This post is not about my teeth

I'm working today. I now work 6 or 7 days a week. Our CEO told us we need to work twice as hard (exact words). He said this earlier this year after he got a record bonus (I estimate he's in the 10-15 million a year range). He celebrated by laying off a couple of hundred more people the same day. He said it wasn't about outsourcing. Two weeks later he sent out an email asking us to extend a big welcome to our new center and new friends in India. My company tells me when I can take a vacation day. If I choose a day they have not authorized I do not get paid. They are lobbying congress to not have to pay me for unused vacation when they lay me off. They have cut back janitorial services. I have to vacuum and clean my own cubicle. My insurance is so filled with loop holes most expenses are paid out of pocket. Employees are so worried about losing their job, they are slashing each others throat. In an effort to curry favor with our CEO someone actually suggested we could save a few thousand a year by cleaning bathrooms every other day rather than daily. Seriously.

I am used to writing letters and emails to the White House. Inspired by Michael Moore's pleas to *call* the WH comment line, I called in to register my disgust about Goldman Sachs "$21 billion dollar retention bonuses for their employees". And the comment line is 9-5 M-F. So I'm thinking everyone agrees this is worst economic disaster since 1930s. People are out of work, those working are working harder than ever for less and less. Many people can't call the comment line from their work phones. So, would it kill the White House to be able to handle calls when most people are available to make them? Is this so unreasonable?

So (once again) I filled in the form and sent it, wondering if AT&T will intercept it. I have a feeling all email automatically gets sent via CIA.com via NSA.com via FBI.com via ATT.com So here is a big fuck you to AT&T just in case you are listening. But I digress...

To the parasites (Democratic Party leadership included) sucking us dry on Wall Street - fuck you too and get a job that improves our quality of life and stop spending all your time and our tax money chopping the country into consumable pieces and selling them to Asia. You are the very definition of traitors and should be punished for crimes against the nation.

people that brought it on themselves.

No raise for three years in a row despite consistently good performance reviews. Company manages to show 20% returns every year, but for the last several they did it by laying people off to cut expenses.

The last straw was when I discovered that they were giving pay raises - substantial ones in some cases - to people who had connections to a certain senior manager. I can handle that, but they were telling everyone there was no budget for raises. That was a blatant lie.

I put my resume on Monster and had my first interview with another in 48 hours. I ended up jumping ship for a $10,000 increase in salary, and 1/3 the distance from home compared to the job I quit.

Most people are trapped in horrible situations where management gives them pep talks about doing more with less, lays off coworkers, and brags about how cheap salaries are at their bookkeeping facility in India. Forget raises, they're all talking about salary rollbacks and hiring interns who work for nothing while living on borrowed money, just hoping it turns into a real job someday and a nice item on a resume if it doesn't.

They think we should all be so grateful to have a job that we'll work for nothing.

It's not going to improve without government intervention and that's a long time away, I'm afraid.

It could easily have turned out differently, and it may not always be that way.

to have landed in a high-demand skill that pays relatively well.

BUT there is an old saying that goes something like "luck favors the hard worker". I absolutely did work my ass off early in my career. I used to think I was "just lucky" but age has given me the perspective that I did, to some extent, earn the opportunities that came my way.

I would tell anyone who is dissatisfied to a) make yourself indispensable where you are now and/or b) keep an eye out for any opportunity to put yourself in a better place and stretch like mad to make it happen when you get that opportunity. If it means working 14 hour days for several months to build a reputation that will open key doors for you, that's what you do.

Of course I do realize that some people are just in f**ked situations and don't have much opportunity at all. I just say don't dig the hole deeper, and keep those eyes open. Meanwhile I am a liberal because I know not everyone gets the opportunity I had and I think we should make life a little easier for those who have it tough.

In every case, when I worked (on my own dime) overtime to deal with emergencies, reorganize, tidy loose ends, etc., I was never looked upon as a "good worker," but a nutcase, suck-up, or sap.

I was young & naive. I don't do that now.

company. I wouldn't be able to perform at my best, I'd get tired and begin to resent my job and possibly look elsewhere, and it disguised the fact that we were understaffed. Of course, that was before he started worshipping Jack Welch, and brought in former GE management employees to make us a "world class organization".

He didn't agree with some of the management techniques, such as bell-curves and replacing 10% of your employees with fresh blood every year, and he was still against working salaried folks like dogs - but it wasn't long before we were doing those exact things. The company had to to be able to afford to pay those exorbitant upper management salaries and excessive perks. The company went belly up in 2003 as we reached peak unemployment following Dubya's first recession.

"I know not everyone gets the opportunity I had and I think we should make life a little easier for those who have it tough."

Unfortunately, I think many of them have "How may I serve you, my corporate masters?" carved there instead. :mad:

The same thing is happening at my job. One of the big partners (fondly known by staff members as the Antichrist) wants to outsource much of our work to India. While the firm has not suffered one bit moneywise this past year and bills have been timely paid, our executive committee found it in their hearts to "right-size" and lay of almost 100 staffers.

Republican, corporate scum.

I wonder if these big employers will ever stop viewing their workers as "overhead". Studies and common sense show that when morale is low, productivity suffers, so your CEO is an asshole and an idiot, too.

If I have somebody tell me that one more time, I'm seriously considering strangling them.

In the past year we've had our workload tripled, if not quadrupled, and lost almost 15% of our pay.

I'm starting to think that this is a test of what the American worker is willing to tolerate.

And when they find that balance... it becomes the new normal!

:mad:

I was just thinking the same thing and was about to write that, until I saw your post beating me to the punch. I was thinking too of young people just entering the workforce now; will this kind of environment become the norm for them?

Remember when it wasn't like this? (Oh yeah, you'll have to think back to the Clinton years...)

:bounce::toast::bounce:

Glad ta have ya aboard!!!

:hi:

I was living in a small town during the Clinton years, and watched as homeless people were being hired into local establishments (McDonald's, Grocery Stores, etc.) to fill jobs left behind by others moving up the socio-economic ladder.

Everybody started doing better and better. The rich got richer, but so did the middle-class, and many of the poor.

And then George W. Bush happened.

We still suffer from Republicanism.

:shrug:

:rofl:

What's the incentive for corporations, really?

I think you're exactly right - this is a test of our breaking point. Seems to be the nature of the beast.

the American middle class was strong. When Wall Street dismantled the unions, they promised better jobs and more prosperity. Instead, the American middle class grew weak and the top 1% grew absurdly rich. Wall Street promised outsourcing was supposed to make us strong and competitive. Instead, outsourcing has made us even weaker. Whenever Wall Street says something is good for the nation it is a disaster for the nation. We need to get these nasty lying Wall Street mother fuckers under control. If Wall Street is talking they are lying.

We see that the Bernanke, Geithner and Summers stimulus programs for the rich on Wall Street has worked wonders. The stimulus program for the working class remains heading to Iraq and Afghanistan where a million or more have been murdered for oil or what ever the popular reason is these days. And given the Afghan escalation, its obvious they are still hiring.

Lawyers have their defacto union. Doctors have their defacto union. CEOs have a dozen professional organizations that engage in collective bargaining and lobbying to protect their wealth. But when a middle class wage earner wants to join with other wage earners for collective bargaining power, its called communism. Middle class union bashers, including many who are Democrats, are just slitting their own throats.

"If I have somebody tell me that one more time, I'm seriously considering strangling them.

In the past year we've had our workload tripled, if not quadrupled, and lost almost 15% of our pay.

I'm starting to think that this is a test of what the American worker is willing to tolerate.

And when they find that balance... it becomes the new normal!"

The first thing they had to do was bust the unions, which they pretty much have compared to 20 or 30 years ago. They are the only ones on the side of the workers.

Then, they could abuse each worker separately, and will do more and more until workers unite into unions again, if they can manage to. That is the point of what has been done by widening the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us: to make us desperate so we won't fight them for fear of losing everything and our families being homeless and starving.

That is why unions came about to begin with. It wasn't because the workers just wanted to band together, it was because that was the only way to get a decent break from the ruthless wealthy that will exploit workers as much as possible to get more wealth.

Unions: the only strength workers have. Support unions if you want a decent working environment - it's the only way to fight the wealthy arrogant creeps.

I agree completely that Unions need to make a comeback for this county's workers to "make a comeback" too. EFCA got lost in the healthcare shuffle, but i've been calling my Reps to make sure that just because it's under the radar right now, doesn't mean we the people don't want it. Without a resurgence in Union jobs, this country will continue to go down the tubes.

:shrug:

:grr:

:dem:

-Laelth

It shouldn't be this hard. It being hard on the rest of us doesn't make it any easier for the top 1%, their lives are already easy, it just makes them a few more bucks that they don't need. Sometimes you have to wonder if they are really vampire sadists sucking us dry for pure pleasure.

I don't think we want it all to be easy, just not so hard. A man or a woman should be able to work a job and enjoy a decent life. It was never this hard for my parents and they grew up during the depression. It's been getting harder and harder since 1980 and it doesn't seem to matter at all who is in the White House or Congress.

If we don't know by now our system is broken by now, then I don't really see any hope for us.

I once worked at a place where the CEO decided to save money by ending janitorial services. You had to carry out your own trash to the dumpster. The voice of experience says: Your company probably won't be around for long.

Copies of the CEO's memo were widely circulated by disgruntled employees, and both the CEO and the company became the laughing stock of the industry.

BTW, that was the same CEO who thought that it was an absolute outrage that any one of his employees' votes could cancel out his vote. He thought that he should get to cast the votes of all his employees. Seriously sick mo-fo.

Sick, depraved, and stupid management whose one and only "value" is greed eventually destroy their own companies, unless they have friends in high enough places to get a bailout.

:applause:

We all need to get mad and speak out...and act* out too.


*(in a completely and totally and absolutely legal manner pre-approved and stamped and signed off on in triplicate by our leaders) And of course, we will hurry to city hall to buy our permits before hand as well....Hell, we will even do it in a cage if our boss tells us too and be cavity searched and go through the metal detectors and take buck nakkid pictures of our family and loved ones and ourselves for some stranger in a cubical to look at too......just to be safe..... :)

*edited to add the following (in order to cover my butt and be pc because of that "act out" part of my post :P).....that of course we will also voluntarily allow ourselves to be randomly filmed, allow random strip searches in public airports and always be checkpoint compliant. We are very happy to let our employers look at our piss.
In fact Dear Leaders we will allow you to taze any of us including our elderly and children and those with heart conditions if our lord and master's feel like it and not sue if you decide blast our eardrums off our heads or microwave the top few layers of our skin.
Of course we will also promise to never try to defend ourselves by "resisting" as they beat the crap out of us.
We promise to lose our homes quietly regardless of how lied to we were on that last loan, joyously let you stick untested flu viruses and chemicals in our bodies without complaint and cheerfully lay down and die quickly if we get sick.

from anyone or anything.

The tide in China is rising.

the guillotine.

just off a few boards