Reply
Wed 13 Oct, 2004 09:50 am
I have always been a very positive employee and supportive of changes even ones that have negatively impacted me, but this is the final straw! Even after a major merger and with many changes in which not one has positively helped employees, I have been understanding, tried to look at the positive for example I still have a job and perhaps a possibility of promotion with some increased business. But this last one has pushed me to the brink. Here are the previous changes: increased workweek hours by 2.5, no more dinner money for working past 7PM, decrease of paid days off from 5 to 3 for bereavement of immediate family members (I guess if your spouse dies working for such a wonderful company you are over it after only 3 days) and other similar items. Now I find my health insurance is increasing. Not a little, a huge amount, more than double as a matter of fact. I will now be paying over $400/month for family coverage. This is a very large international company. You would think that they are benefiting in volume for coverage. It also means that I would have to get a huge raise in order to break even. We are now just getting back to our feet after my husband being out of work for a good length of time. How is the average family to ever get by (forget about getting ahead) when your actual take home pay goes down every year?
Where I work, many of the same things are happening. It's one of the world's big three finance companies, and they are only concerned with the bottom line, as far as I've been able to tell.
Every year, they trim a little bit here and a little bit there. This year they increased our work week five hours. This affects my pay in a negative way, since I used to get overtime for those five hours. And next year, we will have a couple less days of sick time. I forget how many exactly.
Here's my advice. Take sick days for no reason. Talk on A2K as much as possible while you're supposed to be doing work. Pour water into your computer's CPU. Steal stuff.
They are the scum of the earth, and you should never feel guilty for anything you do that negatively impacts them. F*ck them.
And where do you suppose the extra profit from all these cost-cutting measures goes? The rich get richer and everybody else gets poorer. Remember that when you go to the polls in 3 weeks.
kickycan- I suspect that you are not too proud to accept the paycheck from "the scum of the earth"? If you feel that the people that you work for are so terrible, why the hell are you working there?
Working for a company implies a contract. The employee does what he was paid to do, and the employer pays the worker. Buy the premise, buy the package. If a person finds that the conditions so abominable, the best thing for him/her to do is to leave.
Can't leave? Can't get another job that would be preferable to the one that the person already has? Tough. Then the person needs to understand, that for the time being, the job that he has needs to suffice.
Goofing off, stealing, and and undermining the company that one works for, is totally dishonest, and beneath a mature individual.
Hey Kicky, I work for one of the top finance companies too. I can't wait to hear what they are going to do with our time off. As we don't have "sick time" but called incidental time off, we basically use it for whatever, I can't take advantage of saying I am sick. But you better believe I am going to take any advantage and make sure I get everything due to me.
Way to keep employees productive and happy.
Who said I was a mature individual? I reiterate my earlier statement.
F*ck them.
Because it's still an employers market. They are squeezing because they can.
I work 50 hours in a normal week so regular hours have never really applied to me. I don't get paid overtime. I come in anytime before 9am generally, work through lunch most days, and rarely leave before 7pm. The office hours are earlier - I am supposed to be here at 8:30am but I challenge anyone to mention that to me. I am not a morning person and just cannot get my ass out of bed before 7 and that's all there is to it. I hear my coworkers crib and moan (as I do) but they rarely, if ever, do or say anything to management about it. I had a melt-down (sort of) recently in work and told them to shove their job and I was leaving. I gave notice that I was moving on at the end of the year. I realized that I had enough savings to take some time off and literally couldn't take the stress here any more. You know what? Suddenly they opened up the coffers and additional staffing was suddenly falling into place and offers of sweeteners were laid at my feet. To be honest, I thought they would just say "bye, don't let the door hit you on the ass". It kinda took me by surprise that they rallied and are trying to keep me. Who knew my winning (read: bitchy) personality would be noticed? I still haven't made a final decision on whether I will leave at the end of the year - guess I will see what happens in the next two months.
In the meantime, I intend on paying some attention to lottery tickets. If I won some money then I'd definitely leave and take time for myself and decide what I wanted to do. Go play the lottery I say, throw a buck down for a scratch-card. Chance are crap but who knows...........
Re: I'm wasting company time and I love it!
Linkat wrote: Now I find my health insurance is increasing. Not a little, a huge amount, more than double as a matter of fact. I will now be paying over $400/month for family coverage.
try $780.00 per month for medical and dental - but it's the top of the line and includes disability - and you know who I thank for that everyday.
Insurance is not for the day to day but the catastrophic events when occur - it helps save your rear!
Hear Hear... I like this thread already.
I work at a large world wide company that does anything to gain an extra buck. They hired me on through a temp-agancy so that they don't have to pay me benefits like insurance or paid holidays. I don't have any sick days to take because if I take off I don't get paid. I had to get a part time job at night just so that I could get health insurance. The boss is a complete moron who is afraid of confrontation so all of his underlings run around stabbing each other in the back causing complete chaos and he is oblivious to it.
Every minute I spend on A2K is my way of saying F*** Y** to the man. Damn the Man!
Phoenix32890 wrote:kickycan- I suspect that you are not too proud to accept the paycheck from "the scum of the earth"? If you feel that the people that you work for are so terrible, why the hell are you working there?
Working for a company implies a contract. The employee does what he was paid to do, and the employer pays the worker. Buy the premise, buy the package. If a person finds that the conditions so abominable, the best thing for him/her to do is to leave.
Can't leave? Can't get another job that would be preferable to the one that the person already has? Tough. Then the person needs to understand, that for the time being, the job that he has needs to suffice.
Goofing off, stealing, and and undermining the company that one works for, is totally dishonest, and beneath a mature individual.
How's the air up there on Mt. Olympus Phoenix? Thin?
take less compensation and be grateful while the bosses make whatever changes are necessary for profits to rise and with the support and assistance of the government.....welcome to the country formerly known as the United States Of America.....
Bi- I went through something similar in my career. The company whom I worked for had some policies of which I greatly disapproved. For some time I had been thinking of quitting, and I bitched and griped about the unfairness of it all. I knew that I had to think the whole thing through, and decide whether what I was doing was worth the nauseous feeling that I got everytime I ran into the company "policy".
Then I sat myself down and really thought about it. I knew that I was doing good work, in SPITE of the company's cockamamie regulations. I decided to focus on the good that I was doing, and not get hung up on a policy that I considered not only idiotic, but counterproductive.
From that time on, I was perfectly comfortable with my job.
I'm in a similar situation Heeven. The extra 2.5 hours really don't matter to me as I typically work more than that especially since we have to "do more with less." With all the layoffs, we are still doing the same, actually more work since there are new regulations in the financial area, with less people. And no I do not get paid overtime either. It more the appearance of adding on more hours without additional pay and all the other things being taken away. I mean I will net less money even with a raise than I have over the previous four years of employment here. I have more experience and am working longer hours, but being paid overall less money.
My $400 a month does not include dental or disability. Also, as I said, working for a large company, you should reap the benefits of having so many people insured. It is much different than for an individual or a small company. I disagree with Medical being not day-to-day. Part of what you pay for is maintenance health - that is annual physical, mammograms, etc. The other insurance disability, life, etc is for the catastrophic event. Also, my being upset is not the necessarily the medical insurance itself, it is all the ways my company keeps making cuts. Not one benefit to date to the employee as a result of our merger. Can't they at least throw in one little bone?
You jpinMilwaukee is what is consider the underemployed in economics. Those that are not included in the unemployment rate, but are underemployed. They need to work extra jobs to meet their previous pay and/or benefits.
<nods>
<also nodding at what Eva said about voting, but you know what I think about that...>
Sozobe - you are gonna convince me yet!
Kicky you will be happy to hear that I just stuffed $400 worth of popcorn, teabags and coffee creamers into my bag; at least I am even for the first month of 2005!
You know the other aggravating thing isÂ…our company just started the United Way Campaign. One of the Sr. Management Team gave their usual spiel about how we should consider giving. He was saying that THE COMPANY only supports a couple of company-wide charity contributions a year and since THE COMPANY thinks it is so important and THE COMPANY is so good to us that we should support THE COMPANY in this initiative and give generously. Well maybe I could give generously, if THE COMPANY gave generously to their employees.
Okay, because I am a glutton for punishment and because I am such a numbers person, I calculated the percentage decrease in my net pay. For the increase in the price of Medical insurance, I will get approximately a net decrease of 5.78% and if I were to figure in the increase of hours per week, the total decrease of my annual pay is 10.40%. Now considering there was a raise last year at the most 3% and the prior two years, there were no raises, if I were to be optimist, after a raise I would yield about 7.40% decrease in pay. Sounds fair to me. Makes the economy seem to be improving too.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace