My friends and I have often come around, during many a bitch session, have wheeled around to the concept of corporate loyalty. The boss says, “Hey, we have a ship date, can you work Saturdays for the next two months?” Or something similar, plenty of times, but of course we are salaried/exempt employees and expected to work however many hours needed to get the job done.
Or put up with BS bureaucratic procedures to do things related to work, like get reimbursed for expenses. Why the heck employees are expected to pay for the expenses on a business trip and then get reimbursed weeks or months later is beyond me. You all can think of similar examples of how employers expect us to put out for them.
Barbara Ehrenreich lays it on the line in her NY Times essay Two-Tiered Morality: “Only a person of unblemished virtue can get a job at Wal-Mart — a low-level job, that is — …It turns out, however, that Wal-Mart management doesn’t hold itself to the same standard of rectitude it expects from its low-paid employees.”
Yeah, so here’s a shock: the loyalty runs up but rarely down. I could point to my own situation, where my bosses eliminated my job last year just because I needed some time off to recover from the stress they’d put me through. But that would be crying over spilt milk. Instead, look at the many, many companies (including my former employer) who are requiring that employees take the three business days this week off, either as PTO or unpaid. That’s about a 2% cut in pay, right off the top, though the employer PR tries to spin it as just days off the employee needs a little push to take.
The one that takes the cake, though: what about the huge compensation packages the execs get, even when rank and file employees by the thousands are being laid off? Again, the PR machine is hard at work, claiming the executive pay is needed to keep such good people from jumping to another company. But but but!!!! If the so-called “other company” can afford it, how about letting them? Are the PR flacks trying to say that only one person can possibly run the company successfully? Even Microsoft, possibly the greatest example of a really large one man shop today, is doing fine with Bill Gates having stepped aside from running the company in favor of Steve Ballmer.
Of course, I don’t have a “real” job just now. If I ever do get hired again, keep a watch and see if I mouth off about the subject in any meaningful way then, ‘k?
[via Karl, a Java programmer with a social conscience]
BillSaysThis 