  Mrjoshua Member Username: Mrjoshua Post Number: 1098 Registered: 03-2005 |
Interim Solution For Welfare Clients, Temporary Jobs Can Be a Roadblock Short Assignments May Stall Goals of Self-Sufficiency, A Detroit Study Suggests Michigan Weighs New Options By DEBORAH SOLOMON December 15, 2006; Page A1 The Wall Street Journal DETROIT -- Sheila Thomas joined the welfare rolls in 2003 after her marriage fell apart, leaving her with three young children and no income. In order to collect payments of about $600 a month, the state required her to sign up for its welfare-to-work program. Called Work First, the program routes Michigan welfare recipients to outside organizations that help with job searches and training. Its goal, like similar efforts around the nation, is to eventually wean individuals off public assistance. Through Work First, Ms. Thomas has found jobs. The assignments, though, have all been temporary, each lasting just a few months. Today, she is no closer to achieving her goal -- or the state's -- of self-sufficiency. "I want to work," she says. "But the jobs keep ending." Proponents of welfare-to-work argue that a client who gets a job, even a temporary one, is less likely to become chronically dependent on public aid. Nationally, between 15% and 40% of all welfare recipients who do work are in temp jobs. The prevailing view among Detroit officials and others has been that temp jobs, despite their obvious disadvantages, help welfare recipients taste the dignity of work and develop valuable habits, such as punctuality and learning how to interact with others. But a recent study of job programs in Detroit, which has one of the largest welfare populations in the country, is challenging the long-held belief that a temp job is better than no job. "Encouraging low-skilled workers to take temporary help agency jobs is no more effective -- and possibly less effective -- than providing no job placements at all," says economist Susan Houseman, of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a Kalamazoo, Mich., think tank. She is co-author, with David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of a study that tracked 23,000 Detroit welfare recipients. The results surprised even the researchers. "If anything, we thought that temporary agencies would help welfare workers build skills, connect with potential employers, and so increase their future earnings," says Mr. Autor. "But this is not what we found." Temp-agency work, they discovered, can create an unyielding cycle of finding and losing jobs. Detroit's Work First clients often had low morale, slim chances for job stability and plenty of setbacks. "While you're working at the temp job you're not connecting with direct-hire employers...you're not making any advances towards finding a permanent job," says Ms. Houseman.  The academic research confirms what some people involved in Detroit's system have suspected all along: that temp work has serious drawbacks. "Having a job this week and no job next week is not conducive to independence," says Melvin Chapman, director of a nonprofit welfare-to-work program called Diversified Educational Services Inc. Founded by his father in 1987, DES provides job training and placement assistance for 2,000 welfare recipients annually and generally shuns temp gigs for its clients. One reason: When a welfare recipient loses a job -- especially through no fault of his or her own -- it can create resistance to wanting to work, says Mr. Chapman, a psychologist. In those cases, battle-scarred clients "are more difficult to send on another placement, saying, 'I know how this works, it's a merry-go-round,'" he says. In addition to their ephemeral nature, temp jobs can have what the researchers call a "displacing" effect. They take up valuable time that welfare recipients could be using to find better, more stable positions. The temporary path may also divert some workers to dead-end jobs that ultimately discourage them from staying in the job market. In Michigan, nearly half of the state's welfare recipients who exit the welfare system boomerang back within three months, says Marianne Udow, director of Michigan's Department of Human Services. Detroit welfare officials say that while the preference is to find long-term jobs, temporary placements still are right for some. "Permanent is always the goal," says Deborah Watson, manager of the city's work-force development department. Finding such positions is "more challenging, yes, it is, but we do the best we can." Although her office participated in the economists' study, Ms. Watson says she hasn't seen the results and could not comment on the findings. Figuring out how to get people off welfare remains a significant issue long after President Clinton's welfare-reform laws were enacted a decade ago. His administration changed decades of government policy, limiting the time a person can remain on welfare to about five years and requiring that most people on cash assistance work, seek work or get job training. The Bush administration recently signed a law updating welfare rules that will push states to move even more welfare recipients toward work and job training. The law requires that states place 50% of all their welfare cases into "work activities" and restricts what qualifies as work. Many college classes, for instance, will no longer count toward the work requirement as they once did. Credit for drug- and other substance-abuse programs is also limited. Detroit's Work First program randomly assigns its clients to private job-placement organizations. Some send workers to temporary jobs; some don't. In their study, conducted from late 1999 to mid-2003, Mr. Autor and Ms. Houseman compared work histories of individuals who went the two routes -- as well as those who tried to find work on their own. Of the individuals they studied, about 38% were placed in a permanent job during their Work First participation, 10% were placed with a temporary agency. The remaining 52% left the program without being placed in a job -- often because they didn't fulfill certain requirements such as attending mandatory meetings or submitting paperwork. In those cases, many clients also lost their welfare benefits. Surprising Trends Crunching data from the state's unemployment-insurance wage records, the researchers uncovered some surprising trends. Among workers with similar backgrounds, those placed in temp jobs earned more money at first than those who had been hired directly by an employer for a permanent post. But after a year, the temp workers were earning less money and had less stable employment. They were also more likely to wind up back on welfare than those who had been hired directly by a company into a permanent job. Even more striking, workers who got jobs through temporary agencies over a two-year period earned about $2,200 less than those who didn't get placement but presumably found work on their own. The researchers' conclusion: Most welfare clients who were encouraged to take temporary help jobs by the Work First program would have done better by finding a job directly with an employer after some time spent searching on their own. In 2003, Sheila Thomas, 46 years old, got a part-time grocery-store job paying $6 an hour through Work First. After the store closed in 2004, she was routed back to Work First, which sent her to a temporary agency. For about four months she stuffed envelopes and put together in-store displays for a company specializing in paper products. She earned as much as $7.50 an hour. When that job ended, Ms. Thomas set off on her own to find a new gig through another temporary agency unaffiliated with Work First. "I would sit there and wait and sometimes they had a job and I'd work a few hours," she says. "Sometimes they had nothing and I'd go home." Ms. Thomas still longs for lasting employment. "Temp work isn't good because you can't look for something more permanent," she says, echoing the findings of the economists. "A temp job is 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. sometimes and so you don't have time to look. By the time you try to put your foot on the pavement, they're closed and looking at you like, 'Why weren't you here earlier?'" To continue to qualify for aid, she is participating in job training and is trying to find work in the food-service business. For the past two decades, Mr. Chapman's Diversified Educational Services has been trying to locate permanent jobs for people like Ms. Thomas. Although DES doesn't typically send clients to temporary-agency jobs, it makes an exception where an employer uses temporary positions as a probationary period, and puts workers on the permanent payroll after 90 days. The organization has a 60% placement rate and a track record that puts it in the top third of Work First placement providers. Detroit Hispanic Development Corp., another Work First placement contractor, reluctantly sends some clients to temporary agencies. "We want to use them as our last resort," says Linda Gonzalez, the organization's director of employment and education. "But if it's something where time is running out, when all resources are exhausted, then we work with some of the temp agencies." Some workers welcome temp assignments for their flexibility. The temporary-help sector has more than doubled over the past 15 years, to 2.6 million in 2006 from 1.1 million people in 1990. On average, most temporary jobs last three to four months, says Steve Berchem, vice president of the American Staffing Association, a trade group. He notes that temp jobs can lead to full-time positions or provide workers with marketable skills and training. Mr. Berchem largely discounts the economists' findings, saying that other studies show temporary work does help boost low-skilled workers' wages over time. But none of those other studies used the same technique that Mr. Autor and Ms. Houseman used to compare experiences of similar individuals who were randomly placed in different work situations. The emphasis on permanent, over temporary, work does seem to pay off for welfare clients like Tamra Fleming. A 29-year-old single mother of two, she began receiving cash assistance after having her first child at age 17 and was on and off the program for 12 years. Her first husband ended up in prison; she separated from her second six years ago. Ms. Fleming has been through Work First three times. Her initial stint resulted in a $6-an-hour, six-week summer job at White Castle. Her second led her to Spherion, a temporary agency, which sent her to do mostly light manufacturing work for auto suppliers. After her third referral to Work First in August 2005, she ended up at DES, Mr. Chapman's outfit. First it sent her to a three-week customer-service training class. When it ended, a counselor lined up a job interview, advising her on what to wear and how to get a free outfit from another local nonprofit. In October 2005, Ms. Fleming, who didn't finish high school, landed a $6.50 an hour job with President Tuxedo, a Detroit clothing store. In July 2006, she was promoted to store manager with a $35,000-a-year salary and health benefits. She bought a new house and a new car and has since started her own business as a wedding coordinator on the side. She is no longer receiving cash assistance. Extra Boost Ms. Fleming says she wouldn't have found a permanent job without the extra boost from DES. "The welfare program should be pushing people a lot more," she says. In Michigan, where 79,000 families are currently on welfare -- the state is in the process of replacing the Work First program. Ms. Udow said state officials wanted to change the program because they realized the notion of "finding a job, any job" wasn't working. "Our goal was to create permanent labor-force attachment and to reduce poverty in the state," says Ms. Udow. The new initiative, called Jobs Education & Training, is being tested in four Michigan counties. It aims to help people find permanent jobs and stay employed. Unlike the Work First model, which immediately sends individuals out to find jobs, clients are first evaluated to size up their overall employability -- from labor skills to other factors such as child-care issues or problems with substance abuse. As part of the program, Michigan is also working with several companies and nonprofit organizations that help welfare clients find -- and hold -- jobs. One of them is Cascade Engineering, a Grand Rapids-based manufacturer of plastic components used by auto companies and other industries. Job candidates need to have at least 10th-grade reading and math skills, and must also pass a probationary period. After that, they are hired permanently at entry-level salaries of about $9 an hour. So far, Cascade officials say, most of the welfare clients sent to them have graduated to full-time positions. The turnover rate among those workers is low, at just about 2.5% annually. Write to Deborah Solomon at deborah.solomon@wsj.com Copy of the study on MIT's Web site: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=1185 | ||
Danny Member Username: Danny Post Number: 5287 Registered: 02-2004 |
That's a great ideal from Engler's cronies when the welfare to work program have started. It's time to po'folks in Michigan who are healthy and strong to work. Like the Bible says, "If you don't work, you don't eat." | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 417 Registered: 08-2006 |
Whew! That was looonnnngggg read! Great article though. Something the author did not mention however was the need to wean employers off of temporary employees. Temping got started by companies like Kelly Services and was only intended to provide staff for secretaries on maternity leave for example. In recent decades companies have abused the system as a way of avoiding health care and agreed pay scales. They will have positions that are never ending strings of temp workers. I liken it to the single person who ony wants a physical hook up fling booty call thing with thier partner, being too selfish to commit to a "relationship". It would partly address the issue outlined by the researchers if we could make a lot of these temp jobs permanent when the employers obviously have full time work available. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 7626 Registered: 12-2003 |
Never thought about the heartbreak of temporary work. Now that I'm in that mindset...thanks to the article...I realize the stresses of entering a workspace even as full-time...meeting everyone, learning the rhythm and pace of the place-the politics and emotional garbage that collects whenever more than one mere human share a room unwillingly (who of us RUSHES gleefully to work?), then learning the job...the task at hand, only to get reasonably comfortable with it...just as they hand you the pink. Damn. We're doing an injustice to many of these folks...they are as expendable as the corporate model of BOTH business and government considers them. Expendable humans?! Sounds like something even Karl would be against, if they were only soaking in amniotic fluid. | ||
Citylover Member Username: Citylover Post Number: 1958 Registered: 07-2004 |
Perhaps they could soak in amniotic fluid Gannon_ a variation on the auto co's job bank program_ that would satisfy Karl. | ||
Mrjoshua Member Username: Mrjoshua Post Number: 1099 Registered: 03-2005 |
"...companies have abused the system as a way of avoiding health care and agreed pay scales." Companies have no obligation to provide above market wages and/or health care to employees with subpar skill sets, reliability issues or poor health. They are only obligated to provide these things to those employees who have the skills they need and whose supply is limited at any given time on the market because if they did not they would not be able to manufacture the products or provide the services necessary for them to remain competitive. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 419 Registered: 08-2006 |
Companies serve the people of the community not the other way around. We don't owe companies scads of cheap expendable labor that is not entitled to fair pay or benefits. Employers not wanting to provide an adequate sense of job security is the reason our local economy is in the toilet. If you are not laid off, you are worried you are getting laid off. Which is why no one will go out and buy a house or a new car. | ||
Goat Member Username: Goat Post Number: 9042 Registered: 10-2003 |
Welcome to the 21st century. Temp. work is only going to grow as the Board must be held accountable to the stockholders regardless of the workers need. Globalization is the excuse to fleece the average worker and it is working. | ||
Gildas Member Username: Gildas Post Number: 907 Registered: 12-2004 |
Cambrian, You could not be more wrong. A company provides services to a group of people. If it is a fair value the people buy the goods and / or service and the corporation makes money. If it is poor service the corporation may go out of business or be replaced by another organization. Companies do not owe the people of a community anything. Corporations hire people and pay a competitive wage, don't like it? quit and go elsewhere. A corporation is responsible to its stock holders, not the people of a community (provided all applicable laws are followed). Our local economy is in the toilet because for too long we have been using the model you advocate, provide a higher wage then is reasonable and then competition shows up and we are screwed (hello US auto industry). Why do you think an uneducated wrench turner in the US is worth $40.00 an hour while an uneducated wrench turner in Mexico or China is worth $2.00 an hour? It's your lack of understanding basic business practise, compounded with an over inflated sense of self worth that has wrecked our economy, but has made you an ideal union worker. in practise if not reality. | ||
Miketoronto Member Username: Miketoronto Post Number: 400 Registered: 07-2004 |
Why don't they make these welfare people work for the city? Why can't people on welfare get their pay check, but the ones that can work, start doing work to better the city, like clean streets, etc. I see no problem with that. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 421 Registered: 08-2006 |
Gildas: Given the choice people don't prefer to buy from self serving companies (see the big three's declining market share), or vote for people that favor self serving corporations (Note the Michigan Gubenatorial race and the US House and Senate house cleaning). I think it is the draconian opinions of people like you that will wind up in the Smithsonian for generations of the future to regard in disbelief. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 7638 Registered: 12-2003 |
Either corporate capitalism finds some way to value life beyond USING them as mere labor and/or consumer...this will devolve into much worse. Same with environmental stuff, the corporate capitalist system is designed at its core to be anti-BOTH. Overall, even with ethical and moral people as its parts...corporations have psychotic tendencies. They cannot help but act in this way. Watch The Corporation on Google video...open your eyes. Stretch your brain some. | ||
Mrjoshua Member Username: Mrjoshua Post Number: 1100 Registered: 03-2005 |
Cambrian, the Big 3 are a welfare state unto themselves and this is the biggest reason they're in the shape they're in. As a point of fact, they have not been selfish enough as their primary business focus has been not on profitability but the continued sustenance of their bloated and overpaid work force. If you choose to deny that the laws of supply and demand and globalization exist, it will be your loss. You will remain unemployed or underemployed, now or in the future. It would be better for you to focus on how you can become competitive and contribute to the new economy rather than remain transfixed on its parasitic past. | ||
Janesback Member Username: Janesback Post Number: 174 Registered: 08-2006 |
150 years ago, you came to this country for reasons of religious oppression or starvation or any other that you choose. There were no welfare programs to take care of you, no offices to assist you in getting free money.......nothing. You had relatives who you lived with while you went to look for a job. You then had to find a job, or your relative would throw you out. You had to learn the job, learn the English language to survive, you married, you worked, you put your kids thru school, you bought a house, you retired and then you died....... People need to stop expecting help from organizations that are getting the U.S deeper in the hole and deeper in debt. People need to know that their foreign language from what ever country they come from, is not the language of the U.S. People need to take responsibility and be held accountable. Assistance today only enables people to depend on handouts and allows people to find excuses to fail. Dont believe it, look at the school system today, and opposed to 50 years ago. Its a joke, kids having kids because they can, because the govt will pay them for their babies, while their babys' daddy is out playing and not taking responsibility or accountability. Guaranteed public assistance isnt the American dream. Its guaranteed poverty, and from that, the vicious cycle continues........ | ||
Gildas Member Username: Gildas Post Number: 908 Registered: 12-2004 |
Cambrian Sorry that reality and the truth are painful. The Big 3 declining market share is due to other corporations producing better vehicles at lower prices. The Smithsonian display you might be thinking of is the failed welfare state that is the Big 3 as well as the State of Michigan. Future generations may well wonder why we choose to pay people for not doing anything or had government funded laziness. Michigan's recent race shows just how far that poorly placed idealogy has gone. A individual who employes people in a state and has been successful is the bad guy. A governor with a poor track record of job creation leading the worst state in the union the hero. By the way she just agreed to limit welfare to these useless people in the state of MI. Do you think she is trying to avoid being part of the Smithsonian display? Or prehaps just taking some lessons from the real world of business and budgets? | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 7643 Registered: 12-2003 |
150 years ago, you could trek west and stake out some land and GROW your own life. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 7644 Registered: 12-2003 |
The Luddites were right. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 422 Registered: 08-2006 |
That was a Good flick Gannon. I like how even Michael Moore had to admit there are good companies that have bettered the lives of many. Still are, there are lots of companies in the Detroit area we don't hear about that are committed to providing full time employment with health insurance. These companies parking lots are always full of new cars, down the street at fly by night enterprises you'll see nothing but beaters in the employee lot. Obviously you can be a good corporate member of the community and still provide value to the biz owner's or share holders. It's this global competitiveness that encourages some of the companies to start focusing on shaving pennies here and there that is ruinous to our economy. | ||
Gildas Member Username: Gildas Post Number: 909 Registered: 12-2004 |
So Gannon you are saying that opposing technological progress is bad? It was the industrial age that gave rise to a large middle class and the creation of cities like Detroit. Criticism of Luddism One view of Luddites is that they were a paramilitary group, trying to enforce a production monopoly for their own financial gain through sabotage and the resultant intimidation. Also, neoclassical economic historians would argue that Luddites' opposition to the free market and opposition to technological 'progress' were roughly equivalent, believing that the progress that created what we generally refer to as 'modernity' (and especially the high standards of living prevalent in developed nations) was due to the use of technology for private gain, and that this pursuit of private gain, through the medium of specialization, comparative advantage, and mutually beneficial exchange, accumulatively enhances the general welfare. This view, shared with other writers, is a key thesis of David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. The Luddites were an anachronism because they could not adapt and compete, kind of like the UAW today. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 7645 Registered: 12-2003 |
I don't see any long-term benefits to what we call technological progress. Short-term comforts for the mere human? Yeah. A wee bit MORE comfort the higher up you struggle? Hell yeah. If you are lucky enough to be fed with a silver spoon and never struggle, then comfortable enough to make you intellectually numb and unaware of everything obvious around you. (Perhaps, then you get to be called President or Chief Executive Officer.) Nothing long-term, though. Too much comfort makes us weak...Darwin would be horrified to see us obtusely but furiously working towards our own demise as a specie. I do NOT endorse violence against the system. But, the system is screwed up, and is screwing us up. Don't have a solution, just describing the problem. I'm thinking about it, constantly, it seems, though. It's one of the twelve things in the background of my mind...churning. | ||
Goat Member Username: Goat Post Number: 9044 Registered: 10-2003 |
Miketoronto, the unions would have a fit over that! | ||
6nois Member Username: 6nois Post Number: 24 Registered: 11-2006 |
Okay so um the reason why the U.S. auto industry is in trouble, is because they haven't designed cars people want in a long time. In order for a company to make a profit you need to sell things people want. Also if you look, all car makers sell cars for about the same prices, make them and pay workers, the only difference is people want cars designed like Toyota or Honda. Its about design not how you pay people. | ||
Jiminnm Member Username: Jiminnm Post Number: 1141 Registered: 02-2005 |
Not quite 6nois, Toyota and Honda have created a perception in people that their cars last longer, get better mileage and have a higher resale value than GM or Ford. It's a perception that's more true than not (especially the lasting and resale qualities). GM and Ford have created a perception in people that their cars do not last that long and are not worth as much as Toyota or Honda. It's a perception more true than not (especially the value perception, as GM and Ford constantly have rebates, employee pricing and numerous other discounts). It takes a long time and much effort to change folks' perceptions. The poor U.S. cars of the 1970s and 1980s may have soured an entire generation on their cars. The jury's still out on whether the big 2 will survive long enough to change the perception of the next generation. | ||
Cman710 Member Username: Cman710 Post Number: 88 Registered: 07-2006 |
Gannon: "I don't see any long-term benefits to what we call technological progress." I am not sure how you can believe this. How can you say that people are not better off now than 100-150 years ago, when significant numbers of people did not have running water or toilets in their homes, when people died of diseases like smallpox and malaria, when people on average lived decades shorter lives. How is there no long-term gain? The advance of technology improved all of the above situations, and thousands others. And that is not to mention that progress and technology MADE the middle class. There has always been a class of spectacularly wealthy people (think lords in the Middle Ages), but there was not always a middle class. Technology promoted economic development allowing large numbers of people to obtain jobs where they made enough wage to live at an above-subsistence level. If not for technology, many of us would still be farmers, worrying about whether a drought or crop disease or early freeze would cost us our lives. Anyway, how has the progress of society from one extremely stratified by wealth to one with a sizeable middle class merely short-term improvement? (Message edited by cman710 on December 15, 2006) | ||
Mrjoshua Member Username: Mrjoshua Post Number: 1119 Registered: 03-2005 |
Reader responses to the article... That First Rung on the Ladder Up From Welfare Is the Most Difficult December 26, 2006; Page A13 The Wall Street Journal Programs that funnel welfare recipients into temporary work that pays poverty wages rarely help people get skills they need to actually land and keep a job that will lead to self-sufficiency ("For Welfare Clients, Temporary Jobs Can Be a Roadblock," page one, Dec. 15). These programs, therefore, contradict the goal of welfare-to-work programs: to move people out of poverty. The importance of the MIT study cited in your article isn't just that it found that people placed in temporary jobs had their employment prospects worsened, but that it makes the case for training people to have enough skills to be hired directly by employers, because these employees will be 20% less likely to return to welfare within two years. Within two years of getting into Hunter College in New York, I moved permanently from public assistance. I am not special. In fact, a CUNY study shows that 75% of the women receiving welfare who entered college did the same as I did. Education and training lead to skills and self-determination, both of which enhance families' economic and private lives. What we should learn from this new study is that funneling people into work programs can wastefully delay applying the education and training models we know are effective to end dire poverty. Maureen Lane New York (Ms. Lane is a fellow of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy and co-director of The Welfare Rights Initiative at Hunter College.) Your article leaves readers with the erroneous impression that temporary work isn't beneficial and is, perhaps, even harmful to a permanent job search. While this might have been true for some welfare recipients in the Detroit area, when you look at the big picture the facts are completely different. Staffing firms create opportunities for people to get on and move up the career ladder. The American Staffing Association's 2006 survey of more than 13,000 current and former temporary and contract employees found that 53% of staffing employees who want permanent jobs find them. And 65% reported that they developed new or improved work skills as a result of their employment by staffing firms. The Autor and Houseman study covered only a very narrow population of workers -- 4% of the total number of temporary employees in Detroit, an area where permanent jobs were and continue to be in short supply. Roadblock? Hardly. For millions of Americans each year, temporary work is the bridge to permanent employment and a better life for themselves and their families. Richard A. Wahlquist President and CEO American Staffing Association Alexandria, Va. An important metric that seems to be missing from all of these studies cited in this article is the reason for the assignment ending. The temporary employee has a vested interest in this process as well. There is a certain amount of Darwinism in temporary staffing, as there is in any business. Those who produce and are diligent tend to survive. Employees who are lackadaisical and unmotivated are simply removed from the equation. In my company's market, it is getting more and more difficult to find skilled labor. Clients are converting temporary employees to direct-hire at prodigious rates and are becoming more open to training employees with lower skills and offer better pay, if the employee can show a modicum of motivation and effort. This article seems to paint temporary agencies with a very broad brush and fails to consider the employee as part of the equation. Michigan's model seems sound on the surface. But if there are no employers in a given market, you can't expect miracles to happen. Even Santa Claus isn't that good. Mark T. Carlson Vice President Business Development & Marketing The Suburban Group Westborough, Mass. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 459 Registered: 08-2006 |
Nice to see some one realizes things are different for working people now than they were 40 years ago. In the good old days once you got your 90 days in at a company you were good. Now a days you are expected to work 12 hours a day any shift the boss wants, you can be fired at any time for any reason. How could one got to school with that kind of work environment? Too boot you will get passed over for promotion by people coming in that could afford to take a hiatus from full time work for four or six years and get a degree. | ||
Romanized Member Username: Romanized Post Number: 214 Registered: 02-2005 |
Cambrian Sounds fair to me. Its called competition. If there was the same amount as thirty years ago, you would have a point. I'm a professional that had to put in five months as a temp to get hired on permanent. If I didn't like it, I could have just picked up, and headed for the welfare office. | ||
Mrjoshua Member Username: Mrjoshua Post Number: 1122 Registered: 03-2005 |
Romanized, employers term this 'Try before you buy'. It works quite well and ends up being cost effective if 1) the agency your payroll is being run through is not charging an exorbitant rate (it's typically at least 28 percent of your hourly pay) and 2) if the contract's duration is limited to 6 months or under. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 461 Registered: 08-2006 |
Would be nice if they actually did the "Try before you buy". I worked for GM as a manufacturing engineer temp, there were thousands of us. I worked there for six years, others worked as temps for as long as 15 years, I heard of one getting laid off after 18 years as a contractor. I could name only two or three out of thousands that got hired in direct. Sounds like romanized found that rare job, how about sharing with everybody who you your sweetheart boss is? What's that, don't wanna? I Didn't Think so! | ||
Ordinary Member Username: Ordinary Post Number: 95 Registered: 06-2006 |
Mrjoshua, Gildas, I agree with a lot of what you're saying but not everybody can go to college and become a professional. Also people have to be able to buy what they build. Wasn't that one of the problems associated with the depression? Miketoronto, Goat probably answered your question the best but I think about that all the time when I see all these people wandering around with nothing to do and at the same time there is so much work to be done in the city. I just hate seeing all the abandoned half-burnt houses. Maybe something like the Civilian Conservation Corps for the city would help. | ||
Jimaz Member Username: Jimaz Post Number: 1255 Registered: 12-2005 |
This is a very important observation. It suggests that there is a better solution. Thank you for noting that, Ordinary. |
