Employers Are About to Take Back Control

[Nithavela]

Which SHOULD drive up wages.

Unless you can employ kids the way Republicans are desperately hoping.

Or unless they just don't go up.

What are people going to do? Not work and starve? lol

 

[durangodawood]

Or unless they just don't go up.

What are people going to do? Not work and starve? lol

Move into parents basement. Ignore health care needs. Stop driving (legally). Basic poverty stuff.

 

[Nithavela]

Move into parents basement. Ignore health care needs. Stop driving (legally). Basic poverty stuff.

I'm sure that employers have enough reserves to hunger the poor people into working for a wage that is too much to starve, but too little to live. Maybe not the mum and pop store at the corner or small factories, but those are on their way out, anyway.

 

[durangodawood]

I'm sure that employers have enough reserves to hunger the poor people into working for a wage that is too much to starve, but too little to live. Maybe not the mum and pop store at the corner or small factories, but those are on their way out, anyway.

Could be. Ive sure seen a lot of people in the US choose the camping with a shopping cart by the river option tho.

 

[Nithavela]

Could be. Ive sure seen a lot of people in the US choose the camping with a shopping cart by the river option tho.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Which SHOULD drive up wages.

A key point that people need to keep in mind is that there's a regional component at play when it comes to the aforementioned labor shortages in certain fields.

WFH policies have helped balance that out to a degree for certain jobs that can be done from home. (Like the IT sector, I could get a job at another company that's located 500 miles away without having to move)

But for other sectors that's not an option.

In certain sectors, the talent market can be somewhat saturated in one state, despite there being talent shortages in another state.


I think with a lot of people, there's this assumed "right" to be able to pursue the vocation of their choice, do it in their "preferred location", and drive a hard bargain for their compensation. Sometimes a person has to settle for picking 2 out of the 3 based on their priorities.

I'll pick a random field, Nursing.

Right now, there's something of a surplus here in Ohio...where there's actually newly minted RNs who are having a hard time finding an opening. New Jersey and Texas have a pretty bad shortage (that's projected to get worse by 2030).

Before there's a conversation about finding some mechanism to force Ohio hospitals to increase their wages for nurses, there should first be a conversation of "maybe you need to move to one of those other two states if a higher salary is your priority"

And the BLS data on the average RN compensation by state reflects that:
New Jersey: $89,690
Ohio: $61,640

As do 3rd party job posting boards

 

[RocksInMyHead]

As employers seek to bring people back to the office, employees complain.

I'd complain too if I had demonstrated that I could do my job equally effectively in my pajamas from the comfort of my home as I could in business casual at the office and my employer told me that I had to start coming in again.

Specialized benefits and allowances are going away.

Taking perks away from people just because they're desperate for a job and can't afford to quit is a great way to inspire loyalty in your employees! It ensures that they'll take the first path out that comes their way. Then you can go back to complaining about how "nobody wants to work".

Employers are entering a time when they realize they don't need all those people.

In some industries, maybe. Job growth is still pretty high overall though: Strong US job growth persists; wage inflation shows signs of slowdown

Solid US jobs data keeps Fed on track for rate hike in May

An historically low U.S. unemployment rate and rising wages will likely keep the Federal Reserve on track to raise interest rates by another quarter of a percentage point next month, as risks of a financial crisis ease while concern about inflation remains high.

www.reuters.com

The days of quiet quitting are soon going to end as thy quiet quitters, the lazy employees find themselves out if a job. The entitlement at work employee philosophy is going to come to a close and competition for jobs is going to be more prevelent.

"Quiet quitting" is just a new, TikTok-friendly term for the same old phenomenon - employee disengagement. The trend of disengagement has been pretty much flat for the past 30 years: https://www.theatlantic.com/newslet...quitting-trend-employee-disengagement/671436/

 

[Pommer]

One of these days Americans are going to be surprised when they learn what a “general strike” is (and then do one about ten years later).

 

[Mayzoo]

Listening to managers tell me what makes a successful person doesn't really cut it to me. That's just a manager wanting to get more work out of me without necessarily any benefit to ME as a person.

Managers, if you want your workers to stick around and perform better, it's WAY easier than you think: Pay well and give good benefits. People will work at place where they know they are valued. And if their pay does not indicate that they are valued (because they can't afford housing or basic necessities even though they are working 40hrs a week) why should they work hard?

Why should they work hard to not get enough?

My work ethic goes like this: You knew how much the job paid when you accepted it. You should perform as well as you would at a job that pays more because you accepted the position you are in knowing what it paid. I am of the creed you should always do your best.

Everyone should get a living wage, but if you accept a job, you should do your best until you obtain another job,

 

[RocksInMyHead]

My work ethic goes like this: You knew how much the job paid when you accepted it. You should perform as well as you would at a job that pays more because you accepted the position you are in knowing what it paid. I am of the creed you should always do your best.

It's not about the pay. It's about managers expecting employees to go outside of their job description.

If you hired me with the expectation that I would be working 40 hours a week, I'm not interested in working 50 hours for what you were paying me to work 40. If you wanted someone to work 50 hours, you should have put that in the job description. If you hired me for 40 hours and now want me to work 50, you should offer additional compensation (and not be offended if I say no - for some people, time is more valuable than money).

If you hired me as an analyst, I'm not going to do IT as well. I was hired as an analyst, so I will do analysis - if you wanted someone to do analysis and IT, then that should have been in the job description. If you want to add IT to my workload, then we're going to have to renegotiate my salary, and if we can't come to an agreement, I'm going to say no.

 

[iluvatar5150]

It's not about the pay. It's about managers expecting employees to go outside of their job description.

If you hired me with the expectation that I would be working 40 hours a week, I'm not interested in working 50 hours for what you were paying me to work 40. If you wanted someone to work 50 hours, you should have put that in the job description. If you hired me for 40 hours and now want me to work 50, you should offer additional compensation (and not be offended if I say no - for some people, time is more valuable than money).

If you hired me as an analyst, I'm not going to do IT as well. I was hired as an analyst, so I will do analysis - if you wanted someone to do analysis and IT, then that should have been in the job description. If you want to add IT to my workload, then we're going to have to renegotiate my salary, and if we can't come to an agreement, I'm going to say no.

Yeah, it's amazing how workers are supposed to be content with abiding by the terms of the agreement while employers are free to change those terms at a whim.

 

[rambot]

My work ethic goes like this: You knew how much the job paid when you accepted it. You should perform as well as you would at a job that pays more because you accepted the position you are in knowing what it paid. I am of the creed you should always do your best.

Everyone should get a living wage, but if you accept a job, you should do your best until you obtain another job,

Have you ever been in a position where you had very few skills and you could only get jobs that would not support you living a very simple life?

And to be clear, I never advocated not "doing your best". I simply meant your work output should match your salary...

and yet on the macroscale, it does the opposite if you think about it. Most people I know who have done it have said that working fast food (or generally, retail) was by FAR the hardest job they've ever worked. There are many, MANY CEOs, board members, managers and owners who practically, do very little work. Who have the luxury of calling an afternoon playing golf, "work" because they were golfing with "partners" and "talked business for a while".

 

[Mayzoo]

Have you ever been in a position where you had very few skills and you could only get jobs that would not support you living a very simple life?

And to be clear, I never advocated not "doing your best". I simply meant your work output should match your salary...

and yet on the macroscale, it does the opposite if you think about it. Most people I know who have done it have said that working fast food (or generally, retail) was by FAR the hardest job they've ever worked. There are many, MANY CEOs, board members, managers and owners who practically, do very little work. Who have the luxury of calling an afternoon playing golf, "work" because they were golfing with "partners" and "talked business for a while".

Yes, I have been in that position before. I have worked in fast food and been a busser at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I worked one where the promotion they offered included a merit raise and the increased responsibility of being a key holder at an auto parts store where I would have to close, by myself, at midnight. The merit raise and promotion increase was 10 cents added together; I declined the promotion due to where I worked was not a safe neighborhood, and 10 cents an hour was not worth literally risking my life. I was earning minimum wage at the time.

I have lived in a slum, in a 200 sq foot house, where my neighbors on one side were drug dealers and on the other prostitutes because I could not afford any other accommodations. My house had a water attraction; you could watch the water stream down the walls in sheets every time it rained. I had several inches of water in my home every time it rained. I could not get a job over minimum wage, so I had to find accommodations that I could live on for that amount of money.

I have worked numerous low-paying almost no-appreciation jobs while I obtained an education. I gave every job my best regardless of my situation at home and the lack of pay because I agreed to work there for the wage I was paid.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

I have worked numerous low-paying almost no-appreciation jobs while I obtained an education. I gave every job my best regardless of my situation at home and the lack of pay because I agreed to work there for the wage I was paid.

"Giving your best" does not mean allowing your employer to walk all over you though. You agreed to work there in a specific capacity. The job you applied for had a description, and hopefully you discussed hours at some point before hiring if they weren't in the description. If your employer asks you to do something outside of what you agreed to do, there should be no reason to include that under the heading of "giving your best."

 

[Hvizsgyak]

I beg to differ. Quiet quitting is most often laziness. Doing the bare minimum to get by. If it's not completely laziness it definitely fosters it. It doesn't help you succeed or increase your success. You may go your bosses for a while but they will figure it out. It's negativity, it does not foster team work and it does not make you, your team or your company better. Quiet quitting is at best average work and at worst poor work.

Yes when I go to a restaurant I want average or less than average service, with average or less than average meal. When I hire a plumber in want them to only provide me with average service and do an average job. When I hire a company to provide me a product I want an average job done. I want my kids to be taught by average or less than average teachers who only have an average care about my kids. I want my doctor to be an average doctor and when I need surgery I want an average or less than average surgeon who went to an average school and got average grades.

Are you an average teacher who only care an average amount for the kids? Do you only give an average effort in teaching the kids?

There is a dirty little trick that many corporations are doing to their employees. And I not saying this applies to your company but this is what happens. The business offers the worker a pay raise. The worker thinks, "finally, I'm getting paid a decent wage for my work". Then about a month later, the business starts increasing the amount of work each worker must do in a day, sometimes substantially. I totally understand why people would quietly quit and go to another job and possibly quietly quit there too. Most people want to do a good days work for a good days wage. Unfortunately, what the employer thinks is a good days work is not what the employee feels is. The employee feels overworked. Finishing one part of the work only to be rushed to start the next part of the job. Employers are timing people to do their jobs in a certain amount of time. Some employers even have software that tells them, "if there is this much work, this is how long it should take one person to do it".

Next, for new employees coming into the company, many employers give minimal training and then throw the employee into a full load job. Instead the employer needs to give more training time and start the new employees work load lightly and gradually increase it over the next month or two so the employee has time to get into the routine and retain procedures and learn. At our business, we would get 50 candidates and 25 would fail the drug test. So 25 would go on for training and another 15 would drop out because they didn't like what they heard and saw during training. So after training, those 10 got on the job training for about a week. 2 or 3 more would quit. So we got seven left and after they had about a week of on the job training, they worked in their own area. All would be well until a regular worker would go on vacation or a regular worker would call in sick. Management would take the newly train person and place them in unknown areas to fill in for the vacation or sick person. The new trainee gets overwhelmed quickly and the business loses 3 or 4 more people.

So out of 50 people 3 stay at our business. And this happens in other businesses. The workers are lazy, they are overwhelmed at first and management watches them sink. Not everybody works at the same speed and management needs to understand that. And you can't say that the business has to compete against other businesses because all the businesses are being affected by quiet quitting.

Bottom line - treat workers with respect and dignity. They are humans not machines.

It's not about giving away work hours. Employers shouldn't expect or demand that their employees give away all thier free time or work 50 hours a week and only be paid for 40 every week. That's not right either.

Tell that to the many businesses that have employees work extra hours over 40 to get their work done and then only pay them for 40 hours.
I understand businesses have to stay competitive but not at the expense of overworking their employees daily. Sorry to say but here in America capitalism needs some fine tuning to make it work for all workers.

 

[rjs330]

Tell that to the many businesses that have employees work extra hours over 40 to get their work done and then only pay them for 40 hours.
I understand businesses have to stay competitive but not at the expense of overworking their employees daily. Sorry to say but here in America capitalism needs some fine tuning to make it work for all workers.

I'm not buying this actually. I believe it is against the law to do that. You cannot require someone to work more than 40 hours without paying them. It's a violation of labor law.

 

[durangodawood]

I'm not buying this actually. I believe it is against the law to do that. You cannot require someone to work more than 40 hours without paying them. It's a violation of labor law.

Abuse of exempt "management" designations is rampant.

 

[Nithavela]

Abuse of exempt "management" designations is rampant.

As is just breaking the law and having employees not report it out of fear of losing their livelyhood.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

As is just breaking the law and having employees not report it out of fear of losing their livelyhood.

Or out of ignorance. American workers in general are pretty poorly-educated on their rights.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I'm not buying this actually. I believe it is against the law to do that. You cannot require someone to work more than 40 hours without paying them. It's a violation of labor law.

If the employee is classified as salaried exempt, it's perfectly legal.