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IT Workers To Get Fewer Perks, No Free Coffee
dasButcher writes "While the economy is showing signs of recovery and tech stocks posted double- and triple-digit gains in 2009, IT workers are facing a less hospitable workplace in the coming year. Many employers say they're going to continue trimming budgets, particularly in human resources. Rather than giving up head count, they're planning to trim 401k contributions, eliminate bonuses, curtail travel and, dare we say, shut off the free coffee (it wasn't that good anyway)."
Every job is different. Every career is different. Things ebb and flow. For a long time, IT workers were spoiled primadonna. Now they're just another cost center. Guess what, the economy is jacked up. Budget cuts have to happen. IT is a necessity, but so is efficiency, cost control, etc. Welcome to the real world you big f'ing crybabies.
I know many programmers whose fingers can't move unless well lubricated with caffene :-)
The more you screw your employees, the more they will find ways to screw you. Turn off Gmail and Slashdot? Fine, I'll take a once-an-hour smoke break. Hack my 401k? I'll sit and stare at the ceiling. Bust by balls about travel costs? See if I don't have a "family thing" next time and can't go. People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You make some mo'
Anywhere that would cut out coffee from the budget is quite frankly insane. It's a minuscule expense compared to the HR budget and improves productivity dramatically when people would otherwise be flagging (early mornings for night owls, afternoons for early birds).
The ability to provide free, legal performance enhancing drugs is one of the few negligible-cost productivity boost techniques available. You'd have to be both petty and highly incompetent as a manager to do away with it.
Yeah, we've gotta be more concerned about feeding that CEO machine...
I haven't received a bonus in about two years. It was a $1000 check. And the only reason I got that little gift is that I MADE money for my company. One of the perks of being a contractor for a small company. Of course, that contract ended, so I went to work for a larger IT company, and haven't received a bonus since. Working directly for a company is nice, but contracting pays better.
Perk decrease has been going for a long time since dotbomb. In my previous company they used to have all kinds of free snacks (bagels, jams, cream cheese, fruits, salads) and happy hour with free hot food every Friday, then one sunny day it all ended abruptly, only caffeinated coffee remained (that reminded me of the practice of banana companies of the XIX century that encouraged workers to chew coca leaves).
I work for government now and we do not have any free food at all. Good thing is that people can bring all kind of personal electric equipment like toasters, microwave ovens, fridges. We have kitchens on each floor where all this stuff is stored. I personally have a tea maker, an espresso maker and a coffee grinder in my office.
It's better this way, guys.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Nasty instant Coffee?
That's nothing. Where I work, we have go outside, and chew the leaves and beans off coffee bushes ourselves.
Lucky sod! Your coffee's fresher than everyone's!
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I would sacrifice all of those perks for more paid time off. HP offers new employees something like 12 days PTO and then it schedules 10 days of forced shutdowns per year to get accumulated PTO off the books. This means any new employee gets 2, count them, 2 days to schedule at their own convenience. That's deeply disrespectful. (I don't work at HP but I have friends that do).
Why do you have your own person to turn cows into orks in the next cubicle? Is that a big thing where you work?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
We've long had a person head up a 'coffee club', collecting from the java
junkies on the floor every month. Enough money was left to have a group lunch
at month-end. AFAICT the coffee machine was there long before, industrial type
-- 2 open carafes with an orange one for decaf, you probably saw one in a
diner somewhere -- not the 10 or 12 cup coffeemakers you get from Costco.
401K? Long gone from the employer's side, we're waiting for the first
anniversary announcement, if they will reinstate their contribution. I feel
less of a team player if they did not.
Yup, not just in IT. This was the travel industry. Welcome to the club, gents.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Wait: we don't get pensions anymore. 401k contributions ARE our retirement plans. Cutting 401k is the same as saying "we care about you SO little, that we hope you die hungry and cold in your old age."
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Some company perks that I just don't want and will never use:
- I don't want a company celphone. I have my own phone, I don't want to have to keep track of business and private calls, I don't want my boss to get a list of all the calls I make in a month, and I don't want to have to carry around two phones. The company phone is lying in the closet, unused, the subscription fee is being paid for nothing.
- I don't want a company laptop. I don't need one for my work (customers *naturally* never allow machines on their network that they didn't provide themselves). For private use, it's useless. It does not have the specs I would have chosen for my own laptop, and I'm not free to modify it or change the software on it. It's been lying in the closet, unused. It's worse than useless, as I can't justify buying one for myself as long as I "have a perfectly ok laptop gathering dust in the closet".
- Company presentations preceeded by Paintball or Casino: please keep it serious and treat me like an adult. I don't come to the office to play games with colleagues, just give the presentation.
- Free coffee: I don't care. It's nice if it's there, but it's such a minor issue that if they want to save the shockingly huge amount of money that goes into rent and support of these machines, by all means do so, I'm not going to work less hard if I have to buy my own drinks.
While in larger companies doing away with free coffee could be a sensible alternative to laying off perhaps 0.5% of the work force, you have to wonder about the margins and sustainability of a corporation that actually *needs* to do that. As for smaller companies - if they can't even afford free coffee, it must really suck to work there.
;-)
I can only recommend managers to think about how much free for employees (good) food and drinks actually cost you compared to the part of the salaries that goes towards pizza/drinks at work otherwise, what the benefits are (healthier employees, less time wasted ordering stuff or going out to buy it) and how it may or may not make people feel more attached/loyal to your company. As for coffee - think of the headaches from caffeine deprivation you might induce if you don't provide it.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Twenty years ago, companies jumped-up IT guys and made them "Web Masters" -- coders, server maintainers, content creators and (in their own minds) designers -- giving them six figure salaries. Every company, no matter how small, felt it needed to have a "server room" and maintain their e-mail service locally. The Marketing secretary always needed help figuring out how to print her boss's agenda out of Lotus Organizer.
Times changed.
Now, companies buy website templates for sixty bucks non-exclusive (three grand exclusive) and they're sitting in a server room at a place called Dreamhost or Hostgator. The content is maintained via a CMS run by the Marketing secretary. Employers and employees are using Gmail and other cloud-based e-mail systems because the lines between personal and work IT space have become so blurred. Nobody needs help printing anymore, because an entire generation has been raised on the Internet and personal computer systems.
People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.
And employers will replace them with 20-something go-getters with better attitudes and more up-to-date skills, and at half the salary.
You can always fit a small refrigerator inside of a std. rack (lay a couple of 2x4's across the bottom to hold it up, and make sure the rack doors are on it, front and back). Put your own coffee maker on top of it, and you're set. Tape a few Dell server front panels to the inside of the rack door while you're at it. If you're really into disguises, wire up a few LED's to those panels.
Now if only there was a way to squeeze a big-screen TV in there... and no, not sideways.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
IMHO, getting rid of free coffee is a huge mistake. In the scheme of things it's a tiny expense and you're going to lose far more in terms of people bickering about the coffee fund, people running out "on break" to buy coffee, and the basic office environment.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
At the company where I work, they cut off the free coffee last summer, for a cost savings of $80,000 a year. Not exactly a tiny expense, basically one engineer's job.
Now if we can just get that one engineer whose job it saved to get everybody coffee . . .
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
Nope, not a burger joint within two miles of here even if they did.
Do you get your bridge for free, perchance? Does it have a good goat throughput?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Back in the olden days of Computers...like 10 years ago...I was one of the many who was against unionization of IT workers. Now, having been badly treated by both small companies, and one of the largest single-digit level manufacturers of computers, I see that I was wrong. Today's 'sweatshops' are in computer assembly factories, and in call centers. They both use Skinner like systems with seemingly random rewards and punishments to keep people in line.
These days, digging ditches is a more profitable and satisfying job...fully unionized, with guaranteed vacation and benefits, and a grievance system that actually works!
ttyl ...note, I don't dig ditches.
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
industrial coffee maker (can make enough coffee, continuously, for at least 20 people) - $242.07
http://www.amazon.com/VPR-Commercial-12-Cup-Pour-Over-Warmers/dp/B000BN7W84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704523&sr=8-1
cheap coffee (weeks supply for 20 people) - $14.50
http://www.amazon.com/Folgers-Ground-Regular-PAG20015-Category/dp/B00006IDJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704605&sr=1-2
coffee filters (months supply for 20 people) - $5.23
http://www.amazon.com/BUNN-BCF250-Commercial-Coffee-Filters/dp/B0006VNO7Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704669&sr=1-12
so for about 250 initially and a monthly recurring cost of about 50 bucks. hmmm, 20 sleepy employees who are sluggish and inattentive for several hours a day (lets say 2 hours, or 1/4 of their shift). now, per employee that's a monthly cost of $2.50 to not diminish that 1/4 of their shift.
how little would you have to be paying your employees to not think that's a good idea? pennies a day???
furthermore, this isn't much of a cost cutting measure. even if I have 10,000 people working for me, I'm only paying $2500 a month to give them coffee (excluding the cost of the machines, which last a decade) or $30,000 per year, which is nothing for a 10,000 employee company.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
It's called the Juan Valdez Amendment to the Constitution. It's there really. Look it up. It guarantees all workers the right to free coffee during work hours. Ratification of that Amendment has been written into my employment contracts for over 20 years.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
That sounds sort of like the plot of a Dilbert cartoon,. . .
I'm a firm believer that if a business wants to show it cares, it'll say it with money. Because that's the only thing that matters to a business. if it's parting with cash in ways it does not absolutely have to, that says something. But barring that, there's cashless ways to show care. There's not much you can do if you're doing IT-as-a-service where you need to be available for fixed hours but if you're doing dev work that doesn't go on a fixed schedule, give flex time! You worked late during the week, take a half day Friday. Costs the company nothing, same amount of work is getting done. Need a dr's appointment? For the love of xod, we're not going to ding you four hours of vacation time for it.
I don't really get the silly stuff like pool tables and video games. That just seems like prolonging time spent at work and in a non-productive fashion. I would put more of a premium on getting the max amount of work done in the shortest possible time so people can go home. Quality of life is about having a life outside the office. In-house masseuses, catered lunches every day, that seems a little wasteful. But cutting 401k, cutting fucking coffee? Major dick moves.
Employers are doing it because it's an employer's market out there. But rest assured, these employers will reap what they sow. The best employees are always the most mobile employees. If your best feel dicked over or if there's even the slightest concern about company stability, they will be out the door in a heartbeat. And it's now accepted in IT culture that you will NEVER make more money at the same employer. The only way to raise your pay is to move to another organization because your current one will never justify paying more for the person they already have, no matter if you're learning new skills, taking on more work, or improving the bottom line.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
My guess though is that if you're spending $80k per year on coffee, then it's for a hell of a lot of people, and that $80k expense (and a single job) IS tiny on that scale. If an $80k expenditure costs a job but improves morale of a few thousand employees enough to make up for it in productivity gains, then it's the right thing to do.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I tend to agree. When the economy goes south, and you either stop giving raises, or start giving paycuts, sometimes the best way to keep employees happy is with relatively minor perks like these. I worked for a company where there was a hiring and raise freeze during a merger. No one was happy. They expaned the free coffee into free hot cocoa as well. It was a minor thing, but the gesture seemed to make people happy.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
We lost free coffee a very long time ago, along with 401k contributions, bonuses, etc. On the cutting block this year besides staff and salary? HEAT. Originally each department was able to manage their own temperature within a 4-5 degree range. That's been taken away and the entire temperature for the company has dropped to the point where virtually everyone is wearing a jacket or thick sweaters in each of the departments. There's a good number of people across the hall wearing fingerless gloves. It's one thing to not be able to work efficiently by not having that caffeine kick, but shivering and not feeling your fingers is a real productivity stopper, let a lone the looming paycut.
we mixed a little dirt in a cup of cold water and called it instant. If you wanted creamer, you added drop or two of Liquid Paper. Tasted like shit, but the extra chemicals and minerals kept you going.
If you post it, they will read.
Unions are great in concept, but I've yet to see an example that I like. My buddy works for a large company where it was basically required (even though it is illegal to do so) that he join the union to be hired. He pays dues. He gets no real benefit. And they tell him what he can and can't do.
Most strikes hurt employees considerably more with lost wages than they gain in negotiation. Humans are corrupt. Just as management is corrupt, so is union leadership. It just becomes another thing for someone to flaunt around in a pissing contest, rather than use the position to better life for union members.
Conversely, there is the free market model. My last job kept laying people off, and gave me two pay cuts. I assumed there weren't better jobs because of the economy, but I finally looked. I moved to a much better company where not only am I treated better, but I almost doubled my salary.
The reason my last company was able to cut salaries and treat people terribly is because we allowed it. When I was hired there about 3 years ago, the IT staff was about 50 people. When I left it was maybe a dozen. I was one of 3 SysAdmins standing, and they weren't even filling my position when I left. I've since heard the other 2 SysAdmins have put in their resignation. Now the company will be forced to try and hire a new staff in a hurry. More than likely, they're going to pay more to hire new staff than keep those they ran off.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You must work here at IBM too
Meh.
Taking away the free coffee in my office would be considered a benefit. An act of mercy, really. It is a vile substance that resembles coffee in name only.
More than ionized workers?
Wow u guys drink (or waste) a lot of coffee!!! I think its great that everyone took a little cutback to save another employees job, but $80k is seems to be too much to spend on coffee!
I have a coffeemaker ($40) a thermos ($20) and I drink over a liter of coffee a day, fair trade organic Bolivian full city roast mostly. Not counting the cost of running water or bicycling/driving to/from the coop where I get it, it costs me less than $5 /week.
and your handle is cmdr tofu You don't happen to live in San Fransisco do you?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
"Every job is different. Every career is different. Things ebb and flow. For a long time, IT workers were spoiled primadonna. Now they're just another cost center. Guess what, the economy is jacked up. Budget cuts have to happen. IT is a necessity, but so is efficiency, cost control, etc. Welcome to the real world you big f'ing crybabies."
I'm dramatically overpaid for what I do if you look at it from a day-to-day effort perspective. I do my work, but my dad is a heavy duty mechanic, and I'm a chair jockey. I make twice what he does, and he puts in an honest day's effort every single day. It's not fair.
But I'm a troubleshooter by nature, and every once in a while I pull a large rabbit out of the hat and save the day in a big way. I like to think that closes the gap between contribution and compensation a bit.
But I'm posting this from work...
My kids think the day I came home with office furniture, boxes of office supplies, company teeshirts, and random promotional paraphenalia as one of the best days of Daddy's working life. It was like Christmas to the kids for each of them to get a lucite paperweight with our latest chip in it. Of course, unbeknownst to them, it was the day the company folded, and I was laid off. Still kinda cracks me up... it's all about how you look at things, as to whether they're they end of the world, or just a new world of adventure. :)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I have always thought of programming as the art of converting caffeine into an executable. Coffee is part of the cost of doing business.
You might want to look at the math. If you, as an individual, drank $400 of coffee per year, that would lead to $80,000 of coffee per year covering over 200 employees. Or 100 employees who drink twice as much as you do. Or 50 employees who suffer severe shakes, headaches, and moments of telepathy. Or 25 employees who swim in tanks filled with the spice melange and wrap space-time so heighliner ships can reach their destinations. And that may be money well spent. Or 1 to 5 employees who were selling coffee to the other employees using company funds.
I found a quick quote that claimed "the general rule of thumb for office coffee service pricing is $60 to $120 per employee per year." So he's talking about a business with at least 667 employees and probably close to 1000.
So, if the average employee is 0.1% more productive with free coffee getting rid of the free coffee was a bad business decision and the Cxx (COO, CFO, whatever) who made that decision should be beaten to death with his own intestines or fired.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I hear that Chinese HR managers are 20 times cheaper too.
the Cxx (COO, CFO, whatever) who made that decision should be beaten to death with his own intestines
Wow! That's a bit harsh just for a 0.1% loss of productivity!
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Careful that you don't get the coffee bushes and the coca bushes mixed up.
My office has free coffee -- a dozen kinds of Keurig pods -- and a free soda fountain. We all got pretty miffed when they down-sized the free cups, but, meh.
It's about $25-50/week not spent at the overpriced retail joints. Figure 200 employees at ten minutes, once a day to run downstairs, that's 166 hours of lost productivity -- or somewhere between $5-10K PER WEEK. To the employees, that's about $250K of collective benefit. To the employer, it's about double that in productivity not lost to everyone schlepping downstairs for coffee and soda.
On the other hand, my mother's office eliminated their coffee service, one kind, giant urn of Yuban, claiming it was an unnecessary expense. That manager got a bonus for reducing overhead...
The pendulum swings one way, then back the other...
Side 1: "If I can't wear sweat pants, bring my dog to work, have my own office, telecommute when I feel like it, and drink company-provided beer every day starting at 3:00, then I won't work here."
Side 2: "You're 35 and you haven't had a heart attack yet? Perhaps I should replace you with someone who actually works hard."
TFA is a press hit from a PR firm people. Seriously, "Channel Insider"? They aren't even trying very hard to hide the fact that they are a bullshit marketing rag full of advertising copy, "special advertising sections" (you know the ones that try to disguise themselves as "articles" and actually useful content), and "articles" submitted by PR firms on behalf of paying clients to score a "Press Hit". I would put the credibility of anything coming out of "Channel Insider" at just about zero.
Preach on, brother. Coffee is the REAL vitamin C!
... is a mixture of pure unsupported assertations, and anecdotes pretending to be data. Any evidence to show that "strikes hurt employees more through lost wages than they gain in negotiations"? In fact, there's a lot of history that shows that unions did, in fact, make lives better for not only their own workers, but for everyone - and not only in the form of wages, but also in things like medical benefits and safe working conditions. For example: the five day work week - brought to you by the AFL-CIO.
Enough with the union bashing, already. Read a little history of the labor movement, and then see what you think.
I was part of a recent double merger (where two companies split a division off their parent companies to form a third "independent" company).
They flew damn near *all* the managers from one company over to see the other execs for a face to face.
One company in the US the other in Europe...
The airfare alone could have paid my wages, healthcare, perks, etc. for two full years. The per-diam and hotel costs could have paid an additional year and change of the same.
Forgive me for being a little bitter that they laid me off (one of only two developers for an in-house designed test system).
In a twist of justice by karma, there were two different HR groups who were handling the "getting rid of people we can lose" work. One was handing out golden handshakes to get people to retire early, the other got rid of redundancies. Now, you see I was the primary owner for lab maintenance (but there were others that could do that job), and I was the backup for about half a dozen other functions closely related to the lab I maintained. Software development was one of those backups when our primary dev was on holiday, or out sick, or simply overloaded with too much work at one time (we seemed to have a feast or famine cycle that no one could figure out how to smooth out).
The other dev took a golden handshake, while I was redundified. I picked up a job with the parent company, in a lab, doing much the same kind of development work as before I started maintenance, with a manager I worked with years before in yet another division of the same company. (Lesson kids: never *ever* burn bridges unless you have no choice. Swallowing some pride now can save your bacon big time later).
When they realized that both their devs had been let go they tried to call either of us back. The senior dev declined, and I offered to provide contract assistance at a nearly extortionist rate (easily 3x what they were paying me). It was pointed out to me that I was unlikely to get hired if asking that much money, to which I replied "who said I wanted to be hired?"
Yeah, so I should stop rambling now... but your flight thing kind of triggered me.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
While that may have worked at your business I disagree. I recently had a discussion with someone at another IT company and we were bashing just this practice. It seems that every couple months there will be a round of paycuts or firings followed by bowling night/movie night/new fancy coffee maker and donuts in the break room... to the point that those who have been around a while shudder every time they see or hear about any "perks". This may work in some places, but in general engineers and IT people are not morons.... we can see a trojan horse when it is placed in the break room.
Get a web developer
Unions work great in the rest of the world.
Americans seem to have to wrong idea about what Unions are about. It has become a lethal fight in a system that basically says: The worker has no rights.
In Holland unions work together and it is not unusual for the unions AND the employers to unite and tell the government to go screw it self. Like on wage freezes recently. The government said all wages (except its own oddly enough, an oversight I am sure) should be frozen and in some sectors employees and unions said that they had already sorted things out and wouldn't do it.
ideally, government, employers and unions/workers should all work together to create a working society with give and take and the realization that just because you are on opposites ends of the negotiation table, that doesn't mean you have to be enemies with no common goals.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He pays dues. He gets no real benefit. And they tell him what he can and can't do.
Sounds like my home owner's association.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
I'm in a engineer Union, COPPEA. It's awesome and works well.
"Most strikes hurt employees considerably more with lost wages than they gain in negotiatio"
False.
"so is union leadership. "
Yes they can ebcem corrpupt, but that doesn't mean they wil;l or that the employees can't change that.
"The reason my last company was able to cut salaries and treat people terribly is because we allowed it. "
If only you had a common group that appointed a leader to negotiate with management~
Unions are how you don't let an organization treat you terribly.
It's sounds like that company is positioning it self as an attractive to potential buyers.
I work 4 10s, have great benefits, and have protections so I can discusses merits of an idea without worrying about recourse or in fighting.
Your argument that humans can be corrupt and therefore everything is corrupt is laughable myopic and quite frankly, stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not including official holidays.
You want better working conditions? Then stop kowtowing to the man every chance you get.
US (and british) companies have become VERY good at making employees think they are doing them a favor by employing them. It works great for them and allows them to fire people and make the rest glad they got a job in a recession that is SO bad not a SINGLE big company executive has had his/her bonuses cut. Odd that. 10% unemployment yet the bonuses for the top happen the same as before. Gosh I wonder where they got the money from. And all the rest of the sheep think is "well thank god it isn't my flesh the farmer is getting fat on". Probably because no sheep can think ahead to next year.
You are willing to trade "perks" like free coffee (and really, if that is a perk you got amazingly low standards, is free toilet paper a perk as well? Free tap water?) for real free days. Great, that is smart thinking sheep. Just what they want, and next year, they change the traded for days back to forced days again.
Years ago, when the company in the 21st century thought it was okay to turn vacation days into forced vacations, people should have walked out. They didn't.
Oh and for a history lesson, find a SINGLE year in history in which companies have NOT had an excuse to make cutbacks on personal. The recession, 9/11, the bubble, Y2K expenses, crash of the yen, cost of the dollar... there is always a reason. Now find a SINGLE year in which any of these reasons have led to a salary reduction for the people deciding that their should be money saved.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Try and get your learn on before making yourself sound like a jackass:
Wow, what timing. This morning when our company announced that it was canceling the coffee service to save money, I immediately asked what that savings would be. $200 a month was the answer, for our location which employs roughly 130 people. I was floored. If our financial situation is that serious, maybe I need to start looking for another job?
- Long time lurker, first time commenter.
The answer isn't to unionize to get paid more than the job is worth, the answer is to find another job.
Really? It seems to work quite well for the ditch diggers, or rather, for the ditch diggers who were smart enough to organize and negotiate a living wage through collective bargaining. Meanwhile, the Fox News-watching ditch diggers are proudly toiling for $11 an hour and no benefits.
I'd say that "the answer" is to get that union card.
And now that all the IT people are from China, we need an HR manager that understands the culture... and keeps the same time schedule... and that feels more approachable to our new employees, and is payed along the same lines as our new IT staff. Hmmmm yes, you just outsourced your own job... idiot!
That's your "trickle down" economy
That "trickle down" always reminds me of The Outlaw Josey Wales: "Senator, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining." Wealth doesn't trickle down, it flows upwards. Wealth is created on the factory floor, the fry cook's stove, the programmer's cube. The suits in the corner office don't create wealth, they merely aggregate and control it.
Free Martian Whores!