08:07 – I didn’t realize that this phenomenon had made it to Britain: All part-time Sports Direct staff employed on zero-hours contracts
That’s been commonplace here for years, of course. Many US employers, particularly brick-and-mortar retailers and fast-food restaurants, employ as few full-time permanent staff as possible. They depend largely on part-time and temporary employees, who are generally paid minimum wage and receive few or no benefits. It’s even worse in the US than what the article describes in Britain. Not only are part-time employees unsure “of how many hours they will work each week”, they’re unsure of how many hours, if any, they’ll work each day. It’s not uncommon for a temp employee to be called out in the morning to work for a couple hours, be sent home, and then be called out later the same day to work another couple of hours. About all they can be sure of is that they’ll never be offered enough hours in a week to qualify as full-time.
I think this practice is contemptible, and I’ll never engage in it myself, but I don’t really blame the employers. It’s just a matter of unintended consequences. Well-meaning legislators and bureaucrats attempt to protect low/no-skill workers by implementing laws and regulations, including minimum-wage laws. Employers defend their own interests by taking advantage of every exception and loophole to the maximum extent possible. Employees suffer. If the laws and regulations are tightened, the employees find they have no jobs at all.
I remember the first time we invited Mary and Paul to go along as our guests to Costco. Mary declined. When I asked her why, she said that she didn’t like how Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Costco, and similar companies treated their employees. My impression was that Costco wasn’t like that, so I did some quick research, including talking to a Costco employee. Mary was and is right about Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. They treat their employees very badly. But I found that Costco employees were at the time being paid an average of $41,000/year and had full benefits. I sent Mary a couple of links to articles about how Costco treated its employees, and told her about the Costco employee I’d spoken with. This woman was a single mom, and praised Costco to the heavens. When she started with Costco, during her probationary period before becoming full-time permanent, she wasn’t yet eligible for the full benefits package. She was a single mom, and her child was ill and needed expensive medical treatment. Costco found out about her situation and waived the waiting period, putting her and her child under full medical coverage before they would normally have become eligible. By doing that, Costco gained an employee who will be loyal for life, and showed themselves to be the kind of company we want to do business with. Yeah, Sam’s Club may be a bit cheaper because their labor costs are lower, but we’ll never know because Sam’s Club is not the kind of company we want to do business with.
I’ve read the same information about Costco. I wonder how hard it must be to get a job there because of it.
So my question is: how do employers expect to run their operations with, eventually, no employees??? My next-younger brother down in MA, a UNIX guy for thirty years, was fired two years ago by a malevolent Affirmative-Action mangler. He’s been working recently as a part-time, entry-level desktop and phone support drone for a cheap prick down there who won’t even put an a-c unit in a cramped work space with no ventilation and temps in the 90s. He has maybe 20 hours a week regularly and they call or email him constantly to come in for another few hours here or there or switch with somebody else; all for twelve bucks an hour. The cost of the gas for him to get to and from probably wipes out the pay, but he has to get out of the house or listen to endless nagging and pressure from family and in-laws. Needless to say, zero bennies and he’s fed up and ready to quit this next month. Can’t even qualify for unemployment insurance payments with a p.t. gig.
So they’re looking to start up a home biz now; up here Mrs. OFD tries to get her online jewelry thing going, while working a crazy schedule all over the country. And I sit for ten weeks and counting during a Fed background investigation.
I guess the eventual goal is to put us all out of work and on the dole, totally dependent on the tender ministrations of Our Nanny the Almighty State and be grateful for it, while they also provide the security and spy on us from womb to tomb. I expect most folks will like this. Malcontents and miserable old bastards like me won’t.
Bad employers treat employees like whores: hire them by the hour when you need them, and forget about them otherwise. The problem is, it’s a buyers’ market for employees–particularly unskilled and semi-skilled ones–and the supply greatly exceeds the demand. Why pay more than one has to?
My opinion is that this is very short-sighted. If you treat people well, they’ll usually do the same for you; if you treat them badly, they’ll usually do the same for you. I know that religion has laid claim to the Golden Rule, but in fact it’s existed pretty much since people have existed. It’s simply enlightened self-interest. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Those who ignore that do so at their own peril.
I agree that the Golden Rule is part of what I’ll call common sense morality. I’ll just add two things. I’m pretty sure the only time I’ve actually heard it in a classroom setting was Sunday School. I think there is a dearth of morality education in our public schools. I think it would be a great improvement in our society if we just had public school children read Aesop’s Fables. Sadly that’s about as likely as having high school kids read the Federalist Papers in Government class.
A left of center blogger who owned a small business in an industry noted for paying minimum wage always paid his employees at least $1 over minimum wage. He did this not because of his politics, but because he realized this got him a much higher class of employee.
Morality shouldn’t have to be taught. Like most human behavior, it almost certainly has an evolutionary basis and is therefore deeply instinctual. Back when natural selection was still operating big-time on H. sapiens sapiens, those who helped others could expect the same in return. And those helper/helpee types were more likely to survive and have children than those who were just out for themselves.
I mean, one human facing a smilodon was in big trouble; one smilodon facing a group of humans was in big trouble. So we cooperated. That’s why smilodon is extinct and we’re not.
I worked for a while in Downtown Seattle this past Spring, and I had a temporary apartment in the suburbs, around the corner from Costco HQ. The corporate offices are not extravagant, especially compared to the Siemens Healthcare facility nearby on the old Egghead Software campus.
(Old timers and former employees in the area like my wife’s uncle can tell you stories about the way Egghead operated that would make your jaw drop.)
For now, Costco has their priorities straight, but I don’t know how long they can continue to ignore Wall Street’s demands for earnings growth. The cranes never seem to stop moving on Amazon’s new buildings near downtown, and no one buying the stock seems to care that the place has never really made money or employs a lot of H1B labor.
One of the solutions for employees in zero hour type contracts is to get a job elsewhere or start their own business. I always tried to keep my skill set reasonably current so that I had alternatives. From the mid Nineties I didn’t work overtime or join the on call roster because I didn’t think it was worth my time. In 1986 I was called in to work at 4.20 on Saturday morning to fix a problem. Got five hours (the minimum for an unscheduled call in) at double time, but it wrecked my Saturday.
The article says that most other employers don’t do zero hours. let the market work it out. But I agree, I try to avoid businesses that screw their employees. Especially if the people at the top are well paid.
I suspect that most such employees have multiple jobs. Not long ago, I read a news story about a woman who worked four part-time jobs, sometimes working an hour or two for each of the four employers in one day. Her concerns, other than the obvious high cost in time and money of getting to a job for just an hour or two of work, was conflicting demands on her time by the different employers. She was afraid she’d lose one job because she was busy working on another. I suspect that won’t happen often. Employers like that probably consider employees interchangeable pegs and simply keep more on their call lists than they need. If they can’t get one to come out, they just call the next one on the list.
Looking at it from the employers’ point of view, I can understand the advantages. Minimum wage workers are notoriously unreliable about showing up for work. Part of that may be due to things beyond their control like child care but I suspect a great deal of it is simply that their work ethic is lacking. If an employer employs people like these full-time, there’s a good chance they’ll be short-staffed most or all of the time. On the other hand, if they have a call list they can simply call the next peg in line and have a warm body show up for work.
That’s one of the reasons I almost choked back when ObamaCare was passed. I saw all these news articles talking about what a great thing it would be for minimum wage people, who’d now have health care. Yeah, right. I forget who it was who first commented that minimum wage didn’t guarantee anyone a job at that wage, it merely guaranteed that they couldn’t work for less than that wage. So every increase in minimum wage prices more and more would-be employees out of the market. A lot of people simply aren’t worth paying that much, so they end up with no job at all. Same deal on “guaranteed” health care for full-time employees. All it guarantees is that there’ll be a lot fewer full-time jobs available. In fact, I expect that most full-time minimum wage jobs that currently exist will disappear soon, to be replaced by zero-hour part-time jobs.
Walmart and Sam’s club don’t just treat their employees bad they also treat the companies they do business with badly as well. I know this from personal experience as my company does business with them selling them products they use to conduct their business. We also do business with Costco and it is a completely different story. I don’t shop Walmart because they are so mean.
Windows NT is 20 years old:
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-nt-turns-20-7000018597/
“In 1993, Microsoft launched Windows NT 3.1. It was followed up by NT 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0. Microsoft’s Windows releases still rely on NT-inspired numbering conventions. Windows 7’s build numbers commenced with 6.1; Windows 8’s with 6.2; and Windows 8.1 with 6.3.”
Your laugh for the day, just read the link:
http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2013/07/congressional-black-caucus-recommends-sheila-jackson-lee-for-homeland-security-secretary/
I’ve been a Costco member for at least 10 years. But, it’s 25 minutes to the nearest here in Vegas for me. Sam’s Club is literally 4 minutes away. I was torn about joining Sam’s, until I visited Honolulu last week. My niece is an assistant manager at Sam’s there and gave us tour of the store. On my own, I talked to a handful of employees who all seemed happy. Maybe its just HI. Her store was number two in sales last year (still over $200 million). I still have 5 family members at home and a couple more are always visiting. Sam’s makes sense for me right now. Our Costco renewed a month ago so I’ll keep that for now as I sign up for Sam’s. I can always drop Sam’s if it sucks.
Hey, I have no problem with Sheila Jackson Lee being Homeland Insecurity Honcho. Fuck it. The more cretins at top levels in this regime the faster it will crash and burn. And be lots of fun watching. I will not be the least bit surprised if Barry appoints her, either. Look at the other people he’s got already. They all do what they’re told, anyway.
I am running Windows NT 6.3 on this machine. In ’98 I was a VAX/VMS, OpenVMS, UNIX and Windows NT sys admin for EDS in Waltham, MA. The ONLY NT admin for 300 lusers. On top of my other stuff. Even then they worked us like donkeys but back then we also got regular boner checks. No more. Now everyone runs scared shitless every day they’re gonna be canned and the assholes spy on their colleagues and rat them out; doesn’t matter; the PHB manglers run their games and their numbers and just dump people en masse now and at random.
For now, Costco has their priorities straight, but I don’t know how long they can continue to ignore Wall Street’s demands for earnings growth.
All they need to do is raise the membership fee. Costco has, over the last few years, made 100% of it’s profit from membership fees.
As for Walmart, an economist has studied them and said that they have reduced the cost of living for the poor in the US by as much as 20% in areas where they have stores.
Also, you can’t compare a Costco to a Walmart, just to a Sam’s. The average Walmart sells 10x the number of SKUs as a Costco or Sam’s. In addition, Costco’s product selection leans towards upper middle class tastes.
The new Costco is $55/year. Sam’s Club is $45. Not much difference there.
Sam’s Club is brutal on pricing on upscale items. Their number one item in my area is the 35 pack of Ozarka 1/2 liter bottles for $4.88. I have no idea what the new Costco price is.
As for Walmart, an economist has studied them and said that they have reduced the cost of living for the poor in the US by as much as 20% in areas where they have stores.
Rush Limbaugh says that Wal*Mart has done more for the working poor of America than the government does and I believe it. The parking lot is a great equalizer as I often see a new Mercedes parked next to a 25 year old Chevy truck.
ignore Wall Street’s demands for earnings growth
I’m probably naive here, but: by just ignoring them? As long as their shareholders are happy enough at the annual meeting, they must believe in the business model. Wall Street should have no influence whatsoever.
The Congressional Black Caucus is a racist organization.
The Congressional Black Caucus is a racist organization.
You are mistaken buttermilk breath. That is a progressive organization advancing the cause of the black people who are still suffering from the ravages of slavery.
A Congressional White Caucus would be a racist organization. As would Miss White America, Society of White Engineers, United Caucasian College Fund, White Entertainment Television, etc. Hell, my white F-150 is probably considered racist if I was to drive through Harlem or Watts.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the biggest racists of any prominence today. They have made a career out of racism and as such have to keep their career path alive. If racism were to disappear both would be out of a job and unemployable as neither have any skills worthy of pay.
You guys are just mean, mean, mean. People of color cannot be, de facto, racists. Only us Caucasian sons of bitches who’ve ruined the world. As the late Susan Sontag or some other dipshit crone said, white people are a cancer on the world.
What’s funny here is that if all white people suddenly disappeared this afternoon, the world would in short order look like Zimbabwe or North Korea.
Ah, I’d forgotten Sontag was dead. Thanks for brightening up my morning.
the world would in short order look like Zimbabwe or North Korea
And those would be the economically advanced regions.
True, that.
Say, here’s a little tip for y’all from ol’ OFD up here in the northern wilderness; Mrs. OFD just bought a new cah and we went down to the DMV thirty miles south of here yesterday to do the paperwork and get the plates. Their servers were down. All day. I checked and yeah, they’re hosted out of state, in Indiana, and run on M$ technology.
Anyway, she called about twenty times this AM to see if they were back up and open for biz and kept getting busy signals. So, being an ex-bureaucrat herself, she called the Commissioner’s Office; yep, they’re back up and good to go. Lesson learned. Again. Bypass the gatekeeper drones and go right to the top.
From the Wiki:
“Sontag drew criticism for writing in 1967 in the Partisan Review that “Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”[28] According to journalist Mark M. Goldblatt, Sontag later recanted this statement, saying that “it slandered cancer patients”.[29]”
What a sweetheart. But I agree with her about the Boolean algebra and Kant. Dead these nine years now. Even the demons are tired of listening to her dreary miserable schtick, no doubt.
I checked and yeah, they’re hosted out of state, in Indiana, and run on M$ technology.
I would wager that overpaid worker drone unplugged a router because they did not know what it was and the fan annoyed the worker drone. IT problems are never blamed on the individual, it is always a computer problem, never a worker problem.
Yeah, it was probably something really simple at low level; I learned over the years to first check power and network cables and on-off switches. IT worker drones are only blamed for stuff if they’re about to be canned or have already been canned. It’s just too easy to inadvertently screw something up so no one feels qualified to dump on someone because something failed or blew up. We’ve all been there. I found that most IT problems are actually the fault of PHB manglers, who don’t order the right stuff, devise bad plans, and spend most of their day looking to find ways to screw things up even worse, usually mostly ignorant of anything in IT.
I learned over the years to first check power and network cables and on-off switches.
I had one upper level manager at a bank I worked at complain that his computer was not working. I went through the usual stuff and determined that device had no power. I asked the individual to check the plug and he was adamant he was not an idiot and that he had checked the plug. Me asking was merely insulting his intelligence.
So I stated that sometimes the building wire would get out of phase and that may cause problems (single phase A/C mind you). Explained that it sometimes would occur when a power plant was switched in and the generators were not properly synced and that would cause a phase shift in the power legs in the wall. Lamps were not affected because they did not rely on alternating current. He was impressed.
So I asked him to do a simple test. Find the plug for the computer, pull it out of the wall, turn it over and reinsert. (It was a three prong plug). I waited about a minute and the manager said he had turned the plug over. I asked him to power on his computer and voila, HPFM, his computer was now working. He told me I was brilliant for understanding the issue and solving his phasing problem with the power.
The next day a memo was circulated under his masthead telling people how to solve power phasing problems.
This was the same bonehead that bought a TRS-80 Model II (which we did not support) because it had 2400 baud modem whereas the IBM models only had 1200 baud modems. He was told that his system would be faster than any other system we had because it ran at 2400 baud rather than 1200 baud. None of these system used the modem at all, for anything. All connections to the mainframes were with proprietary interface cards. Of course we had no such card to fit the TRS-80.
When he asked why his system would not connect to the mainframe I just told him that we did not support 2400 baud. It was too fast and would saturate the mainframe causing performance issues and delay batch posting. He agreed.
When he asked why his system would not connect to the mainframe I just told him that we did not support 2400 baud. It was too fast and would saturate the mainframe causing performance issues and delay batch posting. He agreed.
Sounds like a CEO candidate for a Fortune 500 company.
Sounds like a CEO candidate for a Fortune 500 company.
Me, or the other idiot?
Mr. 2400 baud.
Dass what I mean, homies; PHB manglers who can barely tie their wing-tip shoes but are making decisions that affect front-line IT drones like me daily, if not hourly; I have tons of stories a la Dilbert but won’t bore folks here with them. Suffice to say that high-level inmates run the IT asylum. And they’ll kick YOUR ass and blame YOU for When Things Go Wrong.