On 11/7/2012 12:27 AM, scott wrote:
>> Yeah, well. Even monkeys need to eat, and as things stand, the view, of
>> some of the wackos running, seems to be that it costs too much to buy
>> them bananas, so its, somehow, their own damn fault that they have to
>> eat their own feces. Case in point - My work doesn't pay its lowest
>> level employees more than minimum wages. They, if lucky, get 20-30 hours
>> a week, average, and then only if unionized, and the company just tacked
>> on a $5 a week health care charge, then gave them a 10 cent raise. So..
>> They plan to let everyone work 50 hours to make up the difference? Of
>> course not... And the current contract "explicitly" states that those
>> employees will *never* get a raise, since no one **ever** receives a
>> performance raise either, unless the state raises the minimum.
>
> I guess they find it incredibly hard to find anyone to work for them then?
>
To keep people yes, to find people to hire, no. See, first, its 
considered a "temp" position, which is how they got by with rewriting 
the contract. Second - some people don't do the math, and realize that, 
due to how seniority works, they will actually lose money for the first 
4-5 years, before they end up with enough hours to make up for what they 
lost. This isn't a huge problem, if they went straight from the "temp" 
position, to one of the tiny number of jobs in other departments. If, 
however, you are currently working 32 hours per week, average, and the 
"minimum" that the union requires is 20, you are losing, annually 30% of 
your hours. Given that the raise you get is probably only about 10% over 
your current pay rate, you end up losing 20% of your annual income, for 
how ever long it takes you to either a) get enough raises to make up the 
difference, or b) enough other people quit, so that you now have 
seniority enough to being making the hours needed to break even with 
your prior annual income.

We are dealing with people that can't do math without a calculator. 
Expecting them to actually comprehend why taking a "better" position is 
actually leaving them in worse financial shape is... probably expecting 
a but much...

And, then there is the fact that, in general, the only other options are:

1. Fast food, which *might* pay more in some cases.
2. Restaurants, which don't, unless you can make enough tips to exceed 
the minimum.
3. Nearly every other retail store, who uses a similar scheme to not pay you
4. The few manufacturing places, who use a different scheme, where by 
they make you work 5 days at 10 hours, and give overtime, then cut you 
back to 3 days the next week, so that, in balance, they are actually 
paying fewer people, less money, than if they worked 8 hours a day, 5 
days a week... Again.. Doing them math to prove it is not something most 
people will even bother with.

If everyone is screwing you the same way, or as much, in different ways, 
picking between places to work, unless you are lucky enough to find work 
at the 5% that still give a shit about their employees in the US, is 
kind of like having the option of taking the bullshit burger, the burro 
dropping burrito, or the dog dropping sandwich. Anyone telling you, 
"Just find a better job.", probably needs someone else to set their VCR, 
and has to ask management how to use a calculator to do a price correction.

And, no, I am not kidding. Some places, it really is this bloody stupid now.

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