corporations screwing their employees

[HL2addict]

I've noticed more and more retail stores and companies that are having fewer and fewer full-time and salary employees, hiring more and more part timers and only giving the part time people about 15-18 hrs a week. (i know, i'm one of them) also, they get really pissed when you tell them you've got a 2nd job simply because they have to schedule around another job. (yet this wouldn't happen if they gave you more hrs, cut part time to the essentials so you had less people to schedule) Yet companies don't really care about the people that actually work for them and run their stores. I've talked to store managers (in other retail stores) who dont give a crap about their part timers, and expect them to only have that one job and survive on 15 hrs a week. Yet, when the part timers get together and tell the managers they will all quit unless they get more hrs, management gets pissed. It's like this.. treat your employees like you would want to be treated and you will have a great store. Ford, the guy who started assemblies, cut work hrs to 8hrs a day and doubled pay and still his profits and worker output skyrocketed. Yet companies don't care about employees, they only care about their own wallets.

any thoughts?

 

[Baal]

My mom works at a grocery store pharmacy, and she used to work over 40 hours a week, but they cut her off because they don't want to pay any overtime (time and a half). Reading it here may make you think that it wasn't that much of a screw-job, but she doesn't make that much of an hourly wage, so it wasn't like they were paying her $45 an hour. And at her day-time store she works at, she generally only works 10-4 or 10-3. I'm sure she would love to work 8-4 or whatever, but as you say, they don't want many full time employees.

I work at a similiar grocery store as a cart jockey, which used to only be Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 4-6 hours for each shift, and previous to that it was the standard 15-20 hours a week in the summer. We do certainly have a lot of employees that work 10-20 hours a week, but it's mostly students that only work nights/weekends anyways, so they have the full-timers working during the day.

Retail stores by nature are penny pinchers, because their profit margin is much smaller per-item sold / employee man hour, because of the volume of products they sell. They may only make $5 of profit (profit = how much they sold the item for MINUS how much they paid for the item from the supplier (IE: gross income, but I said profit for ease)) on a $100 order, but think how many orders they ring through in a typical day.

My other two jobs are dealing with computers. I was recently hired as Tech Support staff for a community centre computer lab, and even more recently as a Data Migrationist at my city's Department of Jusice. Based on these new positions I only work Sundays at the grocery store, which I alluded too earlier.

 

[repiV]

To suggest that businesses care primarily about their profits is about the most obvious thing you could possibly say...the only purpose of a business is to make money.
If they find they can make more money with a steady base of loyal staff, then that's what they will do.

 

[kirovman]

I thought this is what they've been doing in France...

 

[Terminator]

Haha, LIDL, the cheap german supermarket made their female employees wear red headbands during their periods so they could be excused to use the toilet. (yes that's right, you're not allowed to go to toilet unless you're on a break)

That's an infringement of human rights surely?

 

[Stigmata]

Around here, at Futureshop and Best Buy and a whole slew of other stores, "full-time" means 37.5 hours per week.

Ugh.