Where and how do you work? The economics and culture of employment.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Where and how do you work? The economics and culture of employment.

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

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.

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.

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

# ¿ Aug 28, 2018 07:25

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Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Solkanar512 posted:

So anyone else here a "straddler"? That is, someone who grew up blue-collar and ended up in the white collar world with all the WASPy pretension that comes with it? I've been meaning to read Lubrano's "Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams" (decent review here) but in the meantime I'd love to hear from others who've been through similar experiences. The concept of being "bicultural" is something I hadn't considered before, but it really hits home.

For me personally I was raised by a unionized public city employee and a homemaker/house keeper and was the first in my family to attend college. I was lucky as hell to get into an insanely good school with financial support and ended up at a massive manufacturing/aerospace firm in a very mixed blue and white collar environment. The culture is very much a mixture of government/military bureaucracy, old school "I'm a captain of industry" business types and new school consultant business types. It's a very odd culture to be sure, I can go into more details if folks are curious. I do data analysis which is very white collar work but the data is about the stuff the blue collar folks are working on, so I work with them a great deal.

Yup. My dad was a truck driver who spent the last few years of his life working as a Wal-Mart greeter because the DOT pulled his license, and I grew up government cheese poor in a very rural area, 6 people in a ~1300 square foot farm house. We didn't move from my grandparents' place into town until the early 1990's, and holy poo poo what a culture shock. I just happened to get obsessed with computers about that time after working with Apple 2's at school, and it eventually paid off. Took out loans to do some community college work that never went anywhere, then went back to cooking for a decade or so. Thanks to help from another goon who vouched for me on my very first real tech job got into an industry that actually pays survivable wages and worked my way up to management via being competent and handling situations like I was managing a kitchen.

Going from kitchens to white-collar middle management was a real change of perspective. Fortunately, I just kept living the blue collar life and started socking away all that new pay into my retirement accounts and paying off ill-advised student loans.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2018 12:03

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

Star Man posted:

Man, I can't even get an interview at a community college in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming (ie: outside of Casper, Laramie, or Cheyenne) with qualifications that meet or exceed the requirements for a job that pays $29k a year. I can't even interview.

That's a lovely situation.

Ever considered a trade? I know most of the unions around here are looking, and plumbers and carpenters make a hell of a lot better than 29k a year.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 08:16

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