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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 02 2020, @11:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the welcome-to-the-new-world-order dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Until the 1980s, big companies in America tended to take a paternalistic attitude toward their workforce. Many corporate CEOs took pride in taking care of everyone who worked at their corporate campuses. Business leaders loved to tell stories about someone working their way up from the mailroom to a C-suite office.

But this began to change in the 1980s. Wall Street investors demanded that companies focus more on maximizing returns for shareholders. An emerging corporate orthodoxy held that a company should focus on its "core competence"—the one or two functions that truly sets it apart from other companies—while contracting out other functions to third parties.

Often, companies found they could save money this way. Big companies often pay above the market rate for routine services like cleaning offices, answering phones, staffing a cafeteria, or working on an assembly line. Putting these services out for competitive bid helped the companies get these functions completed at rock-bottom rates, while avoiding the hassle of managing employees. It also saved them from having to pay the same generous benefits they offered to higher-skilled employees.

Of course, the very things that made the new arrangement attractive for big companies made it lousy for the affected workers. Not only were companies trying to spend less money on these services, but now there were companies in the middle taking a cut. Once a job got contracted out, it was much less likely to become a first step up the corporate ladder. It's hard to work your way up from the mailroom if the mailroom is run by a separate contracting firm.

[...] The existence of such a two-tier workplace is especially ironic in Silicon Valley, a region that takes pride in its egalitarian ethos. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a remarkably candid assessment of the situation in 2012, in a statement quoted by author Chrystia Freeland.

"Many tech companies solved this problem by having the lowest-paid workers not actually be employees. They’re contracted out," Schmidt said. "We can treat them differently, because we don’t really hire them. The person who’s cleaning the bathroom is not exactly the same sort of person. Which I find sort of offensive, but it is the way it’s done."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:54AM (4 children)

    by lentilla (1770) on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:54AM (#965771)

    Hands up anyone that has met someone that cares about doing their job properly - despite obstacles that management put in their place? A shop steward that polishes the windows to a high shine because they take pride in their work? A teacher who buys some extra supplies on their own dime because the budget didn't quite stretch? An engineer that stays on after everyone else goes home to optimise a particularly difficult problem. Or a customer-facing worker taking an extra five minutes to let a customer rant until they they calm down enough to explain what they actually need?

    We have all seen these kind of people. Certainly not all workers - but they are not rare either - the kind of people that care about actually getting the job done properly, as well as collecting a paycheck.

    I wonder if this coming generation of workers; those who started work in the post-Uber era; will know anything of this pride in their work?

    Society has always lent heavily on the kind of people that would go the extra mile - the kind of people that fill in the cracks that would otherwise go unfilled. To make matters worse, they have always worked quietly and oftentimes actively avoided detection to the point that those giving the orders get the impression that they are completely in control of the entire operation.

    What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right? Do that enough times, and make it clear you will only be paid for what you are told to do - hurry up or be fired - and even the most dedicated people will bow to the economic necessity and social expectation to do exactly what they are told and not one jot more

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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:03AM

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:03AM (#965801) Journal

    63% of workers neither love nor hate their job. 24% would love to go postal. 13 % love their work, enough that they put up with all the shit that goes on around them. Unfortunately, a lot of those 13%ers get ground into the ground and mistreated so much that they either become part of the 24% or go lettuce picking. (Bonus points if you get the "lettuce picking" reference).

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:05AM (#965802)

    > What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right?

    While off topic, I can't help but say that this is as good a reason as any to not buy from Amazon (and probably others as well). If you get the wrong thing or damaged goods (poor packing), don't blame it on the warehouse worker, they were only trying to keep up with the demanded pace.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @03:25PM (#966003)

    > What happens in an era when people are punished for taking an extra moment to do what they know is right?

    I haven't seen this but I have seen the equivalent - people are rewarded for dumping their problems and freeloading off others who are doing the work. The job of management should be to take note of what's really happening on the shop floor. However these days we all write our own work assessments and submit 20 page self-prepared packets. Those who stick their finger in everyone's pie and claim it as their on their self-assessment win.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:55PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 03 2020, @05:55PM (#966056) Journal

    I've met several teacher who dipped into their inadequate pay to buy supplies. My wife had a close friend who bought toilet paper for use by her class, because the school didn't provide any....or at least not dependably.

    For that matter, I cared about my job the entire time I was employed, and my wife cared about hers.

    Note that none of us cared about the entity that provided the job, but about the purpose of the job, and the people we were helping. (In my case it was usually a lot more indirect than it was for the teachers, but I did make some software for internal use. And I did it to benefit the people who would use it, not the company.)

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