Quote:
Originally Posted by dreadgeek
I work for a mid-sized software company. My wife works for a mid-sized cell phone company catering to older people (a competitor of Jitterbug). We are paid fairly well, our benefits are very good and we have a great deal of flexibility--it is nothing for me to say, for instance, that I'm going to finish up the afternoon at home, leave at lunch and then telecommute. When we have a snowpocalypse (where we get snow then ice then snow and then more ice) Portland shuts down. With my company, we just telecommute until the roads clear. My wife has to go in. My wife is seriously underpaid and has to operate under a truly odious set of rules violation of any of which could get one fired very quickly. There ARE things that could get us walked out the door, but handing Tylenol to a co-worker with a headache isn't one of them! Now, we both answer the phone for a living. The difference is that my job requires a pretty diverse and intense skill-set while my wife's job requires the ability to have a good phone manner, the ability to write grammatical sentences and sort of generalized customer service skills.
By any objective measure my wife and her co-workers are abused at work. They are treated, at best, like unruly children and her bosses behave in a way that almost says "we DARE you to quit". They know that they can pull someone off the street and train them to their standards and have them on the phones in a week. My employer dare NOT treat us that way. It is in their best interests to keep us happy. Why? Because on any one of our product groups it takes *at least* six months before you're up to speed and a year before you are truly crossing the threshold of self-reliance (meaning that you can solve most of your user-issues on your own except for the weird stuff). It takes two years before you can reasonably say that you can handle all but the weirdest problems on your own. So if we all walked out the door, they would be seriously hurt for at least six months and more likely two or more years. Since support contracts on *ONE* product alone (the product I support) accounts for 40% of company revenue (those aren't new sales, that's just companies buying support on software they already own) they have a serious incentive NOT to make us miserable lest we leave.
So the tighter the pool of labor is, the better it is for workers. The tighter the pool of jobs, the worse it is for workers.
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Did any else hear the "This American Life" Episode that was the story of GM's Partnership with Toyota back in the 80's. Fascinating, and oh so enlightening. I suggest you search for it if this episode is still available.
Long story short, and leaving out many points made in the story, the Toyota workers in Japan were allowed at any time to pull a yellow cord and stop the entire production line. It could be for anything, from a loose bolt to a major part failure. When the worker pulled the cord, the manager of the plant would rush over to find out what was wrong, taking in every word that the worker said - even writing down suggestions for new tools or other innovations that might fix not only this one problem but future problems.
The result: Quality
GM on the other hand was a production machine and the people there were simply another tool, not there for their minds. There was no yellow cord to pull. In fact any stop of the production line would result in a yelling at from the boss, and possibly losing your job.
The result: Quantity.
Lots and lots of cars ended up sitting in the lot at the end of the production line because they could not even be driven onto the truck for delivery to the dealer.
I once asked a friend visiting from Japan what she thought was the biggest difference between American Society and Japanese Society and her answer was: Everyone in America tries to be an individual, everyone in Japan wants to be part of society.
I think America has a lot to learn from other cultures. In our defense we are a very young country and hopefully we will grow to be a decent adult country. One that cares about being part of society. One that sees the weakest and most vulnerable among us as people to protect and care for rather than to step over or walk around on our way to our individual goals.