I always get super triggered at the "Do you have a best friend at work?" question that my old organization used to roll out during engagement planning. No, you motherfuckers, I already have a best friend. They don't happen to work here.
So I answer no every single time. And then in the interview afterward they go on about how "well, it's not LITERALLY if your best friend works here. The survey just asks the question like that because blah blah blah...". Trying to over examine what it means to "have a best friend at work". To interpret that question in some other way to maybe get me to answer yes next year.
I don't care what the intent behind the question is, they will never convince me to not answer "no", unless my best friend happens to join our team. I feel like they're trying to gaslight me into feeling more connected to the team or some bullshit. Drives me up the fucking wall.
Effective, sure. But, if a company is truly engaging, listening, adapting to the employees needs and feedback, unions would be a lot less needed or effective. When companies are exploiting workers, lowering wages and benefits, causing more problems and not listening to employees, unions can really make a huge difference. If the people are looking to unionize, the company is failing and the workers aren’t being listened to and they want change to happen.
Unions can do a lot of good. I’m very pro-union. But, people don’t go looking to unionize if things are going great and the company is really listening and adapting to employee concerns.
I went HAM on my most recent one. They’re anonymous but I’m sure my direct manager can tell my writing style. But the place I work for has been in refusing to do any hiring including backfills so now I’m a team of 1 doing what 7 people used to do and I let them know I’m not pleased.
The guy is already giving honest feedback on “anonymous” surveys… He’s probably on that list. At least he could try to improve his situation, and look for a new job at the same time since it’s clear they don’t respect his efforts.
Just FYI, they’re not really anonymous. These surveys get reported back to each individual manager with the responses, ratings given, and counts of staff completed; so it is very easy for managers to discern who wrote what.
I figure they aren’t. I didn’t curse or name anyone by name, I just made it pretty clear that the understaffing is job performance at a pretty severe level and that the workload has everyone miserable
Random chance actually means it is very likely there are random clusters of users even in small groups who are closer together than others who could do more locally together. Some kind of mechanism to help figure out if we have a critical mass of protestors/mutual aiders/whatever (without giving away those protestor's names) for a project would be a good idea, and wouldn't necessarily have to be very complicated. Maybe a single page that just asks for location and what kind of project you are interested in?
There are also some forms of work that lend themselves really well to being online. Coding, writing, news, encouraging people to vote, sending money to workers on strike. I firmly believe the most effective way to combat unethical companies is simply to start and support worker owned companies where every employee gets a vote on their wages, and 'starve' the big companies. I found myself looking at the massive amounts of money raised and wasted in political campaigns by single dollar donations and found myself thinking - damn, with a million dollars, you could start a really small company with that. The second most effective way is probably striking, which, yes, you need people on the ground for that.
We could use an ethical version of Amazon, with a collective of shops that people can visit (the offline side of warehousing is a whole other bundle of issues), and an ethical Paypal. I know that credit unions exist, but I don't know of any credit union that has a Paypal-like API and easy convenience of simply clicking to pay for things. Uber and other apps. There is a huge amount of labor that we could 'take back' simply by providing another venue for people to practice it. Unfortunately, I don't think the fediverse way of doing things is quite appropriate when it comes to systems dealing with money. It's one thing to duplicate posts or ads for content for sale, but you don't want to duplicate credit card information. Open source it maybe and use 'semi centralization'; the Paypal-esque site can handle logins and money, and the Amazon-esque sites can perhaps do some form of federation and handle actual showing of items.
TLDR: it is definitely possible to do quite a bit online, and I think work reform has some avenues via it that have been severely under-utilized and neglected in the information age, as we tend to think of action as just being about protest. Protests can certainly be useful, but should not be our sole course of action if we want a paradigm shift. I find it extremely striking that when most people talk about action, they almost always mention protests and strikes first, if they mention anything else at all.
I actually had a much longer post, but it complained it was too long. So I think I will make my own thread.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but private employers don’t have to observe it. Mine sure doesn’t. I have never heard of any employer observing Mother’s or Father’s day with a paid holiday.
That’s a good question. If you don’t mind, I’m going to use the “Speak as moderator” button here (although i don’t really know what that does).
I see a few things necessary to reform the current economic system - let’s call it Awareness, Advocacy and Action:
Awareness means getting people to realise that the corporate propaganda they’re hearing isn’t the whole truth.
Advocacy means going out and telling people to join the cause, form a local union, etc.
Action means taking organized action - writing to politicians, organising dialogues and strikes, etc.
I’m completely open to using this community for any and all of the above. When we have a good critical mass of users, we can all vote on this, and I’ll abide by the consensus.
In the meantime, however, we need to get more people to rally behind the cause. We have ~500 subscribers here from all over the world in a variety of jobs. That’s not nearly enough to do any sort of Action. All we can do in the meantime is Awareness and Advocacy. That means posting memes and screenshots, that means posting news that counters corporate propaganda, that means posting news about organised action taking place elsewhere that we can celebrate or contribute to.
If anyone disagrees, please share your opinions here, I’m totally open to suggestions, criticisms, insults even.
I think “speak as mod” adds a red “mod” logo (kinda looks like a shield) next to your username. That’s it, as far as I can tell - it doesn’t pin the post or highlight it or do anything else.
Does it not? It still does in my experience. Our company has these weird company wide meetings where they tell us how they’re doing great, everything’s great, but because growth isn’t “double digit” due to inflation so there is a pay freeze. (I’d love even a less than double digit pay rise - even though that’s still a pay cut with inflation).
Pretty much exactly what you are saying. Employees are grumbling, but don’t want to get laid off and are uncertain about the job market.
The minimum wage rate in New York is $14.20 per hour as of December 31, 2022. The minimum wage rates differ based on industry and region. The minimum wage will increase each year until it reaches $15.00 per hour
A big problem because it means a federal worker in NYC gets as much as a federal worker in Mississippi. That it hasn't changed for 20 years suggests both are underpaid, but the NYC worker has definitely got to get another job.
By what scale? Medieval peasants only had to pay 10% in taxes and got sooooo much free time. Technology even today is still bad for us, but nature and free time? Come on, what’s the point of having all these gadgets and what not if we don’t have the time to use them, and they’re all run by faceless corporations who make things as addictive and monetized as possible?
Productivity. That’s what you want to compare to wages, and it has definitely increased faster than wages, so why aren’t the workers being paid proportionately to their increased productivity?
Care to have a conversation and not just repeat random excerpts you read from a textbook?
So tell me, how exactly are we expected to consume all those goods in that basket that are used to measure inflation, when we are not paid in proportion to our increased productivity? Do those goods just pay for themselves with wages we do not receive?
Experience? If you say so, again just sounds like you’re quoting a textbook.
If you’re referring to experience all the way back to your quality of life comment, how old are you? Quality of life has definitely dropped since baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s and 40s
Sure we have netflix, we’re all interconnected and have instant access to information on the internet, but we can’t raise a family on a single income, we can’t pay off college or university with a single year of a summer job
In what way has quality of life dropped? We wouldn’t be having this conversation 10 years ago. I enjoy being able to experience an open source platform such as Lemmy, from my smartphone while getting drunk and lounging about at home. I couldn’t have done that without advancements in technology. I feel like that improves my quality of life at no cost. An example of how my life is improved, regardless of wages.
I’m paying devils advocate. I’m all for wages increasing for the average person. I just want people the feel happy for all the amazing things we have in our modern world.
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