Archived Union time?

Union time?

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melvin said:
It isn't just craven, dishonest right-wing scumbags. It's a number of things:

1. We do a p*ss-poor job in this country of teaching the history of labor.
2. We still feed into this myth that getting rich is a matter of hard work. Of course, by extension, this means if you don't have a lot of money, you don't work hard. This is still a dominant belief in our culture.
3. We never instilled the pride in being a working class person that you see in many other countries and many of us cling to this belief that if we didn't have rich people, we wouldn't have any jobs.
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Well considering that Oklahoma just voted to ban AP history because it doesn't promote American 'exceptionalism', what do you think the chances are that any teacher would take the risk of teaching a real class on labor?
 
Would TLs be eligible? My store makes a Sr. TL stay in the building, answer the walkie, and go up front if needed while on her break.
 
konk said:
Would TLs be eligible? My store makes a Sr. TL stay in the building, answer the walkie, and go up front if needed while on her break.
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No. It happens a lot, especially when the TL is the LOD, but that is definitely not legal.
 
melvin said:
3. We never instilled the pride in being a working class person that you see in many other countries and many of us cling to this belief that if we didn't have rich people, we wouldn't have any jobs.
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Why the fuck is it considered bad to do hard work? Why is being rich glamorized, with everybody buying their lotto tickets and penny stocks to try and live the dream? When did work not become enough? When it stopped providing basic needs like a living wage.
 
commiecorvus said:
Well considering that Oklahoma just voted to ban AP history because it doesn't promote American 'exceptionalism', what do you think the chances are that any teacher would take the risk of teaching a real class on labor?
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It isn't easy, but I have taught in a similarly conservative climate in the rural Midwest and I still taught the things that need to be taught. I say this not to self-aggrandize, but to point out that life is difficult and we will never get to the point of treating all people with dignity if we pass the buck and make excuses for why each of us cannot take responsibility for our society.
 
I love reading your comments- I wish you worked at our store.
After working all day doing reshop ,fitting room and operator - doing as much as I can every minute with a good attitude-
a sixteen year old came in , sat down in the operator chair and told me she didnt want to do anything and "softlines sucks". I suggested a few things that she could do ( all in the area she was assigned to ) and she said "Ugh , no thanks " to each one. I then said she could answer the phone and I would continue putting away accessories that have been sitting there for weeks. About an hour later, she told me she thinks it is crazy that she is 16 and this is her first job and I ( I am 54) both make $8.53 an hour.
This is the same dept that has a 17 and a 19 year old trainers. I worked as an insurance adjuster for over 25 years- I dont think these young ladies have anything to teach me about customer service and work habits. Grin and bear it , I am old to care, but I just thought I would share these thoughts in a safe environment.
 
thatcashierdude said:
Why the fuck is it considered bad to do hard work? Why is being rich glamorized, with everybody buying their lotto tickets and penny stocks to try and live the dream? When did work not become enough? When it stopped providing basic needs like a living wage.
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It isn't necessarily. What has been stigmatized is working with your hands or in toil. This was not always true. In the early years of the republic, prior to the onset of capitalism in full force, toil and labor was regarded by many as a gift, God's grace. With arrival and rise of the classes who move and change money without toil, this sort of toil became a sign of lowly status not simply as a cog in the industrial machine, but as human beings. Those who toiled were there because they had some sort of defect. I might add that in the antebellum period, there were still healthy pockets of people in the Northeast and elsewhere who saw these new capitalists as no different than the "idle poor," and attributed the same laziness to the investor class as the indigent "by choice." The change occurred when the elites successfully changed the image of the rich into tireless workers who gained their wealth by the sweat of their brow and to whom the rest owed their jobs and even existences.
 
In my personal opinion Union's had their place in history and that is where they should stay. At least for industries such as retail and fast food. Our jobs are not that difficult and do not warrant much more in terms of compensation. Sure I will agree maybe a dollar or two more but with Unions its going to require more than that because of fee's etc. You can talk about the CEO's and top officials getting paid millions upon millions a year but unions destroyed the auto industry. They needed a bailout because you had people making $40 an hour to tighten bolts and the auto industry had its hands tied and couldnt do anything about it because of the unions. Do we really need to pay the people saying would you like fries with that making $15 an hour? What motivation do they have to better themselves when they are making $31,000?
 
JuicedSoftball1 said:
In my personal opinion Union's had their place in history and that is where they should stay. At least for industries such as retail and fast food. Our jobs are not that difficult and do not warrant much more in terms of compensation. Sure I will agree maybe a dollar or two more but with Unions its going to require more than that because of fee's etc. You can talk about the CEO's and top officials getting paid millions upon millions a year but unions destroyed the auto industry. They needed a bailout because you had people making $40 an hour to tighten bolts and the auto industry had its hands tied and couldnt do anything about it because of the unions. Do we really need to pay the people saying would you like fries with that making $15 an hour? What motivation do they have to better themselves when they are making $31,000?
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Unions didn't destroy the car industry in America, crappy cars destroyed the American car industry - management who refused to change before it was too late.

Others will notice the presumptions in this person's post:

1. Corporations can afford to keep paying CEOs and top management more, but they cannot afford to pay the peons more.
2. The belief that employees are paid based upon the value they bring to a company's bottom line. As I've pointed out before, team leaders are in charge of departments that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year at the store level, yet are paid a tiny fraction of the revenue they directly help bring in to the pockets of Target's top investor class.
3. The idea that amount of money you make has a direct correlation to your worth as a person ("betterment").

The greatest trick the capitalists ever played was getting the peons to buy into this garbage.
 
JuicedSoftball1 said:
In my personal opinion Union's had their place in history and that is where they should stay. At least for industries such as retail and fast food. Our jobs are not that difficult and do not warrant much more in terms of compensation. Sure I will agree maybe a dollar or two more but with Unions its going to require more than that because of fee's etc. You can talk about the CEO's and top officials getting paid millions upon millions a year but unions destroyed the auto industry. They needed a bailout because you had people making $40 an hour to tighten bolts and the auto industry had its hands tied and couldnt do anything about it because of the unions. Do we really need to pay the people saying would you like fries with that making $15 an hour? What motivation do they have to better themselves when they are making $31,000?
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please explain to me in great detail what is so bad about working fast food or retail that the people who work those jobs don't deserve a living wage
 
melvin said:
Unions didn't destroy the car industry in America, crappy cars destroyed the American car industry - management who refused to change before it was too late.

Others will notice the presumptions in this person's post:

1. Corporations can afford to keep paying CEOs and top management more, but they cannot afford to pay the peons more.
2. The belief that employees are paid based upon the value they bring to a company's bottom line. As I've pointed out before, team leaders are in charge of departments that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year at the store level, yet are paid a tiny fraction of the revenue they directly help bring in to the pockets of Target's top investor class.
3. The idea that amount of money you make has a direct correlation to your worth as a person ("betterment").

The greatest trick the capitalists ever played was getting the peons to buy into this garbage.
Click to expand...

THIS!

Wish I could like this a whole bunch of times.
 
JuicedSoftball1 said:
For a low skill job its a lot.
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I've never lived on something that low. It's such a tiny salary, and you're saying it's too much just because of the job someone does? I would like to see you live on that, which you consider "a lot," for a year without any external support. Then you might appreciate why those that work those jobs would like to have at least that much, because they definitely aren't getting that now. And guess what? Government programs have to pick up the slack so these people don't starve. The biggest welfare queens are the corporations, no individual costs our society as much as walmart does through their greed.
 
oath2order said:
please explain to me in great detail what is so bad about working fast food or retail that the people who work those jobs don't deserve a living wage
Click to expand...


I have respect for everyone who is working a job and giving it their all in a legal manner. At one point it was my intentions to be a Target success story going from making $6.50 an hour to when I started to a 6 figure STL. It is a viable job as you move up the ranks. I decided I didnt want to do that anymore.

I will never see these fields as career jobs unless you are on the TL or higher level and they are not meant to be.

Target team members should be comprised of high schoolers, college students, people working a 2nd job for extra income, older people who are basically retired but want extra money or who are bored, or people who are in between jobs. People on here make it sound like if they can't afford a 1 bedroom apartment, car payment, food, cell phone that they are not paid enough.....

I would love to get paid more but paying us more just causes a big snowball effect. As a retail employee I do not think I should get paid anything near what a Teacher, police, fire fighter, and a military person makes if I am on the lowest level and that is what people are demanding.
 
Unfortunately in this day and age the people who are working for the low and minimum wage jobs are more often woman who are supporting families.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/average-minimum-wage-worker-myth

Which kind of explains why so many of Walmart and Targets workers are also on food stamps.
Does it make any sense at all that people with jobs should also have to get government assistance because the company they work for has decided the nature of their work is so 'menial' that ehy are not worth paying more than the bare minim?
 
melvin said:
Walmart raising its minimum wage for 500,000 of its workers to $10 per hour. Amazing! I guess they'll be going out of business in short order or laying off thousands of employees?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/19/walmart-wage-raise_n_6712316.html
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So now target will be paying TMs less than walmart associates AND asking more from them than walmart would. Wonderful. IMO $10 isn't enough, but it's a step in the right direction and it's definitely more than most targets pay. Only on the west coast do they start out at anywhere near that much. Since target is making a habit of following walmart when it concerns labor decisions maybe they'll follow this one too.
 
We always seem to copy Walmart so I wouldn't be surprised if Spot did the same thing

After we all get our reviews of course
 
Something tells me that will be the only way Target will raise the starting wage.

Then again if it happens it will happen after reviews.
 
JuicedSoftball1 said:
For a low skill job its a lot.
Click to expand...
Low-skilled job/worker is a matter of perspective.
Yeh, being a barista isn't rocket science but - when you're slammed in the morning with a line snaking out the door on a cold morning with people who 'want their coffee, dammit!' - you'd pay more if it meant having a worker who was there on time, could multi-task on massive drink orders & still charm the socks off a pissed-off guest.
Like-wise, cashiering may not be a 'career' but you'd kill to have a cashier who could ring out guests at top speed & bag their stuff up before they even finished swiping their card. Compare that to a newb who has to call you over to have you walk them thru a tax-exempt trans or scanning a giftcard or processing a credit app.
They're not 'high-skill' jobs but why shouldn't someone get a bump-up when they master that seemingly 'low' skill? Or train in various areas? Or stay late when needed? Coming in when called?
When you retain proficient workers (even in 'low' skill jobs), your business operates more efficiently. High turnover means you're wasting resources to train people over & over & over again only to watch them leave because they only got an 8 cent raise. VERY inefficient.
Compare these 'low' skills to our guests, many of whom can't even figure out a damn swipe pad (hit X, not cancel to get to credit....like it SAYS ON THE PAD!!!!). Low skill =/= low intelligence.
 
JuicedSoftball1 said:
Despite what you all think I am not anti paying us more. I am in no way claiming our jobs are easy they suck I know.
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Your premise, one that is repeated by certain politicians and talk radio hosts, is that minimum wage jobs aren't "meant to be" permanent/lifelong jobs. Neither is the ETL position. It's supposed to be one that grooms that person to move up to STL or another position within the company. Using your logic, why don't we just pay ETLs a little more than hourly employees?

Of course, what was "meant to be" is a very poor way of framing and understanding this issue. The simple fact is that many Americans have no choice but to rely on minimum wage or near-minimum wage jobs to survive. The right wing's answer is that this is the fault of the people making low wages because they are lazy and just want handouts. Normal people, on the other hand, understand that much/most of the time, these people have little or no choice. And the consequences for all of us are dire when we have a whole class of people who barely make enough to survive. Most all of their money goes into rent, electricity and only the bare essentials. The middle class and the working poor drive the economy. When they stop spending money, the economy goes into the crapper. As you can see with Walmart, corporations are quite capable of paying their workers more money without losing anything. They simply choose not to and count on the fact that there will be folks like you who will swallow the lines they feed you about why they cannot and should not pay their workers more money. So, we can discuss abstract concepts of what people should be paid in some hypothetical world or we can talk in realistic terms about what happens if we allow wages to slip further and further behind inflation and the cost of living.
 
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