President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign

and domestic;


that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God

 

Daaamn. Looks like it was a roast, but still...

 

We have a lot of teens working at the store as well. Most start as baggers at the local minimum wage (higher than the federal rate). Those that stick with it get regular raises via the union steps, plus health bennies. Needless to say, explaining the importance of accepting/rejecting management offers was a priority during the last contract talks.

Always glad to see those who stick with it move into better gigs, like day or night stocking, fresh cut or even cashiering, even though I hate losing them as baggers!

 

And that's acceptable to you? The mindset shouldn't be about keeping wages low because it's good business. It should be, "How can I make this job attractive so I have good employees, even if it's fairly entry level work?"

WalMart lags behind it's retail brethren in full-time work. While it offers platitudes about changing that, it also shifts the definition of full-time. In no other industry is full-time defined as something less than 37.5 hours per week, yet it is at WalMart.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/14/wal...-full-time-in-effort-to-retain-employees.html

Lest you think I'm just anti-WalMart, I'm not. Amazon has a similar disgusting history, and the newspaper industry has similar wage and benefit issues. Gannett, Lee, MNG/Digital First are the definition of scum employers.

Maybe I'm biased because I have had extremely negative past experiences working for companies previously mentioned. And maybe you're biased by your positive experience at WalMart.

Which is why it's important to look beyond personal experiences and instead look at the data. Companies that offer full-time work, good pay, and aren't negative environments end up not having issues with employee retention.

When your move to retain employees is, "Gee, maybe we should offer them full-time work," that's your problem as a company, not the American worker's.

We are not lazier. We don't have a problem with hard work.

We have a skills gap, because generations were told it was better to go college than to learn to be a plumber.

And we have a debt issue, because generations were told they couldn't get a job without a degree, colleges jacked up tuition in response, and now Americans graduate with not only a devalued diploma but six figures in debt.

So as those financially crippled Americans look for jobs, they want something that's going to ease their burden, not add to it. For decades, WalMart acted like paying its employees was a burden. You'll forgive the masses for being a bit skeptical that things have changed. Amazon is getting the same reputation now as it tries to trample unionization efforts.

You can treat people fairly and still turn a profit. And if you can't, maybe you shouldn't be in business in the first place.

 

Would you pay $3 (random number) extra for every item you bought off Amazon if it went to front-line worker salaries?

 

Also, it takes some nerve to be on here for years talking about your customers like they were shit on the bottom of your shoe and then proclaim yourself a “good employee.”

 

Beats my soon-to-be-ex-company, which is replacing its designers with non-journalists from India.

Yesterday we had a Mothers' Day column going in Hilton Head. Story had a mug of the columnist and an old photo of the columnist (as a child) and her mother. When it was "designed" by someone in Gurgaon, the mug of the columnist was used as the main display photo. Only because I still have a tiny smidgen of pride in this product did I point it out to the team leaders, who quickly saw that it was fixed.

It's like training someone to be a reporter by first teaching them the alphabet.

 

For what it's worth, a former employer of mine used an American central design desk and had the same issues. Typos in headlines. Wrong decisions about art. Inability to follow instructions.

I don't blame the workers, who were often fresh out of college, working with little direction, designing a shit ton of pages in their shifts, and who were moved from paper to paper "to stay fresh" rather than asked to build a rapport with their clients. I blame the companies, who sought to cut corners and placed no value in the product. It was an assembly line with no quality control tests. Not surprising that one of those companies turned to even cheaper labor to pad profits for execs.

 

I briefly worked about five years ago for a giant multinational chemical company, as part of an internal order-taking group. We had 15 people, all "full-time" part-timers working eight hours a day five days per week at the US headquarters, who officially were employees of the outside staffing company. I will add that 95% of the group were Latin. Some of them drove a miserable commute two hours each way from the Shore to North Jersey for what was considered a sweet gig with only a high school education. But still a part-time gig, with no benefits.

 

I would.

I don't like this hypothetical, because it always comes off as the only solution.

It's not.

Universal healthcare is another solution. Think about it. What are the biggest costs to most employers? Salaries and benefits. Remove costly healthcare from the benefit package because every worker is already insured before even getting a job. Employers no longer have to foot any portion of the bill for healthcare. That money can then go to better wages, 401k matching, vacation time, and, yes, into the company coffers.

 

What do you think about all the current/former sportswriters 'round here who routinely dog on their papers' stupid subscribers?