Help Wanted: Menial Labor. Dead End Job. No Health Insurance. Fun Place to Work.
Here's a help wanted ad from the local newspaper:
"Order Picker/Packer
Someone to do a variety of tasks in small warehouse, no forklift. Must be able to lift and carry 50+pounds, day hours. No health insurance."
The ad ends with a slogan: "A fun place to work."
Maybe, if there's a compressed air hose, they let you make fart noises in your armpit. Or maybe there's a TV bolted to the wall above the grease-spattered microwave in the break room. And that, "No health insurance"? Sounds like a regular laugh riot.
Maybe you have to be able to lift 50+pounds because they stack the irony so high. Wouldn't it be ironic, for example, if the front office person who wrote and placed the ad weren't eligible for health insurance herself?
The up-by-the-bootstraps set consider jobs like this to be opportunities -- a chance to grab that bottom rung and make something of yourself. And maybe that's true. For all I know, this job is a rocket to the top of the heap. You're picking and packing one day. You're running the whole show the next.
But experience would lead you to believe that, for every individual who can turn a job like this into a rocket, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who can't. They don't have the intellect. They have other responsibilities. They get injured on the job. They've got a kid with health issues. Whatever.
The reality is that for the vast majority of Americans -- especially young Americans -- jobs like this offer little chance for advancement and no incentive to work hard. The company doesn't care. It's just a job, no matter how assiduously you apply yourself. It's a paycheck without benefits. It's day labor, nothing more.
Meanwhile, out in Washington, the anti-universal health care lobbyists and politicians -- people who eat lunch off white tablecloths in four-star restaurants, not break rooms -- say employers, not the government should provide some form of coverage.
And elsewhere in America, CFOs and CEOs of companies that do provide health insurance discuss the crisis over lunch at the club and decide to increase the employee's share of health care costs 50 percent. "We need to do it to remain competitive. And besides, the employees can afford it. We just gave them a 3 percent cost of living raise, didn't we?"
This is the job market the Bush Economic Miracle has created. This is the future we are providing for Generation Screwed -- and future Generations Screwed.
Help wanted. Menial labor, dead end job, no health insurance, no future.
In America -- a fun place to work.
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Come on people. The fix is in on the elections. Nothing is going to change for the average bubba. I'm afraid that what most advocate now is a violent open revolt against the rulers. The rulers will never share their great wealth with the rest of us unless we take it from them. I don't advocate revolution but, I hear from the four corners of America.
Wait a moment, I just heard on Fox that real incomes are going up, and that a recession is a good thing, to kind of clear the air. Things must be good. WalMart just announced third quarter profits up 7%. Wall St, trumps Main street again.
Most people are too young to remember when a man could work at a low level laboring job and support a wife (who did not work) and children. Sure it was not a really comfortable existence, but it was possible and liveable. Today, a husband and wife must both work to support the same level of existence. And even that existence is threatened with inflation and the always lower 'prevailing wage'.
The multiples of a CEO's salary above the average wage in his company is a foolish measure. And, after all, what is paid to top executives has been increasingly obscene over the last decades. No executive deserves a 'separation' package of many millions when he has failed the company - but they all get that kind of thing now.
Top jobs and director positions are all intertwined and they pay one another off. The mantra is 'the hell with the company, the hell with the employees, the hell with the country - it's all getting what you can personally'.
And that means slave labor (illegal aliens), cheaper labor (outsourcing), oppressed labor (longer hours, no unions), continually reducing benefits, reduced customer benefits and service, increased customer costs in part, and MARKETING AND PR AND LOBBYING!
We should apply more the correct term for it all: 'amoral'.
No, it WAS different 50 years ago when the US was at it's peak in every respect.
As a young American I can tell you this blog is exactly right.
The irony will be when he has trouble filling this job (as most Americans need health insurance) the Dems will then use this as proof that we need illegal aliens to do the jobs Americans won't do. An illegal can go right into the emergency room with a back injury and have the American taxpayers pay for his injury.
And in case government employees think they're "safe" to use their health insurance, think again. Those days are gone, as well. After years of underpaid State of Florida service, I was terminated for "medical reasons." During my employment, I was a victim of crime and granted a Special Notice of Insurance Waiver by Florida's Office of Attorney General, supposedly guaranteeing that for the rest of my life, whatever insurance under which I'm covered is required to pay related claims at 100%. Sounds good, right? In theory, yes, however, the State of Florida figured out a clandestine way around it. Get rid of such employees. You see, State of Florida employees are "self-insured," which essentially boils down to the fact that employee claims are paid by the State, so in spite of the fact that health insurance is a benefit of employment, if you use it, you're screwed, if the "risk managers" and "bean counters" deem it "excessive."
Each time I applied for State jobs afterwards, “excuses” were always given not to hire me, though interviews & interactions went well. The cat jumped out of the proverbial bag when I was discriminated against by a community college, inappropriately accused of "falsifying" my application, which I most certainly did not.
My complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, who, in collusion with the Division of Administrative Hearings, rules against Plaintiffs in 99% of cases, is quickly on its way to the District Court of Appeals.
The "American Dream" for citizens such as myself who have been injured, are disabled, have chronic health problems, or who speak out against injustices has become non-existent and replaced with a Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest mentality. Americans who are considered “financial drains” are consigned to the “junk heap,” many never connecting the dots and realizing the truth of the matter.
If we had universal health care in this country, such issues would no longer be a factor in employment, and “risk managers” and “bean counters” could then turn their attention to REALLY important issues such as energy efficiency and workplace ethics.
dchavern,
The job is fine, it's the dichotomy of being able to lift 50 plus pounds without a forklift and no health insurance. Specifically, lifting over 50 pounds can cause back problems, especially if this continues for a long time. Simple lift aids would help a lot including manual unpowered forklifts and handtrucks with cranks.
I assume it's at minimum wage too. So effectively little or no benefits, no aids to minimize on the job injuries, that will be hard to prove occurred at the job. The total lack or worker protections, i.e., no OSHA inspections I am sure and even if they were inspecting, the total lack of even providing lift aids that is so glaring. Even furniture movers use handtrucks and manual forklifts.
The point that always intrigues me is this; With all of the so called Christians in the USA, why do they not see that the resident in the white house is EVIL???????????????????????????????
Oh, maybe it is because they read between the lines of Jesus, rather than the words of Jesus?
I have no problems with companies being expected to provide health-care, and I remember not too many years ago when that was de rigeur.
The companies were local. Goods were shipped hundreds of miles from producer to marketplace, not tens-of-thousands. Inflation was not rampant and money was not thought to grow on trees.
If a company says that it can't afford to provide health insurance anymore ... maybe it's being absolutely truthful. When all that your business-activity consists of is buying stuff, shipping it across the country from the port, putting it on a shelf, selling it, and throwing away or sending back what doesn't sell ... well, there's no real money in that.
To put it another way, "the money only turns-over once while it's in the local area." And that is what "We Sell For Less, Always" has done.
realityhumpsbull
.........
Thanks for the laugh out loud. Let me tell you about the health insurance you can buy. Wal Mart employees enjoy health insurance that features a $200 deductible, pays 80% to $1,000 out of pocket, then pays 100% of all charges to a LIFEFUCKTNGTIME MAXIMUM OF $3,000. That policy maxes out in the emergency room, sucker.
So what does your monthly premium get you? It gets you a card that SAYS you have health insurance....for about 2 hours in the ER. You'll buy your own? Tell me, Candide, what health insurance can you buy at $13 an hour? Go ahead, give me all the specifics and I'll write back with the horror story for each and every feature of that pretend insurance you're so full of. C'mon give me all the details. I can't hardly wait. I am so ready to unload on that "insurance card" you can buy at $13 an hour.
You wrote, "Maybe, if there's a compressed air hose, they let you make fart noises in your armpit."
Compressed air hoses are nothing to play around with. Some of them carry pressures in the thousands of pounds per square inch, which is enough to do serious damage to a person. It is not funny, nor amusing. People have lost eyes and had their guts blown apart by pranksters fooling around with compressed air hoses.
Give me $13/hr NET, and I'll take that job,
especially if there's a chance to get some
time +1/2, 45 hrs week etc. I'll buy my own
damn health insurance.
I wouldn't put the blame only on Bush. He's just continuing a long line of Economic Libertarian policies that were applied by Reagan (and dreamed up by Spooner, Hayek, Rothbard, Thoreau, Mises, and Friedman). Oh yeah, and Corporatist ones (thought up by the greedy since time immemorial).
Good article otherwise. The alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear at this point. The rightist economic policies are an unmitigated disaster for those not in the top 1%.
The Bush Economic Miracle is not the only cause of blame for situations like this. Its just as much that people that are CEOs and CFOs in this country. Every decision that they make is about one thing, profit. Not about the worker, not about the environment, well... maybe, but how it relates to profit.
If one word can define America, it's greed.
My history teacher in high school use to say if he ever ran for president he would run on a concept of "49 to 1." Meaning a CEO cannot make more than 49 times the average employer salary. This was the average ratio in the 60s. Today, it's closer to 500 to 1, if not higher. One classmate said how he thought there should be a "max" on how much a CEO can make. To which my teacher said "see i would need people like him to run too, so my idea doesn't seem as crazy". That class was "constitutional issues," but we students often called it "honors socialism."
Back to CEOs. Not all are bad. The CEO of Costco makes about $550,000 a year (significantly less than competitors). As of March 2007, non-supervisory hourly wages range from $11.00 to $19.50, with benefits. This ratio comes out much less than 500 to 1, and even less than half than 49 to 1 for most employees.
If all corporations followed this model, America would truly be a better place.
Are you saying that this job should not exist (i.e. NO person should ever do this job) -- or that the job is ok but the lack of health insurance is not? The latter argument is at least reasonable, the former is not.
No one is owed a fulfilling career -- and many, many people who have good careers started out in menial jobs. Also, when you order something, you should not be blind to the fact that some actual person has to pack the box to send it to you. It is honorable, respectable and legal work. It seems, though, that you would prefer the job to not exist at all.
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