dagblog - Comments for "Attention Must Be Paid"

So these HR personnel are of

Resistance — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:51:54 +0000

So these HR personnel are of great value to the company. On the other hand, outsourcing the department overseas is a wonderful idea!

If you have money. you can buy stock in those companies.

Capitalism' goal ; make money ........even if it does mean, slavery.

Who said slavery was a bad word, the slaves?

I was driving the other day,

Resistance — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:42:30 +0000

In reply to In the workplace, I've never

I was driving the other day, and heard on NPR, that defense contractors were leaving San Diego and taking the operations to Tijuana, Mexico.

Cheaper costs. Cutting our own throats.

I think you may be

Red Planet — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:45:29 +0000

In reply to In the workplace, I've never

I think you may be underestimating the role and importance of HR, Beetlejuice. The department exists for two reasons:

1. To encourage worker compliance, and conformity to corporate expectations, and

2. To protect the corporation against the legal and financial costs of the corporation's manipulation of workers — their pay, their working conditions, their performance expectations, and ultimately the security of their jobs.

A well run HR department does both jobs well. Terminations, in particular, can be dicey, but HR is endlessly resourceful. A poor performance review is just one of the many tools available to paper over corporate misbehavior toward employees.

So these HR personnel are of great value to the company. On the other hand, outsourcing the department overseas is a wonderful idea! Now workers can be directed to take their complaints to an 800 number and talk to someone whose English is not only perfect but unintelligible to the average Joe, thereby increasing the stress and frustration of an already meaningless job and encouraging Joe to just say, "what the fark," and walk out.

Problem solved.

In the workplace, I've never

Beetlejuice — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:30:22 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

In the workplace, I've never given much value to performance reports. Simply put, every manager will bend over backwards to find anything trivial to make a mountain of doubt in your performance. And that's because HR expects everyone to have sub-par performance ... not everyone is a top performer. What they miss is while a worker can be working at their top performance level, a co-worker can be putting out better work under the same level of stress to meet set goals. That doesn't mean the worker not working any less. They're doing the best they're capable of. It's the degree of difference that should be considered. Then again, perhaps HR should do their job and transferred the worker to another department where their abilities and performance level would be a better asset to both the department and the company. Of course, HR failed in their performance in that if an individual isn't performing their duties with in expectations, they should have be counseling those individuals to determine the cause of their lackluster performance and advising them what to expect in the future if they don't get themselves turned around. As the news article stated, Mr. Graves's poor performance rating was totally unexpected by him. So his firing for poor performance could have been a cover for the need of the company to subtly invoke a RIF (reduction in force) of employees to keep their profit margins in the black at the expense of employee wages and benefits. I say could have been because Mr. Graves was the only person identified ..there may have been more which the article did not go into. And firing for cause means Mr. Graves wouldn't be entitled to unemployment compensation ... another double-edged insult ... puts the company off the hook. It would be interesting to see what's really going on behind the curtains.

Mr. Graves had the same problem as me ... defense and aerospace related resume, experience and work skills. Ever since 2007, the defense and aerospace industry has been idle ... hiring, especially field engineering, has virtually ceased because they read the hand writing on the wall that things were going to get tough in the future. It's so bad now, the roll back has found its way to the plants .. the heart of the military-industrial-complex no less. With the super congress poised to make drastic cuts in defense and aerospace, I'm not shocked or surprised. The congressional chiropractors have pushed the limits and are breaking the backbone of the american spirit all in the name of political austerity in the eyes of the GOPers.

Mr.Graves is a victim of the political brinkmanship in Washington. As Rachel Maddow said ... "Words have consequences".

By the way, in my opinion, if a business wants to reduce their expenditures on employees and benefits, they should start with HR ... they're overhead .. their efforts don't add value to the bottom line ... they sucks money away from the profits workers earn for the company. Perhaps they should be the first ones to be out-sourced to India. But I'm engaging in prejudicial hyperbole.

I read Miller and I

Richard Day — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:11:10 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

I read Miller and I thought:

Daddy sells used cars to Negroes!

And I could not understand how come every goddamn nite he came home drunk and as he got drunker he would use the 'n' word.

But he hated sales.

I mean he hated the entire concept of sales.

And he hated his job and his life and his....

All I remember from that novel was the quote:

I'M WORTH A BUCK AN HOUR DAD....

That was 1950.

By 1962 I was making a buck an hour and until I was in 1972 I was still making a buck an hour. When a shirt was four bucks!

I could not figure it out.

Ignorance is not the problem really.

The problem is ignoring what you already know.

Life is not fair they would tell me.

And somehow, that was supposed to make it all okay!

the end

"hiding in plain sight". Very

Oxy Mora — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:08:23 +0000

In reply to Thank you destor. I think

"hiding in plain sight". Very true.

I was looking up the quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" by Thoreau, which I thought might be applicable. But then I read the rest of the quote "..and go to their grave with the song still in their heart." No song in the heart for Patrick Graves. And, definitely, no pun intended.

Thanks for this Destor. I

Oxy Mora — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:48:39 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

Thanks for this Destor. I have been in the 50's and out of a career position so it is difficult to read stories like this and realize that another human being didn't escape the self incrimination that can accompany unemployment. Over the last couple of weeks I've started to wonder if we are actually heading back into a 30's style depression.

Thank you destor. I think

Bruce Levine — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:03:39 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

Thank you destor. I think one of the problems is, ironically, that the pictures from the 30s that Resistance showed to us don't quite reflect the normalcy of the suffering in today's economy. It is the fear in so many of losing their job while they try to go on with their daily lives and so they have a fear that is hidden from the camera. And the folks who have lose their jobs often don't reflect what we see in the pictures from back then. It's all hiding in plain sight.

We need pictures, lots and

Resistance — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:38:18 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

We need pictures, lots and lots of pictures.

During the Depression many photographs were taken. A picture says a thousand words.

Prick the Nations conscience.

In a nation of illiterates, a picture tells the story.

Don't tell me, show me.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

A devastating story, Destor.

Ramona — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:59:11 +0000

In reply to Attention Must Be Paid

A devastating story, Destor. It's too easy to ignore the raw pain the victims of this failing economy are feeling when we're talking about victims in the millions.

This from Patrick Graves' 15 year old daughter:

"Even with what he did - that doesn't affect his heart - that's just an action he made," she said. "I don't want that to be...the last memory of him or who he was as a person because that was not his life."

I'm not sure what to do, either. None of us do, really. Our power might be in keeping the stories alive, and if that's so, we're obliged to do it.

These are strange and terrible times, so yes, attention must be paid. Thank you.