In the Olden Days

Some of us were talking the other day about employers and their treatment of employees. It sure has gone down hill. Not just the fact that pension plans are a thing of the past, but living wages, respect and status as well.

I recall when I first moved to Sioux Falls. I was 19 and getting my first experience in the culture of the area. At the time, Morrell's was the pinnacle of employers! The job was a filthy one, the hours were long and it was shift work. It was well known, however, if you worked at Morrell's you had it made for life. You made a great wage, you had great benefits and you could retire relatively young with a company pension. In the few short years since then, however, things have changed a great deal.

I have been kind of thinking about the things that we have heard about the disintegrating prospects out there. I should compose a list of the things that employers use to soothe employees annoyed by the low wages and small raises:
1. It is now a global economy and we have to compete with people making pennies a day
2. The surveys of businesses in the area show that we are within the norm for this type of labor
3. You should be lucky you have a job.
4. It's not going to get any better.
5. We don't give cost-of-living wages, we pay for performance
6. The banking industry is notorious for low wages.
7. The pay might be low, but you can't forget about the benefits.

Has anyone had the benefit of the corporate calculations for raises? It is an exponential thang...

First of all, your department is given $x for raises.

Next, you compete with your coworkers for ratings.

You are graded in 10 areas, more or less. The scale is 1-5.
Now, keep in mind that 5s, while not impossible to obtain, are reserved for the kind of employees that you see in the dusty award frames with some sort of gold embellishment. Their performance is damn near heroic. You even suspect that their framed photo was at one time sold in bulk to employers who wish to dangle the impossible carrot in front of everyone else's head, leading them to believe that they can be this kind of performer, and demonstrating in their performance appraisals that they are nowhere near that status.

After everyone is rated 1-5 in their 10 or so areas. They are given a score. Now keep in mind when the supervisor is rating everyone, that they have already been told how many of each rating they can have. For example, 50% of their employees have to be '3' performers. 20% each are '4' and '2' performers and 5% each are '1' and '5' performers.

Each person's score is then multiplied by a certain percentage. The more money you make, the lower the percentage. .: if you make $30,000 and the top pay for your job is $32,000, your score will be multiplied by a lower percentage than the person that makes $23,000 in the $32,000. This way, the more that you make, the less you will receive in raises so you never quite top out in your area.

I kid you not! This is what is done in the corporate world that I call Blowing Sunshine. I think more than attempting to create a fair way to appraise and compensate employees, this confuses them so much that they don't know what the heck happened.

Oh, as for the comment that we have to take our benefits into consideration...I have tried to cash in on the fertility limit in our health care plan, since I really don't plan on using it, and I can't seem to get ahold of it. Also they won't let me take out the military pay that I won't be using among other things. When I tried to pay for groceries with my health insurance card, they looked at me like I was nuts. I just can't seem to live off my benefits...

When I was researching income disparity last year I got sooooo mad! I found out how much my CEO made and how much United Health's CEO made. They did incredibly. Oddly enough, last year my raise was $.11 short of covering the increase in health care. This did not correspond with the fast rising costs of groceries, gas, insurance copays, utilities, etc.



I propose that we begin blowing the same sunshine at CEOs that they give us! We compared your job with the small grocery store owner on the corner and you will have to take a pay cut so you can be within the normal salary range for your position...we pay for performance and it appears to us that it is your employees that have been more efficient and productive. You will now compete with all the employees in the company, including the janitors, and your pay raises will be based on some exponential calculation divided by the number of years you worked to the power of the degree of brownness on your nose.

I think in the same way they should REQUIRE slumlords to have to reside in the stys they create, they should make CEOs try to live on our wages.

Okay, enough venting.
Good Night

UPDATE: By the way, employees' wages are considered expenses. CEO and upper management salaries and compensation is NOT considered an expense. It is taken from the profits. Therefore, when they need to trim down expenses, cutting CEO or UM payout doesn't enter into the picture.