US CEO Says French Workers Have Three-Hour Work Day

First time accepted submitter M3.14 writes "In a letter addressed to French Industrial Renewal Minister, Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan, writes (French article with English letter) that it would be stupid to buy any factory in France since workers don't really work full time. He'd rather buy cheap factories in India and China instead and import tires back to France. He writes, 'They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"

Comments

American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[bit trollent]

Thanks to the erosion of unions, as well as a proliferation of anti-worker laws Americans don't have to worry about personal time or their health. In fact, we can't really worry about either.

It's pathetically easy to get American's to forsake their vacations, their personal time, their families in order to pad a sleazy company's bottom line.

Well... they can get another job you say... Well the union busting plantation owners made sure that the vast majority of America's jobs abuse their employees, so you can only choose among bad options.

There are exceptions to every rule, but Americans have been voting against our own interest for at least the last 30.

Don't pat yourself on the back for opening your country up to near slave labor practices.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. Don't take your vacation days, otherwise you can say goodbye to any chance of a promotion and hello to the front of the line for a layoff.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[pasv]

I wish I still had mod points left to mod parent up to 5, insightful. I would like to know how many REAL hours of work this particular CEO puts in on average per day. The average shouldn't include 1.) Meetings that could be done remotely but instead end up being at a venue several miles a way requiring 1st class travel expenses as well as lodging 2.) meetings that don't really get anything done/are not well planned (and never had the intention of being productive) 3.) time he spends making bullshit comments like the one mentioned in TFA

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[The Mighty Buzzard]

You seem to be under the impression that executive positions are pay for x amount of work like wage positions. They're not. If a CEO hires VPs that can run their divisions well enough that he can sit at home playing video games all day, he's done his job and done it well. Only results matter, hours put in mean nothing.

Now if you'd like to bitch that a lot of today's CEOs keep their jobs and make mad cash while their company flounders, that's another matter entirely.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I never took vacation... maybe 3 or 4 days in the last year. I got laid off anyway, never mind a promotion. I got no severance pay, but they gave me 70% of my remaining vacation time in cash.

The lesson is: use your vacation. You may not get a chance later.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[Mitreya]

You seem to be under the impression that executive positions are pay for x amount of work like wage positions. They're not. ... Only results matter, hours put in mean nothing.

Or perhaps he is suggesting that the "3 hour" metric is meaningless for the regular workers too. If they get their job done, who cares how many hours they work, 3 or more? If they don't, then working 12 hours a day will not benefit anyone either.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[IICV]

Thing is though that the at-will employment relationship is very much lopsided in favor of the employer.

Sure, you can just quit and walk away whenever you want to - but why would you do that? Your boss sucks? The environment is terrible? You've got a better offer somewhere else? In pretty much every case, the professional thing is to tough it out for two weeks and give notice at your current employer.

There's almost nothing, short of illegal activities or conditions, that makes it okay to just walk away without warning - while in theory you have the power to do so, in practice actually doing so without a really really good reason will get you blackballed in the industry as an untrustworthy flake.

And even if you do decide to just walk out, it's still not something you can do on a whim - you really need to make sure you've got something to keep you afloat while looking for a new job, if you're going to just abandon ship like that. Since you'll have to plan it anyway, there's really no reason to give your current employer the middle finger and just walk out on them.

On the other hand, in an at-will environment, the company can fire you for no reason whenever they want to. And they will. The company has pretty much zero incentive to give warning, and garners zero negative publicity for doing so. They're not going to worry about your mortgage payments, or how you're going to find money for food or gas - they'll just do it, preferably out of the blue.

So yeah, while "at will" sounds like a great system, in practice it hands all the power over to the employer while retaining nothing for the employees.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[bill_mcgonigle]

The problem is that real wages are not keeping up with the levels of productivity increases that technology and knowledge should afford. It hasn't always been this way - look at the chart here. You'll see that after 1971 the real share of productivity that the workers saw went away. Unions didn't suddenly crumble in 1971 but the US Dollar did, and that delta in money isn't just evaporating.

The problem is 1971 is when Nixon put the country on a fiat money system (probably his and Johnson's fault, but that's a separate issue). The problem with that is that with a fiat currency and Keynesian central bankers, steady inflation is a guarantee in the economy. If you have wealth (capital) then you're going to want to protect it, and that means you can no longer hold your wealth in your local bank, making a moderate level of interest while protecting your holdings. If you don't want to lose real value every year, that money now needs to be invested in financial instruments (stocks, bonds, commodities, annuities - whatever Wall Street is selling) that return at a higher rate than inflation.

Suddenly capital is no longer available for local lending (due to reserve requirements), money that would have otherwise been spent in the local economy is now gone almost immediately (where does that that 10% of your salary into 401(k) match go, eh?). Wealth that was previously re-invested in the local economy in a healthy cycle is now shipped off, leaving capitalism broken on the local level. And with the 70's stagflation the effect was rather sudden, and people had no recourse. Over time the expectations set them have become permanent, and the workers aren't able to solve the problem themselves anymore (short of a massive general strike, anyway).

This is the same reason trickle-down economics doesn't work anymore - tax cuts at the top don't flow to the workers, they flow to Wall Street (at least to any measurable degree of what they used to). The median hourly wage, in real terms, would be about $37/hr, if trends had kept going as they had for the bulk of the 20th Century before 1971.

American workers are being systematically screwed out of their earnings for the benefit of the financial sector (the new "robber barons") and the legal tender act ensures that anybody who tries to offer a stable currency as an alternative will get SWAT-raided. It's really no wonder that by any honest measure we're in an economic depression. The odds of it getting any better before a total monetary crash are, unfortunately, quite slim.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[drsmithy]

Thinking as hard as they can't won't magically mean someone living paycheque to paycheque can still afford food if they quit their job.

It's great you have the resources to afford voluntary unemployment. Many, many people do not.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[Anonymous Coward]

"Take your holidays. Take them all. You need to be rested."

I have 36 days of fully paid vacation and I'm required by law to take them all. Also I have to take 12 continuous days in a row at least once a year, otherwise the law doesn't consider me rested enough to work another year. Companies take great care not to violate that because they would be liable if an 'unrested' worker caused an accident.

"If you get fewer than 25 days holiday, strike. "

That's how we got ours. But Americans are all millionaires-to-be with a temporary setback forcing them to work for somebody else, that's how they are brainwashed by the 1%.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[sa1lnr]

Having three separate $9 an hour jobs is not the same as $27 an hour, it's still only $9 an hour.

After all, she can hardly work in three different places at the exact same time.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[YttriumOxide]

No kidding. Don't take your vacation days, otherwise you can say goodbye to any chance of a promotion and hello to the front of the line for a layoff.

Here in Germany, whenever I DON'T take all of my annual leave owing, I get emails from our HR begging me to take it as soon as possible. Annual leave owing to employees is written up as a debt owing (from the company to the employee) here, so looks bad in the books.

Same thing with overtime - if I accrue too much, I pretty much get forced to take time off to knock it down a bit.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[daem0n1x]

Oh, fuck! I live in Portugal, which has more or less the same labour laws as Germany. But here, companies take it for granted that we work extra time without being paid for it (which is illegal). I used to work extra time a lot in my current company. I worked many, many weekends, I postponed vacations to deliver projects, in the end, I got a pat in the back and they told me "good boy". So I stopped. Now I work a regular work week. With an occasional crunch now and then, because I decide to do so in any particular conditions. Sorry guys, I have a family. I have a life.

Here, many people are bullied into working extra for free. I know lots of people in the services sector that live only for working. In industry it's not so easy to pull this one off because unions still carry some weight in those areas. Banks force people to work 12 hours a day. Bank employees are trained to evade Labour Authority inspections. Several times, banks are caught, they pay the fines, and keep on doing the same thing. In their calculations, it's cheaper.

The law here requires people to take 22 paid vacation days every year. Vacation days can not be traded by money. I have always seen people that don't take their full vacation time, year after year. And I've seen people being bullied not to take vacations.

In a company I have worked for years ago, I was bullied to postpone vacations when I already had my reservations made and plain tickets bought. They used to try that on everybody because people would postpone again and again, and end up not taking the vacation days. I said NO and fell out of favour with the bosses, that started picking on me constantly after that. I got another job and said goodbye. But I'm a computer engineer. Most people can't find jobs easily, the pay is usually very low and the ubiquity of illegal "temporary" contracts makes everybody submissive, as they can lose their job at a moment's notice.

They think they're so smart doing all this shit. What do they get? Portuguese productivity is among the lowest ones in the developed world. All they get is a bunch of unhappy and anxious employees that can't focus and work efficiently. People throw their health and their family well-being in the toilet for a company that will, in its turn, throw them in the toilet when they see fit. Managers don't have any incentive to do a good job of managing and organising because they can always squeeze some more work from their employees. Hence, management positions are not regarded as places of responsibility, but privilege. As a society, we're sick.

People that emigrate to other countries in Europe (I'm talking about a lot of people in the latest years) tell me that they make a lot more money than in Portugal, work less hours, have a much better work-life balance and get more respect by their company, specially if they are qualified workers. After a while, they don't consider coming back any more. Of course, if they're not hired by a Portuguese company to go abroad. In that case, the shit is the same as here, with the disadvantage of being away from their family and friends.

Sometimes I hear ignorant people saying: "Portuguese are lazy! If we did like the Germans and work 14 hours a day, we wouldn't have gotten in this situation!". When I tell them that in almost every country in Europe people work less hours a day and less days a year, and yet they're a lot richer than us, these fucks almost choke on their own stupidity.

We have to think, what kind of society do we want to live in? Do you want to have the life of a Portuguese worker? It doesn't work, see? Productivity is shit, industry and agriculture have gone away just the same, little added-value, little innovation, no future.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[compro01]

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, DC, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming all allow the employer to not pay out accrued vacation time on termination in the absence of a contract or company policy saying they will.

Only Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota (only if employed there for at least 1 year), Oklahoma, Rhode Island (after 1 year, like ND), and South Carolina require accrued vacation/PTO time to be paid out.

Re:American Wage Slaves are an Even Better Value

[sckeener]

Hell, I never took vacation... maybe 3 or 4 days in the last year. I got laid off anyway, never mind a promotion. I got no severance pay, but they gave me 70% of my remaining vacation time in cash.

The lesson is: use your vacation. You may not get a chance later.

I can easy one up that and drive the point home. My ex-father in law never called in sick or took vacation. He died at 48. The paycheck he got for the unused vacation time had no taxes taken out. His wife who died two years later had to pay a ton in taxes because of that. On his death bed, I showed him pictures of a recent vacation I had and he wished he had done more of that than work. Who wouldn't? And since you never know when your last day is take the time now if you can.

Titan

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to give a litttle perspective to all of you Objectivists out there, Maurice is a naughty boy http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr19107.htm, and I'd take anything he says with either a pound of salt or 50k slipped into your brief case.

But hey, free markets right?

Re:Titan

[Austerity Empowers]

Also misinformed about China. They get 1 hr lunch and 1 hour nap (for reals).

Then if he's paying attention to his peon...I mean subordinates, he'd realise that the typical Chinese day consists of:
- 3 hours of work
- 1 hour of lunch
- 1 hour of nap
- 3 hours of ineptly expressing why something can't be done as specified and must be redesigned with all chinese parts and chinese sources or made so cheap that it really can only ever possibly barely work
- 2 hours of fighting to get an american engineer sent overseas for 3 weeks to "expedite completion" (read: do the hard work for them)
- 1 hour of making cheesy power points that end with bad clip art of disembodied hands shaking
- a combined total of 1 hour of misunderstandings due to language/cultural/time zone issues
- 2 hours of business dinners that seriously involve getting each other as piss drunk as possible
- 1 hour of helping the american you suckered in to visiting the asshole of China (it's never shanghai or beijing, it's always some shithole like guangdong or shenzhen) get laid by a prostitute
- the rest is lost in blackouts

At the end of the day, people are people and work as much as they're going to work based on how motivated they are. Given that capitalism does not actually exist for the vast majority of the world (including Americans), that means not so much.

Pro Exploitation CEO

[ohnocitizen]

So we have demonstrably false stereotypes of the French being played up by a conservative who prefers labor practices which exploit workers. As a fellow American, may I just say not everyone here would mock a country for having respect for the well being and rights of its citizens, even those who have a job.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry to say, but a lot of the French stereotypes are true. My company purchased over 30 million dollars from a said French company. Their machines and equipment are top notch, high tech, and top of the line. However, the way they treated me (their client) was like absolute dog shit. Getting support for their machines was a nightmare. Most of their workforce would always have some long vacation and petty excuses not to do any work. I visited their manufacturing plant, parked in someones space, and some douchebag parked his vehicle behind my vehicle because he was "angry" at me taking his special parking spot. I of course warned them if this happened again, they would be receiving all their equipment back. Of course they all apologized. But, this nonsense never stopped. When I called for their support engineers to try to fix a problem with one of their machines shutting off 10 times a day, they were always unavailable for through out the entire day except for early morning. If you missed this window, you would never be able to speak to them at all. When I complained about it, they would reply with some rude manner that I was just some gun totting American that wanted his way (I speak French fluently, but they always forgot about that). Really, it's quite true they work for literally 3 hours a day and have literally 2 hour lunch breaks.

Suffice to say, I made the decision and sent all their equipment back for this lousy practice on the basis of them breaking their contractual duties. They immediately sent the President and Vice President of the company (With a bunch of idiotic French lawyers) to try to beg me to stay with them and not send the equipment back (Over 30+ million dollars worth plus all the labor costs). I of course refused, because I asked them to stop this nonsense before kindly, I already knew it would still continue, even with their promises. I ended up going to their German competitors which we're quite happy to work with, they answer their phones, they don't disappear and they're eager to solve problems.

So yes, what he says is fucking true.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[trytoguess]

If you're going to post anonymously anyways, you could name the company at the very least. That way people could be warned against the company and/or look up said company to see if there's any other data points that'd corroborate your anecdote.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm french, i'm working around 50 hours a week, and i'm lunching in a quarter.

the next 2 weeks, i will be in my sister company in USA, and, i'm really sorry, i'm not impressed by the productivity and organisation

me : 95% work, 5% communication
USA : 50% work, 50% communication on the work

where is the productivity ?

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[zakkie]

Sample size of one - must be true for all!

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[whoever57]

You post one anecdote. Let me give you my experience.

I have worked in the UK, Italy, France and the USA. I have worked for British, European and American companies.

I have not noticed a significant difference in how hard people work. Yes, those supposedly lazy Italians worked hard. They enjoyed their lunch, but got back to work promptly.

Yes, the French and Italians do take long vacations, but so do the Germans, which makes me think that your story is BS.

Let's look at specifics:

they were always unavailable for through out the entire day except for early morning. .... I ended up going to their German competitors which we're quite happy to work with, they answer their phones, they don't disappear and they're eager to solve problems.

Are you aware of time zones and that Europe is 7-9 hours ahead of the USA (and more for Alaska/Hawaii)? So when you wanted to talk to them, they had finished work for the day? I don't believe the Germans were any better at this because the Germans have a very strong ethos of separating work and home life.

Perhaps the screw-up was on your part in not making sure that the contract included 24-hr support? If indeed your story has any basis in fact.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

Naming the company, and mentioning 30+ million dollars of returned equipment, would likely make the poster's identity very much not anonymous!

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of their workforce would always have some long vacation and petty excuses not to do any work.

Yeah, how dare they have more than 0 weeks of vacation per year. I can understand why it was hard for you to deal with such evil.

I visited their manufacturing plant, parked in someones space, and some douchebag parked his vehicle behind my vehicle because he was "angry" at me taking his special parking spot.

So let me get this straight... You were an arsehole to someone and then you're upset when the person you were an arsehole to didn't thank you for it?

When I called for their support engineers to try to fix a problem with one of their machines shutting off 10 times a day, they were always unavailable for through out the entire day except for early morning.

Fucking timezones. How do they work?

Really, it's quite true they work for literally 3 hours a day and have literally 2 hour lunch breaks.

No. No it's not.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[radio4fan]

I lived in France for years, and I dearly love France and the French, but his story rings true to me.

It's not that the French are lazy or incompetent, it's that they suffer from a collective "can't do" attitude.

You must have experienced this everywhere from restaurants to shops to plumbers, and particularly from anyone who sits behind a desk: nothing is possible, the answer is (almost) always "non".

And don't get me started on French corporate hierarchy, where seniority is determined by age, time served, or nepotism. It's just not possible to get a foot in the door, work bloody hard, show your competence and advance quickly like it is in Britain and the US.

I'm not talking about this not being possible for a foreigner, but for French people.

Read about the French 'Barrez-vous!' (Get out!) movement, which advises young French people just to leave France to escape the ossified hierarchical culture:

http://barrez-vo2.us/site/

I still love France though, and intend to go back despite these problems.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[mumblestheclown]

Folks, this story obviously never happened. People who have the power to both order and return 30m in equipment don't write like 14 year olds and there are plenty of other hints / discrepancies in this story as well.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[fredrik70]

yes, like threatening to cancel a 30m project due to parking lot stand-off

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[Guppy06]

People who have the power to both order and return 30m in equipment don't write like 14 year olds

You're adorable.

Re:Pro Exploitation CEO

[YoopDaDum]

Breaking the law, like an awful lot of people in France, and nobody cares. There's this old notion of "cadre" / "non-cadre" in French labor law, and if you're an engineering or master level you're a cadre. Now if you're a cadre there's a special regime where hours are not counted, and the "35 hours" law just amounted to a lump of extra vacation days. You're still supposed to do 48h max but nobody tracks this. A lot of companies are using this and making 50+ hours is quite common. Yes, it is illegal strictly speaking but nobody cares. By "a lot" I mean a lot of big companies in internationally competitive markets, and most small companies. In high tech this set-up is mostly a given.

Now if you're in a big company, particularly if it's protected from international competition or has public roots, then it's a different story. You can be cadre and having to do 35 hours maximum, enforced with badging in some places with strong unions. One example I have in mind is doing military equipment and the French state is the main client.

And actually, even public companies themselves often break the law. Go to any public hospital and you'll find doctors and nurse pulling 60 to 70h work week just because there's not enough people to do the work and the hospitals can't afford to hire more. Everyone know the 35 hours are just not applicable in many contexts, and turn a blind eye to it.

The GGP story is maybe true but is just an anecdote in any case, you don't judge a whole country based on that. What you have to keep in mind is that 56% of the French economy is public economy, which is the highest in Europe. The public sector is then dominant, and rather protected, and can indulge in lazy practice (although there are hard workers too. They often get depressed after a while due to lack of recognition). But the others are working hard and efficiently enough to make France the n5 economy. And that's a statistically significant result not an anecdote ;).

Key problem: "And import them back to france"

[Maxo-Texas]

Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.

With automation and robotics, we have a time rapidly approaching when there won't be enough work to go around if we insist on full time. There isn't enough work to go around now with some people working 60 hours a week.

Listen- capital thinks they create jobs. But Henry Ford knew... it is people with money to BUY things that creates jobs. If you don't hire anyone in France at 1st world wages, pretty soon you won't be able to sell your expensive tires there. You'll have to sell them at the prices you sell them in China.

For comparison- movies that cost $20 in the US cost $2.50 in China. A visit to the doctor for $50 in the US runs $3 in China. Heart surgery that costs $100k in the US runs about $16k in China.

So if you don't hire french workers, pretty soon you'll have to sell your $20 tires with $2 profit for $3 dollars with $.30 cents profit.

And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that the summary doesn't include his initial statement to the French industry official that approached him: "How stupid do you think we are?"

In a word: Very.

CNN observes that Taylor is not only a relic of the 80s' leveraged buyout "corporate raiders" era, he's a hypocrite as well for wanting to make tires in China:

"The U.S. government is not much better than the French. Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does," said Taylor.

All of this is beside the point however. US workers have less vacation/break time than anyone else on the planet, in a time where it is increasingly recognized that giving more breaks to workers results in more productivity. The real stupidity comes from failing to notice how well the rest of the world can keep pace with the much-vaunted "American productivity" while maintaining a vastly better quality of life.

Re:And yet...

[AdamHaun]

94,750,000 jobs / (102,665,043 + 103,129,321) = 94,750,000 / 205,794,364 = 0.46 = 46%, which means 54% of the total US working age population is either unemployed or employed by government

depressing huh

Not really.

First off, you're leaving out part-time workers (many millions of them), which gets you up over 50%.

Secondly, you're making the assumption that a person without a full-time job is just leeching off of the rest of society. This ignores stay-at-home parents and full-time students, for examples.

Thirdly, the assumption that a government job is equivalent to unemployment is silly. Government employees perform a service and we pay them for it. That the money flows through the IRS instead of some corporation's accounts receivable is irrelevant.

Come over to India and China

[ixarux]

Oh Yes.

Come down to India and China, where we have no goddamn lives any more. We work more than 12 hours a day on menial tasks at odd times. Forget work-life balance, because we really have no lives. And we work because that's how poor we are, with little choice in life and no government looking out for us. Train us. Use us. Abuse us. Talk to us in racial undertones. Marvel at our ability to take crap for little money.
Get away with your profits.

Welcome to the bright world of outsourcing.

It's The American Drean

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone votes as if they are the fabulously wealthy fat cat, that they dream about being. The reality is that they are a slave, and by accepting the "winner takes all" mindset, they are merely further enriching the tiny population of existing winners. Much better to accept that the typical American is a wage slave, and that the country should be run for the benefit of the wave slave majority (gasp, socialism!)

Re:It's The American Drean

[MrEricSir]

Everyone votes as if they are the fabulously wealthy fat cat, that they dream about being.

You'd think Americans would start to notice a pattern when -- at every election cycle -- the winner-take-all types have to come up with the next flavor of the week economic hypothesis to "prove" that everyone wins when we fire another round of teachers and police so that rich people can buy another mansion or two.

But this shouldn't be a surprise, Americans have serious trouble with long-term thinking these days.

Re: It's The American Drean

[madprof]

Um, they earn more than that in Germany but have a better lifestyle.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Anonymous Coward]

And some people vote on the principle that everything that you accomplish today is based off of thousands of years of human civilization and investment, not to mention the security and infrastructure that your current government provides. Being part of a society means that you acknowledge the investments of the past and then you invest in the future as compensation. There is no such thing as a self-made man--if you can show me how a person who was raised by wolves and never had contact with civilization who independently invented technology worth billions of dollars to us today, then maybe I'll change my mind. Otherwise you need to acknowledge that our great capitalists are just people who put the final brick in a product that was developed and made possible by all of humanity. They deserve credit for the brick, but they don't get to treat other humans like slaves nor amass insane fortunes.

Re:It's The American Drean

[hedwards]

And if teachers were paid a rate of pay commensurate with the level of education, continuing training and time spent working, it would probably be easier to retain them. Not to mention the lack of proper support staff.

Anybody taking a teaching job in the US for an entitled life long career is making a serious mistake. Teacher burn out is such that nearly half the teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years.

Re:It's The American Drean

[sqrt(2)]

In a society so interconnected and interdependent, no one's hard earned money is entirely their own. We all rely on each other in myriad ways. If you really think you're an island of rugged individualism, please go find an actual island to live on and prove it.

Re: It's The American Drean

[csirac]

Just how many teachers have tenure? Honest question, I thought it was quite rare. Here in Australia, we're spending more than ever on education (iPads, sporting stuff, school halls) and yet my cousin's school last year could not afford highschool maths text (poorly OCRd PDFs of painfully substandard material don't count). We have far worse education outcomes than 10 years ago. Our neighbours are kicking our arses in educating highschool kids, and one of the biggest differences is the totally opposite spending priorities - fewer computers and iPads, better paid (relative to median wage) teachers.

Re: It's The American Drean

[dcollins]

Watching FOX News does not count as an "endless stream of evidence" on this issue, any more than it does for global warming or Mitt Romney winning in a landslide.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Penguinshit]

I propose that YOU go to Somalia where you will find that it is a once-prosperous country held in economic slavery by a very few who hoarded all the wealth.

Nobody is denying the right of a capitalist to earn wealth. The denial is for them to harm the rest of society in the process.

Re: It's The American Drean

[ganjadude]

where i am it only takes a few years... so it doesnt take long to be full of teachers who cant be fired regardless of their ability

Re:It's The American Drean

[barc0001]

A quote by John Steinbeck sums this problem up perfectly:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

And that's really the issue. You'll have Americans who are poor as dirt voting repeatedly against their own self interest because they have been conditioned to think if they work hard enough their ship will come in one day, and when that ship comes in they don't want parts of it chopped off to help OTHER people out, Never mind the staggering odds against that ship ever arriving.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Jack9]

Please check your facts. I'm sure Illinois has an equivalent to: http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp

Teachers' salaries have plummeted since the late 80's. In california, the average salary is around 68k (up 1% from 2011!) and under 50k for new teachers. This is common knowledge at every california university, so there's a lesson in here somewhere. What I was interested in, is where you get this outrageous number of 75k from? http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/16/correction-chicago-teacher-salary-average-is-74000/ --- probably something related to this.

Re:It's The American Drean

[micheas]

The problem with your theory is that it takes on average seven years to be a good teacher and most teachers quit in the first five years.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Duhavid]

It's about them offsetting the costs of participating in the society that enabled them to become wealthy.
I have a hard time seeing that as wrong.

Re:It's The American Drean

[servognome]

Should the poor have to give a portion of their income to the rich because now even poor people have a car, a TV, climate control in their home, clean water, refrigerated food, and cold beer?

Like corporate subsidies?

Re:It's The American Drean

[Anonymous Coward]

Earned? How did our modern robber-barons earn their fortunes? If you are a smart person and apply yourself, an average person might be able to save half a million dollars in their lifetime. If you are a genius scientist, you might win a Nobel Prize and get another million. But if you are a capitalist you can somehow accumulate billions. Did they 'earn' it or are they so smart and work so hard that even Nobel laureates pale in comparison? No, they took part in a system that is designed to allow the rich to disproportionately accumulate wealth. Bill Gates has a net worth of $61 billion. The GDP per capita of the United States is $49,601. This means that Bill Gates has 1.2 million average man-years of wealth (before taxes). Assuming the average worker works for 35 years, he has the entire lifetime earnings of 35,000 people. Is he that brilliant? Is he that great? Or did he get lucky and happen to participate in a system that allows 10 million people to have more wealth than the other 300 million?

Re:It's The American Drean

[servognome]

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Compared to most of the world they are.
The US participated in social reforms for the worker, but the strong individualist culture prevented it from full socialism. Adopting a mixed economy at the beginning of the 20th century is one of the reasons it became so successful.

Re:It's The American Drean

[GodfatherofSoul]

A classic example of this was Joe the Plumber in the 2008 campaign. Here was a guy making $40K a year and when he got the ONCE IN A LIFETIME opportunity to ask a potential President a question, he didn't even use his own financial data! Spoon fed by partisan radio, he threw out what was the de facto standard net income for EVERY small business which was of course the exact $250K that was the cutoff for Obama's planned tax hike.

He didn't say, I make $40K what are you going to do for me? He said, I'm going to buy my boss's company (with money he didn't have) and instantly make the convenient $250K/year. Not $200K, not $300K, not $240K, not 251K, but EXACTLY $250K/year lol. One half is so dissociated from their own economic situation by political spinmeisters that they don't even associate with their own needs! That's like Thulsa Doom getting the priestess to jump off the cliff wall!

Re:It's The American Drean

[Anonymous Coward]

When my ship comes in, it is because I am here at 2 in the morning [...]

"Your ship" is likely to be a heart attack at age 37 which will leave you barely afloat (no pun intended) after everything you've amassed so far goes to paying the hospital bills and mortgage/groceries while you recuperate, another bitter roadkill in the rat race. Well, maybe not that bad, but the odds are not in your favor.

And you prove the GP's point nicely.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Penguinshit]

Actually we are asking people who benefit disproportionately to pay a [very] little extra for that privilege, such that the services of government can be applied for everyone. In the post-war era the economy exploded because more people had more money to spend. Nominal highest tax rate was 90%, which ended up being around 45% in actual. You can say "horse shit" all you want, but the economy was damaged in the 80s by the drastic drops in top tax rates and beginning of capital deregulation which encouraged the taking and hoarding of wealth from the economy. Reagan built his entire economy on massive deficit spending. Unlike W who tried the same thing in the last decade, Reagan also re-raised taxes to buffer the impact.

Look at any banana republic where a dictator takes power. A very few hoard the wealth, the middle-class disappears, and the economy tanks. You are arguing a hollow and false ideology against an empirical history of fact.

Re:It's The American Drean

[hattig]

Your ship isn't going to come in building and fixing PCs. Just saying. You'll be lucky to get a dingy. That's what the reality is. You are conditioned to believe that hard work leads to loads of money, guaranteed, but if it did, tens of millions of people in the US would be rich. If you don't make your main money fixing PCs, then stop fixing PCs and get some rest, or hire someone to do the menial tasks.

Otherwise all you are doing is burning yourself out. The only plus side is that you are doing it for yourself.

Seriously, I do hope that your ship comes in because you work hard and do a good job (excepting the lack of sleep). It's just that the odds are so stacked against you...

Re: It's The American Drean

[madprof]

What would you cut, and why? Genuine question. Feel free to give as detailed an answer as possible.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Anonymous Coward]

What better job?

If you get to choose between a crap job, or another crap job, then you are merely a slave with a tiny bit more privilege.

The option to run away and starve to death does not make a slave free either.

Re: It's The American Drean

[philip.paradis]

No, it's not ridiculous. Using the current commonly accepted (and very generalized, with the caveat of different quadrant/spectrum placement on various issues) definitions of the terms, I'm a blend of the U.S. versions of a Republican and a Libertarian in many respects. Perhaps you'll be surprised by what follows here.

Fox is largely full of crap. So is CNN. So is MSNBC. So is ABC. So is NPR and virtually any other radio "network" in existence here. Hell, even BBC pieces broadcast stateside are showing serious signs of tarnish nowadays. We simply do not have major media outlets which are interested in doing due diligence to properly research facts from multiple sources and convey that information in a neutral fashion. The networks all consistently lie about, distort, taint, gloss over, minimize or inflate as deemed necessary, or otherwise willfully manipulate information in different manners and for different ends. Our entire media ecosystem has been reduced to the same awful state as our political system, namely the state of pitting the ideological equivalents of "favorite sports teams" against one another and bolstering popular views with nothing more substantial than emotion-driven opinion pieces masquerading as informative news articles. Ignoring this sad states of affairs is synonymous with willfully existing in a state of ignorance, a condition I simply term stupidity.

Re: It's The American Drean

[silentcoder]

What you say about the Non-FOX networks is true, and yes, bad. But FOX really IS worse.
The other networks at least don't just blatantly make stuff up and then call that news !

Fox actually went to the supreme court, fought and somehow WON a case that you can air something which is a completely made-up story with NO basis whatsoever in any facts or sources at all (in other words: pure, unadulterated fiction) and still get to call it "News".
That's called OPINION.
Calling opinion pieces NEWS is outright consumer fraud and it says everything you need to know about the American justice system that it managed to not only fail to prosecute that fraud, but actually RUBBER STAMP it in a precedent !

"You hereby have the permission of the United States supreme court to use the term 'news' widely understood to mean 'a story based on credible sources or actual events and facts' to describe a purely fictional account of a made up event with no basis in anything but the editor's imagination and NOT be accused of fraud".

You know, preventing fraudulent claims is actually a LEGITIMATE restriction on free speech, but apparently the supreme court doesn't think this is true if a big enough company is doing the speaking.

No other company in the history of the world have ever even TRIED to do that. Yes sometimes they lied as news, but only FOX would actually fight to get doing so LEGALIZED !
No, don't even TRY to tell me any other news organisation is that terrible.

PS. I'm going to guess you're not a Bill Maher style left libertarian.

PPS. The best news channels around these days are Al Jazeera and France24

Re:It's The American Drean

[silentcoder]

>Slaves are not paid. If you are paid and free to leave for a better job, you are not a slave. Possibly an idiot but not in any way a slave.

False: definition of slavery: "One who does not have sole autonomy over how he spends his time" - as per Plato.
By that definition - nearly all wage-earners ARE in fact slaves. The definition says nothing about income (slaves DID get paid - even in the modern age - they just did not get paid in MONEY but instead in board and food). Neither does it say anything about being able to leave: ancient laws actually GUARANTEED a slave's right to freedom. The specifics varied by nation but NOBODY in the ancient world was a slave for life - and their definition of a slave was exactly the same as our definition of an employee. The only difference is that employees get cash and (usually) don't get free housing and food.

The concept of working hours didn't even exist until the Industrial revolution, when it was instituted as a substitute for the recently abolished slavery. Part of why slavery got abolished by people whose religion actively endorsed it is because they had to acknowledge that nobody was actually following the RULES their religion had about how to do it. Rules that included: guaranteed rights to LEAVE a position of slavery and become free.
In the Hebrew system for example slavery ended automatically after 7 years, at which time a slave could CHOOSE to serve for another 7 but such a choice had to be privately repeated to the high-priest (to give an impartial third-party a chance to ensure it wasn't coerced). Greek slaves were required to be freed after less time than that, and could be freed earlier by mutual agreement with their masters.
Wait the dissolution of a slaves state of slavery was simply an agreed dissolution of a contract ? Just like "I wish to resign my job".

No my friend, I think you'll find we're ALL slaves, in a world that has very, very few free men left. They live like kings, because they no longer have a slave or three, they have thousands.

Re:It's The American Drean

[pedestrian crossing]

You find a high-value bit of work, distribute the product of that work as widely as you can, and you can have billions too. But are you capable? Most aren't. THAT is why there is such a disparity of income.

Not everyone can be the entrepreneur/investor, there -have- to be workers to make the goods. There -has- to be a middle-class to buy the goods. Otherwise, your capitalist utopia is just another utopian ideal.

I doubt anyone here begrudges the entrepreneur their due. However, if you look at recent trends in worker productivity vs. worker wages vs. CEO compensation, it's clear that the system is moving horribly out of balance.

Re: It's The American Drean

[berberine]

I'm not sure about Australia, but in the US schools also spend tons on electronics, but can't afford textbooks. The school district I work in is like this. For example, the junior high Social Studies department is getting new textbooks next year, but they can't afford one for each student. So, they are getting 75 books, 25 for each classroom. The high school Social Studies is in the same situation. I just don't know the number of books they're getting as I don't work up there.

Now, the junior high also just received 25 new kindle ereaders. This came from the state and was some sort of reward or something for the state writing exam in January. The school didn't have to pay for them. This is in addition to the 10 kindles we got at the beginning of the year because the school got some sort of grant to pay for them. The one nice thing about the kindles is that we have seen far more kids checking out the kindles and actually reading them than dead tree copies.

What it comes down to, at least in my district, is there is no grant money for textbooks. So, the school has to pay for those with their budget money. Math has to wait a few years more now for new books, which is sad as many of our Algebra I books don't have covers and are badly damaged because they're so old. The district picked Social Studies first because their books are older and in worse shape. They also still have Newt Gingrich as speaker of the house.

Any kind of electronics that the school wants, they can probably get. This is because there are thousands of grants out there for them. Our entire district got mobile laptop labs two years ago, all paid for by grants. I don't know if there are any textbook grants out there or if the state doesn't allow such things, but we never have money for books, but we have tons of grant money for just about everything else.

Re: It's The American Drean

[Phrogman]

From a Canadian perspective: CNN is fairly right-wing to me (and 90% of the people who post on a CNN.com article are extreme rightwing fanatics).
Fox is batshit crazy rightwing, and MSNBC I can't comment on as I don't watch at all.
If I want good news reporting I watch the BBC or Al Jazeera, they seem mostly to get what the journalism thing is supposed to be. The US Media - at least television media - doesn't seem to remember that whole journalistic integrity and actually doing research bit at all - they are just Media Entertainment. They seem far more interested in providing entertainment than in relating factual information. As it is, opinion pieces seem to meld into regular reporting a lot of the time as well.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Ellis D. Tripp]

He wasn't an actual plumber (as in having taken and passed the licensing tests in his state). He was a grunt working for an actual plumber.

Without that license, he wouldn't have been legally able to buy the company, either....

Re:It's The American Drean

[Dodgy G33za]

The brutal suppression of the unions was probably more influential than the individualist culture. But then if you grew up with the US education system you wouldn't know about that redacted part of your history.

Re:It's The American Drean

[Jumperalex]

Yes x100. My sister was an outstanding teacher for 18 years ... with math as a specialty. Then she got divorced and realized, "Oh crap I can't afford to keep teaching without someone else supplementing my income." So she went back to serving food, was soon tapped to be a local and then regional trainer, and soon after put into the management program. Now she's making a decent living wage without the physical demands (her age made lugging trays around for 8 hours / 6 days a week unsustainable). The ultimate irony IMO is that her teach abilities, and her work ethic, are what drive her rise to management so quickly. I don't know what number $$$ would have conviced her to stay in teaching, but it was a not even a difficult calculation to make when she was looking to rebuild her life.

Don't talk about how much workers "work" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about how much they get done.

If I had a bunch of workers that worked for an hour, but got the same amount of work done as another bunch of workers would in ten hours (assume that the groups are the exact same size), I would happily pay that first bunch a full day's pay of $X rather than pay the second bunch a full day's pay of $X. Sure, they're working fewer hours ... but they're getting more done, so I'd be getting better value for money.

You get what you measure; if you're measuring the hours worked, you might not be getting the productivity for those hours that you hope for.

Compare programmers. You'll get better results if they work their 40 hours a week and relax out of hours than if you drive them to work 60 or 80 hours in crunch mode for months on end.

Point against globalization

[manu0601]

France law sets full time workers at 35 hours per weeks. This is much more than 3 hours of work. One could argue that 35 hours is not the highest working time in the world, but french worker GDP per working hour is quite high, which make France still relevant.

The Grizz rant is just a point against globalization. It demonstrates very well that it can be used to lower worker conditions as much as wanted.

Re:Why talk for 3 hours?

[dcollins]

It's just bullshit some scumbag CEO made up. Don't pay it any heed.

Re:Why talk for 3 hours?

[HornWumpus]

How many hours a day do you spend zoning out in meetings? That's the American Way.

Three hours actual productive work per day? I wish. Air thieves doing negative work everywhere. 'We should put together a committee to study the problem, meet once a week.' I run when I hear that phrase. Actually I run when I see where the conversation is headed.

Re:Key problem: "And import them back to france"

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, but for the time being, they still have a market to sell goods produced by labor paid at third world rates for first world prices. Sure, it'll dry up eventually, and then they're back to the same profit margins that they'd have if they both made and sold it there - but they'll make a hefty profit until then. And what of it if the new market is China? It doesn't really matter if it's made for $2 and sold for $3, or made for $20 and sold for $30 - especially when the purchasing power of that $2 is that much higher (which it will be once the wages are depressed lower in first world countries due to outsourcing).

Anyway, much as I don't trust the notion that free market solves all problems, this isn't a failure of the free market. The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them. Of course this situation will be abused in a capitalist economy, so long as it's legal and it makes money! The only two workarounds are to either let the labor flow freely as well (i.e. open immigration), or impose tariffs on foreign goods to counterbalance the cost of living differences. Both approaches come with strings attached, but the former is straight out nonviable for many reasons (the amount of migration that'll have to happen to even the market is far beyond what first world countries can manage to handle), while the latter would actually work. Ironically, it's being argued against on "free market" basis, even though all it'd do is make the market more free (or at least more balanced!).

Re:Why talk for 3 hours?

[hargrand]

It's France... they talk to enjoy the sound of their language.

Re:Key problem: "And import them back to france"

[smegfault]

...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.

The French have the right idea

[Okian Warrior]

US Productivity has been rising since the beginning.

Since 1970 it's more than doubled.

Productivity in the US is so high that if it were equally distributed, everyone could get $38,000 worth of stuff - every man, woman, and child in the country - and then do it again next year. And the year after that.

Our productivity is so high we're beginning to run out productive job slots. To take an example, the number of people needed in agriculture is vanishingly small compared to the number needed a hundred years ago. Machines now do most of the work.

We read about this all the time: Google's self-driving car will put professional drivers out of work, Watson will put many doctors out of work... the list goes on.

Our culture requires people to work in order to be valid members. We look down upon people receiving welfare, government aid, social security, and so on. The talk around Washington is that people on medicare are moochers! Let's get rid of it and make them pay their own way!

We've doubled productivity, yet we haven't reduced the time we're required to work - in our "race to the bottom" people are working longer hours for ever lowering wages. Sometimes people have to work 3 jobs just to get by.

The solution is to reduce the weekly workload of all employees. If we went to a 30-hour work week with overlapping days, we could eliminate unemployment and pay everyone a living wage. As productivity rises, we could cut the working hours even more.

If we were more like the French, people would have more leisure time to enjoy the fruits of a highly productive society.

Don't knock the French - they've got this "working for a living" thing figured out.

Re:I don't get it.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

I would have too. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve. Unions can protect you from a lot of bad things but your own greed, laziness, and stupidity are not among them.

Re:Why talk for 3 hours?

[Osgeld]

I hate hour long lunches

ok I did not hate them when I lived 5 min away from my house, but otherwise OMFG shoot me in the head with a nail gun ... even if I go somewhere it doesnt take me an hour to eat a sandwich, then what do you do

I rather go home a half hour earlier

Re:I don't get it.

[Concerned Onlooker]

I don't know. Pretty much everything in life is negotiable. While I would personally rather work a little harder than that I can appreciate that there are people who push back. Is it laziness and greed or is it just bargaining for the best possible position you can get? After all, isn't that what business is all about?

how to work more when you don't have work ?

[Anonymous Coward]

the CEO forgot one thing :
workers work only 3 hours a day because they don't have work
No investment in this factory since 10 years !

don't forgot : Michelin manufactures tyres in France (and abroad) and wins a lot of money.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_myth_of_american_productiv034576.php

i'm an IT guy
in our company, we are 2 people to support 130 users, so the ratio is 1 for 65 users
in the USA sister company, the ratio is 1 for 40 users

  we are less, we do more
no productivity in France ?

Re:I don't get it.

[ganjadude]

sadly some people try and bargain for more than their worth and get cut off from those who pay the bills. Is this the fault of the employee for asking for more than their worth? or the employer for being greedy???

I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount. I am sure I will be down moded for this one but sadly the truth hurts. If I own a business, I am going to maximize my profits, and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market. If you dont like the rules, or the way things are running in your country, change the rules to make it more competitive, if that dont work change the rules to keep workers, or products from ZZ from entering your country.

Re:Vive La France

[Austerity Empowers]

It's only capitalist for the top 1%. For the rest of us, it's communism, or feudalism, and only the 1% for whom it's capitalist can describe which of the other two it is for the rest of us.

 

Re:Many unions in the US aren't much better.

[niftydude]

Dude - read what the GP said again. He wasn't ranting about union members. He was ranting about union administrators. And he has a point.

Take for example Craig Thomson. He was the national secretary of the Health Services Union in Australia, so he was supposed to represent those nurses and ambulance drivers you were talking about. Instead he flew around Australia spending their money on prostitutes and funding his personal political campaign.

Note that he was never a health professional himself, but before getting on the union gravy train he studied to become a lawyer.

This is the type of scum that the GP is talking about - that has infested the top administrative levels of a lot of unions. There are more examples of union corruption than I can be bothered to list here. Anyone who doesn't think that the union movement needs a cleanup is wearing blinkers.

Bad headline

[Jiro]

Headline: CEO says French workers have a 3 hour day.

Article: CEO says that French workers have a 7 hour day but loaf a lot.

In this case it's not just Slashdot that's to blame for the misleading headline, but come on. What he actually said may be insulting to the French, but is not inherently ridiculous. What the headline claims he said is ridiculous. Sensationalism.

Re: Vive La France

[Anonymous Coward]

It already is feudalism. The difference is that we call our "lords" a CEO.

Otherwise, it all applies pretty well.

Re:I don't get it.

[MadKeithV]

I would have too. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to charge ten times the cash and do a quarter of the work deserves to starve. Unions can protect you from a lot of bad things but your own greed, laziness, and stupidity are not among them.

Careful what you wish for: someone somewhere can do your job cheaper too.

Re:I don't get it.

[kiddygrinder]

if you work a solid 8 hours a day and get your minimum wage you're still not going to beat chinese workers. so no, i don't think if i work 2 hours a week i deserve to get paid more than starving chinese people, but i still bargain for the best deal i can get.

Re:Key problem: "And import them back to france"

[theVarangian]

...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.

And the really funny part is that the USA ranks behind those "librul" pot smoking socialist hippies in the Netherlands.

Re:I don't get it.

[drsmithy]

Indeed. Damn those people who think we should be trying to make our lives easier rather than a handful of obscenely rich individuals even wealthier !

Re:I don't get it.

[allcoolnameswheretak]

> "and if that means opening a plant in china, or XX instead of YY, well thats not my fault, thats the market"

Yeeeeah, and severe work conditions and exploitation of human and natural resources in China and other developing countries has nothing to do with it. That's just the market.

Said like a true CEO!

The answer from the french minister

[roscocoltran]

The french minister sent an answer to Maurice Taylor (who is known to be a troll btw). I couldn't find an english translation but it's a well written answer. (sorry, only pdf's and jpg available at this time)
answer page 1
answer page 2
About the 3h/day of talking, the factory was in a transition period where they temporarily switched their production line from tires for car to tires for truck, and the production line for car tires wasn't fully operational anymore. Taylor would have sent the workers home without payment, but the french union refused. That's their difference.
Of course french workers are not allowed to chat for 3h/day, anyone with a sane mind and who have worked in real life understands this.

Re:I don't get it.

[shaitand]

"I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount."

I suppose that depends on what you do in those hours. It is quite likely you pay your attorney and your doctor as much or more for working a few hours as you pay your grunts for working a full time week.

There is truth in this though. An hour of one man's life is not worth more than another. You can make up lost dollars but not lost hours. The doctor and the lawyer just invested dollars and hours up front. There is no reason their total lifetime earnings should exceed that of the grunt plus the cost of their education unless they are working more hours overall and then the increase should be relative to the number of extra hours.

An important thing for an employer to remember is that the worth of an employee isn't defined by the going market rate for labor. The worth of an employee is the total gross profit of the organization divided by the total number of employees. You then average education hours and hours worked and adjust up or down at the individual level based on their relative education hours and hours worked. There is a rampant fallacy that overseeing 30 employees makes you more valuable than those employees. If it takes you 40 hours to oversee a staff of 40 you aren't more valuable than an employee under you working 40 hours. A related fallacy is that the stress of white collar work is somehow worse than that of physical labor. This is nothing but an attempt to shed guilt from accepting disproportionate pay and a lack of desire to perform physical labor. Another myth is that people are somehow magically more valuable because they are close to the source of revenue. It isn't uncommon to see 5-20% of revenue pissed away at the sales staff. In reality long term sales performance is dictated not by fast talking sales staff and their relationships with clients but by the output of the low paid grunts actually making the goods and performing the services. The "relationship" is based on the sales staff "shooting the client straight" which amounts to having sold them quality goods and services over time. Not only are sales staff not worth 5-20% they don't actually work anywhere near the number of hours they would report.

A similar fallacy is that living your job somehow amounts to actually working more hours. You might work at random times, you might be thinking about work during off hours, but typically staff that "live their job" are deluding themselves with regard to their significance in the overall machine. Usually this is seen in executives and for the most part everyone past middle management is either doing what middle management has told them needs done or getting in the way. They have far more ability to screw things up than to fix it. They'll spend 60hrs a week in useless meetings to produce a couple hours worth of output. Working at a higher level doesn't make the problems more difficult or require more time than working at the bottom. To make it worse these individuals often would count countless hours socializing with their peers as work because their peers are similar executives. Shareholders are only worth something at the point of investment, after investment they aren't worth anything at all!

All of this staff is needed but their contribution is not really more than that of the grunts. If your organization has grunts that are professionals the grunts are probably each worth more than any manager or executive in your organization. The market dictates what you pay staff but that has very little relation to what they are actually worth. Investors aren't worth anything at all!

Re:I don't get it.

[buybuydandavis]

Now go away or i shall taunt you a second time!

Re:I'm With the CEO

[jez9999]

I much prefer working with Swiss or Germans - many of the ones I've worked with won't do much more than a 9 hour day, but they'll work very hard during those 9.

Are you really suggesting that a 9 hour day is some kind of acceptable norm or am I misunderstanding you? You guys should be aiming for a maximum of 40 hours / wk for a decent work/life balance.

Re:I don't get it.

[liamevo]

So what? The french are the most productive people in the world while working less hours, and morons call them lazy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-grizz-mauls-lazy-french-workers-over-threehour-day-8503804.html - stupid traditional business thinking more hours = more productivity

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-08-20/markets/30087051_1_capita-france-s-gdp-work - some facts and figures

Re:Vive La France

[AVee]

The USA is no more democratic than the USSR was communist.

Fixed.

Anyone who doesn't think that...

[rsilvergun]

is an idiot. Most factories that aren't run with slave labor are 90-99% machines. Look up how applesauce gets made, or sleeping bags, sometime. Hell, even with slaves Foxconn is switching to robots. We're running out work to do. My buddy drives truck for a living. 10, 15 years from now that job won't exist. Again, robots.

So, when there's not enough work to go around, what do we do? Do we let 98% starve (lazy bastards), 1% work as slaves and then 1% live like God-Kings? Do you know an alternative? I'm anxious to hear a solution that doesn't boil down to socialism.

Re:I don't get it.

[dywolf]

"There is no reason their total lifetime earnings should exceed that of the grunt plus the cost of their education unless they are working more hours overall and then the increase should be relative to the number of extra hours."

Pure and utter bull.
People have different abilities, different aptitudes, different attitudes, different personalities, etc etc and so forth.
A doctor will always have a greater worth to society and economy than a burger flipper. Always. You cannot argue otherwise.
It's also much harder to become doctor, there are far fewer people able to do it, and who want to do it.

So why in hell should the burger flipper be entitled to as much lifetime earnings as the doctor?

Don't you realize that if an economy were managed in such a way you effectively create huge disincentive for people to become doctors? Some still will, but many will look at Easy Path A compared to Hard Path B, see they achieve the same result, and thus choose A.

If someone is content to be a burger flipper their whole life, have at it. I've known a few people who were fine with it (though eventually two of them decided to open their own place and now have a successful local chain, and just sold their first franchise a few hundred miles away).

As a humanist, the inclination is to say that people have the same worth. And they do on a human scale.

But when it comes to how they choose to spend their time in trade for money, they absolutely do have different worths.

Re:I don't get it.

[Squiddie]

Sure, because it's not like the Gilded age ever happened or anything.

Bullshit

[dolmen.fr]

Bullshit.

We are also bound to the 48 hours limit.
But hours between 35 and 48 must be either overpaid or given back as vacation. And that 35 hours limit legally applies only to companies with more than 20 employees.
Most other EU countries also have a similar limit, but above 35.

And most managing jobs have employment contracts that make the pay not related to the hours worked, so the 35 hours limit doesn't apply. In that case, most get about 2 weeks of additionnal vacation (in addition to the legal 5 weeks).

Re:I don't get it.

[toiletsalmon]

I think the issue is when you feel that you deserve to work a couple hours a day (or week) and get paid more than other people who work for 10s of hours a week (or day) and be paid the same amount.

I own a business. I'm in the business of selling my labor. Therefore, I'm going to maximize MY profits. That means getting paid as much as I can for as little work as possible. If business owners shouldn't be stigmatized for being greedy assholes, then workers shouldn't be stigmatized for being lazy assholes.

This double standard has to go.