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Old 03-20-2010, 12:38 PM
 
27 posts, read 108,349 times
Reputation: 36

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I love coming from California, how slow everyone drives in Oregon, how courteous the drivers are. It was one of the factors that helped convince my husband( a native Texan) to move to Oregon. He was firmly convinced after living in California that the entire Westcoast was just another California, rude and always in a hurry. Most of my family live in Oregon and it was coming home for me and I am glad to be back.

 
Old 03-20-2010, 10:59 PM
 
12 posts, read 26,273 times
Reputation: 20
Thumbs down Here we go again...

Quote:
Originally Posted by rhodan653 View Post
Just look at what Oregon's tax policies have created on a macro scale. The "Silicon Forest" is essentially a myth at this point. Were those start-up tech firms offering minimum wage jobs? Were the Intel staff reductions minimum wage jobs? There is a decided lack of white-collar employment in this state and quite frankly there is a lack of talent as well. The bulk of people that Oregon attracts are the underachievers, not the overachievers.
First off, the idea that these high tech jobs were lost due to Oregon's tax policies is a fallacy. They were lost due to outsourcing to foreign countries with slave wage labor! No state in the US can compete with foreign countries that have a workforce willing (or required) to work for pennies on the dollar. I previously worked for aforementioned company for over 10 years. I watched them expand to countries like India, and most recently Malaysia where they can hire someone for a couple hundred a month or less verses paying a US worker a livable, middle class wage. And it's not just hourly employees; exempt positions (salaried compensation exempt from overtime pay - the white collar jobs you mention) such as software and hardware engineering is outsourced as well. It happens with all multinational publicly-traded corporations!

And to say that Oregon attracts underachievers is also disingenuous at least. Or are you trying to say that people who earn less than $250K are underachievers? Oregonians are some of the hardest working people I've seen. And productivity is up, not only in Oregon, but all across the US. Cutting back on labor is the best way to increase the profits that the shareholders demand; the remaining employees have to work even harder.

Have you ever heard the term "snow plowing" as applied to hours worked? It's the practice of under-reporting the hours you work when you reach the maximum allowed hours in a pay period, pushing the extra hours into a future pay period. It's done to complete a project or meet a deadline - any time workload exceeds available hours. It's done routinely at my former employer, although they will state that it is against their policy and it won't be tolerated - for a reason: It's illegal. Oregon has restrictions on the amount of overtime that can be worked in a day and per week. It's another "don't ask - don't tell" policy.

But if you want to get a good year end review, you are compelled to do it because there are others that you compete with during the ranking and rating process who are doing it. Looking at the achievements of those that snow-plow (or simply under-report hours) on paper compared to those that properly report their hours, the ones that practice these policies look more productive than those who do not. It turns into a slippery-slope. More and more hours are worked off-clock in order to get a favorable review - or to keep the job.

During times that overtime is restricted by the company, many people just under report their hours and write it off to job security. The workers that tend to be impacted by this the most are the people who are paid the least - Administrative Assistants (admins), janitorial etc. Those are the positions that are cut first, leaving the remaining workers to pick up the workload. Several of the admins that I have worked with have told me they typically under report their hours in order to get their work done. If 1 employee under reports 1 hour a day that racks up to 260 hours a year. Get multiple employees doing this and it adds up fast. I know of one admin that typically works more than that off the clock, not because she is a lazy worker but because there is not enough time to complete her workload.
Quote:
The one and only fact that matters for a state who has based the majority of their state revenue and budget on an income tax is employment rate and Oregon's employment track record has been poor. The budget deficits will only get larger unless a complete overhaul of the state's fiscal policies and tax strategies occur. Trying to rationalize it with hopes and wishes instead of facts just digs a deeper hole.
The one thing that will save Oregon (and the rest of the US for that matter) is to reduce the focus on drawing large multinational corporations and encourage small business start ups that keep the revenue and labor local to the state. When a large business is headquartered outside the state, at the end of the day the revenue produced by that corporation goes to the home state (or home country, i.e. a tax shelter). Small businesses produce revenue locally and also tend to spend locally B2B, creating a ripple effect that creates even more jobs and increases cascading to increased tax revenues.
 
Old 03-21-2010, 12:02 AM
 
Location: Lakewood OH
21,695 posts, read 28,326,496 times
Reputation: 35862
Quote:
Have you ever heard the term "snow plowing" as applied to hours worked? It's the practice of under-reporting the hours you work when you reach the maximum allowed hours in a pay period, pushing the extra hours into a future pay period. It's done to complete a project or meet a deadline - any time workload exceeds available hours. It's done routinely at my former employer, although they will state that it is against their policy and it won't be tolerated - for a reason: It's illegal. Oregon has restrictions on the amount of overtime that can be worked in a day and per week. It's another "don't ask - don't tell" policy.

But if you want to get a good year end review, you are compelled to do it because there are others that you compete with during the ranking and rating process who are doing it. Looking at the achievements of those that snow-plow (or simply under-report hours) on paper compared to those that properly report their hours, the ones that practice these policies look more productive than those who do not. It turns into a slippery-slope. More and more hours are worked off-clock in order to get a favorable review - or to keep the job.
This is a real eye-opener. This has been done at every company I have worked at in Portland including one where we we union members. The reason was mostly that slower employees could not keep up with the ever-increasing production demands and so stayed late until the work was finished or came in very early to complete something from the night before.

This showed a false accounting of how many hours it actually took to do the work. The departments would of course go by the stats of the most productive workers, turning a blind eye to the extra hours they worked. So more people had to work more unclaimed hours to get the job done. The companies could then justify keeping a smaller staff while working those they had to the max.

I never knew there was a name for this kind of thing. And it's illegal? Wow. Just wow.

I
 
Old 03-21-2010, 04:17 AM
 
12 posts, read 26,273 times
Reputation: 20
Default Illegal labor practices

Quote:
Originally Posted by Minervah View Post
I never knew there was a name for this kind of thing. And it's illegal? Wow. Just wow.
There are a lot of illegal practices that employers will try to get away with. I once worked for an electronic entry systems manufacturer in the SF bay area - Schlage (the lock people) who required all of their hourly employees to wait until a scheduled break or the half hour for lunch to go to the bathroom. This is illegal on the federal level. They can not keep you from going to the bathroom. They get away with it through intimidation, threatening employees with termination if they don't comply (which is also illegal).

These are the same types of anti-labor practices that unions combat. The number one reason employees organize is not for increased pay as the corporations would have you believe; it's for improved working conditions! I once lived with a union organizer and you wouldn't believe some of the horrific working conditions he would tell me about and the lengths these companies would go to in order to stop their employees from unionizing...including death threats! He organizes in WA, OR, CA and ID and has done so for years. What I describe is happening somewhere right now. This isn't just something that happened in the past. He's known people who have been killed.
 
Old 03-21-2010, 02:51 PM
 
Location: Portland, OR
9,858 posts, read 11,875,949 times
Reputation: 10027
What is really scary is that there are fervent union oppositionists right here in this very forum. They would like to see a return to turn of the century America when business was free to work people to death in unsafe factories the way it is still being done in parts of Asia. There was no IRS, no Social Security, no Insurance. Nothing but profit. Some of those tycoons were richer than Bill Gates is now if you adjust their fortunes for inflation over 100 years. There wasn't a whole lot of trickle down then and there isn't a lot now. What there was was a housing boom that allowed people to not have to face the fact that their wages were sub-par. The equity in their homes allowed them to live a Middle Class standard on what were actually Working Class wages. Can you believe there are people against an increase in the minimum wage? They aren't 1%'ers either. They are working stiffs just like the rest of us who buy into the propaganda spewed by the Ruling Class that the jobs they are offshoring aren't really being offshored, no, they argue that it is the Draconian Tax system that is forcing them to cut jobs because they simply can't make a profit. True, they report zero or negative balances every quarter but the Executive Branch takes home millions in salary, perks and bonuses and the shareholders (Toyota excepted) aren't complaining either. If it wouldn't be so destructive to the Middle Class I would like it if the bad guys got their way and unions were outlawed and working conditions in this country could match China so once and for all we could have a unified voice in opposition to the out of control growth of Corporate control of the Free World.

H
 
Old 03-21-2010, 03:36 PM
 
27 posts, read 108,349 times
Reputation: 36
I think the minimum wage should be raised to $10.00 or even $15.00 per hour. There are too many families attempting to live on the minimum wage right now and are suffering in poverty and many are on the verge of hungar and homelessness. Some companies such as Walmart and Kmart restrict the number of hours allowed so that they don't have to pay healthcare or vacation. They have a great bottom line but could care less about their employees. Instead if anyone complains they are told that there are many applicants who would be willing to work without complaint.
 
Old 03-21-2010, 05:01 PM
 
Location: Lakewood OH
21,695 posts, read 28,326,496 times
Reputation: 35862
I worked with various unions and had to be in a union for my previous job. I saw things the unions did (including looking the other way while the investment company my union used while they embezzled millions from 401ks and pensions) that were just as bad as things the corporations did. We would sometimes see deals made between union and management that benefited both but not the employees. Favors were given to some. Cronyism was rampant.

In most cases were the unions were weak in protecting the rank and file because the union members were apathetic. They allowed themselves to be dictated to by both the union to which they belonged and the company for which they worked. They didn't want to make waves so even though they had a contract to protect them, refused to invoke the rights it gave them.

There are companies like Trader Joe's that treat their employees well so the employees do not have to organize. When I worked in Chicago which is a huge union town the unions were always trying to recruit us by making all sorts of promises of improvements. The company would then match these promises and more to keep the union out. The employees benefited each time.

I realized this is an apples and oranges - big city little city - thing but I have to say that I have found Portland employers far worse in their treatment of employees that any place I ever worked for in Chicago.

Last edited by Minervah; 03-21-2010 at 05:06 PM.. Reason: additional thought
 
Old 03-21-2010, 07:08 PM
 
4,282 posts, read 15,713,324 times
Reputation: 4000
After 27 pages it appears the original topic has been shunted aside in favour of more general philosophies.

Time to move on to fresh ground.
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