RandySF
RandySF's JournalThe Future of White-Collar Exploitation
NOTE: I see many examples here that resemble my own workplace.
In the economic world of 2013, employed workers who stop believing that they are lucky to have their jobs, that they should be “grateful for what they have,” will quickly find themselves in trouble. There are always consequences for challenging a culture’s mythos, but this notion has become nearly impossible to dispute in the days since the economic crash of 2008. With so many looking for work and so few openings available, the ability to labor someplace and collect a paycheck is universally accepted as a blessing.
Nevertheless, a June Gallup poll revealing levels of disengagement among all American workers at a staggering 70 percent suggests it may be time to challenge the perception — shared on both Right and Left — of the white-collar office worker as an effete, back-slapping, internet-surfing, casual-Fridaying “professional” coasting through a cushy existence. With many earning guaranteed annual salaries and even hourly clerks and assistants afforded health benefits and paid time off, the notion of organization and collective bargaining within this sector of the workforce is increasingly treated as a fantasy. Tellingly, the Office and Professional Employees International Union represents only 110,416 white-collar workers in the US — out of a total estimated at upwards of 54 million. All this begs certain questions of those who count themselves among the Left. Is exploitation that is neither physical nor overt still exploitation? More broadly, is the purpose of organized labor limited, confined to checking off a list of old demands without venturing beyond, or is the struggle for a freer and more pleasant life ongoing?
If answers to these queries are to be found among the office workers at C&S headquarters, we must acknowledge one thing Coffey and Siraj get right: Rick Cohen is, strategically speaking, positively brilliant. While the company’s anti-union practices and warehouse schemes are readily apparent, it is a mistake to assume this trailblazing “innovation” doesn’t shape the working lives of employees in button-downs and blouses......
Indeed, there are advantages to remaining nestled in “little, dinky Keene,” with its modest local population and small state college, where the corporation has the freedom to do all of this and still remain the largest and highest-paying employer. Here, it is easier to attract the eager and the inexperienced, who know nothing of industry norms surrounding pay and treatment. More importantly, local residents, especially those with underwater mortgages, children, and other family ties to the area, are less likely to go through with the relocation required of anyone wishing to use their experience to command higher pay elsewhere. These workers are more dependent on the company, and consequently more grateful and subservient.
After all, if reducing labor costs is a priority to a corporation, hiring or developing professional experts can be an expensive proposition. Despite the desire on one hand to hire people without the means to easily depart, fostering long-term employees is also expensive. The department wrings no hands at the fact that workers here who have lasted longer than five or ten years are a rarity. Not that this is altogether bad for workers. The stress-related health problems and widespread use of prescription blood pressure and antidepressant medication are so prevalent that the company represents something of a dark inside joke among Keene’s medical community, and the effects of this labor on lifespan have not yet been properly studied....
The desire of management for standardization was unquenchable, and a document formally entitled “A Day in the Life of a Buyer” became gospel. This Excel spreadsheet was a moment-by-moment guide to the myriad activities in which every buyer should be engaged at a given time of day. Its authors never acknowledged that the total time detailed amounted to nearly twelve hours, not including a break for lunch and with no time allotted for the reading and answering of daily e-mails that routinely numbered in the hundreds. Additional “time studies” would be conducted over the years in a relentless search for anomalies and inefficiencies to eliminate. Slowly but surely, the goal of making each employee interchangeable and disposable has been more effectively realized, and with many employees having less than two years’ tenure at any given time, few are ever able to identify any transformations at all.....
This is the office of the future, the one in which colleagues huddled together in pens view one another as competitors for an unknown but finite amount of resources, the one in which expertise in one’s line of work is viewed as a potentially expensive liability to be abandoned in favor of deskilled automation and rote adherence to standardized routine encased in iron. This is the office in which workers are prevented from considering the possibility of joining together by confusion, fear, and carefully crafted ignorance.
The currently emerging generation of millennials is poised to inherit this promised dystopia. The disadvantages faced by the young are well-documented. Conditions such as high rates of unemployment, drastically devalued college degrees, and chronic indebtedness grant a vast advantage to those who, like C&S Wholesale Grocers, seek to “innovate” the white-collar workplace toward greater efficiencies and lower costs. Frequently and mistakenly characterized in the cover stories of national magazines as lazy and entitled, the danger that millennials will assume self-blame and buy into the workplace mythos of their forebears is very real.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/26/white-collar-exploitation_n_4659979.html
La. School Superintendent told Buddhist student to find a school with more Asians.
The school board in this rural west Louisiana parish best known for the Zwolle Tamale Festival is facing a federal lawsuit brought by the parents of a student they say was harassed by fellow students, teachers and administrators at his public school because he isn't Christian.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana brought the suit against the board on behalf of Scott and Sharon Lane and their five children, including 6th grader C.C., an adopted child of Thai heritage who is Buddhist. The suit seeks to stop the school system from harassing C.C., promoting the Christian faith and to reimburse the family for the cost of transporting the youngster to a different school.
According to the suit filed Wednesday in federal district court in Shreveport, Rita Roark, C.C.’s science teacher at Negreet High School — a rural school that serves grades kindergarten through 12th — is an out-and-proud young earth creationist who teaches her students the earth was made by God 6,000 years ago, that the Bible is “100 percent” true and that evolution is impossible. The family also claims in the suit that Roark routinely peppered her tests with fill-in-the-blank questions like, “Isn’t it amazing what ________ has made!!!!!!!” The expected answer for the blank is, obviously, “the Lord” or "God" and, according to the suit, when C.C. failed to provide the preferred answer he was belittled by Roark in front of classmates.
The suit also claims that when the Lanes complained to parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb, the super’s response was, “This is the Bible Belt.” Ebarb, according to the suit, suggested C.C. change faiths or transfer to a school 25 miles away where “there are more Asians.”
http://www.theind.com/news/indreporter/16291-sabine-parish-the-bible-belt-s-big-brass-buckle
Hate Crime? Buddhist student harrassed, ridiculed, told to accept it, leave school or convert
Like many people I have encountered who were raised in a Christian environment, I was indifferent to what I felt were minor infractions of the law that protects the separation of church and state. What's the big deal if teachers promote God in public schools? I didn't see any danger in official prayer during graduation or a football game, or in a science teacher mentioning her religious beliefs when discussing evolution. These were things that had happened when I was in school, and my experience was just fine. Even after I stopped being an active Christian, I didn't understand how any of this could be considered discrimination, as some people claimed. Didn't the Bible teach us to obey rules, and wouldn't that be a positive lesson for our children? Of course, I didn't realize the hypocrisy of breaking the law in order to teach children to obey rules.
But then, when my stepson, who has been raised a Buddhist, enrolled in the sixth grade at our local school, Negreet High, it became personal, and I could no longer turn a blind eye to the very real harms that occur when school officials violate the separation of church and state.
My stepson started at Negreet in the same class as one of my children. By the end of the first week of school, he was having serious stomach issues and anxiety. We couldn't figure out why. In the mornings, my wife would pull over on the side of the road as they approached school so he could throw up. At first, we thought he was sick and we let him stay home. Soon it became apparent that this was not a cold, but something much worse. Our children informed us that their teacher had been chastising and bullying my stepson for his Buddhist beliefs.
On a science test, their teacher had included a fill-in-the-blank question: "ISN'T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" When my stepson didn't know the answer ("Lord"
, she belittled him in front of the entire class. When he wrote in "Lord Buddha" on another exam, she marked it wrong. As she was returning that exam to students, one student proclaimed aloud that "people are stupid if they think God is not real." In response, my stepson's teacher agreed, telling the class, "Yes! That is right! I had a student miss that on his test." The entire class broke out in laughter at my stepson.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/religion-belief/if-you-want-fit-public-school-just-become-christian
Vatican Urges Ex-Swiss Guard To Expose Gay Threat
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A senior Vatican official has urged a former Swiss Guard commander to come forward with details about accusations that the gay culture in the Vatican posed a security threat to the pope.
Elmar Maeder, who headed the Swiss Guards from 2002-2008, told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag that he didn't doubt that predatory gays worked at the Vatican. He was quoted as saying that in his experience, "many homosexuals tend to be more loyal toward each other than toward other people or institutions." He said he wouldn't promote gay guards out of fear they might be disloyal.
In an interview with La Repubblica, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, No. 2 in the Vatican's secretariat of state, urgedMaeder to provide names to back his accusations. His office confirmed his quotes Friday.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/swiss-guards-gay-threat
GOP Rep. Surprised 'Middle Eastern' Man Not Patted Down At Airport
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) suggested surprise in describing how a man who appeared "middle eastern" was not given a pat down at the airport while others were stopped by the Transportation Security Administration.
While speaking to to the Georgia College Republicans Broun, who is running for Senate, described how others trying to board their flights were stopped but a man traveling alone in "eastern dress" was stopped. Broun seemed surprised that the man wasn't stopped.
"You go through TSA. Does anybody not go through airports? Hold up your hand if you don't because I don't want to embarrass anyone but we're patting down grandma and little children," Broun said Wednesday. The remarks were flagged by Buzzfeed on Friday
"Let me tell y'all a story. I went through the screening of an airport not too long ago and right in front of me there was an elderly lady," Boun continued. "TSA pulled her off to the side and patted her down. And then right behind her was a little kid and he got pulled to the side. I went through and right behind me was somebody dressed in eastern dress —man, single guy, traveling by himself. That's typically [described] as middle eastern and he went right through."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-surprised-middle-eastern-man-not-patted-down-by-airport-security
WTF are they thinking? RNC moves up national convention to late June, early July
The Republican National Committee has agreed to condense the 2016 presidential nominating calendar, and move the national convention to late June or early July.
The changes ensure that the June 2016 Republican Convention will be the earlier convention in either party since 1948. Kansas City is competing with Las Vegas, Columbia, Denver and Phoenix, to host the convention.
During Friday’s committee meeting, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus rallied the GOP troops, saying, “We should set the standard for future RNCs and also set an example or other Republicans.”
The earlier nominating calendar is aimed at helping the party avoid the kind of in-fighting that may have dented Mitt Romney’s general election appeal in 2012.
http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/political/rnc-moves-up-national-convention-to-june#ixzz2rSbjlQtA
Maine GOP Candidate threatened to kill wife.
Erick Bennett, the Republican Senate candidate in Maine who said his domestic violence conviction showed "integrity," repeatedly assaulted his ex-wife by squeezing her neck and threatening to kill her, according to a newly surfaced police report.
The report, obtained by Mother Jones and published on Friday, quotes Bennett's then-wife, Angela, describing how Bennett repeatedly attacked her in January 2004.
"Erick got off the bed, put both hands around my neck, squeezed my neck and said "Leave me alone," Angela said at one point in the police report.
Angela later describes how, after that, she was "feeling extremely nervous."
"He got up as if to go to his coat to get the check but instead turned around toward the bed and I just knew we was gonna come after me so I got up to head for the bathroom saying, 'Please Erick I'm sorry' but he grabbed me and got me on the floor and pressed me down," the police report quoted Angela as saying. "Then he started saying "What are you doing? Sit still? Why are you doing this?" As if I was fighting back and he needed to defend himself. "
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/erick-bennett-police-report-domestic-violence
Venture Capitalist Compares Liberal Fight Against Gross Inequality To Kristallnacht
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins compared liberals' push to reduce inequality in the United States to Nazi Germany's war on Jews.
In a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal Perkins, a founding member of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, asks whether a "progressive Kristallnacht" is coming. Perkins's letter is in response to an editorial on speech codes at American colleges.
"Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich," Perkins wrote in the letter to the editor.
He continued that he perceives a "a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-perkins-liberal-war-one-percent-kristallnacht
Just finished watching the documentary "Mitt"
The guy comes off as an even bigger self-righteous asshole than ever. And now it looks like the Romney campaign DID expect to lose on election day, but didn't bother telling Paul Ryan who looked like a goofball measuring the drapes to the Vice President's residence.
Rep. Grimm's Pal Talking To Feds About Possible Plea Deal
A Texas woman accused of using straw donors to illegally funnel $10,000 to the campaign of Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) is "engaged in plea negotiations" with federal prosecutors, according to court documents filed Friday.
The woman, Diana Durand, who has been described as a friend and fundraiser of Grimm's, also had her first appearance in a Brooklyn court pushed back until Feb. 12.
Legal experts who spoke with the Staten Island Advance newspaper, which first reported the possible plea negotiations, were divided on the significance of the possible negotiations and schedule change. Some said they indicated Durand might be offering testimony against others involved in the alleged scheme while others described them as a routine procedural matter.
Attorney Joseph Sorrentino, who is not involved in the case, told the paper Durand's delay was likely an indication prosecutors were giving her time to take care of affairs in Texas and "it would not indicate a particularly significant development in the case." Another attorney, Mario Galluci, told the paper the fact documents indicate Durand has entered negotiations "says a lot."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/grimm-campaign-finance-plea-deal
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