I started out with a degree in psychology and early childhood education, and spent 11 years teaching emotionally disturbed children. When I moved to another state, I couldn’t afford the time or money to get another teaching certificate, so I got a job as a bartender. Then I managed restaurants for 10 years.
Now, I’m a realtor and have been for 14 years. I didn’t end up where I thought I would at age 57. I’m counting on Social Security for retirement and hoping for single-payer healthcare soon, as my health insurance premiums are out of control.
Bush’s Supreme Court (and I use that possessive advisedly; it’s sure not “our” Supreme Court any more) has ruled the Holy Corporation supreme over mere employees. This story is widely reported, and Jeffrey Toobin’s comment on it in The New Yorker is particularly eloquent. In sum: you must bring suit within 180 days of any form of discrimination against you, even if you can’t possibly know about it until much longer after the fact. This, despite the common practice of corporate culture that raises and bonuses are not to be discussed among employees. Some companies, when executing a broad layoff, make you sign a statement that you will not discuss the amount of your severance package with other employees (still employed or laid off) as a condition of receiving your severance pay.
The cloak of corporate secrecy regarding employee compensation is on a par with Vice-president Cheney’s claims of privilege for his own office (whichever branch of government he finally decides he’s in). Forcing sunshine into that dark, dark corporate realm can take years, not a meager 180 days.
Maybe the narrow (and narrow-minded) majority of the Supremes believe that corporations are part of Bush’s faith-based initiatives whose support with federal funds it also favored by ruling against tax payers’ rights to challenge such funding. For now, I have zero faith in our highest court. How about we bring a reason-based initiative against them?
This just in, June 26, 2007:
Today, the New York Times reports that the Senate Republicans blocked the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have given workers “majority sign-up” rights, easing the way for unionizing. Given Bush’s ownership of the Supreme Court majority and the Court’s recent decision on employee rights in the face of discriminatory corporate practices, that’s not surprising.
I started out in academia as an assistant professor, but I found the Ivory Tower incessantly boring and disconnected from the real world. I still work in higher education now, but on a federal grant that lives by the whims of each new round of elected officials.
35 yrs in consumer magazine business (key acct/national acct marketing - newsstand/single copy) with top selling titles. Last company sold. Took yr off and am attempting to resume career. Even with industry in steep decline, experience, amazingly, is a negative.
As an Eastern European arriving in the United States initially for college, the corporate culture is even more inexplicable to me than to someone who lived in its presence from birth. A few years ago I had just a vague belief that “corporations are where the real economy and culture of America lies.” Right after college I started a job in a medium-sized corporation, and within weeks I was stunned by the abnormality of its culture.
The company should have been named “the cult of John” since it was a sycophantic cult devoted to its mythical founder. The ultra-energetic recruitment person stressed to me at the interview that “John is a genius” and my manager found endless ways to phrase his devotion to “the big man.” The pecking order was painfully enforced with condescending remarks from superiors to subordinates, and through testosterone-filled meetings among upper management, each eager to outdo his colleagues with obscenities and back-slapping in front of the father of us all, John.
Work, which should have been plentiful, was forgotten under political moves and revolting inefficiency. My manager was “protecting us” from a higher-level manager who promised to “make our life hell.” Why, and how, remains a mystery. An employee from a different department triggered a small-scale war by asking for my help. The manager took each of his team to his office and individually shouted them into promising “never to help anyone without his consent.” I quit after realizing that the corporation is a complex game I was not prepared for.
I am young and I moved on, but the corporate world still lingers with me as an awkward absurdity. Inside windowless cubicles, fear, sycophantism, hypocrisy and selfishness reign free, leaving people both exhausted and humiliated. I find it perplexing that in a nation that prides itself on dignity and liberty, some employees let such abuses go on day by day in a “business as usual” manner. I kept hearing “that’s how managers are, you’ve got to let that insult pass by you” or “you need to pick your battles.” Most upsetting, it seems that almost nobody tries to keep a cool head when judging corporate culture. The problem is not so much something you can understand by looking at facts and figures, but by looking at the monsters the corporation creates out of its employees. And in the college medium, opinions are split between the “lefties,” continuously demonizing corporations to a caricature, and the “econ” students who have no qualms and expect to pick up the corporate culture “on the fly” in internships and jobs.
The resemblance of corporate culture with high-communism is shocking. Communism too was based on fear, hypocrisy, double-talk and many lies. The important communist bureaucrats were masters at speaking with a “wooden tongue” — a style of talking that had no connection with the reality of governing. They were diabolically able to wrap very pragmatic actions in completely irrelevant Marxist-Leninist talk. The major difference from the corporation is that the generations formed in communist times are extremely cynical and bitter, while corporate U.S. keeps pushing credulity, self-blame and “a positive attitude.” Just like communism, the corporate workplace culture refuses to be aware of itself. It wraps a simple and pragmatic set of actions with a complex and irrelevant set of behaviors and justifications, all the while somehow mysteriously passing on the management wisdom over the years.
I have a message to add to my complaints: if you have to work in such a medium, always try to understand what is really happening around you. It is better to be aware of an unpleasant reality than to let your gullibility and insecurities make a victim of you. Be cynical and allow yourself to see through greed, backstabbing, abuse and absurd speeches. Try to connect and communicate with people you can trust. Think scientifically — science made the world evolve; cults always backfired.
The only jobs I’m suited for are in academia. Right out of grad school, I applied for an entry level, tenure track job, and found out later there had been 600 people applying. The guy who was hired was a senior researcher with 25 years experience who wanted to switch to a teaching institution. I never even got an acknowledgment for my application.
Since then, I’ve lived on family money while pursuing scientific research as an “independent academic.” There are big advantages as well as disadvantages to working this way, (for those lucky enough to afford it). In my “spare time” I’m an activist, educating the public about the fact that the last three Federal elections were stolen by Republicans, and advocating for reform in the way our votes are counted.
In the late ’70s, after a move to DC, I began consulting to not-for-profit organizations and corporations, planning their meetings, conferences and conventions. Since then, I have had a staff and then moved back to a consultancy, using other contractors when needed.
My work has evolved from full-service meeting planning to consulting on contracts w/ hospitality industry vendors, helping design programs and program formats for meetings, conducting performance audits of meetings departments and helping organizations hire internal planners, and training others in meeting planning: basics, meeting risk management, negotiations and contracts, industry future issue.
In and outside the meetings industry, I train in ethics, meeting program planning and design, adult learning issues, and more. I’ve worked hard and have been honored by many hospitality/meetings industry organizations with some of the highest honors the industry gives. My passions and strengths are used every day.
Summer’s here, and the time is right for … or are you too overworked or too insecure about job security to take a vacation?
News of layoffs in the first half of 2007 may have contributed to your workplace collywobbles. The International Business Times lists: IBM cutting 1570 jobs; Hawaiian Airlines laying off 98 nonunion employees as part of its tactics to cut $4 million from its annual budget; Nokia Siemens Networks, the telecom equipment maker that began operations in April, laying off up to 9,000 people worldwide (about 15 percent of its work force);medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp. laying off between 500 and 600 workers; and ABN Amro bank cutting 900 U.S. jobs in 2007. Reports elsewhere remind us that Circuit City laid off 3500 long-term employees earning above the market rate, saying it would replace them with lower-paid workers; and reporting professionals themselves have been laid off at the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News and two dailies in Philadelphia.
The Economic Policy Institute provides another view of the potential we have for banding together for power in the workplace in its June 20 posting Strong unions, strong productivity. In brief, clear language and charts, the article reaches this well documented conclusion: “The dramatic drop in unionization in the United States from 1979 to 2005 did not lead to faster productivity growth than in the seven largest European countries with union density greater than 60%. In fact, those countries’ average annual labor productivity growth of 1.7% equaled productivity growth in the United States. … If Congress is concerned about protecting middle-class incomes, it should pass measures to facilitate union organizing and collective bargaining coverage, including the Employee Free Choice Act. There is no reason to fear that higher rates of unionization will impede efficiency or labor productivity.”
In light of those statistics, we should seriously consider encouraging our elected representatives in Washington to support the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800, S. 1041), which would “enable working people to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.” The Senate began consideration of the bill on June 19.
Professionals need similar protections when we band together to ensure workplace equity. United Professionals is working for you.
At age 57 one should research to make sound decisions when making a career move … right? I was approached by a board of directors and recommended by friends of the family (a one on the board) to accept the position of President/CEO for a building products recycling and plastics company in Chicago. My background is strong in the field and it appered to be a no-brainer.
This led to an in-depth due diligence discovery and attorney’s consent so as not to commit financial suicide at my age, with a 3 yr. contract. Deal done and I am safe if all hell breaks loose, right? The 2 groups were a fraud and into the real estate and tax credit advantages more than the business which really took off in this new “green built” world. They never funded the business as promised after I saw and signed the notes. In fact they tried to slip past the bank funding and take more cash out. Busted! And this really hurt the company’s progress.
It is just too long to go in to any more detail and I think you have heard this all before. After a 2 day meeting and assured if they did sell the company I would not be unemployed and given a substantial severance package in the event that would happen. BS! They not only sold the company 2 weeks later; we were all booted in mid-afternoon from our desks without final paychecks, insurance, and even withholding the 401K monies.
The business moved out of state and now the developers are paying a very high price for the property. All in the plan from day one, good guy bad guy roles and we all got stuffed. A calculated and cavalier bunch of crooks. My original attorney at this point is no help so I have contacted a very tough one to help with the 19 months balance I have on my contract. I am taking steps to get these guys legally through the IRS and OSHA as they deserve a visit from the business practices I have lived.
Life moves on from stumbling stones to stepping stones … and the job search goes on. I am now in the moving and furniture business, a little humor in a very tough time. Yes I am moving somewhere and selling all of our furniture to live as well as the house. Oh yes, I forgot they forced me to move 90 miles closer in the first 6 months and we did according to the contract and now have a new home for only ten moths for sale. Ok … next victim! As Harry Carey used to say at the Cubs games, “Let Me Hear Ya” Have a Great Day, Shaun
A disturbing video… Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.
