Re: latest news at work



On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Old Pif wrote:


drocillo wrote:

Today I had a conversation with a colleague technician, a true-blue
middle-aged local. Without listening to my story, he said that people
were nowadays hired into the positions of one pay level below than what
they were supposed to get. He said this seemed to be a new trend in our
govt lab. (Someone even said that this was a trend in the whole
country/world). The guys said that this was an insult from the
management to downgrade people's positions. I felt stricken: I also
called this an insult as it follows from the subject line of the
initial posting.


Someone is correct on that. What happens is inflation of actual work.
It goes down in the hierarchy both pay-wise and status-wise. For
instance, with some exceptions the practical treatment of patients is
done by physician assistants and nurses, legal work by paralegals,
science by postdocs and graduate students. If the professors from the
19th-the first part of 20 century were transferred here with the time
machine they would hardly called the modern professors scientists. It
is this upper managerial layer makes research so expensive here as it
consumes the lion share of resources. With this class burgeoning on the
limited government funds, naturally less and less money are available
for those who are below.

It is life. Take it easy.
Old Pif


I'd like to take this opportunity to add an important comment. Last week, in one of the recent issues of Financial Times, a somewhat international version of the Wall Street Journal, were two articles about the labor and job markets in both Germany and France (you know, our most major examples of high job security and high pay places to work) and the articles talked a little more about _reality_ but with pieces of the story missing. However, there was enough there that I can tell you what is going on.

In France, all the employers can't fire the older workers (i.e. after they reach some low age, I guess that is 24 or 26, whatever) but what they have are internships. Everywhere! Guess what? The idea is that you do an internship with a company for 6-24 months, and then if you are "OK" then they hire you as permanent. But, guess what is happening? You work up to 23 months and then what they are doing is telling the kids "OK, we don't need you any more" and thus avoid having to convert a non-paid, non-secure job for a person to a permanent job at higher pay. And this is maybe part of the reason why the French are so pissed off at the system. What are the young French doing about this? They are leaving their country in droves. One of the articles had some data on this: some 400,000 French kids are all over Europe, even England, looking for work. Work of any kind. And, of course, if the kids leave the country, then who is going to be left to contribute to their "pension-Soc. Sec" system (whatever it is) and down the road that's going to lead to trouble just like any country where the workforce is aging.

Now, Germany: Something very similar is going on. The employers are not hiring Germans except on part time, low paid, zero job security jobs. Again, reading between the lines, if they keep one guy in one job for more than two years, then they have to make the guy permanent and raise the pay, etc. So, what are they doing? Just before the guy gets his two years in, they lay the guy off (and it resets the timer back to zero again). So, the guy has to go find another temporary job at low pay, etc. An endless cycle.

And, who is to blame for this situation? The greedy-selfish employers who just want to keep only a cheap labor force (and keep unemployment up [and there are a lot of jobs in Europe also going to India, too])? The statesmen & leaders who can't (or won't) write good laws that might help people? Or, is it impossible to write good laws because a good law might look like socialism and we sure don't want that, do we? Because the only guarantees that anyone should have are guarantees for the rich and powerful, right? Give all the priviledges and protections to a small, special class of people who are really free and eveyone else go find their
station in life farther down the pecking order, and in an economic straight jacket.

So, back to the original theme from \/: yes, the new world has begun to split into middle class with a lower class that is increasing in size every day. Even in India and China, its no more "permanent" jobs and there have been net layoffs in both countries (to reduced the number of inefficient factories) and at least in China there have been a lot of protests by people who got worse deals in life during all these recent changes. And, no, I have no idea what to do about it but the only peaceful solution will be good laws and corporate officers who will have fair deals instead of ripoff deals for their employees. The only other possibility: revolution (eg. 1917) is just going to get another small
bunch of overlings into power and priviledge and a whole lot of people
killed. But...keep an eye on South America, maybe.
.

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