the top with no input from the lower echelons, BUT we’ve got unions that fight against the most egregious stuff through legal channels. In the public sector, unions are given a very important role by law (participation in many kinds of decisions) so that’s good, but wow how much I’d love more democracy in my workplace. I don’t mind being managed. I actually relish the fact that I have almost no responsibilities and take almost no decisions that I haven’t run by the section chief (this wouldn’t be the case if the section chief didn’t almost systematically agree with my suggestions). I don’t mind a hierarchy. But as a disciple of Marx I have vowed never to join the private sector because I cannot stand the idea of being exploited for profit, and having a part of my labor stolen from me. Should I ever leave Customs (like, if fascists gain power and I can’t be a thorn in their side), I would probably attempt to found a cooperative restaurant - something that allows me to work in a non-exploitative environment. This is crucial to me. Back in the 18th Century we made our first steps towards democracy in politics. There were a bunch of bumps on the road, it’s still a work in progress and there are plenty of authoritarian voices that oppose this process but progress is there. We failed to achieve this in the workplace however - especially in the private sector - and especially when it comes to the fair distribution of the products of labor. As an aside, I find it utterly baffling that so many people who call themselves democrats, supporters of freedom and so on are so blind to the fact that so much of their life is spent under a dictatorial (even totalitarian) system. But democracy in the workplace is the next step of the democratic struggle and we must do all that we can to advocate for it. Flowers For Algeria fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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Aug 26, 2018 14:54
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I think it would be better to regulate away lovely behavior towards employes. Democracy doesn't mean work places would be more moral, and I dont want to think of what it would do for minority representation if supervisors are voted in, especially in the south. Nothing wrong with giving employees more of a say in the direction of a business. Theres even a corporation type for that.
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Aug 26, 2018 15:24
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Sylink posted:Complete democratic control over all decisions would cripple a business. Election of leadership is more important because just for organizational reasons, individuals to control and have ownership over certain domains of the business with people acting subordinate/in supporting roles to their decisions. If only for expediency because otherwise nothing would get done. Seems like regulation from outside the business is a better model - eg. cap the disparity between highest and lowest paid (and no bullshit loopholes where the CEO is "paid $1" because they get billions in stock and benefits), cap hours (and it's illegal to pressure a worker to do more hours), have reasonable safety and health expectations, and make any violations of these caps an actual crime punishable by a large fine that mostly goes to the victim[s], and goddamn prison if you don't pay. And the fine comes first from the person doing it, as much as they can afford, and only second from the company. Penalizing the actual perpetrators of crimes rather than the company they worked for seems like it would go a loooong way to curb workplace exploitation.
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Aug 26, 2018 16:03
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Flowers For Algeria posted:Tenure ("titularisation") as a civil servant is most commonly achieved through success at a competitive examination where thousands of candidates apply for dozens of job openings. I remember writing a post about that at some point but I’m unable to find it. Kind of off-topic, and also I might not be fully aware here, but for, me it seems like a lot of countries outside of the United States put a lot of emphasis on examinations. And that sometimes these examinations determine someone's life, and can only be taken once. Like, where I live now, in Chile, the people take their scholastic examinations at 17, and that pretty much determines where they go to university, and then what company will hire them, etcetera. They are surprised when they find out that in the United States, you can not finish high school, spend 10 years working a menial job, then go back, get a high school equivalency, and go to community college and get a bachelor's degree in your 30s. It is one of the better things about the United States system, people do get to do things differently. Or it was---when I was in community college in the 1990s, my tuition was 30 dollars a credit. Its now 100 dollars a credit...and that is at a community college. So its not as easy a path as it used to be. In general, interviewing for work in the United States, and getting hired, is a really subjective experience. I think that outside of very technical jobs, work experience counts a lot more than formal education. And even in jobs where it is about formal education, they still want a lot of soft skills, and the interview is going to focus more on how someone might fit into the workplace culture, than on what they strictly know. Other people might correct me on all of these points...maybe my US work experience is just specific to me!
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Aug 26, 2018 17:37
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roomforthetuna posted:I'm not sure electing leadership is significantly better - that's how you end up with the American Politics model, where leadership consistently lies to the voters about what it's going to do, then scrapes out as much grift as they can while in power, and hey let's also introduce some sort of weird constraints on who can run for the position to guarantee it's never someone who actually wants to improve conditions for employees. Yeah, this is where I am at as well. Democratizing the work place won't bring any of those things. Id rather see heavily regulated businesses that are activly punished for pulling the crap they pull. Also if you eliminate through regulation a lot of yhe lovely things like cheating people out of fair wages and benifits, then you'll probably see more businesses that are employee run, or unionized at least.
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Aug 26, 2018 18:41
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I'm going to be starting a job with a FedEx contractor that pays by the day instead of by the hour. It's how the scumbag gets away without paying overtime, but I still need this job because it pays better than anything else I can ever find in this shithole I live in in Wyoming.
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Aug 26, 2018 19:31
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roomforthetuna posted:I'm not sure electing leadership is significantly better - that's how you end up with the American Politics model, where leadership consistently lies to the voters about what it's going to do, then scrapes out as much grift as they can while in power, and hey let's also introduce some sort of weird constraints on who can run for the position to guarantee it's never someone who actually wants to improve conditions for employees. Oh, it absolutely doesn't come close to solving all problems; it's just definitely better than the alternative of "workers having basically zero control over their superiors." It at least gives workers some direct recourse if the company's leaders are terrible and treat them poorly. Obviously you also need strong regulation, but it's just part of the solution to move power from private owners/shareholders to workers.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:20
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I live in Canada and make $34/hour driving a bus; full union member with great benefits and a defined benefits pension. On the surface it would seem to be a lousy job but I get to pick my hours, my routes and my days off, it is by far the best job I have ever had. I actually have not driven since February as I am on parental leave until October.
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Aug 27, 2018 03:23
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Colorado, manufacturing, CNC machinist, 22/hr. I kind of want to move to Canada and get a job as a bus driver now.
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Aug 27, 2018 13:53
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Admiral Bosch posted:Colorado, manufacturing, CNC machinist, 22/hr. I kind of want to move to Canada and get a job as a bus driver now. It is a good deal, but I am assuming that is Canadian dollars, which means they are getting paid closer to 27 US dollars. I mean, it still seems like a pretty good deal, but with COLA and the like, maybe not quite as good as it seems at first.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:28
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Star Man posted:I'm going to be starting a job with a FedEx contractor that pays by the day instead of by the hour. It's how the scumbag gets away without paying overtime, but I still need this job because it pays better than anything else I can ever find in this shithole I live in in Wyoming. Pays by the day instead of the hour? I do wonder how they get away with that... If you are wondering whether your employer is doing something that perhaps they legally can't, this is a good resource: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/statutes/FairLaborStandAct.pdf Although its very long, and covers lots of very specific topics. Lots in there about maple syrup and cardboard box bailers.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:30
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I'm a full-time army reservist managing a company of engineer soldiers who are too broken to deploy. I am grossly overpaid for what I do at around 8k a month. My 15 years in the army bumps the pay up a lot. That plus the free healthcare are nice. I'm originally from a very economically depressed area in upstate NY and am now in Arizona. The military is almost the only option to get out of the hellscape of NY. About 15% of my high school class joined and none of us have ever gone back. I am though, pretty loving tired of AZ politics.
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Aug 27, 2018 15:54
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I'm a software engineer for Google in Munich, working on Google Account Settings. I also worked at HQ in Mountain View (on Google Photos), and before that at Amazon in Seattle (Kindle Android), which was my first post-college job. I've had a bunch of random jobs prior to that, the only one that's really notable though was interning at Goldman Sachs (I was only vaguely aware of who they were before applying) in NYC in the summer of 2010, around the time the SEC was investigating them and the post-recession financial legislation was being worked on. It was kind of funny going to the theater next door to the office and watching The Other Guys (especially the credits). If you have a reasonably recent Android version (I think L and up?), you can probably see what I work on by going to Settings > Google > Google Account. If the interface that pops up at that point looks not-poo poo, that's the new version we launched earlier in the summer. Working at Google is, as far as salaryman-type jobs go, pretty amazing. You still have to dehumanize yourself and face to bureaucracy to a certain extent, but the pay is excellent (amazing, by most non-programmers' standards), there's free food and gym, work hours and conditions are flexible, the company makes it easy to transfer between projects/teams/positions (even to another country), basically everyone there is really smart and nice, the culture is generally very socially progressive/accepting, even many internal software tools have consumer-level polish or something close to it, the 401k plan is incredibly good, there's generous parental leave by US standards, the company is usually very supportive about buying the right equipment that people need, and the internal culture is unusually open and accepting of criticism by corporate standards (e.g. there's an internal social network, built with company resources, where it's common to mock executive decisions), etc. It's hard for me now to imagine going somewhere else to code, except maybe Facebook or a handful of larger startups with similar benefits. Ytlaya posted:I don't think there's really any reason not to have all businesses be required to be run in, at least, a representational democratic manner (i.e. employees can either elect or vote to remove managers). While it's not hard to come up with potential problems with this, I think they're greatly overshadowed by the plethora of problems with the current undemocratic way most workplaces are run. quote:Works councils in Germany have a long history, with their origins in the early 1920s in the post World War I Weimar Republic, established by the Betriebsverfassungsgesetz or Works Council Act. Initially, unions were very skeptical of works councils, seeing them as a way for management to negotiate with employees without employing collective bargaining, but eventually they developed clearly defined responsibilities with works councils not allowed to organize strikes or enforce a wage increase. In recent years with a decline in union membership, works councils have come to be seen as a way for unions to recruit members, specifically by having works councils campaign for people to join them. Cicero fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 16:05
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I work in a city public library as a clerk. I used to work in rural and suburban community libraries. Running children and YA programs and keeping the place running. Actually I've worked in... twelve to fifteen public libraries ha. But this one is a big library, comparatively. It used to be just me and a couple older librarians in a small rural town over the summers. Now I'm in a library of over a hundred staff with thousands of patrons. I definitely feel hardened by the sharpness of an inner city public facing role. Public libraries are generally run by local councils, at least in my country (nz). You have to deal with some amount of bureaucracy and organizational politics because of this but overall its a stable job in which you are left alone. I'm a massive hippie so all for the possibility of democratic, egalitarian or decentralized work environments. I can tell you the libraries that run best are those where the staff on the ground feel empowered and confident to take initiatives without having to run them past upper management (too much~). I've found the libraries that are more decentralized run heaps smoother and healthier. Management and above are generally rather good. Nobody is running a library to make evil dollars. Definitely been on the receiving end of sexual harassment. Both by some staff (in previous libraries) and patrons. The patrons has almost been a weekly occurrence. It feels 'just part of the gig' even though it really shouldn't. Honestly after working in public libraries for.. six years (wa?!), I've become rather numb to all sorts of bleak behaviour by the public. My current position isn't so rough, I have a v good team. But there has definitely been times in the past where if a coworker wandered into the workroom with "yeah they asked for help finding a book and when we got to the shelf he started running at me screaming "I'm going to hurt you!" I would be concerned but not.. like, surprised. Working with the vague broad demographic of the public is probably where most of my trepidation with my job comes from. That and robots lol. No shadiness re: breaking employment laws or shady bosses or anything. No corruption haha. I wish I called out the sexual harrasment but I was in my early 20s and really, really needed the job. I was afraid I'd lose it if I rocked the boat. I enjoy my job. I have interesting, creative coworkers who often have another passion/aspiration going. Comedians, musicians, poetry people, etc. A proportion are burnt out lawyers, excorporates and teachers who realized they need a job that is relatively low stress and 'easy' (ha). I'm only working part time this year. I'm studying a bachelor of health/psychology and volunteering as a phone counsellor as to eventually transition into that field. Libraries are cool but the pay is bad and I've worked Saturdays my whole twenties. Lampsacus fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Aug 27, 2018 |
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Aug 27, 2018 16:20
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I make $13.50/hr(plus 1.5x on Sundays) working full time for a large supermarket chain for 5 years which is in turn owned by Ahold, and it is some sort of hellscape. Our parent company was just on a $3 billion stock buyback binge, but we can't get authorization to have our elevator fixed, so now we are going to make a human chain probably to get 16 pallets of water and 14 pallets of candy down two fights of stairs. There are basically no standards for our part timers anymore since you can't really ask for them when you pay the minimum wage, and there is a lot of discontent between the new full timers who feel like they're being screwed(for example, there is now an $18/hr salary cap), and the ones who have been working there for years who have all kinds of great pay and benefits. Also, specific to our store, we are extremely busy, in fact the busiest in the state for our company. We are bled dry to prop up other stores, we have the staffing levels often of a store doing half the business. We received a new store manager three weeks ago who is loathed by everyone from the department managers to the part time grunts, and we often have sewage back up into our backroom. Retail, woot.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:32
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I work as a freelance web/app developer, and also as a flight instructor in a traditional employer/employee relationship because gently caress owning and maintaining my own plane to freelance that. The pay for the former is very good, and it allows me to work basically as hard or as not-hard as I want, by selecting which projects to take on. The pay for being a flight instructor is poo poo ($26/hour, but only for flight and instructional time, which is weather-dependent). I get to pick my own schedule there, though, which is good, and it's actually fun instead of being boring and tedious. It's a small business by overall standards, but large compared to the other flight schools in the area. Management is... okay, and they respond reasonably quickly to any concerns, but there are a few hold-over policies from when there was significantly less demand that I could do without -- we have a 200-person waiting list for instructor availability, and we're booked often months in advance, but we're still treating some students as if we need every student we can get. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the instructors too much, but I'm disappointed to see motivated students hamstrung by the lack of instructor availability when we're still plodding along with people who schedule one or two flights a month and make very little progress, and I think it's impacting instructor morale overall. It's a great example of how a more democratic workplace culture could drive policies that increase employee morale while literally costing no money. In fact, it'd probably make more money, since motivated students wouldn't cancel bookings nearly as often.
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Aug 27, 2018 16:35
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Seattle, for a not for profit. I wander the waterfront attempting to prevent historical scale disasters.
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Aug 27, 2018 17:09
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glowing-fish posted:Pays by the day instead of the hour? I do wonder how they get away with that... I'm not even in the job yet, so I will have to see. Right now I'm a seasonal parks worker for the city and this driving job starts in October. It's $120 per day and will likely go up probably after Christmas. So, presuming that's eight hours per day, it will come out to $15 per hour. I know that I will be delivering on Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I'm sure there some loophole that gets them out of paying overtime. I suppose I'm being paid salary instead of hourly. It's not a job with FedEx itself, but a contractor that uses all of their branding and uniforms. The contractor I'm working for is based in Nebraska. I'll know more when things get closer to starting. It just sucks that he does poo poo to rip people off and I think that's why the person whose route I'll be taking is quitting because he's done it for several years and is going nowhere with it and is moving to St. Louis. I know that I'm getting screwed too, but I'm in a position where all I can do is grin and bear. I had to move back home from Denver in February 2017 because my father died and my cheap place to live got sold in January and I had just finished my undergrad in December 2016. I had nothing. I just have to put up with it long enough to get my credit card debt erased, save up at least $10,000 while I live at home for free, and get back to Denver in early 2020. I just can't find anything where I live in Wyoming and can't even land an interview in anything relavant to my degree that's hiring to build up experience.
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Aug 27, 2018 17:29
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roomforthetuna posted:In my experience small companies (sample size 3) are significantly more totalitarian and employee-screwing than large companies (sample size 1 and a half). I think there's a certain stigma against large companies these days that means they have to pay a bit more competitively than their small competitors to get equivalent quality of workers, and they're almost certainly more concerned about potential legal action if they try to screw employees (whereas small companies can eg. just dissolve and leave the last two months of paychecks unpaid - didn't happen to me but has happened to friends. I got "oh we can give you a big raise in a year" which I took as a sign to quit immediately; the company dissolved ~8 months later.) quote:The average pay per employee for very small business with 20 employees or less was $36,912, according to the research. For small firms with 20 to 99 employees, it was $40,417. At medium-sized firms it was $44,916. And at large companies it was $52,554. Flowers For Algeria posted:But as a disciple of Marx I have vowed never to join the private sector because I cannot stand the idea of being exploited for profit, and having a part of my labor stolen from me.
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Aug 27, 2018 18:45
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I work as a technology coordinator for a bunch of rural and very rural school districts and towns and stuff. All the school districts underpay and cheat me but I give a lot of leeway because it's meaningful work. Like one school pays me 1000 dollars a year, but like, it's a 28 student one room two teacher schoolhouse so I'm happy to take the job like I'm a kid mowing a lawn. The aggregate of all of the schools pay me an okay amount, not great, but okay. I very obviously should break away from this being a web of individual separate jobs and just become a contractor and take jobs like this generally but it feels hard to care. I am making less than other people in IT but I don't really want for anything and I don't really feel like I want to put the squeeze on a bunch of poverty schools?
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Aug 27, 2018 18:47
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Wow, this is a very conveniently timed article on works councils/worker board representation in America that came out today: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-27/why-u-s-corporate-boards-don-t-include-workers According to this article, the councils were fairly popular up until 1935/1937 (law passed and subsequently Supreme Court ruling), when they became illegal in the US. I thought they didn't exist just because, y'know, capital having more power than labor and whatnot.
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Aug 27, 2018 21:26
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I work in the steel industry as an electronics technician, mostly programming/troubleshooting PLCs and VFDs and their associated circuits. I make about $55/hour and just over six figures per year. It's rotating shift work, though, so it's probably not good for my health long-term. Right now I'm my family's sole income so that my wife can do the stay-at-home mom thing, so I'll keep at it awhile longer and look into transitioning to something with lower pay but a more normal schedule once we're on two incomes again. Prior to this I earned a History degree and joined the Navy after I didn't make enough to do more than get by as a writing tutor. In terms of pay and QoL, I am in a much better place than I have been before. Even though swapping from night shift to day shift sucks a lot, four days of work and then four days off is pretty great. Extra fun: While I'm a little more conservative than average for this forum, I'm way more liberal than average for my industry, and surrounded by Trump and tariff lovers. I don't exactly hide my politics, but I keep quiet about them unless I'm asked. My workplace and town are 90%+ white with all of the blind spots you would expect.
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Aug 27, 2018 23:49
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Cicero, you are ignoring the perspective of the economy as a whole. It is impossible for most workers to do the 10-20% of jobs that pay anywhere near as high as the Google job you describe, because most of the jobs required for society to function do not afford their employees much/any negotiating power. Basically, to be frank, the well-being of the minority in the labor aristocracy is irrelevant when considering the overall effectiveness of an economic system at providing for its participants. Most people will never have the choice of entering the professional upper-middle class as you have. Edit: Put another way, you're creating a false dichotomy that assumes good pay is mutually exclusive with better worker representation, as well as ignoring the fact that good pay is not characteristic of our economic system for most people. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 00:14
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I work as a technology coordinator for a bunch of rural and very rural school districts and towns and stuff. All the school districts underpay and cheat me but I give a lot of leeway because it's meaningful work. Like one school pays me 1000 dollars a year, but like, it's a 28 student one room two teacher schoolhouse so I'm happy to take the job like I'm a kid mowing a lawn. The aggregate of all of the schools pay me an okay amount, not great, but okay. How many hours do you have to work for that 1000 dollars? And is it mostly onsite or remote? This is where work conditions can make up for a lot of inadequacies in pay. Because if that is two hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you are making less than 10 dollars an hour. But if that is done in 30 minute chunks throughout the week, at home, wearing your pajamas and remotely reading log files on a computer or something, that is a pretty good job. If you actually have to get dressed and drive somewhere for those same hours, it becomes a worse deal. Which is why working for democratic, or at least more open work conditions, is just as important as working for better pay. Because I would rather be paid 12 dollars an hour and be happy, than be paid 15 dollars an hour and be constantly stressed.
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Aug 28, 2018 02:33
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That reminds me of a great example of where big companies were less weirdly autocratic than small companies. Two of the three small companies I worked for were really loving anal about hours; you must be in by 9, you must never leave before 5, lunch is not more than half an hour. No flexibility, even though you're working on a thing completely on your own and have zero required interaction with any kind of humans or even shared systems during those hours. And one of those two had the cheek to ask me to work late when a deadline loomed - I told them gently caress off, you gave me a formal written warning for coming in 10 minutes late two days in a row even though I worked 20 minutes extra at the end of both those days, no, I will not work extra for you without extra compensation. (The other one was a startup so they were trying to be cool.) Of the big companies, one was pretty flexible and just wanted the hours to add up each week, and if they asked for more they paid time-and-a-half for any extra. The other basically doesn't care at all so long as the work gets done and any meetings are met. Work from home if there's no meetings, come in whenever, work whenever. Work in the middle of the night if you want. (Again, this was all computer-related fields.)
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Aug 28, 2018 03:53
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I am lucky enough to work in what is probably close to an ideal situation in the US. I'm a mid-level university employee at a state school in a well managed East Coast state which prioritizes education funding. At one point I was considered 'administrative faculty', which meant I got some of the benefits of being a faculty member (amounts of leave) with none of the protections (tenure). A recent human resources redesign shifted administrative faculty into a new staff category which was created to allow the university to have more control over what were previous classified-level state employees. As a sop to those of who got switched, I was allowed to keep my previous leave accrual rate. Right now I earn around $50,000/year in a low cost-of-living area with excellent benefits, including comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance, for which I pay roughly $140 a month for my wife and myself. I pay 5% of my salary into a pension plan, which my employer double matches (they provide $2 for every $1 I contribute). Having worked more than five years I have vested into the plan. I work 'roughly' 40 hours a week, which means I have a fair bit of discretion setting my schedule as long as the work gets done and most of my hours fall between 8 and 5 PM. As an exempt employee I am not paid more if I work more than 40 hours a week, but that rarely happens. Over the summer I am in the office around 30 hours a week and am able to telecommute for one day every other week. I earn around 24 hours of leave each month and am only required to submit leave if I am away from the office for more than 4 hours (a weekly doctors appointment, for example, does not require me to submit leave). We also have additional leave, including maternity and paternity leave, family care leave, etc. I think I have something like 3 months of leave saved up. While I do not have the same level of protections as a classic state employee (impossible to fire in my state), I do have significant protections, making it very difficult to get rid of me. The one downside to my position is that raises outside of significant changes in job/job title (for example I was recently promoted and given more responsibility) are few and far between and are controlled by the state legislature. I am expecting a 3-6% raise in October. I have a BA, an MA and am finishing a Ph.D. I am able to work on my Ph.D. for free due to provided tuition waivers. My job requires a minimum of a Master's and 3-5 years of experience, although finding employment at my school has become much more competitive of late. Both my BA and MA are in fields unrelated to my job. I like my job. This is my third position at my university and I've been happy with my career progression. I foresee myself working here for another 7-10 years and then moving into the private sector. Because I work for a government institution there is a focus on creating a quality work environment and providing protections to employees. I feel strongly that the things my job provides should be standard. My wife works in the private sector and makes significantly more than me, but receives nothing in the way of time off and her health insurance is horrific. Seven Hundred Bee fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 04:34
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Star Man posted:I'm not even in the job yet, so I will have to see. Right now I'm a seasonal parks worker for the city and this driving job starts in October. Salary vs not-salary isn't a distinction in US federal labor law. You are almost certainly not exempt from overtime regulations (for one thing, you don't meet the $913/week min pay requirement). As far as the law is concerned, (1) you have an hourly rate which must be greater than minimum wage and (2) anything past 40 hours/workweek must be paid at 1.5X your hourly rate. If your hours are consistent, your employer can math their way to an effective $120/day, but if you work extra some days, they owe you more. Example: - Boss wants to effectively pay $120/day for 5x 10 hour days - They agree to pay you $92.30/day - $92.30/day * 5 days/50 hours => your base hourly rate is $9.23/hour (> min wage, so legal) - $92.30/day * 5 days = $461 base pay - $9.23/hour * time-and-a-half * 10 hours overtime = $138 overtime - $599 total pay But if on Friday they decide they actually want you to do a 12 hour shift: - $92.30/day * 5 days/52 hours => your base hourly rate is now $8.87/hour (not legal in Nebraska, but ignore that for the example) - $92.30 * 5 days = $461 base pay - $8.87/hour * 1.5 * 12 hours overtime = $160 - $621 total pay (Practically, if they end up trying to cheat you but you really need the job, I'd document hours well, ask questions about how you're paid to try to get something incriminating in writing, then make a wage theft claim after you leave and have something else lined up)
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Aug 28, 2018 05:09
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glowing-fish posted:How many hours do you have to work for that 1000 dollars? And is it mostly onsite or remote? My employment is hilariously convoluted. I work basically 28 hours a week for one school district and 7 hours a week at another which is two paychecks but are give me some benefits jointly (like, they coordinate for vacation time and sick days and stuff) then work on call for the vague local government of one of the districts where I am loosely on call for the town library/town office/fire department/sheriff's office/plow shed/whatever where that is either separate hours or allowed to overlap with hours at the larger school depending how important something sounds and how much the school department needs favor with the town at the moment. (if the dispatch computer is down at the fire station no one at the school minds if I disappear to go fix that, but I would fix the land assessor's computer after the school day). I am also employed separately by the special ed department of one school just because they like.... have computers and like, separate budgets meant they paid for stuff for them out of a separate fund than the school. Then I have the weird little one room schoolhouse ~4 hours a month (one morning), for 1000 dollars a year, where that makes zero economic sense but I already do so many other schools and it's so little and sad that I basically do it as charity because it's a <30 student school for 5 entire towns and the next nearest school is 45 minutes away. And it makes no economical sense as a job but it's like my 13th job and 4th paycheck so I just basically count it as quasi pro-bono work that doesn't need to make financial sense. It's 500 dollars at christmas and 500 dollars in july which is the month all the school jobs are off unpaid. (which is really way less than 500 dollars because taxes, but it's a fun 500 dollar check at times that I want 500 dollars and the tax bill is months later)
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Aug 28, 2018 05:47
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:
So that works out to about 20 dollars an hour (4*12=48 hours a year), which I am guessing is below standard for whatever type of IT professional you are, but is not an unfair wage. And it also goes back to just how flexible you are. Can you choose what day that is? If that is a Sunday morning where you are bored, and you can just kind of cruise in and noodle around, seems like an okay job. In general, your work seems to be an example of the "gig economy", more or less. Would you classify it as such, and if so, do you like it?
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Aug 28, 2018 06:34
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in the summer of my rear end in a top hat there is always honey and wine (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 28, 2018 06:42
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My story, or at least the most interesting of my stories (I will write about being dial-up internet tech support later) In my 20s, my "first job" was working for a non-profit. It was an organization that recycled and rebuilt computers for the community, using open source software. It was originally volunteer and community run. I came in one day as a volunteer, and ended up working there for three years. (You might already know about this organization). When I started, there was three staff members, and by the time I left, there was 12. There was also a variety of paid interns there, through other programs. The full time staff was a collective, who made operational decisions by consensus, with the volunteers and community making "big picture" decisions at a monthly meeting. Especially for my first few years, it was full of chaotic energy: it really was egalitarian, people could come in and three weeks later be part of the informal decision making process, and also there was a feeling of being part of the community. But as it got bigger, it started having problems: they wanted to hire people part-time, which made sense, but also turned it into a two-tiered organization. There was a lot of factionalism developing. And while it served and interacted with the larger community, the people who ran the organization were usually demographically pretty similar: what we might call prototechbros, only Wobblies instead of Libertarians. Eventually, some time after it left, it switched to a more conventional non-profit model. It still does a lot of good work, but as an experiment in spontaneous community organizing and collective decision making, it has ran its course. Also, from the outside, lots of people looked at it as just crazy hippie shenanigans, but I found that consensus and non-hierarchical decision making made it more efficient, because there was no management to be insulated from the impact of their decisions. Everyone had a voice in what was practicable. It was agile, because suggestions from everyone could be incorporated quickly. Even though I see the problems with this type of employment model, I think it can work, and has benefits compared to conventional employment models. I think the two main things it needs is a way to be scaled better, and a bedrock of a culture of inclusion/respect, which are hard to get. I've also found it interesting that on at least one occasion, I've had discussions with people who were doctrinairely more leftist than me, who didn't believe that a workplace without "bosses" could be possible. It is still something that I take as a template for how we can work.
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Aug 28, 2018 06:59
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Yeah, this is where I am at as well. Democratizing the work place won't bring any of those things. Id rather see heavily regulated businesses that are activly punished for pulling the crap they pull. Unionization is a lot better, as far as I'm concerned. Let management get on about the business of management, and give the workers an elected representative to sit in and make sure their viewpoints are represented and they are taken care of. The majority of the workforce in a modern corporate structure has no idea what good strategic business decisions look like, just what needs to be done at their local level, and they should be handling that. I'm a former kitchen professional who's done everything from washing dishes to managing kitchens and is now doing IT management work because there's no money in food unless you're a supplier. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Aug 28, 2018 |
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Aug 28, 2018 07:25
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