Posted on 01/23/2008 9:42:02 AM PST by decimon
1) People quit (what I did)
2) People become lazy and/or steal.
Both #1 and #2 should work elsewhere, obviously.
Welcome to the world market where one can find employees thankful to have your job for less.
“It doesn’t pay, Big Blue. This company has a moron management problem.”
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve outsourced two accounts and on my last one I and my partner were replaced by EIGHT Brazilians. I got laid off in May and saw it coming a year before that so I wasn’t surprised. I got treated to a great education in corporate manipulation for which I am grateful. When my manager called me to explain that I just wasn’t being very productive in spite of the 60 hour weeks I knew it was over and I had to laugh. Nine years of great reviews and all of a sudden “POOF” I’m a lousy employee. I got a good severance package though.
I think the point was that these workers were having to work 45 hours anyway and were not eligible for overtime pay.
Usually workers stick it to The Man more than The Man sticks it to the workers.
Yes, I know. But at least, as they noted, with the higher base pay they were “guaranteed” that much per week. Now, it will depend on their boss whether they make up the 15%.
Either way, at 45 hours they will be making the same as before. Of course if they work more than 45 hours they’re better off. The question is, will this happen ?
Net: uncertainty, resentment.
This is a serious misinterpretation to what this article is all about.
The problem is that in IT, it's pretty rare to work a 40 hour week. That's why MOST IT workers are on salary. So the IBM employees were payed more than they'll get now that they've been reclassified as hourly pay employees. Their base pay for 40 hours of work will be less, but they would make the same as they were when they were on salary, based on "time and a half" overtime pay. But they're going to cut back on the number of overtime hours that these people work to cut labor costs. So they'll be earning less because they'll be working fewer hours.
I'm not defending the action of IBM. I just wanted to correct your interpretation of the article.
Mark
Whining legalistic jackasses, getting exactly what they wished for - and deserve.
That's how it always works. Long-time temp employees sued Microsoft, won, and got screwed.
IBM shouldn’t violate labor law.
Ive always been told that there is always someone behind that is smarter, quicker, stronger, prettier, faster and willing to work for less than you get. Thats why I have such high work ethic (aside from FReeping at work)
Hell I AM in IT and have been for years. I worked at IBM for 8 years in the 80s - I know what that’s all like. I didn’t work a piddly 40-45 hours per week most weeks - my workweek, particularly when I was travelling, often ran 70+ hours with no overtime. It’s the reason I quit. I was well-compensated, but not that well.
I didn’t misinterpret the article. You did. IBM, by this action, just guaranteed that these employees MUST work 45 hours to make the same amount of money. Might it cause IBM to stop working these people 50+ hours like they did with us ? Maybe-probably - but in the 40-45 hour range, these people lose.
They took on IBM, and the 40 hour a week person lost.
“But, the Indians work and study harder. In fact, many of the Indian schools are better than US schools. Guess what? The Indians study management too. I think it’s time to hire Indian execs at 1/4 of the rate of pay of American execs.”
Yeah, the old myth, perpetuated by management and corporate interests, that Indians are super-intellectual hyper-workers. HORSESHIT! I’ve worked with many of them at IBM and they’re no smarter, better educated or harder working than Americans. They’re cheaper though!
I think that it depends a lot on your position, the sort of business and company you're dealing with, and the sort of job you have. Your generalization may be true for many executive positions. I don't know for sure, since I'm not an executive.
I do know that long hours are quite common in the IT world. It's just a part of "the nature of the beast." In my case, I'm part of a 3 man department of network administration, and we're responsible for over 200 servers and 600+ remote locations. Since we've got these stores located all over the country, in every time zone, our "production hours" are from 7:00am until 10:00pm, Monday through Saturday. The only time we can do maintenance is between 10:00pm and 7:00am (and from 10:00pm Saturday night through 7:00am Monday). Plus we need to be able to support users during the production hours. So 50 to 60 hour weeks are quite common for us (sometimes quite a bit longer), and this has been the case since I started in the IT world back in the mid-1980s. I'm not complaining, this is the career I chose.
Mark
From a programmer's point of view, I work with lots of Indians and let me tell you, you're full of it. Indian programmers are NO BETTER than their American counterparts and the language barrier makes them worse.
I've described the realities of working as a salaried software developer. Frankly, I've really felt ripped off by working all those hours and not seeing the compensation in my paycheck at the end of the pay period. That's the short term, get it now view. The long term is that my employer recognized the effort and rewarded me with bonuses, promotions and pay raises. My patience was rewarded. The larger paychecks come every two weeks instead of sporadically.
The day may come when the company books are audited and the uncompensated overtime is viewed as a liability due the employees. If that happens, the windfall will be nice. If not, no big deal.
Indians are not that great when it comes to communication. There is also that problem of them disappearing if someone offers them more money. When I worked on a project with them, they were good programmers but the functional staff complained constantly about the language barrier. It was not worth the savings. When the guy disappeared from our team, we had to spend time figuring out what he was doing.
People started insisting that all communication be done by email. That really irritated the Indian guys.
You gifted at telling people how to run their businesses. How many people do you employ? How many jobs have you created? How many poeple are on your payroll?
We both it’s NONE.
When a quarter to a third of your workforce sues your business, you’ll know the position IBM is in. All this event does is precipitate IBMs final demise. It’s not like they produce products/software/services that can openly compete in today’s marketplace. They only exist today because of direct government contracts and flowdown contracts from other government contracts.
Mark my words, IBM will ultimately go under in a fashion similar to DEC within our lifetimes.
I know this: I’ve been contracting recently and because of a lawsuit brought against MSFT, Im not allowed to contract for longer than a year. Look that one up.
A few people decide to sue (and make out) and everyone loses.
You can only lose what you already have; not what you expect to get.
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