Why is the corporation so hostile to workers?

originally posted by: nwtrucker
a reply to: jimmyx

That post doesn't even make sense. This isn't the same time or circumstance. I'm talking individual survival/success.

Spouting how one is 'victimized' by it all, serves no purpose unless one a politico.

There has NEVER been a society where there wasn't stress to survive...EVER.

That's reality. How one deals with those stresses is my point. Crying about it all is only successful for babies with their mothers. Doing something about it, on an individual basis, is the key.

old peter and marie were so separated from their own people by massive wealth, that they even thought that the people love them and wanted to be like them, and could not believe it when they came for their heads. the people did something about it allright, not on an individual basis, but in a murderous mob.

a reply to: jimmyx

OK, and that got them what?? No change that I can see....

a reply to: openminded2011

Good post.

They DON'T care. The sole purpose of any corporation is to consistently show increasing profit margins for their investors.

That's it. Anything "morally positive" done by a company that goes beyond business laws, is still only done as a consideration towards increasing popularity and therefore, profit margins.

Workers are inherently unimportant because they know all too well how easy it is to replace them. Any good treatment is mostly due to regulations and laws that require that. Companies that make giant profits will show their colors by adhering to the very letter of those regulations and nothing else. Big Pharma is a great example of this.

I'm not saying there aren't good exceptions. I believe Google is one - so far. And I hope there are others. But you will be hard-pressed to find one where it's not simply all about that bottom-line of MONEY.

originally posted by: Ironhawke
a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Allow me to introduce you to Walmart sometime. There's a fantastic documentary about it called "Walmart : the High Cost of Low Prices". Guaranteed to make your blood boil.

That's exactly why I don't shop there unless that is the only store around, say if I'm out of town and can't find someplace else to go.

They treat their employees like garbage, import all their crap from China and pocket billions every year. Truly, it is disgusting.

Cue some snarky remark from one of their minions who will be here shortly to defend the family.

originally posted by: openminded2011
Why is it that so many companies in treat their workers with such contempt? It seems that the attitude of management in most organizations is that workers are just widgets that can be replaced without any regards to ethics or morality. I understand that business is sometimes forced to make hard decisions and make changes in headcounts, but what I am talking about is a prevailing adversarial attitude towards workers in general. Sadly it seems that companies no longer value their people, the bottom line comes above all things, and this is a culture that is widespread. It almost seems in some cases that they are intentionally striving to treat their workers as poorly as possible. I guess a better question is, why are we as human beings, tolerating and accepting all the mistreatment that is taking place? There just seems to be no concern for making workplaces decent places to go any more. One thing I have noticed is a large division between salaried workers and hourly workers, who are treated as less intelligent second class citizens (never mind that there are a lot of very smart people who just never had the resources for college). And there is persistent push to remove protections, benefits, and basically any perks for workers they can take. What is the goal? Do they realize that miserable people make miserable workers? There are studies that show that productivity is directly related to happiness. Just a rant, but it seems to get worse every year and you wonder where this is going to lead us all. You wonder what would happen if someone introduced a workplace where people were actually treated well and their happiness was an actual metric in the boardroom. I wonder how such a company would do against the standard model? Is this the only way to do business?


Study linking productivity to happiness

www.theguardian.com...



Workplace depression linked to bosses, not workload


sciencenordic.com...

I treat the system, the corporation, the 1% of a facsimilie thereof, with comtempt.

I think there are good ones to work for and bad ones, like anything else in life.

As someone else said, workers are a resource. Some companies choose to find and develop their workers (human capital) by taking care of them and trying to keep the ones who do good work and show promise and keeping them happy as much as possible. Happy workers do good work.

Other companies take a different approach. They put their efforts into other aspects and don't worry about developing their human capital. They're the ones that are likely to crap to work for. At best, they're going to be resume fillers if you can stand to do your time there.

And there are going to be all manner of approaches in between.

continual:

smoke breaks, coffee breaks, lunch breaks, bathroom breaks (after the morning coffee & doughnut/burrito), sick days, tardiness, 401k matching contributions, workman's comp costs, unemployment costs (the one's not recouped)...mandatory safety instructions on new systems/operations

... the workforce is mostly ill, ill-educated, emotional, distracted by sports playoffs, the men & women are NOT Robots
basically the human workforce is not very efficient or reliable and they schedule their daily 'Dumps' during work hours to get paid for it...Also the corporation pays an inordinate amount of their social security mandated coverage on top of a usually top wage for that individual & whatever perks that had been earlier negotiated or pressured by Unions or Advocates


Oh, I add that Management & executives are as feeble & in need of baby-sitting as the blue collar line workers are...
the manicured and coiffed set just have a different style of ineptness ...but deftness at beating the Man out of a days wage for a days labor

Ebenezer Scrooge had it correct.... before those X-mas eve ghosts poisoned his mind

a reply to: St Udio

Wait how do I schedule my daily dumps, when I have to go, I have to go. Biology like that doesn't work on a schedule, I can't pen in, # at two pm, two pee breaks at 6 and 9.

Or do you mean the people that lie and text instead of using the bathroom proper? Then yes they annoy me, they make it harder to go when one really has to, and not get in trouble if stuck longer due to a bathroom emergency creating excessive time regulations. Where instead of being based of how often you go and how long it's always a set time ect.

So someone who never goes like ever, except when it's an emergency who then gets stuck in there for 30 minutes gets in trouble despite going maybe twice a week and usually back before they need to be.

While Suzy texts a lot gets in none despite taking like 5 breaks per day at the max 10 minutes each time. So one takes double the others rare emergency total in one day everyday but the one stuck for that rare emergency gets in trouble, totally messed up.

a reply to: Puppylove

I don't have that problem. Mine is the coworker who just sits and texts all the time when she should be working. It might be easier if she would go spend all her texting time in the can.

a reply to: openminded2011

The root of the problem is that your company is more than likely to be Public. This means it has trade stock. Means its owned by shareholders. Shareholders usually just want money from companies they own stock from.

Why do you think instead of helping their employees and increasing wages, companies like Mcdonalds just pop more stores open, on every block. More stores, more sales.

This is why private companies care about employees more.

a reply to: openminded2011

Tell me about it. My wife was recently fired from her job after 15 years for saying "no" to a supervisor that was not her supervisor in her area when she was not done informing this supervisor in maintenance that equipment was not functional. He did not care about the issue mind you and it was his responsibility. Nor a warning or write up but fired. After 15 years discarded over nothing.

I worked for same said corporation in the 90's and was fired as well under similar circumstances. Said supervisor I got in to it with had a history's of harassing employees and refused to let employees use the rest room. He got the company sued when a person soiled themself. But the company kept him after several law suits. However they eventually let him go some time after I got canned as a union steward.

This company is known intentionally for unethical practices.

a reply to: openminded2011

Workers are treated like widgets because they ARE widgets. Soon to be replaced by robotics and the like.

a reply to: Heruactic

I think this is probably true enough. Despite the size of the company where my husband works, it is still privately held by the original family that started it.

a reply to: soficrow

I wonder what our economy will be based on when we are all replaced by robots? Not really funny as google is working on a project to create robots to replace a lot of workers in the next 50 years or so. Less and less people working. Who will buy the products? I guess the robotics repair business is the future.

originally posted by: openminded2011
a reply to: soficrow

I wonder what our economy will be based on when we are all replaced by robots? Not really funny as google is working on a project to create robots to replace a lot of workers in the next 50 years or so. Less and less people working. Who will buy the products? I guess the robotics repair business is the future.

Didn't you see that other thread? We will be pets for the robotic overlords. They will provide all we need.

Actually, with all the jobs that have gone overseas we are already at a point where good jobs are hard to come by for people. Can't really make a decent life working at McDonalds or Walmart.

It's going to be tougher and tougher for future generations I'm afraid.

a reply to: openminded2011

...I guess the robotics repair business is the future.

Erm, no. They will be self-repairing. ...This is the thousand-year dream come to fruition - an economy that is not reliant on worker-slaves.


ED. TO ADD.


Nano-robotics are used in medicine and more. Tried to find a good overview of the new robotics industry but here's the best I've found so far. (It's really incomplete.)

Robots in the present are able to perform a number of different tasks as compared to the past uses of robots. Advances in technology have helped present robots to expand their horizons into medical, law enforcement, and military fields amoung many others.

How Robots are Used in the Present

Industrial operations is one of the most popular areas for robotics and is where they originated from. Industrial robots commonly have 1 arm with an EOAT and can be classified into 3 categories:
Assembly and finishingautomation robot
Movement of materials/objects
Performing in hazardous conditions
The most common present applications of robots is welding, in fact a quarter of today's robots are used for such applications. Other common applications for present robots include:

Cutting
Grinding
Polishing
Drilling
Sanding
Painting
Spraying
Assembly
Robots in the present have been a great asset because they can perform jobs that are too dangerous for humans. This has allowed workers to move onto more skilled jobs such as programming robots. Present robots have also found careers in the medical field. Today's robots assist in high precision surgeries such as brain and heart surgery. They are also used to test quality control in pharmaceuticals.

How Robots Will Affect Our Future

In the future service robots are expected to surpass the industrial robot market. Many manufacturers are starting to look into fields that are lacking workers. One area of interest is developing robotic helpers for the elderly. You may also see major uses of robotics in law enforcement and security. Future robots could also be as small as a computer chip and inserted into appliances such as vacuum cleaners.

a reply to: openminded2011

More.

World's First Robot-Staffed Hotel to Open in Japan

...A new hotel at a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, ... The Henn-na Hotel (whose name means "strange hotel") will be partially staffed by androids that work as reception attendants, robot waiters, cleaning staff and a cloakroom attendant...

The android-staffed hotel will be part of a theme park called Huis Ten Bosch...

"We'd like to draw visitors to this setting surrounded by nature by establishing a smart hotel, which could be something we could spread through Japan and the world, a spokeswoman for Huis Ten Bosch told The Telegraph.

If the robot hotel is a success, another one may be opened in 2016...

Room rates at the Henn-na Hotel will start at about $60 U.S. (7,000 yen), but will likely remain well below the rates for the park's other hotels, which start at around $170 to $255 (20,000 to 30,000 yen). The use of robots and renewable energy will help the hotel keep its operating costs down...

For those Luddites who prefer a human touch, the hotel will also employ 10 human staff members.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: openminded2011

Workers are treated like widgets because they ARE widgets. Soon to be replaced by robotics and the like.

Hence DARPA creating a robot work force.

Then what happens to the rest of us ya think ? I am sure those chemicals they are spraying in our skies and in our food and water supply is to ensure we do not put up a fight and go quietly.

Corporations are sociopathic entities hell bent on profit and will do anything to remiain sustainable at any cost. The reason why our political structure is ruled by the lobby. As long as our government remains usurped by corporate entities we are doomed.

Enablers will argue it is just capitalism for ya , take the good with the bad. As if we need corporations to have our luxurious first word. But it is too far gone past the point of no return. The corruption of its reach has a foothold on all our institutions. AMERICA WILL FALL. It is not a matter of if but when.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: openminded2011

...I guess the robotics repair business is the future.

Erm, no. They will be self-repairing. ...This is the thousand-year dream come to fruition - an economy that is not reliant on worker-slaves.


ED. TO ADD.


Nano-robotics are used in medicine and more. Tried to find a good overview of the new robotics industry but here's the best I've found so far. (It's really incomplete.)

Robots in the present are able to perform a number of different tasks as compared to the past uses of robots. Advances in technology have helped present robots to expand their horizons into medical, law enforcement, and military fields amoung many others.

How Robots are Used in the Present

Industrial operations is one of the most popular areas for robotics and is where they originated from. Industrial robots commonly have 1 arm with an EOAT and can be classified into 3 categories:
Assembly and finishingautomation robot
Movement of materials/objects
Performing in hazardous conditions
The most common present applications of robots is welding, in fact a quarter of today's robots are used for such applications. Other common applications for present robots include:

Cutting
Grinding
Polishing
Drilling
Sanding
Painting
Spraying
Assembly
Robots in the present have been a great asset because they can perform jobs that are too dangerous for humans. This has allowed workers to move onto more skilled jobs such as programming robots. Present robots have also found careers in the medical field. Today's robots assist in high precision surgeries such as brain and heart surgery. They are also used to test quality control in pharmaceuticals.

How Robots Will Affect Our Future

In the future service robots are expected to surpass the industrial robot market. Many manufacturers are starting to look into fields that are lacking workers. One area of interest is developing robotic helpers for the elderly. You may also see major uses of robotics in law enforcement and security. Future robots could also be as small as a computer chip and inserted into appliances such as vacuum cleaners.

Think of Elysium as a documentary , the shape of things to come. With a bit of the new Total Recall film.

Orwell's 1984 is now

a reply to: DarthFazer

Uh huh. Doesn't look -or feel- very good, does it?

But I still think there's a way out. Or two or three. Life is full of options.