I'm 28 years old. I work at a chemical plant whose parent is based in Europe and whose tentacles reach around the world. I've worked there two years under contract from a staffing company. I make around $55,000 a year but I receive no benefits, no 401k, no future. For every $1 I make the staffing place charges my employer $10, AND THEY STILL MAKE MONEY OFF ME. Twenty years ago I could afford a house, a family, but now? I can barely make rent. But where else can I go? Every other bigname BIZNESS is going the same way. We let THEM convince our parents that unions are the Devil and now what do we have? Companies where if you even talk about employee rights you're blackballed. You may as well hit the gate. What really pisses me off is the "company" I work for is based in a place where they wouldn't dare treat their employees like that. But they can here. Because we're used to it. Because we're desperate. Just like me. It's a deadend with nowhere to go but down and out and it really gets to me sometimes. To paraphrase Carlin I hope one day this will change but I'm way too cynical to think it'll happen in my lifetime."I'll take a little cancer so longs as I can get a job."
The rich pay nothing and get all the benefits. The middle does all the work and pays all the taxes. The poor are there... just to scare the fuck out of the middle class.
What I really mourn is the death of the pension. Sure, I have a 401(k), but I can drop all the money in the world into it with employer match and if the market goes bust, boom. No retirement. I do not trust the market enough to trust I will have a valuable retirement fund in 40 years.
The market will go bust and it will go boom again. It's this simple: in order for the market to have participants, the market must enrich investors or they won't play. If the average investor didn't make money in the market long-term there would be no market. Long-term, the market will go up, it's just a matter of the term. These are beta gains. Alpha gains are increases in investment due to idiosyncratic performance above and beyond the basic (beta) gains of the market. Beta gains are cumulative. Alpha gains are zero-sum: any money you make is offset on the balance sheet by losses for someone else. You can lose all your beta gains and more through alpha plays. This is why you shouldn't day-play your 401(k). Putting it in the market, however, does not mean you will lose it.
Isn't that reasonably good money though? Don't worry about your 401k or pension or something. Young(-ish) people's pensions will be plundered by governments before they get anything anyway, so you're not any worse off in that regard.
Why can't you move to a better place then? Is it genuinely impossible, or are you just uncomfortable with the idea?I make around $55,000 a year but I receive no benefits, no 401k, no future.
What really pisses me off is the "company" I work for is based in a place where they wouldn't dare treat their employees like that. But they can here. Because we're used to it. Because we're desperate. Just like me.
Where would I move to? Germany? I'm not trying to be argumentative but that's just unfeasible. I'm stuck in the States and here and now it's all about the bottom line. More with less. Squeezing every last dime and productivity out of your employees only to lay them all off if it pleases the shareholders. I'm youngish and they take full advantage of that. They know everyone else is operating the same way so I really have nowhere else to go. Shit I'm lucky to have found the job I have. Somewhere around Reagan I think we lost the balance of power between employee and employer and now it's reached almost indentured servitude proportions. Social security? I know I'll probably never see that and if I do people can't live on that now. I'm almost 30. I need to start putting a retirement plan together like 5 years ago and they just, don't, give a shit. There's no real loyalty anymore.
Well, with your envy-inducing native-English-language privilege you can just waltz over to an Asian country of your choosing, and pretend to teach English for ~15h/week for a (usually) considerably above average salary (by local standards). It makes no sense that you can do that, just because of an accident of birth, without any skills whatsoever, but hey.. the world we live in makes very little sense. Moving is not a problem. I've moved out of Finland twice now, but without that privilege. I'm almost 40 and have no pension saved up. That doesn't really matter because again, we're not any worse off than others, because others are going to lose their pensions when governments plunder them. We'll all just have to work longer, or run a successful business to be able to retire earlier. You can move out if you just have the will to make it happen. Don't hate "corporations" for employing you. The fact that you're working somewhere shows that you find it preferrable to any other options you perceived you had. Now you have a new one. Go "teach" while you still can.
Hating corporations for the conditions under which they employ people really is the smaller issue here. My disgust has way more to do with the way in which they manipulate the actual options, the political framework surrounding the options and (throuh corporate media) our perception of our options. Simply saying "Move to asia, teach english" makes one hell of an assumption about someone's circumstances and responsibilities. Assuming they are indeed able to do so, it may actually be a decent idea. If someone is considering a language teaching position, just be ultra-paranoid about whom you sign up with and the terms of employment. There are very shady teaching agencies and people looking for that easy gig do get screwed over badly. Depending on your choice of nation and your fluency in their language, actually enforcing any terms of your contract may be a far different process from what you're used to, too. Don't, under any circumstances whatsoever, let anyone have your passport.Don't hate "corporations" for employing you. The fact that you're working somewhere shows that you find it preferrable to any other options you perceived you had.
Corporations don't "manipulate political frameworks". Our rulers do. Exactly. So how about not shaming me about "assumptions"? I don't know him or his exact circumstances, but he does have that option, and he sounds like he's in an overly negative mindset. With a $55k per year income, he's not really poor. The rest of your message is not really relevant to our discussion, so I won't comment further.the political framework surrounding the options and (throuh corporate media) our perception of our options
Assuming they are indeed able to do so, it may actually be a decent idea.
Why do you take this as an attempt at "shaming" you? Why would I want to do that? Distinguishing between corporate rulers and political rulers is becoming increasingly hard nowadays. They certainly visit the same Bilderberg meetings (among many, many others) and it's not exactly uncommon for people to switch back and forth between the two sectors. And no, I still don't believe that simply removing the political sector from the equation will lead to an improvement of the situation.
What situation is that, and how would you improve it?And no, I still don't believe that simply removing the political sector from the equation will lead to an improvement of the situation.
This is shocking. Could you explain a little about what this staffing place is?
Does is add value anywhere in the chain, or just skim off your earnings? Sorry if this sounds ignorant, I'm European, and I'm not sure an equivalent exists here. For every $1 I make the staffing place charges my employer $10
eeeek. I just got back from Greece :/If Germany has its way, soon to come to everyone else.
A staffing company works by taking all the hardship out of the equation for the potential employer. They handle all the headhunting, interviews, payroll, etc. The employer doesn't pay me, the staffing company does. The way it's supposed to work is after a certain period of time (6 months to a year in my experience) the employer actually hires you on as a true employee. In the last 5 years though that seems to have changed. By keeping you at arms length through the staffing firm the employer can get all the work they want out of you without having to cough up money for such trivial things as health insurance or retirement benefits. This you can imagine saves the employer a lot of money while keeping the employee screwed. Not only screwed but with my crazy schedule pretty much locked into the job. $10 for my $1 is pretty inconsequential when you figure in the tens of thousands their saving by shirking the potential benefits. It also means they can fire me anytime it's economically viable for literally zero reason. It's fubar.
Staffing companies also allow companies to amortize and rebate their workers differently. By working through a staffing company you cease to be an employee and become a line item in a spreadsheet. It may not even be "cheaper" for them to hire you through a staffing company without accounting for tax benefits and accounting trickery, which are likely substantial savings. Seriously, though, dude. I've been there. You're a polar bear on a shrinking ice floe. Whatever it takes to give you some jumping room? Do it. There's no happy ending for you here. You know it. Once the job is gone (and you know in your heart of hearts the job will go away) you'll bust ass to get another one. The trick is to bust ass now.
So workers of staffing companies are classed as something like private contractors rather than employees? We have a neologism here in France Uberization (from the company Uber... you probably heard how popular it is here ;) ) - there is a lot of discussion of Uberization of the workforce. Is this what's happening here?
An outsourced HR and payroll department, essentially?