Ever have your boss tell you that when you take a break without clocking out, it's "stealing" from the company? Ever have a situation where your work is done (including the cleaning up) but there's still ten minutes or so left in the day, and the boss wants you to be doing
something because while you're on the clock, you need to be active somehow? This happens all the time, you know.
Productivity is the key word here, which in the real world means that you work harder for less money, because it makes your immediate supervisors look like they're "efficient", and it makes
their supervisors look like they're saving the company money.
You know, one of the reasons I have trouble hanging on to jobs is because I have a lot less tolerance for this sort of bullshit than most other people, who will put up with anything because they need that check (A more direct term would be "blackmail"). Some people even consider it honorable in some way to put up with it, it shows how tough they are. Of course, it only makes it easier for the bosses to take advantage of it: you work your ass off for not enough pay, while the people on top get more money in a week than you see in a year (well OK it depends on how big the company you work for is, but since big corporations are driving smaller businesses out, the analogy applies to a lot more people than it used to). But because I won't put up with this, I get branded as a "troublemaker". I have this strange belief that I'm there to do a specific job. I don't shirk my responsibilities, but when my task is finished, I try to take it easy. It's not aerobics, you know: you paid me to do
X and I did it, gimme a sec to get geared up so I can do
Y. It's yet another example of how I take my
work seriously, but not my
job. It's also a good reason why I'm always broke.
The reason I bring this up is because of this article in the NY Times about how people are being forced to work while "off the clock":
- Soon after Trudy LeBlue began working at the new SmartStyle hair salon outside New Orleans, her salon manager began worrying that business was too slow and profits were too weak.
To keep costs down, Ms. LeBlue said, the manager often ordered her and the two other stylists to engage in a practice, long hidden, that appears to have spread to many companies: working off the clock.
Many weeks, Ms. LeBlue spent 40 hours in the salon, but was ordered to clock out for 20 of them while waiting for customers to show up, she said. With the salon's computer tracking her official hours, she was told to clean up and stock merchandise during the unpaid stretches.
"If you weren't doing hair or a perm, they'd tell you to get off the clock, but you still had to stay in the salon," she said.
What angered her most was her paltry paycheck, which she said often came to just $200 for two weeks, even after 80 hours at work. For Ms. LeBlue, that worked out to $2.50 an hour, less than half of the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage and her official rate, $5.35 an hour.
Workers at hair salons, supermarkets, restaurants, discount stores, call centers, car washes and other businesses who have murmured only to one another about off-the-clock work are now speaking up and documenting the illegal practice.
In other words, the company is stealing from them. There's no other way to put it. It used to be that we had laws dealing with these things that were actively enforced, and employers who actually were concerned about the physical and financial well-being of their employees. Those days no longer exist.
Mandate. Will Of The People. Of course, this attitude suits the slave states just fine, it's how they've historically been treated and it's what they expect. And it's a good example of how, when I use the term "slave state", it means more than just geography: it's a state of mind, a belief that you'll never do any better than the job you have right now, that your supervisors are your superiors (in all aspects), and you don't deserve to be treated decently.
Some people overcome this. They start their own businesses and work for themselves. Others, like the comedienne Roseanne, break out in a more spectacular fashion. Despite what you mght think of her personally, she had the courage to step out and say "I'm not putting up with this any more!" Granted, not a lot of people have the kind of talent she has, but the important thing for her was taking that first step and seeing that there was something better, or at the least that she deserved better treatment and was unafraid to do something about it. It's an attitude I wish more of us had today. If enough people had that mindset, even if they never became the star of a TV show, they could have a much better life and make the kind of money our parents (and for some of you, your grandparents) made, thanks to the New Deal and progressive liberal policies. It wasn't the kind of money the celebrities make, but enough to pay your rent and bills, go out to eat every now and again, and save for the future. Despite the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration and its corporate allies, that was the real "ownership society". People had ownership over their lives because they made a decent living and had the time to enjoy their lives.
I'm glad that people are starting to speak up about this. Of course, they shouldn't expect a lot of sympathy from the government: after all, the people in charge of the Labor Department are more interested in destroying labor than helping it. But if enough people left the "slave state" things might change for them, for the better.
Have A Nice, Hot Cup O' Joe!