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I have absolutely no interest of ever moving to the US. You lot get treated like gak.

Palindrome wrote:I have absolutely no interest of ever moving to the US. You lot get treated like gak.

It's actually not that bad, you're just seeing a list of bad examples. It depends heavily on what your job actually is and what company you work for. There are good jobs where the employees get a lot of perks and good benefits too, breaks, etc. etc. It's just that those sorts of things aren't always required by law. That doesn't mean that employees don't necessarily get those things.

IT does mean that low level ones usually don't.

Melissia wrote:IT does mean that low level ones usually don't.

So the moral of the story is: In the US, go to school and study so you can get a specialist job where you get the perks, and if you don't you can go to another boss who will give them.
(Not that it's much different in Europe at that level, it's just that the people who didn't get the education get treated a little better).

Bran Dawri wrote:

Melissia wrote:IT does mean that low level ones usually don't.

So the moral of the story is: In the US, go to school and study so you can get a specialist job where you get the perks, and if you don't you can go to another boss who will give them.
(Not that it's much different in Europe at that level, it's just that the people who didn't get the education get treated a little better).

Not really, even high level jobs can treat you just as bad. Unless you are very specialized then there is always somebody else who can do your job if you don't want to be a "team player".

A fancy (most likely non-scientific) survey by Expedia shows that Americans take an average of 12 days of vacation a year.

High level jobs are also more likely to be exempt positions, so more of a chance that you will end up working uncompensated overtime.

Hordini wrote:

Palindrome wrote:I have absolutely no interest of ever moving to the US. You lot get treated like gak.

It's actually not that bad, you're just seeing a list of bad examples. It depends heavily on what your job actually is and what company you work for. There are good jobs where the employees get a lot of perks and good benefits too, breaks, etc. etc. It's just that those sorts of things aren't always required by law. That doesn't mean that employees don't necessarily get those things.

Thats what I mean though; the fact that those in power somehow think that things like sick pay are not worth the effort of legislating suggests to me that they don't really care for the welfare of their populace. What is the average working week in the US?

Welfare of the populace?

That's socialism talk and we will have none of that!

d-usa wrote:Welfare of the populace?

That's socialism talk and we will have none of that!

Those damn commies!

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Joey wrote:

Melissia wrote:

generalgrog wrote:I think a lot of this has to do with the current economic conditions and possibly with illegal immigration making it easier for companies to get more "peasants".

Illegal immigration is the lowest it has been in decades.

Nevertheless you can't deny that an influx of (legal or otherwise) unskilled labour into a region a)reduces working conditions and b)increases unemployment amongst "natives".

Actually we can until presented factual evidence otherwise.

So me being unable to get a job because the local factories almost universally only hire foreign workers, is not enough?

You guys really want to hear about how bad some places are, Look for slaughter house stories, they are bed. I once read about this guy, who was "forced"(as in loose his job) the work at night when a cleaning creew didnt show up with liquid ammonia(which turns to gas) with nothing but a flimsy surgean mask to protect him. He ended up being let go with the slaughter house not being held accountable for the various injuries he accumulated because it cant be proven the slaughterhouse caused them.

Yeah, that's not happening here joey.

Someone brought up the salary exempt example. This is one of the areas where an unscrupulous manager or company can really exploit you. What they do is bring you in at say...$70K a year salary, which isn't a bad living in certain areas of the country. So they get you in and make you work 70 to 80 hrs a week. So instead if hiring 2 people... they hire one and burn that guy out. Then bring in the next guy..burn him out...rinse and repeat.

GG

Wal-mart does that, But instead of making it high they do it lower.

Yeah, Wal-Mart kept trying to put me in eight hour shifts that were four hours apart, when I worked there.

Arent they extremly sexist aswell? wasnt there a big lawsuit about that aswell?

Melissia wrote:Yeah, that's not happening here joey.

Pretty sure you guys have mass unemployment in the unskilled labour market.
You also have a large amount of unskilled immigration.
Seeing a connection between those two points? Try harder.


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Melissia wrote:Yeah, Wal-Mart kept trying to put me in eight hour shifts that were four hours apart, when I worked there.

Hahahahahaha.
Anyone who tried that here would be shunned by the general public. That's obscene.

Joey wrote:

Melissia wrote:Yeah, Wal-Mart kept trying to put me in eight hour shifts that were four hours apart, when I worked there.

Hahahahahaha.
Anyone who tried that here would be shunned by the general public. That's obscene.

What like Argos and Asda are currently shunned for using free labour paid by the state to shore up their busy periods, or Holland and Barratt basing their recruitment policy on "work experience" that is unpaid for months and then, rather than pay wages, they just get a new "work experiencer." Apart from a very few people noone is exactly shunning them are they?

In a more apt example a friend of mine manages a tesco and often works 11-11 followed by 6-6 shifts.

Joey wrote:Pretty sure you guys have mass unemployment in the unskilled labour market.

The major source of unskilled labor is construction work. The housing market crashed. Seeing a connection between those two points? There's mass unemployment because when the markets dive unskilled labor goes first because its unskilled labor. Anyone can do it.

You also have a large amount of unskilled immigration.

Most of the illegals in the US work in agriculture, which is a job no one in the US wants anyway. EDIT: I.E. These jobs have been weeded out of statistic by circumstance.

There are almost no employee rights in the lower echelons of US employment.

Last year I worked as a data entry keyer at a mail order company in Perris, CA. I passed my 90 days probation, was good at my job etc. Then after working there about 6 months I got into a motorcycle accident. My first call was to 911 and my second call was my boss' voicemail to explain that I would be absent the next day.

Turned out I had shattered my knee and that I would be in bed for 2 months, and in a wheelchair another 2 months after that. So my doctor wrote me a medical leave notice for 8 weeks. The wheelchair wouldn't be an issue as it was a desk job with elevator access. Cut to day 31 after the day that I called my boss, I get a letter from HR saying that my only medical leave covered was for 30 days and since I hadn't reported to work the day before that I had "voluntarily resigned" my employment. Regardless of the fact that I couldn't even get in the car, let alone in a wheelchair and sit at work for 8 hours.

Now I may have been able to sue for unemployment or some such nonsense, but I was in no condition to be fighting for anything what with all the pain medicine. So I collected disability until that ran out.

So the desk job that I did have was taken away from me because of a medical issue, and now my potential job market has been cut down dramatically as I can't stand on my feet for more than about 2 hours at a time. Desk jobs are damn near all I can work, and those are in serious decline these days.

I don't remember why I started writing all this anymore. The whole thing just pisses me off.

/rant


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LordofHats wrote:

Joey wrote:Pretty sure you guys have mass unemployment in the unskilled labour market.

The major source of unskilled labor is construction work. The housing market crashed. Seeing a connection between those two points? There's mass unemployment because when the markets dive unskilled labor goes first because its unskilled labor. Anyone can do it.

You also have a large amount of unskilled immigration.

Most of the illegals in the US work in agriculture, which is a job no one in the US wants anyway. EDIT: I.E. These jobs have been weeded out of statistic by circumstance.

Also, those unskilled construction workers often made more than minimum wage. That means they adjust their spending and lifestyle accordingly. When that income gets cut by 20% or more then they start losing houses that they probably shouldn't have bought to begin with.

And most Ag workers are paid by volume, not hourly. So no, us lazy ass white people don't want a job where performance in manual labor=pay. I'll be the first to admit that.

Palindrome wrote:I have absolutely no interest of ever moving to the US. You lot get treated like gak.

You do at big name chain stores.

Price Chopper was the worst of them as far as working conditions,

Most of the employees at the Kmart I worked at hated black people. It was sort of the one thing they all had in common other than smoking. Smoke outside and talk about how much they hate black people and were the cause of all their problems.

I'm sure it was coincidence that I went from working 40 hours a week to 15 for wearing my Obama 08 hat.

Toys R Us sucked
Apple Bees sucked
Target sucked


Loved home depot though.

And most Ag workers are paid by volume, not hourly. So no, us lazy ass white people don't want a job where performance in manual labor=pay. I'll be the first to admit that.

Yep. Stephen Colbert famously challenged people to spend a day picking Strawberry's in southern CA. No one showed up, which utterly shocked me. I thought that at the least people would go to see Stephen Colbert.

Lots of illegals work contracting too, but no one wants those jobs either cause they suck. What illegals do in the US is what no American wants to do. The idea that they're taking jobs is true but its also silly cause they're taking the jobs that no one else will do.

Legal immigrants working in quest programs take more jobs than illegals.

I think that the ignorance of the status of a latino persons citizenship is what makes people think they are taking jobs.

Legal immigrants generally work food service here in California. The only people usually competing for those jobs are students.

There hasn't been a single Mexican immigrant at any data entry job I've worked. Not a single one. And I've seen some of the least qualified people ever get those jobs.

Sadly I missed that Colbert episode, I totally would have gone to that and given it a shot had it been before my little motorcycle adventure.

That said, I wouldn't want that strawberry job. I've met a few people who do it, and they are paid by weight of produce picked. And it is back breaking work being hunched over all day in the sun. Sure you can take a lunch break, but at the cost of productivity which means less money. They are contract workers who have no HR to complain to about work conditions.

Aerethan wrote:
Last year I worked as a data entry keyer at a mail order company in Perris, CA. I passed my 90 days probation, was good at my job etc. Then after working there about 6 months I got into a motorcycle accident. My first call was to 911 and my second call was my boss' voicemail to explain that I would be absent the next day.

Turned out I had shattered my knee and that I would be in bed for 2 months, and in a wheelchair another 2 months after that. So my doctor wrote me a medical leave notice for 8 weeks. The wheelchair wouldn't be an issue as it was a desk job with elevator access. Cut to day 31 after the day that I called my boss, I get a letter from HR saying that my only medical leave covered was for 30 days and since I hadn't reported to work the day before that I had "voluntarily resigned" my employment. Regardless of the fact that I couldn't even get in the car, let alone in a wheelchair and sit at work for 8 hours.

While I'm sorry for your situation, from an employer's perspective, they need someone to do a job. If the person they hired to do that job can't (or won't - but not saying this is your case) do it, they then need to hire someone else who can (or will). There are a lot of companies out there that aren't rolling in cash, and are running close to red. Hiring another person and retaining the one who got hurt is not financially viable for them. I don't know anything about the financial state of the place you worked, so I can't say that this was a factor, but it is certainly one that a lot of employers have to take into account when dealing with FMLA stuff.

I understand that. It was the manner in which they conveyed that point that pissed me off. No phone call asking when I was estimated to return to work or anything. Just cut and run.

Now don't get me wrong, the job wasn't anything great. It was minimum wage typing in old peoples orders for snuggies and cheap jewelry. The company must have been doing well, as some days they kept us sitting at our desks for up to 5 hours waiting for work. No sending people home early or nothing.

Being paid to literally do nothing isn't as great as it sounds. It's extremely boring if you don't have a book or gameboy handy.

It wasn't uncommon to have 1-2 hours of paid downtime there, which only sucked as the end of day was at 6pm. So instead of getting home early and playing some games or painting, I had to sit there and ride out the clock.

Plus there was so much work that was being repeated by as many as 4 people. One example was for returns or exchanges on damaged goods. A CS rep would take a call for a return. Instead of making the return in the database, they would just write down all of the information. Everything. Name, address, phone, email, part numbers, reference numbers etc. It was a lot of writing on a little page. That page was then checked over by a supervisor. After that it was sent to me, where I then had to just type everything on the page into the system(which was some old school black and orange screen nonsense, a nightmare to work in). Once I was done with it, it was then sent to verification. You'd think they'd just look over the page and the screen it was entered on. Nope. The verification process was to have another person type in the ENTIRE thing again. If anything came up different the verifier was notified and made the correction or informed the original keyer of the error. Then it when to a supervising verifier who just looked over the page and the final database screen.

All in all that single return takes up about 15 minutes on the phone, and then another 10-15 minutes of data entry and error checking. And some days there were hundreds of those to do.

That company hemorrhaged money in every conceivable way. But they never once cut back hours, if anything making us work more Saturdays than we'd have liked.

Aerethan wrote:
That said, I wouldn't want that strawberry job. I've met a few people who do it, and they are paid by weight of produce picked. And it is back breaking work being hunched over all day in the sun. Sure you can take a lunch break, but at the cost of productivity which means less money. They are contract workers who have no HR to complain to about work conditions.

I have a friend whose family ran a strawberry patch nearby. They would grow the strawberries and pick half the field themselves and sell it. If you wanted super cheap strawberries, you could go and pick your own and pay a significantly cheaper price. Not a lot of people did the pick it yourselves thing. Except the local Amish people. They would come in, whole family, and sweep the field dry in one day. They were crazy.

The Amish have an insane work ethic, I'll give them that.

I'm not worried about the price of strawberries really. I also don't give a flying feth who works that job. The job exists, and there will always be someone to take it.

The Amish were probably making a spiritual experience of it. Getting in touch with where the food comes from. Not that they need the reminder as much as most of us.

LordofHats wrote:

And most Ag workers are paid by volume, not hourly. So no, us lazy ass white people don't want a job where performance in manual labor=pay. I'll be the first to admit that.

Yep. Stephen Colbert famously challenged people to spend a day picking Strawberry's in southern CA. No one showed up, which utterly shocked me. I thought that at the least people would go to see Stephen Colbert.

Lots of illegals work contracting too, but no one wants those jobs either cause they suck. What illegals do in the US is what no American wants to do. The idea that they're taking jobs is true but its also silly cause they're taking the jobs that no one else will do.

Legal immigrants working in quest programs take more jobs than illegals.

Growing up and living most of my life in Salinas, California (next time you buy iceberg lettuce see where it is from, more than likely it will say Salinas), most of the illegal immigrants their (and the majority of them are) work in the fields picking lettuce, strawberries, garlic, etc.

If they are not doing that then they are cleaning public toilets and porta potties around the city.

99 percent of the jobs they take are jobs most "native" workers (best put by Mellisia) would not take.

Probably the only jobs I have seen where they take jobs in my home town by "native" workers are construction jobs, which in most cases have the more dangerous jobs or the hardest.

Most of these companies do donate to the Republican party, does anyone really think the Republican party would do anything that would hurt millions of dollars in donations coming their way? Other than a few symbolic deportations, they won't due much, and if they do it would only hurt the agricultural business (See Georgia).

Best thing to do is legalize them (or something similar?) that has everything on the table. No working under the table, no undocumented workers, all those fun things people have been arguing about and allow them to work. We benefit from them.

The (relatively) easy way to deal with it is at the demand end, not the supply end. If the fines for the employers for using undocumented laborers were big enough to outweight the money saved using them, they wouldn't be written off as a simple cost of doing business.

Aerethan wrote:The Amish have an insane work ethic, I'll give them that.

I'm not worried about the price of strawberries really. I also don't give a flying feth who works that job. The job exists, and there will always be someone to take it.

Amish people rock.

Every year bunch of Amish people come to my cousin's ice cream shop and hop out of a van, there is like an endless number of them coming out (like a clown car).

One of the guys gave me their hat because I liked it so much.