Temp Troops of High-Tech

A submitter sends in this story about temp work in Silicon Valley, from the point of view of the temp. Compare almost the same story written from the point of view of Amazon.com's management.

Comments

That because

[JohnHegarty]

Thats becuase most CEO's of internet startups are now fired. And hoping to be temps to earn the average temp wage of $75,000.

Re:That because

[Masem]

The quick calc is that your hourly wage times 2000 is your yearly salary. $10/hr == $20k/yr.

Re:That because

[dattaway]

Its called overtime. Guess how many time-and-a-half hours you have to work a week to get $75,000.

Those robots are amazing. They can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

Re:That because

[gorilla]

You're misreading the story. The average wage in SV is $75,000, not the average wage of the temps. So that $75,000 includes the CEO's etc.

Another side

[smaughster]

The most scary thing about reading such articles is that I always have a feeling that it will end up being fiction, having a happy ending, yet finding out that these things really happen, even in civilised countries.

Re:Another side

[stevew]

Well - it probably isn't fiction - but it's also a 2 year old story!

Things are probably VERY different now-adays because temps are especially having problems finding jobs now! We have a 6.1 percent un-employment level here in the valley right now. That was down at something like 2 percent during 1999. Times have REALLY changed.

I work for a consulting company which puts teams of engineers on projects. Not that different from a temp agency, just a different area of operation. The big diffeence here is that it's plain to our employees that they are OUR employees. Just as in this report our managers handle people issues not the company we contract too. I think we do a better job of things like pay checks and such but I saw alot of parallels in that story. Since we are deploying engineers, the pay checks are larger (yeah - around that 75K figure..)
The working conditions are usually better too, but that is mostly because it's an engineering position.

Re:Another side

[MarcoAtWork]

Things are probably VERY different now-adays because temps are especially having problems finding jobs now!

yeah, exactly: things today are probably much worse for the type of employee described in the article, because if conditions were so bad with a 2% unemployment rate, can you imagine how much worse they are now with many more people available to take your job if you don't like how you're treated?

IMHO sub-sub-sub-contracting should be made illegal, because, like it's very well explained in this article, it exposes workers to all sorts of abuse. If you work at an HP plant, you should be hired by HP. There should be a maximum of 15 days of temping allowed, perma-temping is an abomination.

It's also time that companies stop caring only about Wall Street and start caring a bit more about their workers, and not lay them off or pay them crap or keep them in this type of working conditions just so they can show the stock analysts how good they are in creating ever increasing profits (and make a killing in stock options).

It seems that in the current economic climate there is no incentive for execs at a company to make it successful in the very long run by treating their workforce well, after all for some reason the more the execs decide to axe employees and/or pay them less (so they leave) the more the stock goes up and the more money they make...

Re:Another side

[wurp]

This is everyday life for a large (at least 25+) percentage of the US. And a significant number of the people working these jobs are intelligent, capable people who simply have no exposure to cushy office jobs and don't really believe that they could get such a job.

I could easily have been such a person. I have an IQ in the upper .1%, but if I hadn't gotten a scholarship that left my parents needing to pay nothing for my college, I almost certainly would have been such a person. It is hard to convey just how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing that your life must turn out in the expected way. In any family in which the parents, aunts, uncles, etc. have all done manual labor their whole lives, it is almost certain that their children will do the same. Most of my family is _well_ over average intelligence (upper 25%, minimum) and they are not lazy, etc., yet almost all of them do some form of manual labor. It's a cultural thing.

It is mostly your good fortune in having people in your everyday life who work at what we consider reasonable jobs that has led you to lead the cushy life that most of you (and I) lead. I am one of the lucky few who have made the transition from a factory worker culture to a professional career. And make no mistake, it takes more than ability to make that transition; it takes luck. I am sure that parents in a factory worker culture could groom their children for professional careers, but it is the nature of the culture to not really believe that it is even a possibility.

So don't be so shocked that people work under the conditions described in this article. You can't manufacture goods to be sold at the prices you see in your local retail store without treating factory workers like another cog in the machine. And don't look down on the people who do those jobs (not that the parent poster did, but people often do). But for some luck, you could easily be in their place.

Reminds me of my days mounting Tapes....

[Captdipshizer]

I used to mount tapes as a vendor to IBM... man... that work was a pain.... same wage walking eight hours a day to feed damn tape machines that would never slowdown... that god for VTS tape libraries.. It was amazing that in the year 2002 people are still manually mounting tapes for mainframe systems.. we even had a bunch of old reels... that would occationaly light up waiting for a mount.

reminds me of this quote:

[bdavenport]

Judge Smails: The world needs ditch diggers too!

high tech also means low tech

[Reinout]

There is mention in the beginning of the article about it being strange to have so much non-hightech work in such a hightech-area. That's not so strange if you think about it. The whole ecommerce thing is about selling stuff. The stuff that gets sold normally can't be send over the internet, so you need FedEx, the postal service, etc. What they're missing out on letters that get send, they're gaining in packages...

And the high-tech (?) printers and so also in the end need packaging, sending, assembling. You can automate some parts, but...

When you read a story like this, it just keeps reminding me of early 20th century conditions that made socialists movements all too understandable... Some people just don't seem to care. Or not to be allowed to care by some system...

Reinout

Re:high tech also means low tech

[spencerogden]

But what is it about ecommerce which means your plant has to be near your headquarters? Assuming your headquarters are in Silicon Valley why would you put a production plant in an area where real estate and labor costs were so high? It seems it is because of the location that both workers and managers have to go to extremes.

Re:high tech also means low tech

[vanguard]

Well, of course you're right. You don't need to have your plant near your headquarters. It does make it easier to manager but it doesn't *have* to be near it.

However, it does make sense to have your plant near your customers. That keeps lead times and shipping costs down. Maybe that's why it's close to headquarters?

Re:high tech also means low tech

[protogeek]

This is a very good point. $10/hour is crap in Silicon Valley, because the cost of living is so high. Where I live, $10/hour is mid-grade temp pay. You can live on it -- not luxuriously, but if you manage your money sensibly it'll get the bills paid. (Grunt-level work like that in the article tends to be around $6.50/hour, which you can't live on without fairly extreme sacrifices.) If HP had their plant in a less insanely expensive area, they could pay the same wage (or even a little less -- $9/hour?) and have workers who weren't starving for the privelege. Betcha productivity would go up....

Re:high tech also means low tech

[Rocketboy]

It's their own damn fault for taking the job

Even if you have no valuable skills other than a strong back, don't you still have to eat? How disposable are people? More to the point, is everyone like you or me? Must they have made the same choices, gained the same favor, suffered the same setbacks? Isn't it possible that our circumstances might be different from theirs, have forced them down a different road?

Or does everything devolve down to 'The Little Engine That Could'?

Re:high tech also means low tech

[Hanno]

If they don't like it they should refuse to participate. It's their own damn fault for taking the job.

Oh, I just hate this "they're stupid for doing this job" attitude. It's so easy for people who had a better choice. There are more than enough people who don't have this choice and your narrow-minded, condescent "look at me, I did't take your kind of job" doesn't help them.

I hereby invite you to read the book "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. While it describes the problems of Chicago workers around 1900, it observes many of the basic wrongs that are still valid even today. That book is quite an eye-opener...

The world economy.

[Sobrique]

The world economy has always been built upon the backs of a 'disposable' workforce.
Let's face it, paying minimum wage to people is cheaper than automating a production line (and of course, they can argue that they are providing valuable jobs).
It's heavy handed and unethical (IHMO) but companies (with a _few_ limited exceptions) are only interested in the bottom line.
I've done the temping thing for a while, and there was certainly variety (like I'd be in a different job every week), but you are also treated as little more than 'an extra body'. They can get another one easily enough, so they can get you to work, trample on you, and if you go replace you in a day.
(Much happier now I'm working full time doing 'skilled' rather than manual labour. Least this way I get a month's notice before being told to walk)

Re:The world economy.

[mip]

Capitalist economies require a pool of unemployed workers to allow for continued growth. Full employment is bad news for such a system. Read this page for further details.

On unemployment it says that it is a necessary condition for a capitalist system, as long as it doesn't get too high - it is upto the individual to find employment and change their status. Capitalism is economic individualism.

Should society look after the people or should the people look after themselves? I think, as in all things, balance is required.

Re:The world economy.

[gaj]

The whole point of business is the bottom line. Companies that are not primarily focused on turning a profit have a special name: failed. How much good does a failed company do for the economy?

If you are easily replaceable, that's your own damn fault. The fact that there are those willing to replace you means that the job, however foul to you, is desirable to others. If you want a job that is more palatable to you, do what it takes to get one. Learn a skill, learn a trade, start your own business; whatever it takes. If you choose not to take the steps necessary to improve your lot, you have only yourself to blame.

As for your comment about production line automation, I cannot remember a time that production line automation came to a plant that formerly employed human labor to do the job that didn't result in much wailing and gnashing of teeth when said workers were laid off. How does replacing workers help them?

Or are you suggesting that the firm should automate the line, then keep the workers on as paid spectators?

I'm glad you now have a more skilled position; it's nice to improve your lot, isn't it?

Re:The world economy.

[hawk]

That's overstated. Think of the alternative: zero unemployment means that noone is training for better jobs between jobs. No social mobility. You can't change employment. It all comes down to *why* people are unemployed.

hawk

Re:The world economy.

[sql*kitten]

Let's face it, paying minimum wage to people is cheaper than automating a production line (and of course, they can argue that they are providing valuable jobs).

There are plenty of people who believe capitalism can do no right, to wit:

• They're automating the factories, driving workers out of their jobs!
  
• They're employing workers to do menial repetitive tasks better left to machines!
  

The fact is, even in the developed world, there are lots of jobs that don't require anything more than repetition. Another fact is, the most you can earn is the economic value you produce, minus the cost of doing business. Third, the seller sets the price no more or no less than the buyer - for a transaction to take place, there must be mutual agreement.

I've done the temping thing for a while, and there was certainly variety (like I'd be in a different job every week), but you are also treated as little more than 'an extra body'

Well, that's what you are, an extra pair of hands to do the work. You show up, you do the job, you get paid, you go home. A lot of work is necessary, but very simple, and varies in demand - look at the Amazon story about seasonal rush. The alternative is to have very slow service during peak times, and/or high prices during the slow season, to support an idle workforce.

It's heavy handed and unethical (IHMO) but companies (with a _few_ limited exceptions) are only interested in the bottom line.


The market - the customers, you and I - have indicated by our behavior as market participants, that we want good prices and fast service. The only way to do this is with a flexible workforce.

Another point made in the article was that many temps come from countries where there is no economy to speak of. Many Westerners are spoilt; a bad job and a little money is much, much better than no job and no money.

Re:The world economy.

[gorilla]

Most definitions of unemployement exclude those in education, retired and other people who are not actively looking for work.

Re:The world economy.

[benedict]

The thing you market fundies always forget is that
the "buyers" and "sellers" of labor power are
never on an equal footing.

The use of power in the employer/employee relationship
distorts the market in favor of the employer.
I mean, read the article. In an ideal, frictionless
market, if the buyer (employer) didn't pay what
they'd agreed to pay, the seller (employee) would
take her "goods" (labor) elsewhere. But she has
rent to make and kids to feed and is not free to
act as an ideal market participant.

Re:The world economy.

[stevew]

How can you have retention of employees without profits (that silly thing that you need to concentrate on ??)

Re:The world economy.

[weinerdog]

There are plenty of people who believe capitalism can do no right, to wit:

* They're automating the factories, driving workers out of their jobs!
* They're employing workers to do menial repetitive tasks better left to machines!

In the case where owner and worker are the same person, automation is a boon and market economics work great. If you can automate a job that you previously did manually, it frees you to do other work, or to enjoy liesure time. Because you own the fruits of your labour, anything you can do to improve your efficiency benefits you directly.

Unfortunately, over time, productive assets have been privatized, sold, and amalgamated by an ever-decreasing number of individuals. Everyone else is left with nothing, and so they must sell their labour to those who own the productive assets.

While automation for the labourer who owns their own productive assets means either less work or higher productivity, for the worker with no productive assets, it means more work for less pay, as similarly unendowed individuals engage in cuthroat competition with one another for ever-decreasing employment opportunities, and wages fall appropriately. It leads to people working harder, longer, and more efficiently, but actually earning less.

A futuristic Star Trek world where machines do everything and everyone enjoys the benefits is predicated on everyone sharing in the benefits of automation. In a society where only the few who own productive assets benefit, everyone else is eventually doomed to poverty and ruin as their only means of earning a living is replaced by automation.

That doesn't mean that capitalism has to fail to provide for the masses, but the overwhelming tendency of capitalism is to concentrate rather than distribute wealth, and the overwhelming tendency of technology is, personal computers excepted, to reduce rather than increase the need for labour. Together, they make a pretty dangerous poison.

Re:The world economy.

[JordanH]

• The thing you market fundies always forget is that
  the "buyers" and "sellers" of labor power are
  never on an equal footing.

You're right. "buyers" of labor power aren't allowed to form cartels and set prices like "sellers" can with unions. "Sellers" have the minimum price for their product set by government decree.

I see your point. They aren't on equal footing.

• But she has
  rent to make and kids to feed and is not free to
  act as an ideal market participant.

Like employers don't have kids to feed or rent to make... Like employers aren't sometimes driven out of business because they can't afford labor. Not all employers are multi-national corporations, you know. Some of them are just getting by also. A rich and powerful employer like some huge business is similar to some employee with lots of options and marketable skills.

What's this you say? Any employer who doesn't account for labor costs has a bad business plan?

Any worker who doesn't gain marketable skills or save during good times to guard against being forced into unpalatable labor conditions has a bad business plan as well.

Re:The world economy.

[hawk]

yes, but we have a few definitions running around, plus the difficulties classifying them.

hawk

Re:The world economy.

[benedict]

That's true. For low-skill work, the power
balance is generally in employers' favor.

It's been interesting to watch the balance tip
back towards employers in high-tech fields in the
last few months. It's still pretty good for
workers, but not as good as it was just a year and
a half ago.

Re:The world economy.

[benedict]

Are you trolling?

Buyers of labor power often don't need to band
together because a single buyer is effectively
a cartel all by itself. Have you ever heard of
a one-company town?

The minimum wage is set by government decree, but
it's not even a living wage. Furthermore, it's
often not enforced, especially when the workers
are illegal immigrants working under the table.

Employers can have kids, but most employment comes
from corporations, and corporations do not have
children (though they do pay rent). You're missing
the point though. Employers can always afford to
let a low-skill worker go, whereas a low-skill
worker can't always afford to go or be let go.
How therefore can a low-skill worker get an
arm's-length price for his work?

You're right, a worker who doesn't ensure that he
won't be in a bad situation has a "bad business
plan". So what? Do you want to live in a nation
of 300 million MBAs?

Re:The world economy.

[JordanH]

• Are you trolling?

No.

• Buyers of labor power often don't need to band together because a single buyer is effectively a cartel all by itself. Have you ever heard of a one-company town?

Ever heard of moving?

A lot of people move to urban areas for those jobs. They should be able to move away.

• Employers can have kids, but most employment comes from corporations, and corporations do not have children (though they do pay rent).

What you say is technically true, but most of the economy is actually small business. Many of these corporations support a small number of business owners whose livlihoods depends upon that enterprise. I'm sorry if this doesn't jibe with your "big bad corporation" vs. "poor mother with children" worldview.

In any case, even the big corporations fund pension plans with their equity and have an affirmative fudiciary responsibility to keep their costs, including their labor costs, at a minimum. Those pension plans support retirees that might otherwise be impoverished.

• You're missing the point though. Employers can always afford to let a low-skill worker go, whereas a low-skill worker can't always afford to go or be let go.

You're missing the point that a high-skilled employee might leave some small company and ruin it, whereas the poor small businessman can't always afford to pay what another concern can.

• You're right, a worker who doesn't ensure that he won't be in a bad situation has a "bad business plan". So what? Do you want to live in a nation of 300 million MBAs?

No. Just people who make prudent decisions regarding their futures. People who are motivated to train for more skilled positions, people who save and keep an eye toward their options. The paternalistic society we've come to depend upon actually discourages this.

Look. I don't think all employee/employer relationships are symmetrical. I do think that some businesses gain too much power in society through various means (collusion, government support, many others). I also think that big labor sometimes exercises these same mechanisms. I do believe that our attempts to make things "fair" oftentimes have unforeseen negative consequences. I don't favor always taking the side of the "powerless" worker.

Re:The world economy.

[jedidiah]

A dishwasher in the Soviet Union could also afford more than an engineer in the Soviet Union. It wasn't just the structure of the economy that was problematic. Poor management policies were also in place.

However, that "poor engineer" was still better off in 1980 than their counterpart from 1880.

Re:The world economy.

[Wesley Everest]

The whole point of business is the bottom line.

Which is why you can't change a business by appealing to the owner/manager's sense of decency and ethics. Ultimately, you have to affect the bottom line. If a company does something illegal or otherwise anti-worker, the only way to get them to stop is to organize and fight back. When workers in an industry are organized, there is a special name for companies that treat their workers unfairly: failed.

That's why we should organize.

If you choose not to take the steps necessary to improve your lot, you have only yourself to blame.

Right on.

Re:The world economy.

[mirko]

So, tell me how the unemployment rate in Switzerland is that low, especially if you take its social order into account ?
I think the correlation between protectionism and employment is higher.

Re:The world economy.

[Gaijin42]

You probably will never see this, as the thread is old, however I will try anyway.

You are right that productive assets have been privitized and amalgamated by decreasing numbers of people. This is how it happened :

Two workers both earned enough money to meet all their needs, plus have a little spending money on the side. One worker spent his money on wine, women, and song (And had a real good time). One worker saved every penny.

After a few years, the second worker had enough money to buy or build his own shop! (There is your privitization of production). Now, this worker may still work in the ship himself, but he now gets all the profit of the shop. Eventually, he gets enough profit, that he can expand his shop.

Through economies of scale, he can eventually hire the other worker and stop working himself.

He is now "exploiting" the other worker for his own benefit. Since he made the sacrifices up front he can make whatever choices he wants to maximize his own profits, even if that cuts into the first workers Wine and Women!

Following me so far? Sure you say, but what about all the people that inherit their wealth, and didn't sacrifice for it! Is that fair? Maybe, but in any case thats life.

Would it be fair to "balance" everything each generation? Definatly not. The earlier generation could have slacked off, increasing their wine women and song intake and screw their decendants. But they didn't. And to balance things now invalidates their sacrifice.

If you did implement such a system, people would choose not to save, because there would be no benefit.

In actuality, we have this sytem now. I saved and worked hard, which allowed me to go to college. The college education allows me to earn more. The government takes away more from me to balance things out, even though I sacrificed up front to get where I am.

Further, if I have any thing extra after expenses and taxes, I choose to decrease my wine women and song and invest! Uh oh. Now I am one of the owners of production, and I am exploiting the workers! Time to balance things out again by increasing my taxes.

I am obviously being somewhat pedantic, but the point is that non-capitalist systems discourage people from saving, and sacrificing up front, because you will get balanced in the end.

As bad as that is...

[f00zbll]

I've heard horror stories from friends. One in particular has to do with foriegn programmers who are brought in with work visas. The hiring company holds both the visa and their passport. The programmers are threaten that if they don't work 12hrs a day, they'll be sent back. Typically, the programmers are paid 1/4-1/2 the wages of a citizen. High tech is not immuned to slave labor practices and mentality. The whole idea of staying with a company for 50-60 years doesn't exist anymore. Although some companies use it as a selling point in their recruiting, most companies have a policy that dedicate the opposite. Now more than ever, intelligence is necessary for steady employment.

Re:As bad as that is...

[sql*kitten]

One in particular has to do with foriegn programmers who are brought in with work visas. The hiring company holds both the visa and their passport. The programmers are threaten that if they don't work 12hrs a day, they'll be sent back. Typically, the programmers are paid 1/4-1/2 the wages of a citizen.

Yeah, I've heard these stories too, and they're mostly from foreigners-are-stealing-our-jobs and unionize-programming types. For a start, it's illegal to pay an H1B holder much less than an American doing the same job (either 90% or 75%, I can't remember offhand). H1B visas are bound to a company, true, but it is possible to transfer a visa between companies, and L1 visas require that you've worked for the company overseas for at least a year, unlikely if they treat their people badly. Finally, I don't believe that passports could be held. I've lived and worked in the US (I'm British) and frequently needed to present ID (for example, going into a bar, getting on a plane, etc) and I can tell you, you can't do much in the US without some form of ID, most Americans use their driving licences, and if you don't have one, you need your passport.

Re:As bad as that is...

[Naum]

One in particular has to do with foriegn programmers who are brought in with work visas. The hiring company holds both the visa and their passport. The programmers are threaten that if they don't work 12hrs a day, they'll be sent back. Typically, the programmers are paid 1/4-1/2 the wages of a citizen.

Yeah, I've heard these stories too, and they're mostly from foreigners-are-stealing-our-jobs and unionize-programming types. For a start, it's illegal to pay an H1B holder much less than an American doing the same job (either 90% or 75%, I can't remember offhand).

You both are wrong, though the first writer is closer to the mark. The company may not "hold a passport", but changing jobs will start the clock over on the green card process - also, many foreign contract programmers (Indian firms particularly, or American firms like Syntel that are predominately comprised of Indian H1-B visa holders) have draconian contracts that bind them to the company for multiple years.

And speaking from first hand experience, I will tell you flat out that many of the foreign programmers are working at 50%-75% (the 1/4, at least here in America is not accurate) the rate an American would receive. You can quote law and such, but the fact of the matter is it is happening. Just as I lost a position to a cheaper H1-B visa holder - through subcontracting or other loopholes cheap labor is attained in this fashion. No, not all foreign programmers fit into this paradigm (more experienced and talented individuals are paid on par with American workers), but the bulk of programmers brought over fit into this category - new or relatively inexperienced programmers (0-3 years work experience) - sold as "professionals" (but with unverifiable credentials in most cases - at times the relevant experience consists of being handed a manual on the plane trip over to America) but paid like paupers. Again, I know because I've experienced the scenarios first hand, having been displaced by cheaper foreign immigrants, after training them to do my job. There really isn't much protection for American workers, and those who proclaim "it won't happen to me" will be saddened when the "Neutron Jack outsource everything" program comes to their company.

Re:As bad as that is...

[markmoss]

For a start, it's illegal to pay an H1B holder much less than an American doing the same job

Technically true, but in practice it's a law without force -- because it's impossible to define "same job" for programmers, engineers, and scientists. 1/4 the wages is an exaggeration -- but it's generally possible to find some American, somewhere, doing a job for $30K that _sounds_ like the same one you wouldn't accept less than $60K for. So if they don't want to spend $60K, they advertise that job for $30K, find no qualified applicants (surprise, surprise), and then get an H1B.

It doesn't necessarily save any money -- they have to recruit overseas, do all that paperwork, wait a few months for the gov't to process it, pay for the plane flight, and then they may get employees that don't understand English well enough to fully understand the specs. But the budget looks great up front, unless and until you get into overruns because the H1B's aren't working out as expected. And corporate management nowadays seems to be all about looking good on the next corporate statement, never mind that those projects that are allegedly 75% done (because 75% of the budget has been spent) are really only 25% done.

Re:As bad as that is...

[benedict]

It's been reported here on Slashdot that those
laws are getting violated. There was a lot of
discussion about this maybe a year and a half ago,
when big companies were lobbying for a greater
H1B allotment, and older programmers were protesting
that there's no shortage of programmers, just
stinginess and age discrimination. Where were you?

Re:As bad as that is...

[Danse]

Let's see. If you can shortchange the employee, and pay them 50% of what you'd have to pay an American worker, then that's a decent chunk of change. Combine this with the fact that you can get them to work more hours, and you're doing even better. Then, understand that they are not "handed a manual on the plane trip over", but already know their job in many cases, and you're getting a pretty good worker that will work more hours for less pay. Sounds like a great proposition for someone who is "in business to make money." Now figure in the ability to contract them to work for your company for so many years, and you're pretty much guaranteed a good return on your "investment."

H1-B workers make a shitload of money compared to what they can get at home and that it's a great opportunity.

This is utter bullshit. What difference their earning potential in their home country make? If they are working in America, then American companies should have to pay them according to the going rates in the American labor market, not just "more than they could make in their home country." Sounds like an excuse for letting companies get away with this kind of bullshit.

Re:As bad as that is...

[corbettw]

"The hiring company holds both the visa and their passport."

Bullshit. If this ever really happened, the person at the hiring company who took those items would go to Federal prison. Passports and visas are not owned by the holder, they are owned by the nation issuing them (in the case of an Indian immigrant to the US, fo example, the passport would belong to India, the visa to the US). Stealing either one is a Federal felony in the US, and I can't imagine anyone in HR at any company not knowing this.

Re:As bad as that is...

[Malc]

I'm British, and I used to be on an H1. I've seen first-hand how they "fudge job-descriptions". Yes, there is a prevailing wage for each region that must be met. This is verified by the Labor Department during the H1 application process.

In my case, the offered salary was below the prevailing wage. The immigration lawyer had the offer letter re-worked so that it would appear that I was only working 33.3 hours per week, but at a higher rate. All that said, I was earning well above the prevailing wage within 3 months, mostly thanks to the most senior programmer on the team who insisted (without my knowledge) that management increase my wages. That guy is my best friend in America these days.

Later on, I learnt how to stand up for myself: the exceptionally good economy in Denver 3 years or so ago meant that I could threaten to quit if I didn't get good pay rises. By the time I left Denver, I was getting job offers around $75K+, which I thought was reasonable in that area, especially considering I hadn't changed jobs, I had less than 3 yrs experience, and I had started at $28K.

Re:As bad as that is...

[Tackhead]

> There is a legal requirement(last I heard 65% of average wage) regarding the wages of H-1B visa holders.

Correction: 100%, not 65%, of the average wage.

Granted, the "average wage" for a job the Bay Area, as supplied by the DOL, may be less than the wage offered by many companies, on the grounds that DOL's figures include the lower salaries offered in .gov jobs, but your original point is actually stronger than you'd thought it was.

(And you're absolutely correct that if the horror stories about seized passports and 12-hour workdays for 1/4 wages from the other poster were true, that the staffing company in quesiton was just begging for an INS raid.)

Re:As bad as that is...

[rodgerd]

Oooh! A legal requirement! No-one ever breaks the law! Especially not companies. They would never, for example, misreport profits, set up shell companies to hide debt from investors, and shred documents in the face of court and Congressional orders.

Re:As bad as that is...

[renehollan]

You are confusing an H1-B visa with a green card.

For an H1-B, the employer must simply attest that they could not find an American for the job, the job must be in a prescribed catagory, and a minimum wage must be paid. There are other requirements such as no on-going labour disputes, lockouts, etc.

A green card (lawful permanent resident) is an entirely different thing, and generally requires employers to hire the least qualified American, over any foriegner, regardless of qualifications. The first step is obtaining a Labor Certification, LC (not to be confused with the similar sounding Labor Certification Attestation, LCA, required for an H1-B visa).

The LC is where the local state department of labour determines whether any Americans are available for the job. Generally, you have to post the job nationwide, in recognized trade mags, interview all applicants, and demonstrate how all Americans fail to meet the minimum job requirements. This can take YEARS.

There is a short circuit provision, of course: "reduction in recruitment", or RIR, and any immigration lawyer worth their salt will petition for this on the LC application. Basically, if an employer has been trying, on an ongoing basis, to fill a position, without success, and can demonstrate this, the dept. of labor will usually accept this as evidence of no Americans being available to fill the position. Of course, the employer must be in good standing with the INS and not recently (within the past 6 months) not layed off any Americans doing related work.

Certainly there are those employers that break the law, but, as an H1-B holder awaiting a green card, I wish the INS would have the resources to crack down on those that break immigration laws, and reduce the time it takes me to jump through the necessary hoops.

As for taking money out of the economy, I think you'll find that far more gets spent locally than leaves the country. In my case, if I sent money to Canada, I'd likely be taxed in Canada as a resident, and could not afford to live in the U.S.A. paying Canadian income tax rates.

Re:As bad as that is...

[Danse]

Alright, as you're obviously a fucking moron, I'll type slowly.

Even if it were true that companies could shortchange these people it would not be a bad deal for them.

So you're basically saying that it's ok for US companies to ignore the law and give these foreign workers the shaft because they'll still make more here than they would in their home country? No fucking wonder corporations have run amok. We have too many people like you that will jump through all sorts of hoops to try to justify their behavior. These companies are lying to the people of the US and to the US government. There is no justification for it.

Re:As bad as that is...

[Danse]

In the real world the good ones are making money, providing jobs and creating wealth, the bad ones are going broke and capitalism is working just fine, thanks.

The ones making money are also the ones that are exploiting people and furthering corruption in small governments around the world to get a better deal for themselves. The ones that die seem to be quite good at enriching a few top executives at the expense of everyone else. Seems like the ones who were guiding the company should take the fall, but it never seems to work that way.

comanies exist to make money, pure and simple. Paying employees less than they are worth does not make money because they soon leave for greener pa$ture$.

Christ you're ignorant! I've been working in the real world for quite some time now, probably longer than you, so lay off the stupid arguments. Companies exist to make money. I'll agree with that. The problem is that if they think they can make more money by breaking the law or recklessly endangering others, they'll do it. Look at Monsanto. They covered up their pollution for as long as possible and milked PCBs for every penny they could get. The sad thing is that they will still probably come out ahead (because our government is FAR too lenient on corporate and white-collar crime), thus validating their actions because they turned a profit. As for employees leaving for greener pastures, that can't happen until their contract is up and/or they get their greencard. Employers just milk them while they can, then they bring in another.

Re:As bad as that is...

[jedidiah]

Your argument is vacuous.

Especially in the case of IT, the potential immediate savings are substantial. The first year salary difference alone could save a company enough to offset any meagre legal fees. This is cookie-cutter stuff we're talking about in attorney terms.

The "HR specialists" are already on the payroll and may well represent an underutilized resource.

Then, in the end you have someone that is easily cowed because you can effectively deport them. This will likely save you in terms of resistance to unpaid overtime, allow you to subject that employee to unreasonable performance standards, and allow for more meagre pay raises.

You also expose the fundemental flaw of your own reasoning with "H1-B workers make a shitload of money compared to what they can get at home and that it's a great opportunity". That directly translates into "undercutting the market" and "undermining the bargaining position of professionals".

BTW, there are even "H1B temp agencies" that will allow the uncrupulous employer to do to tech professionals what was described in the article.

Re:As bad as that is...

[jedidiah]

> You illustrate your understanding of the
> costs involved perfectly

What costs? Just how expensive is a 3rd rate Immigration lawyer doing nothing more than paper pushing? Ditto for "HR specialists".

A picture of everyday business in America

[buckeyeguy]

I worked a few awful temp jobs shortly after getting out of college (back when 'entry level' stuff didn't exist in IT), so I can sympathize with the narrator of the Silicon Valley story.

But at the same time, this story happens in thousands of businesses around the country, every day of the year. The pay is low, the work is tedious, and the management oppressive and degrading. Where I work now, the fulfillment center is the major part of our company... supply-chain services, as it is being touted nowadays. It's the 'new economy' that was made so much around the start of 2000... but it's still the same old labor-intensive machine. So, IMHO, there's really little news to see here, for those of us who have worked outside the cubicle.

And temp agencies? Don't even get me started...

Re:A picture of everyday business in America

[buckeyeguy]

Heh, no, not CMRC, but we do deal with companies in that business space... thanks for the warning.

If CMRC is monitoring Slashdot posts, they'd be more advanced than most; I know that the Yahoo message boards are more commonly monitored because people tend to go crazy when they post there, and because there's no moderation.

Re:A picture of everyday business in America

[t0qer]

Heh, im surprised, CMRC tried sucking up most of the talent pool around b2b, when they couldn't pay em anymore they secretly laid off thousands and replaced them with H1B visa robots.

I saw an entire department slowly get flushed and replaced with H1B's. Did they get cubicles? No, most of them got folding chairs and tables.

Eventually my cubicle space was targetted for termination. That and I started finding out all the dirty little secrets the upper eschelon of the IT department was doing there. I knew I was on my way out, my boss tried to get me to perk up and work my ass off before I got fired, I knew it was coming so it was get into work at 12:00 leave at 3:00 until the day came when I was let go.

It's funny how an animal knows it's being hunted by prey.

It's been a year long break from corporate life since then. Been doin php/mysql storefronts cheaply for local merchants, getting paid under the table tax free on a commision basis. Not even close to what I was making before but the stress is gone. When I was still working corporate I could count 1 white hair a month appearing on my head. Now I get a new one every 3 months.

Life here is fun, I got a mortgage, I got a few websites paying for that and my top ramen. The b2b you work for, wouldnt happen to sound like caliente would it?

Temping.

[saintlupus]

Speaking as a former "contract employee" for the good people of Verizon, it's a lot like being the world's most low-class whore. You get passed around from job to job like a dirty sock, and eventually booted out onto the street with a keyboard print on your forehead from spending so long bent over your desk.

On the up side, at least I'm not bitter.

--saint

Is government really obsolete?

[Denito]

One of the most common sentiments on slashdot is how backwards governments are and how technology makes them obsolete.

But you see something like this-- maybe things like workplace safety standards are still important...
With all the libertarian sentiment here on /., its easy to forget the role that wired or not, there might still be an important role for gov...

Re:Is government really obsolete?

[gaj]

Saftey standards? How does that even apply. It's not like a few (or even many) paper-cuts are a saftey issue.

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for an invention. These workers need gloves tough enough to protect their hands from paper cuts, but thin and slightly tacky, so they can open the plastic bags. Perhaps some type of latex? Either that, or the plastic bags could be dispensed by a machine that gives a little puff of air to pop them open as they are dispensed, perhaps with a bit of corn starch to keep it seperated. Probably not even all that expensive a machine to build.

Or they could whine about it.

Which sounds more likely to solve the problem?

No Respect

[Hates]

Reading an article like this does nothing but make me feel quite weak and ill. Thinking that people in a country like the USA are treated like nothing more then a pair of hands really really bothers me.

I read sooo many articles written by these company CEO's or whatever, telling the reader how they are now customer focused and how great they are doing, but the honest truth is they treat their employees as if they aren't human.

Companies need to learn that it's their work force that makes them what they are. I'm sure they believe they are being effictive by getting rid of "bad" workers who complain and want better standards, but have they ever really just taken a step back and wondered how much BETTER production would be if they were to treat their workers with respect and give them the security they need and desire?!?

Re:No Respect

[Anonymous Coward]

you want the company to pay a box loader more than $8 an hour, but you'll be the first to go online and find the lowest price for any item you want to buy, thereby putting the company that pays higher wages out of business.

this is the hypocrisy of the consumer.

Re:No Respect

[Catiline]

Everyone is out to make a profit.
All trite religious-saying books aside, life does not come with an instuction manual. [At least, I didn't get one. If you did, could you fax a copy to me? :)] Unless you want to make a visibly false statement, don't claim all people have X quality. Especally don't say all people aim for maximal profits. Consider ministers (probably true for all religions but I'm basing this on Christianity)- they pay big $$$ for postgrad education (yes: it is required for ordination in several denominations) and then get one of the lowest-paying jobs available. What profit is in that?

Till then I'll be out to make a profit. Just like you.
Personally, I hope to leave the world a better place than I found it. I may only end up not making more of a mess myself, but I try; I act as a political and social activist with my Open Source actions and try to help other people broaden their views by (occasionally) posting moderately intelligent comments here on /.

I will admit that in America (or any other capitalistic society), profit is the game; yet there is no force that says you must play. Although the incentive to join the game is quite strong (general society is geared toward players), you always have the option of a monastic lifestyle.

Re:No Respect

[sql*kitten]

Reading an article like this does nothing but make me feel quite weak and ill. Thinking that people in a country like the USA are treated like nothing more then a pair of hands really really bothers me.

I hate to put this so bluntly, but here goes: there are many people whose sole economic skill is the ability to perform repetitive work.

Now, these may be great people with interesting lives and many talents, but everyone's got to put bread on the table, and to do that, you need to be able to do something that someone is willing to pay you to do.

As I said in another post, a bad job and some money is better than no job and no money.

but have they ever really just taken a step back and wondered how much BETTER production would be if they were to treat their workers with respect and give them the security they need and desire?!?

Despite what you might like to think, corporations are not stupid, and if they really could get better productivity (and higher profits) by doing so, they would.

Re:No Respect

[benedict]

The question is, what happens when the market
value of manual labor is not enough for a manual
laborer to live on?

Many here will say "it's the laborers' faults",
but for every laborer who refuses to work below
a living wage, there's another who will take the
job.

So why don't they organize? Well, look at what
management at the HP plant did to people who tried
to organize. It's not like the labor market is a
level playing field -- management has plenty of
opportunity to talk to each other, for example,
but workers get fired if they talk to each other
at the workplace.

What are we doing, as a society, when we require
that certain work be done but we don't offer the
doers enough compensation for the work to even
make ends meet? What does this say about our
values?

Re:No Respect

[jedidiah]

If companies in don't build wealth in general, they will have NO CUSTOMERS. Robber Barons such as Ford understood this. Their customers and their employees are often the SAME PEOPLE. Companies can't get away with infinite abuse of their workforce indefinitely. It will eventually (if it hasn't already) harm the economy they hope to use to their own benefit.

compare the two? your kidding right?

[bdavenport]

so in the first, we have a full on temp agency with no company employees working on site, workers are being manipulated, silenced and fired...essentially sounds like a terrible work environment.

in the second (amazon), you have 7.5% of the work force as temp workers, with no mention of abuse, forced silence, etc.

and you want us to draw a comparision from the 1st to the 2nd?

flame all you want, but what is it with /.ers and amazon? i am not holding amazon out as mother teresa of corporations, but having 3700 full time employees out of 4000 - that says to me that amazon at least gets it a little. sure, during xmas amazon is trying to squeeze every ounce of work out of its employees, but no where in that article does it mention abuse.

what an unfair comparion...you ire should be directed at HP if you ask me.

Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overworked? Impossible - he's paid hourly.

Underpaid? Well, get another job with your obviously menial skill set making more than $8/hour. What's that? You can't? Well, see, if we paid everyone 9 bucks an hour, we'd have to let one person go for every 8 we give the raise to. Also, why pay 9/hour when there's people lining up to work for 8?

Essential? No, your job function is essential. You are not.

Third world jobs in your backyard

[GdoL]

The most amazing of this is the fact that so many people are getting this jobs as the best think they can get. The third world labour conditions are being moving to the country, you get the same people who would be working on this factorys on their homelands and put the people and the work conditions near you. And maybe they get paid a little better than on their countrys but the CEOs spend a lot fewer, they con't have to delocate the factory, and get a better image.

where's the Segway?

[Alien54]

I thought Amazon was going to be using the Segway. no mention of it here.

unless it is for the super management types to roll around and lord over folks or something.

typical of manual temp agencies, there is no reason to give when you are dropped from a job. because then they might have to justify their practices. this puts them just a few steps away from the attitudes of slave masters, not quite tyheir, but close.

Re:It's quite sad

[dso]

Actually, they call that Communism. I prefer a social concience but not out right control.

Re:That's Life

[fmaxwell]

Not everybody can both live where they want to live and have the ideal job. If there aren't any decent jobs available in your area... news flash... you may have to move.

That's right! To hell with your family that lives in the area. If you mother's cancer kills her while you're 2,000 miles away, so what? You'll be living where the good jobs are.

You need a clue. Some people have family ties, kids that they don't want to yank out of school and away from their friends, and other circumstances that make becoming a nomad to chase jobs around the country impossible.

That's just the way it is. Reality bites...

So no one should have a social conscience or work to improve the realities of life? Maybe Jonas Salk should have just said "People get polio. Reality bites" and then moved on...

Been There

[ScumBiker]

Having been a temp worker in Florida, back in the early '80s, I can really sympathize with the article. It totally sucks not knowing if you can even pay the rent, much less eat. I was working at a pc board plant. Something like 80% of the workers were temp. Everybody was scared of getting shitcanned. The pay was terrible and the managers/supervisors constantly screamed and threatened people. Lovely environment, in other words. Thank managed to pull myself out of that morass and moved forward.

All I can say to people that are trying to live on temp work is, get to school! Somehow, anyhow. I don't care if it's tech school for one semester. Even that little bit of knowledge can help. Also, learn English. Learn how to speak it so that even slow midwestern people like me can understand you. I know it's challenging to the extreme, but my ancestors came here and had to do the same thing. BTW, I'm *not* trying to flame or be prejudiced here, I'm simply trying to state facts. Please read and judge accordingly.

Re:Been There

[Sobrique]

BTW, I'm *not* trying to flame or be prejudiced here, I'm simply trying to state facts. Please read and judge accordingly.
Unfortunately this is the case. An ideal world is one where everyone is equal. It remains the case that in many parts of the world, this is blatantly not so. The average salary for a woman is overall lower.
If your english is not so good, then someone 'fluent' in it is going to assume you are not as clever. (This is leaving aside the _possibly_ valid point that if you cannot communicate well with your employer, then you are also unlikely to do so with you collegues).
Unfortunately discrimination is a fact. It's built from prejudices about what your idea candidate will be. So often getting a job is about presenting yourself to your employer in a favourable manner.
You'll often find that a manager's impression of an ideal employee is sort of like themselves but younger - same skin color, similar accent, quite close in age. This is simply because of something which is fundamentally ingrained in an awful lot of people. You grow up surrounded by a particular set of people. Differences are instinctively percieved to be 'not right'.
Sad, maybe, but true enough. Eventually the world will realise that there isn't really any difference (most do now at an intellectual level, but until as kids, it becomes a commonplace thing, then it's not going to change at an instinctive level), but the process is saddeningly slow.

Re:Been There

[ScumBiker]

>> You grow up surrounded by a particular set of people. Differences are instinctively percieved to be 'not right'.

You're right, thank you. I grew up in a small city in Wisconsin. The entire time I was growing up, until I was about 16 or so, I saw exactly one black family (I think they where vacationing), I don't really remember any hispanics or orientals. I wasn't in a sheltered situation, that's just the way it was. I pray that I'm not biased by that. More than likely I am though. This is a good insight into living and working with fellow workers from India, China, Africa, and I'm sure other places. Give us white folk a chance to adjust! I, at least, am trying to grow and change.

Re:Been There

[ScumBiker]

I was referring to a fairly large number of people's that have extremely thick accents. Not to their intelligence or command of English or ability to be a human being, not simply a person. The whole point of my original post was about me learning tolerance and hopefully others. I'm writing about people that are speaking English but I literally can't understand them. So, what exactly am I not getting across?

Re:Been There

[markmoss]

If your english is not so good, then someone 'fluent' in it is going to assume you are not as clever.

No, but if I cannot understand what you are saying, on most jobs it doesn't matter if you are clever. I cannot tell if you understood the instructions, you'll have trouble telling me about problems that arise, and how are you going to communicate with fellow employees or the public? For office jobs (most of the good jobs), communication is critical. For sales and other public-contact jobs, many large American companies do hire people whose English is unintelligible to me, but there is considerable risk of losing customers who get asked "do you want flies with that", or note that United Airline's employees in Korea speak much better English than their employees in San Francisco.

For lousy jobs, speaking English matters less, but there are not so many of those jobs as there used to be. When my Dad ran a cherry farm, the best pickers tended to be migrant families with very little English -- just hand them the buckets and ladder and point to their row of trees. But this job has been done by machine for 30 years now. Or if I was hiring a ditchdigger, I could pick up the shovel and _show_ you what to do. But I can rent a trenching machine that does the work of several men for less than hiring one, so that job is pretty much gone, unless you can demonstrate that you can run the machine or work together with the machine operator. (And if the whole crew speaks Spanish, that's fine as long as one man speaks English too. Since he's the one I can explain the job to, he'll be the foreman and paid more...)

Re:Been There

[fireboy1919]

I think you've been slightly misinformed.
The average salary for a woman is overall lower.

While that's true, the salary for women given the same skill set as men is higher.

The only reason they make less in general is because, in general, most jobs held by women are not in demand as much.
Also, women are, statistically about twice as likely to succeed in business.

Sad, isn't it, that there are still those who think that the old prejudices govern the workplace?

No, there are all new prejudices now - more sinister. We can accept anyone. We can accept any behavior. The only thing that is intolerable is not accepting pluralism - that is, not believing that all beliefs are equally correct.
I can believe anything I want, except that you're wrong. How can we move forward this way?

First impression

[inerte]

Editor asked to compare. I read and saw:

Raj talks about people. He cites a lot of names, feelings, relationships. It's constructed around what people are feeling about a situation, the actions that they are seeing and their reactions;

And Amazon's Management talks about numbers. It quotes lots of statistics, managers, and 'market condition'. It's constructed around what people are analysing about a situation, the actions that they are taking and the reactions.

It's classical from a literature perspective. And IMHO, I prefer much more Raj's point of view.

But maybe I am a misplaced human on a capitalist society ;-)

Re:First impression

[Sobrique]

But maybe I am a misplaced human on a capitalist society ;-)
Please report yourself to the thought police forthwith. Such displays of humanity are incorrect and you must therefore be lobotomised.

Re:First impression

[jht]

You're spot-on, but there's a catch:

Raj knows his co-worker/fellow temps. He forms relationships with them. But there's only a small group (relatively) that he works with. He doesn't know most of the other temps, nor does he know the workers on the other shifts, nor most of the full-timers, or anyone at their other facilities.

He might know _of_ them, but to Raj they aren't part of his world. If something happens to them, it won't really register on his radar screen because he no personal connection with them. This is important - it's part of why the management at HP (or Amazon) can easily deal with cutting workers to boost profits. These workers aren't part of their world. They're just statistics on a P&L sheet. They don't have a direct relationship with the people their fates depend on.

Is this necessarily bad? I'm not sure. I think depersonalization is a necessary evil to go with growth - people only have room for x amount of connections in their own "personal network". managers can only handle a certain number of direct reports on average before things become inefficient (not enough time to maintain the connections or devote enough attention to each person). That's where middle management, sub-groups, and smaller organizational units come into play - to preserve as much of that as possible.

The largest company I've worked for (where I am now) employs 152 people directly. But for the last two years we've also been a part of a much larger "virtual" organization (through a pool with several other insurance companies of equivalent or larger size). Once we leave the cozy confines of my 152-person location, a lot of these issues come into play - decisions have been made that affected people that probably would have been made differently in a smaller company.

That's not all bad here, though. We've formed a lot of official and quasi-official working groups within the combined organization that are as small as possible - the objective being to try whenever feasible to keep decisions from happening in a vacuum and to preserve the personal aspect of working together as much as one can. Has it been perfect? Of course not. But it hasn't been too bad either, thankfully.

In the end, people need to be aware that they are ultimately responsible for their own fates. Raj can go work elsewhere, or go to another part of the country, or learn a skill that will allow him to escape the permatemping world. Or he can settle for what he has now. Some of his co-workers, sadly, will never do better - perhaps a few of them are handling the most they are capable of. As another poster to this thread said when quoting Judge Smails (the reference was from Caddyshack, BTW), "The world needs ditch-diggers, too". But most can eventually go as far as their skills will take them, provided they make sure that the skills they have are always needed enough to ensure relatively high-paying work.

Being a human and a capitalist aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. But the bigger the organization, the tougher it is. People also get torn between their connections to others and their own fates - it's tough for the manager of a temporary workforce to form any lasting attachment to their workers when your own job may depend on being able to dicipline and/or terminate workers on the instructions of the people your own job depends on.

If you're the person in those shoes, and you feel uncomfortable with it, then I'd definitely say you're human.

Re:compare the two? your kidding right?

[Sobrique]

Ummm. No, that's not what it says:
Amazon's warehouses employed only 4,000 temps and 3,700 full-time employees
So by my book that's 52%
In 2000 that number looks more like 62%...

NO LOGO

[why-is-it]

The tactics described in this article here are very similar to the ones the large brands use on contract workers in the export zones in SE Asia. Naomi Klein describes it at length in her book NO LOGO.

Strange that these same management techniques which work so well on the poor and uneducated overseas are now being used domestically.

Re:NO LOGO

[daniel_isaacs]

Strange that these same management techniques which work so well on the poor and uneducated overseas are now being used domestically.

Not strange at all. I read in the article that most of the poeple were immigrants, including the author. And these policies have been present in the US for as long as factories have been. Check the history of Labor circa the late 19th century some time. It'll turn your stomach.

Re:NO LOGO

[benedict]

It's cheaper and less messy than hiring the
Pinkertons to shoot the uppity workers.

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[Tim C]

Overworked? Impossible - he's paid hourly.


So by that logic, it would be okay to fire a person if they couldn't keep up with a 20-hour working day?

You're confusing overworked with underpaid. "Overworked" means "having more work than you can be reasonably expected to complete in the time available". It has nothing to do with how much you're paid, or whether you're paid hourly or not.

Cheers,

Tim

The alternative

[slow_flight]

Ok, so it looks like the consensus here is that these poor folks are being used and abused, and Big Business just doesn't care.

What's the alternative? Pay them $20 and hour and let them come and go as they please, or stop the line whenever they want to chat about their weekend? How willing are you to pay $500 for a printer that currently costs $125?

If this story was about HP automating the box line and putting some number of temp workers out on the street, or moving the work to Mexico where the labor costs are even lower, would that be better?

Temp work exists for a reason. I have done temp work myself. My view of it was work I could get at the drop of a hat, and quit the same way. If you need to work for 3 weeks, are you going to take a job somewhere knowing full well you're only going to be there 3 weeks? Yes, there are perma-temps, and there are inarguably strong financial incentives on the part of the company to staff in that manner, but the cold, hard reality is that this is the kind of migrant labor these workers chose. Granted, they probably didn't have a whole lot of options to choose from, but it's not like some recruiter painted a rosy picture of temp-Nirvana to these people. They made a fully-informed decision to accept the work, and given the angst shown over being laid-off, seemed to appreciate that they had work at all.

Re:The alternative

[DohDamit]

Ahhh...the false dilemma fallacy. How common you are here, among the spoiled brats who aren't nearly as intelligent as they are lucky.

Well, let's see...alternatives. Pay them $10 an hour, and pay for benefits. Rough cost? Hmm, in a mediocre plan, roughly $400 a month. Translates into about $2.50 raise. Not exactly going to break the bank.

Hmm. The despotic tactics could go. Treating people with respect costs less than you think.

Oh hell, what do I know. I should bask in the glow eminating from luminaries such as yourself.

Re:The alternative

[Wyatt Earp]

400 bucks a month for how many workers?

I know that at my old job, the health plan accounted for 53% of the budget in a organization of 540 people.

With the narrow margins that companies like HP operate at, it could break the company.

As for despotics tactics, what's despotic about not giving a temp benefits? I don't see full-time employment or health care listed in the Constitution, Magna Carta or the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Re:The alternative

[why-is-it]

What's the alternative?

How about paying a reasonable wage - enough to pay the bills. It's not a binary choice - poverty level or CEO level wages you know.

this is the kind of migrant labor these workers chose.

Just like they "chose" to be poor. Ri-i-ight.

Granted, they probably didn't have a whole lot of options to choose from

Definitely an understatement. Let's see: poverty level wages, or starve. They definitely had a choice. Mind you, HP also had a choice: they could pay a living wage to their staff, or they could contract out the positions to a third party and minimize their costs, and give Carly a bigger bonus.

Re:The alternative

[SubtleNuance]

What's the alternative? Pay them $20 and hour and let them come and go as they please, or stop the line whenever they want to chat about their weekend? How willing are you to pay $500 for a printer that currently costs $125?

I knew it was only a matter of time until this albatross argument arrived. You are flatly out to lunch.

According to this articleMrs.Fiorina made $69.4 Million Dollars last year, further, according to this blurb at hp.com in 2000 hp had 88,000 employees.

So, 6,9400,000 / 88,000 == $788.63. Our kind friends in the article, working for HP's bottom line, "pull in around $1000" per month.

For all the "wealth" created by HP, a single person, the CEO earns 75% of a month salary for EVERY EMPLOYEE* .

What is it that Carly Fiorina does that affords her such phenomenal wealth and security? Why is she afforded the kind of kingly existence of comfort and un-imaginable security while those who MAKE THE WEALTH are forced to earn a pittance with zero security. Remember, it is not only the low wages that people have to contend with but the risk of being instantly unemployed without provocation.

I cannot fully explain the rage I feel at this situation, it exists all around us (and the world) -- this is the reality of Capitalism -- left unchanged it is guaranteed to get worse.

The world is in an uncomfortable place at the moment, out of control and heading in the absolutely wrong direction.. and most people of conscience recognize change is necessary. Sweeping, fundamental changes to the economic systems we employ.

Without a democratic solution to economic problems, (economically) powerless people will eventually revolt. It is not a debate of *if* but when, history has proven this -- and we are destined to allow it to repeat. Sad, very very sad.

Interesting Reading: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

So, explain now, what does paying equitable salary have to do with the choice you mentioned? It is simply a non-issue.

*i recognize that temps are not included in the 88k number, and therefore would be a smaller portion of Mrs.Fiorina's salary... but it really has no bearing on the concept.

Also, im not surprised at the complete lack of understanding of the reality of this situation displayed in this forum. People have been so overwhelmed by the rhetoric and dogma of Capitalism, Freedom and America that they are absolutely blind to the massive problems with the present system -- and our ability to build a better alternative for everyone.

Re:The alternative

[jafac]

The alternative is cutting the CEO and senior staff's (basically his golfing buddies) pay in half, they can STILL buy their lexus, they can still produce printers for $125, and they can still pay their workers $20/hr.

I see the waste at the higher levels in my company. I see the huge amounts of money wasted by the sales staff, who feel it's their right to expense hookers on business trips, I see the sales manager take the whole staff on "offsite" meetings to expensive vacation resorts, where they don't do anything that you or I would define as "work", and on top of it, they're given expensive gifts like rolex watches, just to commemorate their wonderful strategic planning meeting. Basically the what goes on at these meetings is the sales people either bitch that they can't sell the product because it's priced too high, or they bitch that selling a product isn't worth their time and effort because it's priced too low (and they don't get a high enough commission).
Don't even get me started on marketing dweebs and trade shows.

Money at a tech company should be spent on engineers and infrastructure.

Of course, this isn't just MY company. I bitch and moan to my father, who was a salesman, and he says this is commonplace everywhere.

They waste this kind of money, and then they cry about their poor long-lost bottom line when the unions come to ask for a raise for the production staff.

Re:The alternative

[gorillasoft]

Well, let's see...alternatives. Pay them $10 an hour, and pay for benefits. Rough cost? Hmm, in a mediocre plan, roughly $400 a month. Translates into about $2.50 raise. Not exactly going to break the bank.

A $2.50/hour raise may not look large, but it amounts to an increase of 25% in labor costs. Want to think again about whether that may "break the bank" when you apply that to several hundred/thousand workers?

Not that I always agree with the way the corporate folks run their businesses, but a 25% increase is not something you can just casually implement without raising the cost of the end product.

Re:The alternative

[Saeger]

...blind to the massive problems with the present system -- and our ability to build a better alternative for everyone.

Capitalism is ugly, but just like the U.S. itself, it's the best of the worst at the moment. Us greedy humans are just doing the best we can with what we have.

Anyway, it's my opinion that technology will eventually erase much of the inequity of capitalism. In a few decades, when nanotech and AI mature, a new social contract will have to be drawn up to account for an economy of abundance -- one where you can cheaply reassemble the molecules of garbage into food -- one where AI can do better engineering and write better movie reviews than humans -- one where robot labor isn't sci-fi -- and one where solar energy isn't laughed at.

--

Re:The alternative

[TheSync]

However:

"...Virtually all of Fiorina's compensation came from a $65.6 million stock award..."

While people think that many tech CEOs are inhumanly wealthy, only a few are, in terms of cold, hard cash. I don't think many make more than a million dollars per year in cold, hard cash. Most compensation is in stock, which as we know now can go down as well as up. Of course, it is possible to make hundreds of millions from stock (a friend of mine made $15 million). However, CEOs often have lock-up periods, or simply can't dump too much stock at one time without taking the price too far down, which would get them fired.

Be that as it may, the theory on CEO's making millions is that they are 1) highly experienced businesspeople doing 2)incredibly stressful 24/7 jobs and 3) if things go bad, you may get a big blot on your record, and may never have an equivalent job for the rest of your life - it might be your fault, or it might not. The "risk" is the reason for much of the high income.

Re:The alternative

[crucini]

In a few decades, when nanotech and AI mature, a new social contract will have to be drawn up to account for an economy of abundance...

You are quite optimistic. People whose profits are based on scarcity will not welcome abundance. If we draw a lesson from the RIAA/MPAA/Napster situation, the technologies you mention will be killed in their infancy, or shackled with restrictions to avoid competing with any existing industry. Worse, I think that nanotech and AI will be the basis of the most airtight tyranny the world has ever seen. AI solves the problem behind 1984 - who watches all the telescreens?

When the internet was gaining momentum, many people believed that the existing powers would foolishly stand by while the net made them irrelevant. The last few years have shown how wrong that view was. Having noticed the internet and the threat it represents, the establishment has reacted with a massive counterattack, including the DMCA and perhaps SSSCA. (And I think asymmetrical and capped broadband are part of that counterattack).

It's possible that the time has passed when technological change could change society. The entrenched powers are too aware of the process of technological development, and too heavily involved in controlling that development, to allow themselves to be unhorsed by a new threat. They will see the new threats on the horizon before the ordinary people do.

Re:The alternative

[Saeger]

Well, actually, I'm more of a cynical optimist; which means I assume the worst of the human animal, but can only hope for the best, without deluding myself (too much).

The root problem is that our technology is evolving faster than our relatively primitive brains, and alpha-male assholes in power find it hard not to leverage it to be even bigger 'superior' assholes ... gravitating towards world domination, rather than a global commonwealth. Evolutionary baggage...

The RIAA/MPAA/Napster argument -- that increasing CONTROL is a trend, and that things will only get worse -- is valid, but only up to a point. It's been my view for a while now that we're in-between revolutions, and that things probably will get worse before they get better.

Right now the necessary evil is people making information artifically scarce to trade for things that aren't as cheap and abundant (yet). Once nanotech/AI opens the door, there isn't much of a reason to be a selfish asshole anymore.

--

Workers already have the power!

[anomaly]

Low wage jobs can be unpleasant. The managers there frequently have no training in how to work with people. Production oriented jobs like the one described in the article are often focused on keeping the line moving.

And yet, these people choose to work there for $8 an hour. This is their choice. They also opt to live in one of the most expensive places in the world. This too is a choice.

Before you pound on me for being heartless, it may be important to note that I have passed through that place, as well. I come from a poor family in an economically depressed area.

I have worked as a laborer doing back-breaking work by the sweat of my brow. I have also worked in mall jobs that were production oriented. "No talking! You're here to work, not have fun!" I have worked in food service as a busboy and waiter for long hours and late nights.

It was my experience in those places that motivated me to get my education. Without those jobs, I would not have chosen to finish school.

People can go to school, even while working a low-wage job. I did it, my parents did it in their 40's, and YOU can do it, too.

If it's too expensive where you live, MOVE to somewhere cheaper. Don't want to move? Be creative, find a way to make it work. Don't want to do that? Then accept the fact that you will work that kind of job for the rest of your days.

The future is in your hands. Repeat after me: "If it's to be, it's up to me. If it's to be, it's up to me. If it's to be....."

Re:Workers already have the power!

[jeff13]

Umm. I hate to point it out, but you are the exception pal! Not everyone has your brains, spunk, and determination. The issue is the state of employment. It's not a choice except for those dynamic individuals who rise above the supression of the masses. Like you.

So back off Superman.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[anomaly]

With all due respect, I'm no superman, and you wouldn't have to be superman to do it either.

I went to school with some brilliant people, but I also went to school with some folks who weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, either.

For example, my senior year I was in an all-out run for head of one class against a man who was a laid-off coal miner.

Nice guy, but on his best day, he had an average IQ. On his BEST day. One thing this guy had was a work ethic. He put in more hours than could be counted to make up for his lack of mental capacity, and it paid off in spades! This guy was the top of his classes because of the sweat equity.

If Carl could succeed in school, anyone could. He was a hard worker with a family. Certainly he and his family made huge sacrifices to get him through college, but that was his choice, too.

I've heard that Henry Ford said something to the effect of "If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."

Let's inspire people to achieve rather than focus on limitations. Let's help people choose to make a better way for themselves rather than stay stuck in the mire.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[DohDamit]

Buddy, we've lived the same life. Same path through the shithole jobs, same type of jobs even.

But.

You had the hope that you could escape. So did I. That's why I went to school, that's why I'm doing well now. I know too many people who don't have that hope. I have no idea how I had it....but I did.

There is an alternative to this situation. Oddly, it struck me when I was working one of these shit jobs. On one occasion, we had six people working a shift at the fastfood place. Five managers, and me. Man, we fucking flew. Work was easy, no one was stressed, and it actually didn't suck. Next shift, next day, thirteen people, one of em a manager. Nothing was going anywhere, chaos ruled, and life sucked. I know damn well the managers were earning about 50% more than the employees. The idea that I drew from this was as follows: open up a fastfood joint, hire 50% of the people, pay at management rates. Advertise this fact to the MANAGERS at the other shops. They could earn their pay and have LESS responsibility? I asked my managers then if they would jump. To the man(and woman) they all said yes.

Respect for your employees empowers them, especially if they have nothing else going for them. Thus, I put the onus on the employer to show respect for the individual.

Everyone has to work. Not everyone has to work for an asshole.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[Wyatt Earp]

BS.

Anyone that is willing to make a change and make his/herself able to do a job can and will.

It doesn't take brains/spunk/determination to move somewhere with the same pay and lower cost of living. It doesn't take much to get a decent paying job.

People seem to think they are entitled to something more than doing work. Manual labor is what makes industry work, just as you can't win a war without some grunts on the ground, you can't operate a company without some people filling boxes. When I was in College I would have killed for that job and 8 bucks an hour. Because, like I said in another post, I grew up doing farm work. I never thought I was entitled to anything.

The man isn't keeping these people down, the people are keeping the people down.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[HardCase]

Umm. I hate to point it out, but you are the exception pal!

If he's the exception, then so am I and so are dozens of my classmates who are graduating this spring with electrical engineering degrees from Boise State University.

Not everyone has your brains, spunk, and determination.

It doesn't take brains. It does take spunk and determination. Maybe you have to get to the point where I got when I decided that I wasn't going to take low paying, go nowhere jobs for the rest of my life. College is one option, trade schools are another. Financial aid is there, and not just student loans, either. I'm evidence that it CAN be done.

The issue is the state of employment. It's not a choice except for those dynamic individuals who rise above the supression of the masses.

That's pure and utter bullshit. "Suppression of the masses"? What does that mean? That it's OK to just give up because a lot of other people have? Is it society's fault? Is the "man" keeping them down? Is the problem that somehow everyone is entitled to a high paying job, that somehow they have the "right" to make a lot of money?

Nobody has that right. But look, I've managed to finish four years of college, three and a half years of it working at a job that paid $9.00 an hour and no benefits. Was it hard work? Damn right it was. Could anybody do it? YES. I'm not special. All it takes is the realization that a handful of years of very hard work is going to pay off with a better job and a better life.

At my college I'm surrounded by people who are in the same position as me...and people who are working even harder than me because they have families to support as well. My fellow students are Hispanic, Causcasion, Asian and African American. Some of them are fortunate enough to be traditional students with parents to pay for their education, but most are not. For many of them, they will be the first in their families to have a college degree...and I suspect that the average age of my college's graduating class is around 28.

So you see, I take exception to your comments because I know from personal experience that they are wrong. Anyone who says that they can't do it is really saying that it would just be too much work. And, yeah, it's a ton of work. But it pays off.

-h-

Re:Workers already have the power!

[haruharaharu]

This reminds me of a woman I have heard of; she has an IQ of around 75 and a PHD. People ask her how she could possible do that with such a low IQ. "It just takes longer."

Re:Workers already have the power!

[laserjet]

Well said. I also go to BSU, and I see a lot of people working much harder than I have to, and I am working full time and taking full time credits. yet, there are people doing what I am doing, plus support a family and kids, and maybe trying to pay for a house at the same time.

so, i know i am working hard, but I know there are people working much harder than I - and that is what keeps me going. That, and the hope that one day I will leave the "ratrace" and graduate in a year or two.

very well said. I hat people that say it can't be done - you are right in that they are just saying "it's too hard and I don't want to put forth the effort".

Re:Workers already have the power!

[Catbeller]

Hold on there, Ayn Rand. Positive Mental Attitudes do not rock the world all the time.

You can go to school and improve yourself. If you are 19 - 25. Beyond that, in high tech as in other fields, you are SCREWED because of age discrimination.

Move to places that are cheaper to live in? Why do you think they are cheaper to begin with? There are no bloody jobs there! The few that do exist pay min wage! YOU try living on 5.15 and hour, and improve yourself... yes, I did it once,dirt poor and supporint my mom, but I was twenty. I didn't have a kid, and I had a pretty good education considering.

Not everyone grew up in a 'burb with good schools. If you didn't, you ain't getting a better job. You ain't goin' to school, and you ain't gonna get rich.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[Catbeller]

Okay, so my spelling breaks down under speed.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[arkanes]

By the design of our society, not everyone can do this. If everyone did, it would be an economic disaster. Therefore, saying "I did it, you can too" is not a reasonable argument against improving working conditions at the bottem end of the spectrum. If the ability and opportunity to rise above your social and economic class was widespread, our society (or, really, any non-flat [read: socialist] society), would fall.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[arkanes]

Just as in my previous post - by design, only the (small) minority of people can move out of thier bracket. Yes, we need low-level workers to keep our economy working. Nobody likes such work (well, a minority at best). You say that everyone who really wants to doesn't have to do such work. So what happens if all the people who currently fill boxes STOP DOING it? Of course, you can just say that anyone filling boxes is stupid, and feel warm and fuzzy that you're doing well by walking on the backs of stupid people.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[ch-chuck]

Well, when you consider that "IQ" (Intelligence QUOTIENT) is the ratio of mental age to chronological age, that's a tautaolgical statement - someone who attains the intelligence of a 'normal' 18 year old at the age of 24 has an iq of 75, so indeed, "It just takes longer".

Re:Workers already have the power!

[Catbeller]

I am moved to ammend my earlier remarks... yes, you can pick yourself up by educating yourself, even at a late age. Of course.

Curious tho, as to how well the janitor is doing, even with his degree. I really wish him well.

But that kind of will is not common. If you are from a poor family, in wealth or in imagination, it's, literally, hard to conceive of what that janitor did.

There aren't many "janitor"/comp sci's out there. But if there are, I hope they speak up in this thread. How'd it work out for you? How about this recession especially; are you hurt in the job market because of your past?

Interesting.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[anomaly]

I disagree with that assertion. My dad was in his 40's when he went through school. He waited until his kids were in college and then he went back. Age discrimination? Work as a self-employed contractor was available to him, and he was comfortable with it.

While I'm on the subject, I don't think that Ray Croc or Col. Harlan Sanders was stopped by age discrimination, and you've probably eaten at McDonalds AND KFC (if you live in the US, that is)

Both started their companies after they were past 40.

My family lived in a fairly low cost city in a state with high unemployment (WV) and we were able to swing it.

If all you're qualified to do is minimum-wage work, then moving to someplace with a lower cost of living just makes sense.

I didn't grow up in a "'burb with good schools." We make our opportunities, as well as our choices.

BTW - Ray and Harlan had plenty of $$ when they died.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[anomaly]

Whoops! That's Ray Kroc, not Croc.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[HardCase]

Or you can be like me, student loans office laughed me away. You want money? Hahaha, we aren't giving you a cent, your parents make way too much money.

Well, the way I see it, you didn't try very hard. Parents won't help out with college? Hey, it happens, and that's too bad. But it's not the end of the world. You can get student loans, grants and scholarships without your parents' help. It just takes a little more work. Your university's financial aid office will show you what paperwork needs to be filled out.

Guess what? Not everything in life is easy...and some things are damned hard. But if you really want to achieve your goals, it can be done. Yeah, some people don't have to work as hard as others to get what they want, and some people don't have to work at all.

My advice is to not waste so much time worrying about how good everybody else has it and concentrate on achieving your goals yourself. Like I said before, it worked for me and I definitely wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth!

-h-

Re:Workers already have the power!

[haruharaharu]

wow. you totally missed the point. Bettering yourself is more about dedication than smarts. The stuff with IQs is there to show you that, even without the mental gifts of genius, you can do a lot.

As for the IQ thing, it is very good at measuring your performance on IQ tests. Aside from that, it does have some correlation with intelligence, but it's just one of many factors in success

Re:Workers already have the power!

[anomaly]

People have gifts that they don't even know. People have options. People make choices and those choices mean that some doors are opened, and others are closed by those choices.

Clearly single moms have limited opportunities. Some of that is a result of their choices. Some things are beyond their control.

"Bet you never thought about a woman's opportunities in IT - did ya?"

In fact, I have. I have some good friends that are single moms and they do have some limits.

Also, I work for a major company that is aggressively promoting women. While many of our female employees are smart and hard working, a disproportionate number are being promoted to high positions. Many of them are getting bumped up through the ranks at double or triple the speed of most men in the company.

It's a fact of life in many big companies that women are more likely to get promoted than men.

Not enough room in the high positions?
We make our choices, and we have the chance to make room for ourselves. If there's no room, you can make your own company and have lots of opportunities.

Re:Workers already have the power!

[haruharaharu]

But if IQ is not much of a measure, why do you mention the "mental gifts of genius"?

IQ attempts to measure genius. Just because it does an imperfect job deson't mean that genius is unimportant. Also, genius makes things somewhat easier, but you still have to work.

Re:I don't get it.

[DohDamit]

I'm going to pretend that you aren't as ignorant as you make yourself out to be, given the tone of your post.

Instead, I'm going to work with the premise that you've lived a very comfortable life(using world-wide living standards) and you simply don't know how it feels to do an automaton job.

Not only that, I'm going to work on the premise that you're young, which means that you still see the responsibility that companies have towards their employees.

However, there is one mistake I am going to call you down on. You're obliviously maelevolent attitude to people who have been screwed by their company will in the end hurt you and those around you who could really use your support when the big boys bend everyone else over the table.

Don't think this could happen to you? Think your intelligence and oh-so-sophisticated view of the business world will carry you over troubled waters? One word, little man. Enron.

Jeezus friggin' Christ, you'd think most of the posters here are anti-social jackasses, if you just read their posts.

There's always a trade-off...

[adubey]

On one hand, having a sucky job is not so good... on the other hand, as one of the temps points out, you can't have better conditions without unions. One of the sad facts of life is there is a positive correlation between union membership and higher unemployment.

Unfortunately, there's a trade-off between good working conditions and having work at all. In Europe, the population chose to have better working conditions, by voting for left-of-center governments. In the US, the population chose to decrease the power of unions and have more jobs, by continually voting for right-of-center governments.

Re:There's always a trade-off...

[HiThere]

Do you believe government statistics? I'm not at all sure that our (the US) unemployment rate is lower than theirs (the EU). Which may imply that we've sacrificed good working conditions for no gain.

OTOH, it's true that we probably have more very rich people. So if you are one of them, then I guess that it was a gain.

The real benefit of the US choice would be that there was less governmental control over individual actions. Unfortunately, this gain too has been sacrificed. If was a casualty of the "drug war", and "anti-terrorism".

So what's the gain to me for the sacrifice? I'm not one of the really rich people. I was willing to work the extra time as a part of the cost of liberty. But that is being rapidly discarded, and neither party seems better than the other... well, perhaps the Republicans are a bit worse. They tend to be more viscious about it, where the Demms coat everything in sugar.
.

Re:There's always a trade-off...

[Catbeller]

But in Europe they manage to have decent pay and decent lives, even at the bottom of the pay scale. And somehow, the government doesn't collapse, businesses stay alive and profitable.

Maybe the corelation between good pay an higher unemployment is true. But I doubt the pro-biz groups sponsoring those studies commissioned studies of the miseries caused by low/no-pay no-security jobs.

Under-employment's costs are not quantified because no one wants them to be.

Re:There's always a trade-off...

[Malc]

"Ireland and Britain have had consistently higher unemployment and shakier economies "

Being an emmigrant from Britain, I still know a little of what goes on there. I can tell you that you are very wrong. Britain has consistently had lower unemployment than any of the major economies of Europe (e.g. France and Germany). In addition to this, in the last 10 years, the British economy has far outgrown the other economies of Europe. Britain has gone from the 6th to the 4th largest economy in the world, easily passing Italy, and in the last few years, also expanding larger than France's.

Math time

[kin_korn_karn]

Say the average salary for an experienced developer is $80k. (I'm in St. Louis, YMMV)

65% of that is $52,000.

Where do you see YOUR career headed?

Re:I don't get it.

[pubjames]

Thats life. It's not anyone's job to make your life peachy. It's your job. Don't whine to me about how the corparate machine is ruining your life.

What a sad sentiment.

I don't understand why so many people (I think I'm right in saying mostly Americans) on Slashdot have such a shitty attitude towards life.

We all have a choice as to how we behave towards others (and that includes company directors and shareholders). Before anyone shouts "you're naive" or "get with the real world", many companies in Northern Europe, particularly in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, have very high ethical standards. They don't pollute the environment, treat their employees badly, rip-off their customers, etc., not because the law demands it, but because it is the civilised thing to do. And some of these companies are extremely successful globbally.

It is a bit of a shame when many people in America, the so-called "leader of the free world", have such a primitive attitude towards life.

Re:I don't get it.

[FileNotFound]

"leader of the free world"

You're just as free to horribly fail in life as you are to be wildly sucessful in it.

Thats what freedom is. Nobody will be there to help you up if you fall on your face. You're free to bang your head on the wall for the rest of your life. Your free to work your ass of to find a better wall. But you don't have to. I don't have to help you find a better wall. Nobody does.

Re:I don't get it.

[keycowboy9]

I think that the main point of this article wasn't that the people where "whining" about the $8.00 jobs out there. It's the way the lower payed workforce is being strongarmed by large corporations like HP and Manpower without any recourse in an undemocratic or civil manner. Got checkout Manpower Inc profit last quarter up 3% to 18.7% in a fading market? What was HP's? How much is HP paying Manpower to take away all those sticky issues like weekly paychecks and employee rights? How does Manpower justify its value add? Is this progress or opportunism? This article is highlighting the possible future or your "higher CS" job. Basically and as you have mentioned above, there will always be $8 p/h jobs and people to do them. Something to remember is that we need people to do lower paid jobs, you know all that lowly stuff like garbage and manufacturing and all that lowly physical layer stuff, whilst your doing all that important stuff like recompiling perl 5.53 for the 50th time.

One way to make the most of a bad situation

[twocents]

There is one benefit to working temp jobs that I would suggest anyone take full advantage of - read the internal postings.

I temped in Chicago for one year during the tech boom period, and had no trouble interviewing for system support and programming work, and eventually landed one. The cool thing about this method was that I would just jot the info down while in the break room and call the next day.

While employers are looking for education / experience, they are also very well aware that some guru with ten years of background might not contribute that much more than "the temp fellow that has a decent resume, everyone seems to like, and seems to know how to brew coffee instead of leaving it for the next person to do." Or at least that is the angle I would take if I was not the guru. I just always thought of the temp work as rent payers and a good way to scope out companies I might like to work for.

I wonder if temping at an HP corporate office would have yielded a different tale?

I agree

[Wyatt Earp]

I'm from South Dakota, in South Dakota right now a majority of jobs pay around 8 dollars an hour, in South Dakota the cost of living is about 1/6th that of Silicon Valley California. In South Dakota the unemployment rate is around 2%.

The fellow in the article said "The events of this day alone are grounds to start a revolution."

On what grounds? He's making 8 dollars an hour, doing grunt work. Sure his hands are getting cut up, where I grew up, the summer work was prying rocks out of dirt roads with 6 foot iron pry-bars, 8-15 miles from, town for 8 hours a day with no breaks. That really motivated me to stay in College.

All these people that drive for 2 hours each way to work, they have locked themselves into what they get because they are either too foolish or too lazy to move. A work visa into the US doesn't mean you have to move to Texas, California or New York, there are thousands of places out there that need stable workers, that want people, of any nationality to move there.

Turning the place Union won't help, temp workers are temp because they want to be.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[Gallowglass]

This form of argument reminds me of the "Iron Law of Economics" which said that the proper and natural rate of pay for unskilled labour was one that was *just* above starvation level. David Ricardo's view was that nothing but stark need limits the numbers of people who are propagated and who endure. As a result, humans will forever live on the verge of starvation and the inevitability of mass poverty. In Ricardo's view, profits and wages were in flat conflict for the rest of the product. An increase in profits, other things being equal, meant a reduction in wages; an increase in wages must always come out of profits. Increasing profits necessarily meant an increase in population, leading to an increase in the price of things. The producer/landowner/capitalist must necessarily reap the rewards. The natural price of labor is that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or decrease. [excerpted from Family Dynamics 7400.608-001, U of Akron (?), David D. Witt, Ph.D.]

More simply put, it was assumed for a long time that if the minimum wage were raised beyond basic subsistence levels, then the population would increase, leading to sharper competition for jobs which would depress the wage rate, until starvation occurred then the drop in population would make labour scarce and thus cause a rise in salary according to the law of supply and demand. So for the better part of two centuries, it was believed that it was not possible to raise the minimun wage more than bare subsistence - the "Iron Law of Economics".

Funny how most western countries have managed to mandate minimum wage scales over the past half century without plunging us all into economic chaos.

So what's my point. My point is that just because an economic theory is logical and consistent doesn't necessarily mean that it is correct. Your assumption, sir, appears to be that people are replaceable machines to be purchased at the minimum cost. But you are leaving out a number of factors. Morale in any team of workers is not a factor to be despised. A happy worker is normally a better and more efficient worker.

It also leaves out the moral question. An enterprise does not exist in order to make a profit. No, really, it doesn't. A company *needs* to make a profit in order to exist, but that's not its function. "A company exists in order to fulfill some market segments needs or wants." And dare I suggest that taking care of the clients - who provide you with the income - is no less important that taking care of the workers who produce whatever it is that you are producing. (All my management texts suggest that that is the more efficient paradigm.)

I suppose what girned me the most was the assumption implicit in the post that labour issues were only an economic matter. IMHO, piffle!

Re:I don't get it.

[pubjames]

That's interesting-- could you please name these companies that are doing so well financially and also cite references for their good deeds and kind employee relations.

Nokia
http://www.nokia.com/insight/index.html

Ericsson
http://www.ericsson.com/ericssonresponse/
http://www.ericsson.com/sustainability/

Ikea
http://www.ikea.co.uk/about_ikea/code_of_conduct/w ork.asp

Lego

http://www.lego.com/eng/info/profile.asp

It sounds good but more of a rumor than anything else.

It's not just rumour, you just live in the wrong part of the world. I know many Americans find these thing difficult to believe. That just shows how screwed-up the American mentality has become.

One big difference between here and America is that, these companies policies aren't just for PR purposes, but they are actually core to the peoples life values. If you actually visited these countries and saw it for yourself, then you'd understand that the "America way" isn't the only way, or necessarily the best.

Re:I don't get it.

[pubjames]

Thats what freedom is. Nobody will be there to help you up if you fall on your face.

Am I glad I don't live in America.

I've worked for companies like this

[buckrogers]

when I first dropped out of college because I ran out of money to finish my degree.

I was a temp worker, and was only given part time work so that they didn't have to pay me any benifits. I had to work 3 part time jobs and was also an officer in the Army National Guard in order to make just enough to support my family.

A union worker decided that he would cuss me out for no reason and I told him to fuck off. He ran off and lied about the incident and got me fired, the little coward.

After working for a year in shit jobs I finally got a break laying network cabling and doing help desk and support and I never looked back. I am currently a self taught programmer and make a great salary.

But even then I got laid off my Disney after working for them for just a few months, when they began downsizing go.com.

I lost my job while the executives got paid about $50,000,000 in bonuses and stock options. _My_ stock options. So even at a professional level you can be screwed over.

Of course I got 2 job offers in less than a week, during the height of the recession, so no big deal. But it was depressing to get laid off. And in my book being laid off without ever intending to hire you back is just fired.

The most important thing to remember is that the fuedal system was _not_ slavery. Sure, the serf had responsibilites to the lord and had to work hard, but the lord also had responsibilities back to the serf. The lord had to provide for the workers like you would your prize animals. And the church kept a strict eye on the behavior of the lords to ensure that they maintained law and order in the area.

The lord just couldn't arbitrarily throw someone off the land, because there was no replacement workers, even a lazy drunken lout was better than no lout at all. A lord that kept abusing his people would have to answer to the church and might even be excomunicated and exiled himself.

When capitalism replaced fuedalism the CEO became the fuedal lord, but the CEO no longer has any responsiblity to the workers and has to answer to nobody for their treatment of the workers. The unions formed in response to long hours of labor with little pay and the constant threat of being fired. The same reason that these people in the story have to face everyday.

I used to be against unions, because I had been brainwashed by the propaganda that unions were causing the US to be less competitive. But then I looked into the matter and found out that union shops are every bit as competitive as non union shops and that dollar for dollar they produce as many goods as non union shops. Mainly because in union shops you had long periods of employment that allow people to get good at their jobs.

The reason that companies go with lower paid inexperienced workers is because even though it is more expensive in the long run for the company, it allows the executives to make a lot more money for themselves individually, in the short run.

Ford paid his workers enough money to buy a model-T. I doubt that most of the workers in these third world countries could buy a pair of sneakers or jeans at full price. I doubt that the workers at the company in the story could have afforded to buy one of the printers that they were packing up. Sad really.

If we don't support the right for everyone to have a living wage that lets people get ahead, who will buy the things that we are making in the future. and if noone buys the things that we are making, how long do you expect to keep your job?

I think that it is time for high tech workers to form a union and protect our rights. We should also make sure that the workers in foreign subsidiaries of the companies that we work for get paid the same as we do. The the US will have someone to sell our stuff to overseas and we can reduce our huge foreign debt that we have every year.

Re:I've worked for companies like this

[arkanes]

Mild nitpick: Like alot of things, what you describe as the feudal state is accurate, but true only in theory and often broke down in practice. For example, the concept of the Church punishing a feudal lord for failing to provide for his serfs is... romantized, at best. the church actually contributed to the that sort of thing, because it was considered a serfs "place" to be exploited by his lord, much as we now consider it the "place" of cheap immigrant workers to do dangerous, poorly paid labor.

Re:I don't get it.

[gaj]

The number of bulshit statements in your post lead me to believe that either you are a troll, a moron or simply ignorant. I'm going to assume the latter, though I'm bound to regret it.

"People cannot form unions since our pseudogovernment has completely undermined them."

Unions have undermined themselves. The reality is that unions are mostly superfluous. If people were not such sheep, and if (possibly well meaning) politicians would stop interfering with the market, this whole issue would sort itself out.

"Public education is a malformed joked, being actively disassembled by conservative treachery and liberal stupidity."

While I agree that public education is rapidly becoming a bad joke, it is only because of the lack of market forces that this is so. If people could vote with their feet (and cash), shools would have to compete for students in order to stay in business. If they provided inferior product, people could go elsewhere. Of course, that assumes that the parents would have any clue as to how well little Jonney or Jenny is being educated. But that's their responsibility.

"You can't make a decent living doing honest work."

I can't! Damn. Guess I'll just go home then. I came from a lower middle-class family. Only got two years of post-HS education (no degree). I worked blue collar jobs for about half my working life. Yet I'm doing ok (our household income is in the $90K - $120K+ range).

"You can't get an education unless you come from an already fairly affluent family."

Huh. Again, I suppose I should go home now. I must not actually know all the programming languages I'm using. I must not have the problem solving skills I need every day to get my job done. I must not have the communications skills that are necessary to interact with all the people I need to interact with daily. Hell, I may as well just go apply for wellfare now. After all, as I said before, my family was barlely middle class; certainly not affluent. And when the scolarship that I received from the construction company my dad works for (as a lobor forman) ran out, I chose to quit school because I didn't have the motivation and wisdom to find another way to get the money. Yet I work on an peer basis with folks who have their MS. Why? Because I chose to educate myself. I'm reasonably intellegent, and it didn't take me all that long to get pretty good at programming, network design, etc. It was hard work to get into the field, but hey, hard work pays off.

"So...if you are not already comfortable...you can't get comfortable."

Hmm. I was a broom pusher, a floor machine operator, a "would you like fries with that?" guy, a forklift driver, a truck unloader. Max wage was approx $12 during that time. Not overly comfortable. Yet now I'm a well paid computer profesional. How can that be? According to you, it cannot be.

" Wasn't the great game of America supposed to be social mobility?"

Nope. opportunity for said social mobility, on the other hand, is the "great game of America". But opportunity is not a free ride; it means you are free to reach for the brass ring, but if you areen't willing to hang on tight enough, or werent' willing to build yourself a ladder to be able to reach it, or fail for some other reason, too bad. Thank you for playing. Please try again soon!

"Guess what, tough guy, my family was already well off when I was educated. I'll bet my life yours was too."

Don't make that bet. Depending upon your definition of "well off", you'd lose. Again, we didn't starve, we had clothes on our backs and a roof over our heads. Hell, we did allright. But I had no monetary support (other than a few small loans, a few hundred dollars at a time) after highschool. Yet I'm doing ok. Please explain that.

Bottom line is: TANSTAAFL.

/. readers naive about work

[jeff13]

Hi,
I'm 34 years old. I've worked in the IT industry for some time. I've also been a /. reader for some years. If there is one consistent POV I've noticed with /. posters is that they are very uninformed as to their rights as a worker.
/. posters believe people have a choice, you don't like working there, go elsewhere. Where I ask? All corporations work under the same rules of employment, the lowest end I can assure you. Those very very few companies that do give their employees human consideration will be bought by Micro$oft soon.

/. posters think the standard IT contract is perfectly natural. Well, a contract that gives you bad benefits, no pension, no security, seniority, etc. is not a good contract. Just because you're making 6 thousand more than your friends are doesn't mean you'll have a job tomorrow.

/. posters believe that roaming from company to company is a normal and good career move. This drives me crazy... can you people not do the math?

/. posters should consider the big picture. Workers need to come together to assure a healthy industry and future for the technology. You think Bill Gates will do that? Larry? Steve? No, they won't. Industry is created by the workers, the engineers, the scientists, not the bean counters and marketing sharks.

/. posters seem to have not noticed that all thier IT jobs generally originate with departments or companies that are, in effect, a chunk of some greater hydra like corporation. To make thier quarter earning fit, they would fire you and burn down the building you work in. It's called downsizing.

"Fuck the doomed". R. Nixen

Re:/. readers naive about work

[Tackhead]

> /. posters should consider the big picture. Workers need to come together to assure a healthy industry and future for the technology. You think Bill Gates will do that? Larry? Steve? No, they won't. Industry is created by the workers, the engineers, the scientists, not the bean counters and marketing sharks.

Last time I checked, most /.ers working for Bill, Larry and friends were doin' pretty OK in comparison to the rest of the population.

But maybe you're right.

Alla youz geeks working for Microsoft, Oracle, Sun... with your $100K salaries and your offices and your GHz desktops and 21" monitors and foosball tables and rec-centers and free coffee and snacks... y'all has gotta realize youz iz bein' exploited!

Grab that pitchfork and march, I say, march on down to the CEO's office and demand the Aeron chairs and million-dollar stock option packages that are rightfully yours!

"Hey Hey, Aerons today!
A five-hour day or we won't stay!"

Re:/. readers naive about work

[Tackhead]

> Hmm, fooz-ball table -or- education for my children... hmmm. You know, people my age refer to that crap as payola.

Eh? If you're making $100K/year at Microsoft or Oracle, or some other company that's successful enough to have the high-tech office with the recreation center, you can probably afford to educate your kids too. You may even have on-site daycare and preschool as part of the benefits package.

(And if you're from Toronto, your grade-school education is "free", in that it's being supplied by the government, as funded by your tax dollars.)

Two groups to blame...

[El Camino SS]

First of all, although it will do you no good, blame the Government for all of the wonderful deregulation in the workplace.

It will do you no good, because "the will of the masses" couldn't get John McCain in the White House, well after his candidacy yielded three times the support of Bush or Gore in the primaries. Think how different our country would be for the working man with a reforming, respectful, ex-POW in the big chair. All of that campaign money is now going to screw you in this "financial crisis." By the way, financial crisis means "we will not cut into our profits one dime, so we will CUT YOU." Expect fun legislation that will take decades to undue in the next year.

Second, blame Manpower. After all, they're only the largest employer in the US. They treat peole like cattle, hold your checks for weeks so that you feel forced to stay at your crappy temp job... and sometimes never pay off. I should know, my sister got screwed by them. So this poor person that lost a weeks pay, well, they aren't alone... pray it wasn't two.

They keep the money coming late so you can never be ahead of anything, and be able to leave your job to pursue a better one. This is no different than the coal towns of West Virginia in the late 1800s, where they were far away from everyone, so the company charged more than they got paid, and they got more and more in debt until their children worked the mines.

Manpower is no different. After all, they are America's largest employer (of late, no benefit, no security funds to people who can't afford an education)! JOIN THE MANPOWER TEAM TODAY!

Why capitalism isn't evil,and unions sometimes are

[Anonymous Coward]

It speaks well of those who argue for higher wages, better working conditions, and the like for the lowest-paid workers. But, at the same time, it's important to remember that we're the ones who create and support these structures. After all, we kicked off a race to the profitability bottom by insisting on the cheapest possible prices for hardware and software: $60.00 inkjets, pirated software, e-commerce loss leaders, and the like. The players have had no choice but to cut expenses to the bone in order to keep prices sensitive to our demands.

This isn't to say that companies aren't misallocating money -- Enron, anyone? -- but don't think that increasing assembly line workers' real wages won't impact the prices we pay.

Now, the flip side: when companies reduce prices by reducing costs, they paradoxically make life easier on low-wage employees in some ways, because the cost of living is reduced as well. Unions are a way workers can game the system to their own advantage, increasing their own wages by making goods more expensive for other, usually non-union, laborers; to use a deliberately simple example, if auto workers can get higher wages while farm workers can't, then auto workers will get larger paychecks and pay less for food, thus getting improved real wages. At the same time, farm workers' real income (even if their money wages remain stable) drop because cars become more expensive to compensate the auto workers. It's essentially the prisoner's dilemma.

I hate to say it, but I can't think of any easy way out of this problem, short of increasing government requirements when it comes to wages, benefits and working conditions for all American employers. But then, of course, many of those jobs would be moved overseas where such protections don't (and, given how onerous they are to developing nations, probably shouldn't) exist. But *that* would drive down product prices, releasing more free money into the American economy, creating new jobs ... and so on ....

Bottom lines.

[benedict]

The company I work for is profitable, but not
as profitable as it could be if management were
focused solely on the bottom line.

Heartlessness is neither necessary nor sufficient
to prevent bankruptcy.

Re:Bottom lines.

[bat'ka makhno]

What factors (that don't lead to long-term maximization of profit) am I missing?

What you're missing is that modern capitalism is not focused on the long-term maximization of profit, hence the absence of benefits, poor relations with employees and the community as well as a dislike for capital investments. When attacking "profit", most people are likely talking about the kind of head-in-the-sand short-term profit motive that we have been seeing for the past ten to fifteen years, not the right (or duty, as the case might be) of a business to provide its owners with a return on investment.

Re:Bottom lines.

[bat'ka makhno]

The market still works the same way; those companies that are short sighted will be short lived.

I agree. A company can only sustain increasing profitability by cutting costs so long, and investors will eventually turn to more promising opportunities.

The problem in this scenario is that while the market "punishes" companies unable to demonstrate sustained profit growth, the punishment is mostly felt by the rank and file employees, for whom termination often spells financial and personal ruin. OTOH, executives are sufficiently shielded from any negative impact of their own decisions by otherworldy compensation packages ($70 mil for Carly Fiorina? What *did* she do for HP?).

Unfortunately, with few unions and lack of democratic process within the enterprise, the most vulnerable corporate constituency has very little say in its own life.

Re:Bottom lines.

[shyster]

Focus on profit doesn't imply heartlessness. In fact the total benefit to the economy (of wich we are all a part) is much greater when a business maximizes its profits.

Hmmm...seems to me that if the business maximizes profits, then the people up top (and investors, ot a point) are the beneficiaries. Sure, some of that money will cycle back through the economy, but a CEO making $5 mil more a year isn't going to spend/actively invest all of it. If you paid 1000 rank and filers $5000 more a year, probably 99% of it would be spent.

IMHO, capitalism has the unintended consequence of collecting the wealth to the top. Remember the old adage, "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer." Conservatives/Republicans don't see it this way, and thus, fail to see the logic in so called "socialist income redistribution" programs. What those programs are doing, however, is allowing capitalism to extend it's useful life as an economic system. Of course, better wages for rank and filers, and reasonable salaries for top manangement would be just as, if not more, effective...but greed won't allow that to happen.

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[markmoss]

I think American minimum wage tends to run a little bit _below_ the bare subsistence level envisioned by Ricardo. If you are single and can find one hell of a good deal on housing, you might just make it on minimum wage. With a family, you're eligible for welfare...

Note however that Ricardo didn't imagine zoning laws and building codes forbidding the workers from living in really inexpensive housing -- in his day the lowest class of workers would live in one room, no plumbing, minimal heat, and built from sticks, scraps, and mud. You could do a whole lot better than that and still spend less than half of the minimum cost of our regulated union-built "low-income" housing. Nor did Ricardo imagine cities sprawled for 50 miles, so that most workers had to drive to work. We have "progressed" from a condition where the average worker could barely afford to bring home food for his family, to one where a couple hours of work will buy a day's food, but about 25% of the population can't pay for a home out of their own earnings and have enough left to get them to their job.

Re:compare the two? your kidding right?

[bdavenport]

right right....never get up at 4AM and try to quit drinking coffee in the same day...ugh!

still, i am not sure the correlation between the evils of Manpower Inc (who i have worked for as a temp)/HP and Amazon. of course, the NYT article is not written from an insider's perspective.

appreciate the correction!

The role of management

[syphax]

There's a variable not much discussed here- good vs. bad management.

For my work, I've spent time observing warehouses for a number of different companies. The nature of the work varied little across the facilities that I've seen, but the cultures varied dramatically- workers in some facilities hated life, and in others were fulfilled and happy (of course, I am dramatically simplifying here).

The difference? Whether management viewed and treated their employees like robots, or like experts who knew the job better than they (the management) did. In the latter case, management could and would call on floor workers to help improve business processes, making the company more efficient- and guess what, one benefit of increased efficiency is that you can pay a higher wage (and will, because you want to retain your trained workers).

I realize that this sounds like a fairy tale, but I have seen it and it's real. It's the exception rather than the rule b/c it's hard to manage with this philosophy, and requires something that few managers have- humility.

For an example of what I'm talking about, read about Paul O'Neill's days at Alcoa (Jan 13th article in the NY Times Magazine- apparently not free online). For the theory, read about W. Edwards Deming, or the book Lean Thinking.

Re:That's Life - That's what people say...

[SnapShot]

That is absolutly true. This is why Republican's want to end funding for family planning.

Nothing keeps wages lower than third-world countries with average family sizes in the dozens.

There are six billion uneducated, poor, and hungry people in the world who all want your job and, while they wait to for the factories to move to their villages, they are breeding another six billion uneducated, poor and hungry children that will want your children's jobs.

Deplorable. We need communism NOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

i can't believe someone in Silicon Valley makes an hourly wage. we should split up all wages equally. except for open source programmers, and maybe any other tech workers who are "cool". they should make more. much more.

Re: Temp jobs are not minimum wage

[penguin_dance]

At least as far as this article is concerned, the workers here were being paid well over minimum wage at $8 an hour. Yes with CA's cost of living that pay sucks, but it's the cost of living in CA. When I last checked, jobs in California didn't pay much more than they do where I live, but the cost of living was 2.5 to 3X of here.

Depending on your skills, one of the advantages of temping (of which I've done quite a bit of) is that you can LEAVE or be reassigned to another job if you hate it. Or you know you'll be out of there soon. Sometimes, I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't work somewhere permanently! At least you got to see it from the inside first! Yeah, it's work without the benefits, but also without the commitment on your part too.

I liked the variety of temping. How you're treated can depend on the atmosphere of the company, but it depends on your attitude too. I was amazed at the number of employers that would put up with sloppy work or chronically late (really late) temps.

One thing I did gain from temp work was walking into different situations and a broader background.

Why would unskilled labor be more valued here?

[Ars-Fartsica]

Why is this story new and interesting just because it takes place at an HP plant?

Its unskilled labor. You get what the state mandates you should get because there are one thousand people who would take that job for a nickel an hour less if the state permitted it.

If you don't like it, get a skill. This is not news.

Re:I don't get it.

[SubtleNuance]

That just shows how screwed-up the American mentality has become.

As I see it, being a *very* left leaning Canadian living in Windsor, Ontario this is how I see it:

Americans Live to work *NOT* Work to Live. Simple. Life is about their Job. Their Car. Their money, their House. Getting "paid" is a goal un-to itself, and no concessions are made to those who are not interested in this pursuit.

Competition is a Religion. People are distrustful and selfish. Government is the enemy, it is seen as serving the needs other than those exactly specified by each individual, "'Greater Good'? who needs it? I want 'ZYX'" is the mantra. Cooperation (healthcare, social programs, education) are seen as a method for "others" to take from the individual.

Are these opinions "true"? I dont know, I am simply one man, with one opinion. Do I have pre-disposed bias? Sure. Am i flatly wrong? No, it is doubtful. There is ample evidence of this characterization. It is, at-best, unflattering - and I am certain to be modded off as flame or somesuch, but I can tell you that people *outside* the US understand this description.. if Americans would look past their jingoism, myopia and ethno-centrism -- just a *little* -- they could really begin to grow again.

Re:The fault lies with....

[Catbeller]

A human being should not be cheated and gamed with just because he/she were not born in a nice suburb with a fat tax base to fund the schools.

God, this new century's well-employed children sound like the wealthy scions of 19th century moguls.

Not everyone gets the golden elevator. People on that elevator are lucky, not deserving.

People who are not software engineers or accounting/marketing sharks do not thus deserve being cheated of their wages and in general treated like chain gang escapees. We had something in this country called "unions" once who would help the non-engineers get more than 1000 bucks a month to raise a family. Those unions are now for all intents and purposes illegal, banned.

Damme if it doesn't make me want a hammer and sickle sometimes. Arrogance from the top is far harder to take than arrogance from a union official; the well-paid denigrator of unions has no business blocking the ability of low-paid people to improve their position by collective bargaining. It's grotesque.

Re:That's capitalism

[Catbeller]

They could expect to change it by bargaining collectively; but that's pretty much illegal now.

Sigh.

"Contract" confusion.

[saintlupus]

It is funny that you should mentiont he word whore, and contract employment in the same breathe. The main reason to hire contract employees, is for just that reason, the ease of letting them go at a moments notice. Companies pay a premium for this ability.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I apologize -- the fault is entirely mine.

One type of "contract" employee is one who is hired to work on a particular project due to arcane coding talents, impressive credentials, or a really impressive pair of those black framed glasses all the Dreamweaver jockeys are wearing these days. Were I that kind, I wouldn't be complaining.

The other type is, like I was myself, a tech support drone with no job security, paid at well under Parent Company wages and bitchslapped occasionally to keep the chances of "uppity-ness" down. That's what I'm complaining about; a job that made me feel at the end of the day like I was walking away from my corner, counting the money in my garter belt.

Sorry for any confusion.

--saint

So what's new?

[markmoss]

This article has two main points.

(1) Working conditions and pay really sucks on the bottom. Duh!!! I've worked as a dishwasher, farm labor, and in a non-union factory. The Essex Wire factory job "inspired" me to get the heck out of there by joining the Air Force and getting an education. Pay was $0.50 above minimum wage, no benefits, worse working conditions, layoffs whenever the economy hiccupped, and people who'd been there 11 years (since the plant opened) were making just $0.50 more than new hires. I think the economy is always going to have an oversupply of idiots, so if you want to do better, find some way to distinguish yourself from the idiots...

(2) The rise of "perma-temps." At Essex Wire, we were permanent employees, for all the good it did us. But most permanent employees have some benefits. Permanent employees often learn considerably more about the business than just their jobs, and this experience is valuable -- whether or not the employers recognizes this.

But the HP plant described deliberately separated itself from the hourly personnel and classified them all as "temporary" even if they had been there for years. I guess they were paying Manpower about $12/hr for $8/hr employees, so the economic benefit isn't real obvious. Probably it's that the "temporary" classification kept the hourly workers ineligible for company benefits, and out of the union.

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[Lemmy Caution]

You have just described the conditions which, as a whole, are called "a race to the bottom." If you think this a good thing, you have some very unusual ideas of the good.

It's not about the jack (or is it?)

[way0utwest]

Like many posters, I've had low wge and menial jobs. I've worked hard and now have a great living, making 100K in the computer field.

However, not everyone can succeed. The advice to learn, get better, and you will succeed is good advice, but it doesn't work for everyone. Not only that, but there are many more important things than $$ or pesos or yen.

I wish the entertainment and sports world would learn this.

There are more important things than money. Now everyone needs to pay the rent, feed their family, etc. And doing that may be a problem, but and life may stink while you do it, but there is something to be said for a day's work and a day's pay. Be happy with your life. If you don't like your job, work to get another one, but also enjoy your life and your family. I wouldn't work twice the hours for twice the pay, but I'm in a good position. Hell, I wouldn't work 50% more for twice the pay.

I had the same attitude when I worked in a restaurant and worked 50 hours a week and barely made rent. While I tend to work more than the average joe, I need some free time and that time has a value. Often a value above that of my wage or salary.

I hate to have to say it again, but there are more important things than money. Even if you make $8 an hour.

Re:It's quite sad

[Lemmy Caution]

No, communism is in practice total state ownership of the means of production. A 10x salary cap is just a big regulation. Perhaps not a sensible one, but it isn't communism.

The differentials in pay between different classes of work are not simply functions of the utility of that work. There is a powerful psychological/social/cultural element in terms of the public expectations and tolerance for certain types of reimbursement. In Japan, for example, the differentials are much lower than they are in the US. Is this because Japanese CEO's are less productive or effective than US CEO's? No, it is ultimately because a cultural difference - such high differentials would simply feel wrong, and so boards don't authorize them and shareholders wouldn't approve of them.

I actually think that undoing the "Brazilification" of the US economy (which, it should be noted, is only occuring in the highest sectors of management) is going to be prerequisite for a real economic recovery. As long as people have the perception that their own buying power is inadequate, that the market is serving the wealthiest and that they need to conserve and save, demand will continue to drop.

Time is finite.

[Lemmy Caution]

An African American woman, Barbara, has an unofficial (but unanimously accepted) leadership role on the line. Initially drawn by HP's reputation and good work standards, she worked at another of its plants for nine years and seven months. She had planned to stay until she completed a full 10 years in order to be eligible for retirement benefits. Five months before her decade was up, HP moved the plant out of the Bay Area (to a place where labor is cheaper), depriving her of her retirement and her permanent job. Barbara has been temping in this particular job for four years. She's what's known in the industry as a "perma-temp."

No matter how you slice it, this is fucked up. You only have so many productive years in your life - being in constant retraining mode is a nice idea and all, but just being human has its limits. And it's definitely a class-based issue: you know that a management-class worker would have been given golden-parachutes, retraining packages, relocations packages and all sorts of goodies.

Re:Why capitalism isn't evil,and unions sometimes

[jeff13]

I hate to say it, but I can't think of any easy way out of this problem

Create employment law that protects the worker, the industry, and the community? Just a thought...

Business practices will always aim for the bottom line in a capitalist economy. In the past, we had created law to protect workers after we learned that companies will exploit people even onto death. What has happened to those laws in the past 20 years? Things changed...

"Greed is all right, by the way . . . I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." Ivan F. Boesky, U.S. financier. Commencement Address, 18 May 1986, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Boesky's words were later picked up in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street (1987), spoken by Gordon Gecko. Boesky himself was later convicted of conspiring to file false documents with the federal government, involving insider trading violations, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines and illicit profits.

Choice

[Pac]

My respect for you is great, since you did almost exactly what my father once did. His hard work and his obstination with studying are the main causes my life and my brother's are and have been for a long time a life full of choices and surrounded by high technology.

But I must disagree when you say that working for low wages in expensive cities is a choice some (many) people make out of the blue. Unfornately, the very fact that makes Silicon Valley an expensive place to live (the concentration of high-tech industries) also makes it the place where the jobs are. No choice here, unless you are willing to move away to cheaper places (where you will obviously earn even less).

It should also be noted that work and study at the same time is not for the faint of heart. And may be objectively impossible for some people (single parents, parents with a many children etc).

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[Tackhead]

> I think American minimum wage tends to run a little bit _below_ the bare subsistence level envisioned by Ricardo.

A good point, but you already raised my objection:

> We have "progressed" from a condition where the average worker could barely afford to bring home food for his family, to one where a couple hours of work will buy a day's food, but about 25% of the population can't pay for a home out of their own earnings and have enough left to get them to their job.

Ask your grandparents, if they're still alive, about what "bare subsistence level" was like? (Particularly if they're from North American and lived during the Depression)

To many people, "bare subsistence level" now appears to mean a home with a television, a cable TV subscription, air conditioning, prepackaged foods, and for about half the population in question, enough money to maintain a nicotine habit.

Cut out the luxuries and live better. Buy "cheap food" - fresh vegetables and cuts of meat.

Filet mignon: $10/pound. Potatoes: $0.30/pound. Carrots: $0.30/pound. Clove of garlic: ~$0.10.

For about $6.00, including the cost of electricity (apply spices, lightly sear in frying pan, wrap in foil and cook slowly at 300F until medium rare), I can have an 8-oz filet mignon with two vegetable side dishes in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

Or I can have a Big Mac, Large Fries, Big Shake, and a Diet Coke while sitting on plastic chairs and surrounded by screaming kids.

You tell me who's livin' at the subsistence level :-)

The biggest social problem is educational, not economic. If you know what you're doing, living at a subsistence level can be pretty damn good.

(Frugality applies to us middle-class-income folks too. If you drink coffee for the caffeine, swap the $5.00/day Starbucks habit for the free stuff in the company lunchroom. Multiply that 220 work days per year, is a $1100 vacation to wherever you wanna go. Or a GeForce 4, 160GB drive, and dual Athlon XP 2000+ box to go with it!)

I'm Floored...

[MajesticFiles]

I've been a Recruiter/Staffer in the industry for 5 years now, and I am shocked at both the article and the responses to it. I'm shocked at the article because someone actually had the huevos to write it (and did a great job of it!) and shocked at the responses because of their (mostly) lack of blind Temp agency bashing.

IMHO, there is always a time to say "enough". It's just different for everyone, and they must have the balls to do it.

For Temp agencies, they must be able to turn away that business, and that money, when their temps are being treated badly. This is a very hard thing to do when your Parent company is demanding sales numbers be met.

For the workers, they must be able to sacrifice the easy job (as in easy to get and quit) and put long days and nights into education to qualify for higher paying and permanent work. This is also hard, when you can't feed your kids.

Finally, the Company must be able to lower profits and raise expenses by hiring high quality, permanent employees at or above market rate. Again...not easy to do, especially when profit are low.

Every agency, company and worker has done this at some time in my career. My agency has walked from business and paid for it, sometimes for years. But we did it knowing that we would come out ahead in the end (there is a reason my agency is NOT the one in this article) but in the meantime, things are harder, not easier.

Until one of the three parties in this plant says enough...it will be an embarrasment for all.

Pride and Bitterness

[jamesmartinluther]

"But I quickly learn that the engine of the new economy is fueled by methods and labor practices more commonly associated with the old industrial era.

I saw this writer in a television documentary on public television a few months ago. He struck me as bitter about the success of others and overly prideful of his own mechanical labor.

Simply put, those closer to the implementation of the thoughts of others are paid less.

Raj Jayadev's paid contribution to the company is to mechanically assembles designs. The engineers are paid more than he is for the designs and assembly instructions. The designers of the business process are paid even more. None of these groups should be prideful of their own contribution, and none should covet the pay nor power that others have.

He is lower on the decision chain and he should not be so bitter about that. While his strategy of organized complaining and "unionizing" may help a group of workers with pay and conditions, I would argue that self improvement (and group improvement) help a lot more.

We need a pro-union Congress

[Animats]

And we'll probably get one in the next election. US unions are weak because US labor law is weak. In Canada, for example, a union has to be recognized as soon as half the employees sign cards wanting to join. In the US, 90% of workers who try to organize a union are fired.

Drivers licences

[coyote-san]

Despite some of the recent noise out of Washington, a drivers license is tied to residency, not citizenship.

If you're here as a tourist, you can use your home license and an "international license." But most (all?) states want you to obtain a local license if you're here for any length of time. Even if you don't drive, I think you can still get a "state ID" if you prove you're a legal resident.

Still prefer to use your passport? That's fine... until you run into someone who needs proof that you live locally (e.g., before they'll accept your check). In those cases a drivers license from another state is as worthless as a passport (domestic or foreign).

That's why we need unions

[Wesley Everest]

Third, the seller sets the price no more or no less than the buyer - for a transaction to take place, there must be mutual agreement.

This is true if both sides have an equal need to reach an agreement and both sides are equally informed about the value of the work. And of course there would need to be equal negotiating skill.

Obviously someone who desparately needs a job is in a worse individual bargaining position than a company that has 500 employees doing the same work and wants to hire 1 more. While negotiating, the individual can walk away if wages or conditions aren't good enough, but the consequences are great -- possible eviction, children without healthcare, etc. But if the company refuses the individual's final offer, then the company is understaffed by less than 1%. That might mildly affect the morale and profitability of the company, but it obviously wouldn't be desparate. And the fact is, the one with the most ability to walk away from a bad offer is in a powerful position.

As for knowledge, it is difficult for an individual to learn the true value of their labor. While it is possible, most people aren't aware of what they are worth. And if you undervalue yourself, you are in a worse bargaining position. Imagine buying a used car, thinking the car is worth $5000 more than the salesman knows it's really worth - you will clearly pay more than you might have with more accurate information, just as if you knew the value and the salesman undervalued it by $1000 you'd end up with a bargain. And if a lot of people looking for a similar position undervalue themselves or are desparate, then suddenly your value goes down, even if you have accurate knowledge and are not desparate.

And, of course, negotiation is a skill -- if you've only negotiated three or four times for a salary, you won't be as skilled as someone that has done it a dozen times, or someone whose job it is to be a good negotiator.

This all adds up to most people being in a situation where it is not an agreement between equals. And this lowers the value of all of our labor, since we are only as valuable as someone that might be used to replace us.

So, that leads to the question -- how can we best increase our value, so that we are on an equal footing when reaching an agreement with an employer, or even tip the scale in our favor? For one, we need to ensure that the employer is more desparate than we are -- if refusing an agreement might put us on the street, then it would be best if the employer would risk going out of business if they refuse. We need to make sure that not only do we as individuals know what we are worth, but we need to make sure that all others that do similar work know their value. And we need to make sure that others have the skills needed to stand up for themselves. And to tip things even more in our favor, we need to lessen the risk of standing up for ourselves -- if one person stands up, the employer risks little by getting rid of them, but if we stand up together for issues we have in common, we have less risk and the employer has more.

Now, when I say we need unions, I mean it is in our best interests to organize together as I described above. We certainly don't need corrupt union officials or unions that spend our money on even more corrupt politicians.

But there are a lot of other options -- you can form an independent union, and make it as democratic and decentralized as you like, or you can find an existing union to your liking (there is a broad range both within and outside the AFL-CIO).

Personally, I recommend the IWW -- a union long known for being the most democratic and least bureaucratic of unions, with a constitution that forbids any entanglement with political parties.

Re:I don't get it.

[frank_adrian314159]

Jeezus friggin' Christ, you'd think most of the posters here are anti-social jackasses...

Well, they don't call SlashDot "News for Nerds" for no reason! Of course they're anti-social! They're nerds!

And, as for the jackasses part - well, they try really hard not to be, but their knee-jerk run towards ultra-simplicity often drives them into the Libertarian camp, no matter how messy reality may be.

If you look at it correctly, their positions can be rather touching in a pathetic sort of way, rather than vomit-inducing. At least it can be if you don't look too long.

Re:Why capitalism isn't evil,and unions sometimes

[arkanes]

Quick note: reducing the disparity between the lowest paid worker and the highest paid worker (line worked and CEO) would certainly allow them to keep 'costs" the same, produce products at the same price, and up the wages of thier employees. This can probably happen in every industry (I say probably because I don't know my way around every industry).

Yes it is.

[Wesley Everest]

Look at every workplace safety standard, and you'll find that the law was enacted only after workers had won the right for themselves. In fact, the law was passed to take the power out of our hands and put it in politician's hands.

If we are organized and see that we are the ones that control how safe or comfortable our working conditions are, then we will see the value in staying vigilant. If the standards are in a law instead of a collective contract, then rather than keeping organized and putting pressure on employers, we will need to work to keep the incumbent politicians in power -- staying organized on the job will be irrelevant. And after a while, the politicians will have little incentive to keep the standards on the law books -- they just need to make sure they are the "lesser evil". Next thing you know, the laws are whittled down, the standards are gone, and we're disorganized and weak.

We don't need the government to do anything for us, and, in fact, they'll never have our best interests at heart. That's why we need to do it ourselves by organizing for our own interests.

Re:Welcome to the machine

[broken77]

The reality is that some folks are currently less well off than others. I only see two alternatives that don't screw simply steal from someone else to sove the problem

Option 1 - What's your idea of "stealing"? Would "stealing" be reducing the salaries from the CEOs, presidents, veeps and managers and redistributing those salaries to the workers? If so, then would "stealing" be reducing salaries from the workers and redistributing those salaries to the upper level employees (such as CEOs)? Because that's what's happened. The average CEO in America used to make ~40 times the salary of the entry-level employee in their companies, and they now make more than 400 times that salary. The salaries of upper-level management has also increased dramatically. I say take that money and redistribute it fairly.

Option 2 - Raise the price of the products we sell in this country. Someone asked, "would I be willing to pay $500 for a printer I would pay $125 for now". Nope. But why does it have to be $500? Can't it be $175 and still increase employee salaries?

Option 3 - Reduce the amount of net profit by increasing employee salaries. This *might* then reduce the amount of money stockholders would get from sales of stock and dividends from those increases (I say "might", because it's not entirely clear what will happen when you raise employee wages - possibly productivity will increase, product reliability will increase, and therefore profits will increase. But who's to say!)

Now I see you smirking. "There's no way these ideas will work! Some other company will run this company into the ground through not changing their economic policies and just sticking with the old way!" You're absolutely right. That is, unless everyone changes their ways. But that would never happen, right? Right. This leads me to Option 4.

Option 4 - Major economic reform in the way Capitalism runs. Unfortunately, this is only accomplished by making laws (or repealing laws, or re-writing laws and documents). I also don't think this is ever going to happen. It is therefore my hypothesis that Capitalism (at least in its current incarnation) will eventually buckle under its own weight. More and more people will live hard lives that they can't seem to climb out of, more and more poverty and social unrest will be prevalent, and the system will eventually fall. I see it as inevitable. Just waiting for it to happen...

Re:Why capitalism isn't evil,and unions sometimes

[msouth]

in reply to:

"I hate to say it, but I can't think of any easy way out of this problem."

you said:

"Create employment law that protects the worker, the industry, and the community? Just a thought..."

Ok, I can think of an easy way out, too. Kill everyone. But we want easy AND good. And I'm sure you think you are proposing something good. But I don't think you are thinking about how much damage your laws can do.

I lived in Belgium for six months. Part of the time I was there I was at a hotel, where the owner was working his ass off, long hours, little vacation. Some huge fraction of his money was going to pay young, healthy kids to do nothing. He couldn't find people to work for him. Why work when you can sit around and still get enough from "the government" (read "those the government has extorted money from") to live on?

I'm not saying that there is _no_ place for regulation. I am saying, though, that you have to be very careful. Yes, a civilized society can take the edge off of the human condition, prevent you from having to spend all your time as a hunter-gatherer when you are between jobs, etc. But if you take too much of the edge off, people quit trying--and it's your fault. You have "helped" them into being completely unproductive.

Not to mention that you do this by taking the money from people who are working for it. Maybe you can do that successfully, but there will be backlash. You have to figure our the right balance, and it's not easy. "More laws" should only be the absolute last resort.

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[markmoss]

Or a couple of pounds of rice, peas, mushrooms in sauce, tuna or meat, boil it up in a big pot, it will feed a dozen. I haven't priced all the ingredients in a couple of decades, but in 1978 it was under $5; it's probably still under $10 and tastes pretty good. If you know how to buy it and cook it, food in 21st century america is as cheap as it's ever been since manna stopped raining from heaven. But cooking takes planning, work, and a little knowledge, 3 things that seem to be lacking in the people that actually _need_ to keep costs down. Back when I was working at minimum + $0.50, my wife had a friend whose kids would get hungry at the end of every month -- their foodstamps gave them a bigger grocery budget per person than us, but they bought TV dinners and soda pop...

And cigarettes, of course. I've seen people get the heat turned off in mid-winter, who are burning up more than the heat bill every month in cigarettes. If you _really_ want to get the welfare cases back to work, find a way to cut off their tobacco.

As for subsistence living... My first year in the Air Force, 4 people living on E2 pay, was probably way below the poverty line but it wasn't subsistence living the way we handled it. Closer: when I was five in 1958, 4 people in married student housing at Arizona State, Flagstaff, a two room stone cottage and living primarily off Dad's GI bill and 10% disability. (There was some damage to his lungs in the Army -- he gets sick _every_ time he tries mountain climbing.) Real subsistence living: Dad learned to sneak up on rabbits and woodchucks with a rock to put meat on the table, as a kid in the Ozarks in the 30's. But I doubt that corner of the world is much different when the economy is booming, either...

And not everyone was suffering that badly in the 30's. Mom's grandparents had to lay off most of the servants...

Root of All Workplace Suffering

[Skip666Kent]

The Amazon article ends with the following quote:

"The sum of all the little mistakes," he said, "is big."

It is the dogged and too-often mindless persuit of control over that dynamic that is behind every ridiculously draconian rule you ever suffered in any company you ever worked for, from McDonald's to Ratheon.

They learn too late that it's a double-edged sword, that erodes morale and encourages sabotage when pushed too far. It is the dynamic that make even the new-age slobs at Apple yearn for the dark years of yore when labor laws were lax as slacks on a Lorax!

Hey, it's all part of the fun.

Re:Overworked, underpaid, essential... Uh. No.

[markmoss]

I forgot the "on the other hand." There used to be houses priced within reach of a minimum wage worker who was sufficiently frugal with other spending. I actually could have bought a house for $5,000 in 1979, if I'd needed to save money badly enough to do all the work it needed. I think that's $15-20,000 in 2002 dollars; a vacant lot goes for far more than that now in a good many counties.

Now, it seems like any housing at all is priced pretty much out of the reach of minimum wage, unless they are assisted by the welfare department. This is bad not just because it effectively raises the real price of unskilled labor (much of it shifted to others by taxes), but because regardless of the ostensible policies set by legislatures, the welfare department's actions tend to maximize the number of clients so their bureaucracy has to grow too...

And of course, Ricardo expected the less foresightful of the unskilled workers to starve to death, along with their presumably genetically inferior children. We don't let that happen anymore. And we no longer enforce significant societal penalties against those that breed without regard to how the children will be supported and reared. (I know of a man that is in arrears for child support on four or five different children by as many women, mostly not from marriage. How many more children weren't tracked to him? The courts can enter all sorts of judgements for non-support, but there is no money or assets to sieze, they don't sterilize him or keep him in jail forever, and as soon as he's out he's finding a new girlfriend to support him.)

Did you not read the story?

[Apuleius]

This goes far beyond that. Here we have people getting shortchanged for their wages, and fired if they complain too much about it. I've done factory work, I even came close to punching out a foreman. I know there is no way to make the work less shitty. But to fudge payroll ought to be a capital offense.

Re:Isn't capitalism great?

[Skip666Kent]

Which one of you isn't posting your sophmoric pseudo-political euro-babble from a clean, well-lit place? Which of you is sleeping on the street at night? Which of you is not free to go to the local library and peruse the political screeds of a thousand or more years of ideoligical genius and idiocy alike? What is being denied to you and by whom? What reward is owed you and by whom, that you would postpone all pleasure in life until it is recieved?

You have plenty, and yet are only capable of constantly chafing at the fact that someone, somewhere, less deserving than you, has more.

That will ALWAYS be the case in ANY political system.

If 'they' in Capitalism have more money than you, then 'they' in Socialism will have more status or connections or a prettier wife than you. You will NEVER get the 'fair deal' you think you deserve. Get over that now so the healing can begin.

Learn to be a Good Animal, and life in general will take on colors you didn't even know existed. But don't get that confused with constantly brayying like a donkey or a stuck pig every time some desire of yours is thwarted.

That road is endless and paved in skulls.

hrmm..

[poemofatic]

It's not a simple as you make it sound.

If your goal is to switch places with "ana" in the article and yell at some other sop, then go get a degree in management, work hard, and maybe one day you will get to hold the whip.

If your goal is to improve the lot of people in general, then address the systematic incentives in our economy for these sweatshops. Atleast minimize them. Maybe change the playing field so that these types of parasitic business models are punished.

Why parastic? Well, these temp workers are not going to be buying a lot of printers. The idea of the worker who can afford his own model-T is sustainable. Having a horde of disposable temps who make stuff that only a shrinking middle class can buy is parasitic.

What are the incentives for these sweatshops?

the above hidden cost is not paid.

The big 5 accounting firms have successfully lobbied the SEC to not require reforms in reporting compensation packages. This allows management to pay themselves more, because this pay is hidden from shareholders. This (along with LBOs and management sitting on each others' boards) is a big source in shifting money from supervised to supervisory employees (total labor costs have remained constant). This can be addressed with accounting reforms.

The laws on the books protecting the rights of workers to communicate and organized are not enforced. Scared, disorganized employees are then confronted with organized management which is confident it can break the laws with impunity.

make the true owners (hp in this case) legally responsible for how their employees are treated. Let defacto employees == legal employees. Again, this is a shell game which we let the big boys play to avoid responsibility and bad p.r.

the article contains an example of clearly an illegal firing. This was done for political purposes and without cause. The employee can no go to unemployment and uncle sam foots the bill. Companies who want this kind of "flexibility" should then pay for it by paying much higher unemployment insurance. Companies who don't engage in these practices will have lower costs.

Not paying someone's paycheck is illegal. How about some enforcement on that.

Immigration reform. If you come here you can work for anyone. Companies who decide to use the INS as their personal manpower recruiter should then pay some of the INS's budget, no? While those who don't shouldn't pay this cost.

openness. No secret meetings, no policies of "we can't tell you if a list exists, and if it does, wether your name is on it." Documents relating to your employment should be accessible to you. More inspectors, more news coverage. HP, Amazon, IBM, know the power of goodwill in the marketplace.

There's nothing wrong or shameful with washing dishes, carrying boxes, loading packages, or seasonal employment. It's possible to treat these employees well, have everything above board, and enforce their rights. Many countries manage to do it, and it's more a matter of political power and organization which prevents it happening here. Remember, there is nothing inherently more indispensible or rare in another kind of seasonal work: the business consultant. But the latter has powerful (non-"market") institutions which protect his interests: academia, networks of friends, cultural prestige, congressional lobbyists. These interests tweak the business climate to support him.

Just think:

You want to shut down a plant, but can cover your ass if some fancy name consultant recommends it. Guaranteed income for Anderson Consulting!
Or

A ceo (say for Cisco) gets stock options. If the business goes up, he gets 700 million, if it goes down he pays..nothing. The utility function doesn't dip below the x-axis. That's called, in economics, a "moral hazard".

These examples are due to institutional policies which benefit these two groups. Nothing at all to do with working hard, free markets, or improving yourself. Everything to do with culture, the legal system, accounting rules, and business practices. In short -- power. And there are ways for dishwashers and assembly workers to be powerful, too. Not artificial ways, but natural ones, since everyone needs/wants dishwashers and loaders. Poeple have to be forced into hiring lawyers and consultants. Simple power of the vote, of organizing, of information can be enough to make the life of the seasonal worker much better.

Re:hrmm..

[phossie]

HP, Amazon, IBM, know the power of goodwill in the marketplace.

Only too true. Check out what the people trying to survive IBM have to say. IBM's PR is so, so good these days. Good on the OSS front, good in the market, good in little local human affairs sorts of ways (unless you're from Burlington, VT). Finally, miraculously, there's a union forming (CWA, which makes sense).

IBM was the last major tech company to begin major layoffs, and that's because IBM had the balls to wait it out long enough to seem that much stronger than the rest. Big Blue. A wonderful strategic move... especially now, with attention focussed elsewhere. Now it quietly lets thousands go, and no one - except those thousands - seems to notice. These people are treated badly, and they were "IBMers".

IBM propped up its "revenue" by upping the projected interest on its pension fund to 10% (from 5% a year earlier) and simultaneously locked away a large portion of money that would have gone to retirees. This single move, alone, gave IBM enough extra "revenue" - though it's all fantasy - to pull reasonable profit in quarters when everyone else crashed hard.

Do some research and find out how much Lou Gerstner took home last year... and will take home throughout his retirement. Carly is *poor*.

The only reason I haven't signed on with the union already is this: I'm a temp. I've been temping at IBM for 2.5 years now. I will not be hired, though I am repeatedly carrot-led ("but no guarantees"). I am indispensable to the point that I worry about my job - because if I had the authority to rework internal systems, my job would not exist. My reassurance is that management is completely inert|incompetent. Did I mention that I am a Manpower worker? I am. The union does not seem to notice temps, and until they do, I think they're missing the point.... in the same way IBM's extremely well-compensated executives do.

I cannot leave my job, as if I do, I absolutely will have to move. There's no way I could afford my rent. Manpower reps have actually laughed at people coming into the local office looking for "something, anything." There's nothing, outside a few specialized industries.

...And no, I do not work the assembly line. I work in a position where I am constantly berated with how I helped land that last $NN million deal. I get to hear people discussing their bonuses in the bathroom. These people make more than doctors, and they're fucking morons.

It's all very rewarding.

Ah, fuck it. What's the worst that can happen if I don't post anonymously? :-D

Gloves

[Kris_J]

These workers need gloves tough enough to protect their hands from paper cuts, but thin and slightly tacky, so they can open the plastic bags

Just cut the ends of the gloves' fingers off -- you only need the fine control at the finger tips. Seriously, how hard is it to "innovate" this last step?

Re:I don't get it.

[jedidiah]

...yes, quite. Too few in this argument have realized this part of the problem. There must be some perception of upward mobility. They must be some perception that your diligent labors will benefit YOU in the end. Without this, the backbone of capitalism is gravely undermined.

IOW, meaningful positive reinforcement must remain present for all levels of the labor force. Otherwise, the productivity (or even stability) of society will be in jeopardy.

Excessive economic stratification and abusive "landlords" are what communist revolutions are made of. It is the best interest of all of you self-proclaimed "Atlases" out there to prevent such things.

How little has changed

[Hanno]

Read The Jungle, a book by Upton Sinclair, written in early 1900.

Re:How little has changed

[Hanno]

(Darn, hit submit too early.)

"The Jungle" is a novel about the meat-packing industry in Chicago of the early 1900s and about its incredible working conditions and exploitation of its disposable work force.

Don't be appalled by its reputation as a socialist classic - I don't consider myself a socialist, yet learned a lot of new perspectives from this book. It's a fine piece of literature and quite an eye-opener, showing how little society has really changed when it deals with "disposable" jobs.

Re:"Contractor" is not synonymous with "Employee".

[(outer-limits)]

I don't think you read the article properly, the work seemed to involve packing printers, not computer contracting. And the point was that people are not allowed to talk about or question what goes on. Not much different to a Communist dictatorship. Are you saying that in this guys spare time at he should have been self educating himself in storage sub-systems? Not when the only priority was that the line had to keep moving. This is George Orwells Big Brother scenario in real life. No in is responsible, the individual counts for nothing, and no one is allowed to say what they think.