Slashdot Mirror
Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut
theodp writes "In an email sent Friday evening to its Microsoft temp workers, Volt Workforce Solutions asked the techies to 'vote' to agree to a 10% pay cut. From the email: 'We want to support you in continuing your assignment at Microsoft and respectfully ask that you respond by going to the upper left hand corner of this email under the "Vote" response option and select, "Accept'" by close of business Tuesday, March 3, 2009. By accepting you agree to the [-10%] pay adjustment in your pay rate.' Microsoft managed to keep the Feb. 20 email detailing plans to slash rates from leaking while it pitched its Elevate America initiative at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the National Governors Association, touting Microsoft skills as just the ticket to economic recovery."
You can vote anyway you want, the only catch is that there is only one choice.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
that their REAL "Elevate America" plan is to hire 10% more people but pay them 10% less?
"Voting" is a rather hilarious newspeak term for acceptance of a pay cut.
Not that I see anything particularly wrong with this approach. I find it pretty absurd that a company should be "stuck" with the contract rates it offers. And considering how big salaries in USA are, it's a small miracle that they still manage to make a profit.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Instead of Yes/No the options should have been, in keeping with Microsoft software licensing tradition, Accept/Cancel.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
I agree. There's plenty of companies negotiating concessions with unions and regularly staffed employees for pay or incentive cuts. Slashdot villify's Microsoft enough that they don't need to post the common business practices of third parties in the employ of Microsoft. Give us a break kdawson, enough with the sensationalist anti-Microsoft vendetta.
I'm sure much worse is going on elsewhere. It's just that this is such a bizarre way to do it. Do the temps really have a choice?
There's the door, you know how to use it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is there an alternative to slashdot? (Honest question)
I worked for Volt at MS for a year. They offer a 401k plan and match a small percentage which is vested after a year. My year ended (MS only lets you stay a year due to the perma-temp settlement, then you have to take a 100-day break), but the Volt match never materialized in my 401k. Volt explained that to get the match I had to work 12 complete months. Sounds like a year, right? No. Since I started in the middle of the month, my first month wasn't a "complete" month, and it didn't count towards matching.
I told them their policy was BS, since 1 in 30 employees must start on the first day of the month, assuming people's contracts are as likley to start on day 1 as any other day. They didn't respond.
But the really nice part is today, when everybody on Slashdot gets to read about it.
they start sending this email to the upper management in MS and see how many Accept replies they get.
And since when is something that's compulsory also voluntary?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The email stated "this is mandatory in order to continue your assignment at Microsoft ". So voting yes just means you want to keep your job.
I agree. There's plenty of companies negotiating concessions with unions and regularly staffed employees for pay or incentive cuts. Slashdot villify's Microsoft enough that they don't need to post the common business practices of third parties in the employ of Microsoft. Give us a break kdawson, enough with the sensationalist anti-Microsoft vendetta.
How many of them made $17 billion in profits over the last year?
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
I thought Microsoft only hired via the H1-B visa scam?
There are alternatives, but not on one of them will you get +5 Insightful for bitching about the story and calling the readers 'fucktards'.
The OP indicates to me that Slashdot is working very well.
A large portion of their contractors are really contracted through temp companies. For example, I install computers in the Microsoft offices through one company while testing Xbox 360 hardware/functionality through another. I never received one of these letters, it was answered for me. I would also like to note I have barely had work for the last couple months, and it is terrible. Microsoft is a corporation which uses its contractors as fodder in order that it doesn't get the media that is normally involved with laying off employees.
Well, you could try life.
Disclaimer:
Life might have (severe) emotional impact and can harm your health including but not limited to depression, skin tissue damage, loss of hair, loss of bodily functions and death.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Especially since the story isn't even about Microsoft! Microsoft negotiates a new contract with Volt in which they pay 10% less for each consultancy hour bought. Which is not unreasonable since it costs them 2-3 times as much for consultants as for full-time employees. Volt chooses to put the lost income on each individual consultant as 10% lower salary.
Which is reasonable if their salaries are proportional to their hourly fee. Except it usually isn't, in good times consultant companies can charge exorbitant rates while not raising salaries much which means that they have insane profit margins on their services. It is supposed to be a give and take, consultants give up some of their earning potential for greater security in bad times. But the security is just an illusion and consultants working for companies are just as vulnerable as incorporated ones. These companies are the scum of the IT industry, they offer no value neither to companies they sell to who would rather hire new employees if they were available nor to consultants that work for them.
Football Odds
So what's wrong with singling out #1? Oh, that's right, because there are other companies out there doing the same thing, which means no one should call foul. People should be forced not to take advantage of the spotlight to rally for their cause. #1 would never do that... I'm sure. So, why can't these fucktards protect their own interests? Contract firms and temp agencies are in a powerful position. People should keep a close eye on the relationship they keep with the Corporations. They provide a service, but reap profits largely disproportionate to the gains they receive.
I was working as a Temp once for Adecco and was put into a position that required I see how much I was being billed out for. It was about 40% of my pay. I had been in this position for a few years without a raise. At this point the Temp agency was making 40% of my hourly pay for doing nothing but send me the check. I did not get enough hours to qualify for benefits. I had well compensated them fairly for finding this position. Now it's just a milking scheme.
So, sorry to say, but you're right. Everyone should protect their interests. Even these "fucktards"
It's easy to stand on a soap box anonymously.
Only a handful of contracting firms are considered "approved suppliers". If you are on your own your out of luck, at least as far as big companies like Microsoft are concerned.
All "a-" (contract employes) were told to take a 10% pay cut. Those of us at Aquent weren't even asked to "vote".
We're trying to get the word out on this site: http://www.msratecuts.org/
There's no headcount for permanent hires now, and I don't think any Blue Badges are getting raises, but that's different than taking a 10% pay *cut*. However, at least on my team, they're still hiring contractors.
On the Aces (Flight Sim) team, they fired the whole team and then asked about 3/4 to come back as contractors, forgoing their severance.
IMHO: This is an excellent catalyst for unionizing.
"Microsoft, as a trailblazer in the information technology industry,"
"Whooat?" I thought... "trailblazer?" I thought most of what ms did was light the initial fire in some cases, buy and shut down in many cases, and FUD/run out of business in many more caes.
(cue the off-topic/flamebait/troll-markers against me...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I've heard that benefits for employees are also vastly in big 3 workers favor.
I found one 'for example'
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/pers-n13.shtml
[i] Like Friedman, he writes indignantly of decades (now ended) during which Big Three workers received "gold-plated medical benefits that virtually no one else had," under which United Auto Workers members had "no deductibles, copays or other facts of life in these United States."[/i] opinions of the validity of the argument aside, such benefits add a lot to the bottom line....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Will the US nationalists make up their collective mind? If capitalism and competition are good, then Microsoft can only be bad for stifling competition.
Successful companies are a good thing, they can help improve the industry's efficiency through reduced prices and increased quality. But monopolistic companies like Microsoft rarely do either.
If it wasn't for the monopoly, Microsoft would have been dead between XP and Vista. Six years between incremental product releases? Instant death in any *normal* industry. Fast-paced competitors like Apple and Linux would have eaten it for breakfast. And the economy would benefit. So does the US still need more Microsofts?
Sam ty sig.
Most big companies will not deal with individual LLCs. They have a "panel" of agencies (say between 3 and 10) that you have to go through.
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
Hate to say it, but that's exactly why. The cost of labor is dropping, because there's a massive pool of it willing to work for less right now. Market forces and all - more supply, less demand, price drops.
Sure, it was awesome for us all during the .com boom because it was the other way around (demand outstripping supply, causing outrageous salaries, etc.), but the point is stop your bitching when it goes the other way. That's just the way an open market works.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that contractors can stand to make a lot more money than regular employees, when they are in work?
The downside is that your job's temporary and you have fewer rights, as this article shows. That's the risk they choose to take.
Unfortunately, they're publicly-owned, which means they have to at the very least pretend they're coping with the economic downturn in a very visible way. Even if they really don't need to. Otherwise their stockholders will revolt, sell of their shares, and they'd be in much worse state. It also doesn't help that the other layoffs rates in Washington State have lowered the price of tech labor.
Comment of the year
American workers take a 25% haircut and become competitive again.
During the great depression there were several major waves of pay cuts.
This service economy fantasy is not sustainable.
What's missing is the 75% pay cut for the executive class back to 1987 levels when they "only" made 50 times the average worker (instead of over 400 times today) AND raising taxes on dividends and capital gains from 15% back to normal income levels ( these extremely low tax rates on div and capital gains are why warren buffet averages 17% income tax rate while his secretary averages about 30%)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
The temp's employer is Volt Workforce Solutions.
Volt joins most but not all firms in deciding to pass some or all of the impact of the [Microsoft] cuts on to their workers. Temp giant Volt informs workers it will make Microsoft pay cuts
How surprising is it when a wholesale supplier cuts his prices and costs to remain competitive in a recession?
--- but is not so quick to dial back his own profits?
Microsoft is bleeding to death when kdawson's theme is FOSS and Linux. Microsoft is rich, strong and stable when the talk turns to pay cuts and layoffs.
The well-run company survives a deep recession - a depression - by making changes before the situation turns desperate.
The 10% pay cut now is at least a better outcome for the temp than the 100% cut he'd take later if his job is outsourced to India.
It's useful to remember now and again that the median household income in the states is $50,000 -
keeps things in perspective, when you ask yourself how much your job is worth.
Cap at 100k? And you expect to attract high-power, high-earning execs to your company how? Sunshine enemas? Be logical. If a programmer makes thirty to forty thousand per year, and his boss makes twenty percent more - move five or six steps up the logical chain and of course you get million dollar salaries. Is it fair? Not really, by most logic.
But even if you project a 20% pay raise per position five steps up the chain, you still have nearly 100k salaries - and I don't expect jumps as low as 20% are realistic. In my company, salary more than doubles from location manager to district manager - five steps up from that (Which is roughly executive level) puts salaries nearly half a million a year. I'd call that estimate conservative and I work bloody retail, where there is NO profit margin WHATSOEVER.
This isn't an attempt to curry favour with execs, as I don't know any who read Slashdot in the first place. Your use of 100k-no-bonus just makes me wonder where in gay hell your logic is coming from.
Those things you're doing with that stuff you just bought? That's not what it's for! -
Well, for starters, autoworkers union != bank executives. The two situations aren't even similar. On one hand, you have a union that's doing nothing more than bleeding a corporation dry. On the other, you have a situation where the free market should really be determining things like salaries and bonuses*.
The auto workers negotiated in just as much a free market as those bank executives did. SO they are the same in that regard.
Truth be told, it would be better for the US Automakers if they went bankrupt. That would dissolve all union contracts, forcing them to restructure. While there are certainly other factors like demand and quality, the benefits alone received by members of the UAW make it almost impossible for American car companies to compete with non-union car manufacturers in the US.
While it may be better if US auto manufacturers did go bankrupt, you're either discounting, ignoring, or don't know something. Even foreign auto makers what Detroit bailed out, "Why Toyota wants GM to be saved". This is because of the reason mentioned above, they all depend on the same suppliers. If Chrysler goes bankrupt it's suppliers, who also supply Japanese makers in the US may go bankrupt as well. Secondly those foreign owned factories received a lot of government subsidies. State governments have given out billions in subsidies. "Alabama offered a stunning $253 million incentive package to Mercedes ." And one of Alabama's senators, Sen. Richard Shelby was one of those who opposed bailing out US auto companies.
Its great when a company can afford to treat their people well, but when they can't, something's gotta give. Unfortunately, the UAW doesn't see it that way.
Neither do company executives. Even Carl Icahn says executive pay needs to change.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Collectivism and Marxism already failed. We don't need to try that again.
Don't recall anyone advocating that. Put that straw man away before it falls apart!
Though expecting 100% free-market capitalism to work without people taking advantage and/or subverting it for their own ends (even through the "legitimate" use of markets to- e.g.- get a monopoly) is just as flawed and dependent on a grossly over-idealised view of human nature as communism is.
Remember that though many will proclaim the merits of a free market, they really want it to be free for themselves... and will certainly seek to shut out competition given the chance.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I am a contractor at Microsoft right now subject to this pay rate decrease. Although I have my opinions about why it is happening, and what should be happening instead, I think more interesting is what the immediate effect of this will be. In my case, I cancelled several services I pay for in order to absorb the hit to my income and will be increasing my W-4 deductions to maximize my current income (up to my allowed amount) in favor of decreasing my tax return next year (here's to hope).
But, I cancelled Netflix who licenses Microsoft's streaming video technology. I cancelled Gamefly who previously rented me Xbox 360 games. I will be providing less revenue through withholding to the federal government. There will be less discretionary spending and less revenue provided to my local and state government, all of whom need it just as bad as we do right now. All of those organizations rely on Microsoft products for their dwindling operations. In a very real way (since I live in northwest Washington) there will be less money for police to protect Microsoft's physical assets.
Don't these circular relationships represent the defintion of a "downward spiral"? Are we sure we understand the impact of these actions?
In the meantime I will buckle under and keep working my ass off. My kid's doctor doesn't accept righteousness as a form of payment.
The prices of ALOT of things jumped up after 9/11 on fear and during the gasoline crisis. They also take advantage of every weather crisis or flood to publish how it will cause a shortage and a price hike.
Ever notice -- when these things clear up, they don't go back down.
Everything needs to go through some deflation. The price of many things is just ridiculous.
Things going from 25-50 cents in the 70's to 6-10 bucks... That's a hell of alot of inflation -- alot more than the
supposed 2-4% reported by government figures each year. Over 3 decades, 4% would be a 324% price inflation.
Instead, I commonly see things more in line with 20x (2000%). It's not just housing.
$2.99 for a corrupted version of a song (a ringtone). vs. $4-6 for an album in the early 80's. The incremental cost
to produce that ringtone: 0. An album might have ~10 songs... so as ring tones, that'd be $30. That's 7.5-5x and those aren't for the real song. The incremental profit margins are nearly incalculable. Piracy has hurt music companies sooooo much.....
But contrary to what 'should' happen -- the government is just manufacturing more money backed by nothing. It's like stock dilution -- but on a massive scale -- dollar dilution. Soon street bums will be begging $20's for a cup of joe.
Theoretically, we are so screwed...but for what really will happen? Good luck guessing!
These are CONTRACTORS not employees. The whole reason a company uses contract labor is so they can adjust the number of bodies to the workload without having to later layoff their own employees. In other works these a TEMPORARY jobs. Everyone understood they were temporary and would not last. I don't even count not renewing a contract with a layoff
I was a contractor once too. And sure enough we were the first to go. With all of about 20 minutes notice at that. Cutting your pay is just a very nice way to say "Find another job, soon." The more normal way to say that to a contractors is "Find another job."
Read the story "Volt" is a "temp agency". Our company uses Volt too. For thing like when a normal emplyee is on extended sick leave, they might hire someone on a 6 month contract.