Make it worth my while.
I said before, an employer has to make a job worth my time if the point is to stay until retirement age. Monitary incentives like bonuses, more responsibility, access or influence in the other processes not involving me personally. I believe it's all about competition. As someone who's unemployed and has been so, the question is how does an employer compete with " free ". If people get newspapers from one place for free right out of the box, and there's other newspapers they have to shell out .50 cents to $1.00 for, how do you compete with that? Content. The job has to have appealing content in order for me to come up out of my shell and into the workforce again putting up with a lot of what I normally don't have to being unemployed. People have riddiculed me, but they know it doesn't work anymore than it does on fat people trying to lose weight. I know. I'm not saying anything more or different than what I've said already, I just want to give another think of it this way analogy/perspective.
- thanks for reading this message.
xttwo
No matter how much we agree with you on this point, the sad reality is that most employers really don't give a rat's butt how they treat us or what kind of incentives they offer us to stay. Just yesterday a woman (along with 6 other mid-level managers) was fired. She had been with our hospital for over 25 years and had worked her way up from the bottom, starting as a cleaning lady, then as a nursing assistant, to a nurse and then on to various management positions. They waited until her workday was over and called her and the others into the office and fired them all. These loyal employees were escorted off hospital property by the security guards. That really makes the rest of us want to give them 110% of our efforts or time. NOT. They have no loyalty towards the employees, none at all.
Unless someone is fired for cause, these are business decisions, Lola! It's foolish to take them personally. They really do not owe us anything other than decent pay for the work we do and a safe environment free from harassment and abuse. My June 1993 layoff from Pratt and Whitney, along with about 500 employees that day, was essentially the same as what you described. All of us got that dreaded telephone call from our supervisor requesting that we meet privately with him and his boss. I did what I was told and they gave me a form to sign saying that I would not sue them. I signed the form and I was told to go into the room they use for presentations for additional details. I went in and all those people were there at the same time. They answered our questions, and we were told about outplacement services and given other essential information. Then we went back to our work areas, cleaned out our desks and were escorted out the door by their security guards and that was the end of it. There was no time for good-byes, and I did not care. I was glad that this day was finally over. I worked there for eleven years. Many of these employees, now former employees, worked there much longer. My friend and co-worker, Dee, left with me that day (I gave her a ride to work). She worked there for nineteen years - having transferred there from Connecticut in the seventies. Others were close to retirement. They represented all ages, ethnic groups, races, and religion. I doubt there was any real discrimination in the selection of people who were to be laid off! This was one of many layoffs which spanned a decade or more! How could these layoffs be considered personal? Some people get too emotionally tied to their jobs. Their jobs are the main source of their satisfaction. They are their jobs. They're left with no other identities. It's a depressing and empty feeling until they recognize for what it is and rise above it. In time - most people feel better and arrive at a good place. I did! The people that were fired at the hospital will also.
Bunzo
I know it is business and layoffs or firings are not personal for the most part. I, personally, do not identify myself with my job. I go to work, do my job, and come home. There are nurses there, though, whose lives completely revolve around being a nurse. It is, as you put it, their identity. It is who they are. And to lose that is devastating. It just made all of us wonder whose neck is next on the chopping block. Currently the hospital has 75 nursing positions open. These nurses should have been offered a job as a floor nurse instead of just firing them outright. But they weren't offered anything except the door. It didn't affect me personally, and I don't even know any of them, but others that I work with started their nursing careers with these women. It's too bad the hospital doesn't spend more energy concentrating on patient outcomes.
The issue I have with the way American business are run is that the employee is always the one who suffers. For example, ENRON went belly up because of bad management yet their employees suffered when they all lost their jobs. In any company, the first thing they do when money is tight is to lay off employees. Why should employees be laid off? Why not fire the management team for their stupidity in managing the company? Look at Ford Motor Company. Their cars are not selling so the first thing they do is shut down factories, lay off employees and encourage employees to retire. BUT it is the management's fault for NOT building cars Americans want. It is not the employees fault that Ford management could not see the future and foolishly did not compete with the imports. CEOs think about their financial safety before the company. Think about it. Why wouldn't a CEO take this job if it paid $80,000 a year? I worked for a major retailer after high school at minimum wage. I met the retailer's CEO who was earning $270,000 back then. He did not keep up with the times and the company eventually failed. Whose fault was that? Not mine or my fellow workers! I would love to pay my employees what I feel they are worth. For example, I have one sales manager who busts her butt working and traveling to meet quotas. She is paid $85,000 a year plus commissions and bonuses which can average $150,000 a year in total compensation. I strongly feel her base salary should be in the $120,000 range plus commissions and bonuses. But because of shareholder pressure to increase their investments 10%-15%, we are limited on what we can pay her.
If I'm reading your opinion correctly you make it seem like there's this tug of war between a large corporate shareholder responsibility versus the middle class workers that make up the corporation itself, where the managers, supervisors are caught in the middle. You very well may be but unfortunately you don't exactly qualify for sympathy, nor would you get any from the sales manager you speak of if she ever got laid off. Who's she going to blame for her predicament, the person she has the most access to, the person who's within her reach, the person who let her go. Mainly because you're that easily accessable corporate CEO's by design have that teflon shell under most circumstanaces. The only thing a lowly group of people could do is sue provided there's a valid reason #1, and enough people to sign on for a class action #2 which just doesn't happen all that often.
The medical profession is different, it's under the gun of state and federal regulation in the name of parties trying to score political points. I almost feel sorry for you people, God forbid you ever had to make a mistake doing anything. But the old saying goes : if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen ( and find another line of work ). I worked security for a condominium in a pretty upscale part of the city where just about everyone owned a high price current year luxury vechicle. As I stood there in the morning, feeling tired and ashamed of my status, manually opening what was a broken garage door seeing them go by, each one was wearing either a white doctor's lab jackets or pale blue O.R. hospital scrubs. Goes with the territory, is all I said to myself then and will say now.
An upscale part of Haverhill???
The city was called Charlestown.
Not everyone in the medical professions is wealthy. Only the doctors, not us lowly nurses. We make what the hospitals dictate, which is as little as they can get away with paying us. You are right about one thing, though. Make one little mistake and your career is over. Of course, on the receiving end of that mistake someone could actually die, which isn't very good either. I don't like the stress of being responsible for keeping 4-6 critically ill people alive during my shift without the means to actually do anything should something go wrong and then being held responsible for anything that does go wrong. If a patient starts to go downhill on me, I have to call the doctor because I can't legally do anything without a doctor's order. So while the patient is in a life threatening situation, even though I know what to do, I have to wait for the doctor to call me back and hopefully be awake enough to give me orders that will actually help the person. Nursing is a thankless, dirty job. But I can go to sleep at night knowing that I did my best and that what I did was not harmful to anyone. Nor criminal or immoral. | |
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