An alarming new study has indicated that employers are virtually paying people to do nothing! Sorry to say, but this ain’t exactly news.
There are many reasons given but I have not yet heard a valid justification for not basing an employee’s pay on performance. Productivity. Deliverables. Pay based on longevity is a thing of the past. Except in government work – and we all know what they say about government workers.
If your employee isn't delivering how can you afford to keep him or her on the payroll? Or aren't you paying attention?
Paid to do nothing.
ReplyDeleteI’m reminded of an earlier life when I worked in a kitchen cabinet factory in Canada. I was young and knew in my heart that the bosses were out to abuse the workers and the only protection we had was under the shelter of our union.
Life, and my place in it, was easily understood by who you were. Bosses were exploitive capitalists and all workers were downtrodden and our union reps wore halos for hats.
Although there were some on the factory floor who took pride in their work, mostly immigrants who obviously knew no better, many of us spent much of our time figuring out methods to avoid any physical labor. Indeed, often the conversation over beers after work went on about how little work we had done. It was a point of pride to offer up stories about how we got out of doing a chore assigned by the foreman, who of course always was a jerk.
So, in that vein, I ran for a seat on the union’s plant committee and the following year I became the chair of the committee, largely based upon my boastful position of filing constant grievances against the management.
And then I changed.
I understand the mindset of the do-nothing crowd. It’s often rationalized in one’s mind that the boss is a jerk and therefore it’s OK to steal his time. We usually don’t steal from our friends and it only lightly, if at all, touches our conscience if we steal time from our employer, who we know ‘doesn’t care’ about us.
We’ve developed a sense of entitlement to our jobs. They are now ‘Our jobs”, the worker’s job, not the employers. We feel we should have the deciding vote as to what we do and how we do it. And if the boss has the audacity to fire us, we’ll sue.
In short, albeit I don’t know the study you reference in your blog, it doesn’t surprise me.
Gordon Mullin
dgmullin@yahoo.com
Great insights -- thanks for sharing.Speaking of unions, a ruling just came down that a union did not violate any laws or regulations when it conducted a harassment campaign against a business owner AND HIS FAMILY. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that it was OK for the union to pass out leaflets in front of the the CEO's office and home, interrupt business meetings and charity events that he and his wife were being honored at for the charitable work they had done.Obsenities and threats such as "we know where your children go to school" were shouted at both the employer and his wife when they were out in public.
ReplyDeleteI believe that unions have done a lot for US workers, and they are just as suseptible to power plays and fear-based actions like this as employers.This ruling will not help gain support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give unions easier access to employees to convince them to unionize.