Some Practices in the Workplace Hurt People

Occasionally, we review how workplace attitudes, policies, and practices affect workers

I mentioned Gus in an earlier post. He and 8 other drivers left a grocery conglomerate because the company would not give them raises, but gave bonuses instead for 8 years. All nine of them got jobs with a long-distance trucking shipper. After 3 years, the company tripled how much each worker had to pay on healthcare premiums. In addition, the company is proposing a 15% cut in wages for all drivers. Management claims the need for lowering wages because of competition from cut-rate trucking companies. Profits to shareholders, however, increased by 17% in the last year.

Business Focus on Profits

B-School students learn that their role is to maximize profits for shareholders.  Some companies carry this advice to unhealthy or unlawful extremes: Enron, Arthur Andersen, Shearson-Lehman, and others come to mind. Trust in financial and other corporations plummeted since 2008.

Companies currently enjoy great corporate profits and executive rewards. Competition from cheaper labor markets, Asian production facilities, and other factors that create cheaper competition provide excuses for cutting overhead even more drastically. American workers have sacrificed a lot while shareholders profit:

• Loss of benefit defined pensions for contribution defined pensions
• Loss of healthcare, life insurance, and other benefits
• Lower salaries, bonuses, and other income
• Reduction in training, involvement in professional and trade associations
• Harsher and more restrictive employee practices
• More impersonal workplaces (some companies refuse to allow managers and supervisors call employees people, but insist they call them resources)
• One division of a major company stated that policy now dictated a standard 50-hour work week instead of 40-hours for all exempt employees
• Penurious wage increases for most of the workplace and huge increases for executives—even when their management loses money or closes the company

When Do We Find a Balance

If companies and management do not find a kinder, more just method of dealing with employees, then employees may find respite in collective bargaining (which legislatures are trying to eliminate).

Monday we begin a new series outlining how the 10X2 concepts will help you get hired faster