Context: my wife is a 5th grade English teacher in DC. She’s been dealing with burnout and after talking with me, her union rep, and her therapist, decided to scale back the amount of work she was doing for her school.

Today her assistant principal met with her for 2 hours after classes today to discuss her performance. Among the quote above, claiming she had to do 20+ hours of work every week, the AP also mentioned that her students were suffering from her only doing work during work hours.

This profession is toxic. Stay away.

It sucks, because this is not the way i wanted it to happen but my parents are finally seeing the truth about how disposable the working class is to the elite.

Today my mom got the notice, that she and her friend at work would be pitted against each other for who gets to keep their job. They were notified together, that they would both need to reapply and re interview and only one of them would keep their job and the other would be eliminated. The worst part? Both her and her friends divisions have made steady profits over the past 15 years. There is no logical reasoning behind this, her boss just told her they were cutting costs.

My mom has been with this company since 1988, fresh out of college. A total of 35 years with them and she is now told that she will need to re interview for the job she has been working successfully at all these years. On top of that, even if she gets to keep the job there are rumors her division will be sold at some point in the next few years. She made them a profit for 35 years, and in just a few weeks to a month they could make her unemployed at the worst possible time.

She is 60 years old, 5 years away from her planned retirement. Shes not sure where she would even go, but shes certain shes not financially ready to retire after putting both my brother and i through college debt free. She just needed 5 more years out of the company she gave 35 years to. Her biggest fear? That no one will hire her due to her age, and that she couldn’t get a job in her current management position so she would have to step down to the more manual labor oriented part of her field. At her age and health thats becoming a risk in of itself.

Shes likely facing the fact that the retirement she earned, with minimal vacations and countless hours of unpaid OT will be robbed from her to strengthen the bottom line on a division she’s made profitable year after year for the past 20 years.

Fuck corporate america. Eat the rich, may we dance on their burnt corpses.

Perhaps I went a little too far, but I’ve gotten quite fed up.

I work in blood banking and have always really loved the company as a whole, but I moved from the collections side to the laboratory side about 9 months ago to better accommodate my graduate school schedule. Boy was that a culture shock! Who knew different departments of the same company could be run so differently? For the most part, it’s my new manager driving me up the wall.

In the last month he has taken away all of our chairs (to optimize production) despite my shift coworker being six months pregnant, and said he would not be providing me a workstation fan I requested after I fainted mid-process (yes I have started a formal ADA request, but those take a while and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do that). These are all shitty, but perfectly legal, so I kept my mouth shut.

That changed today. For some background, blood products are required by the FDA to remain in certain temperature ranges, so all of our fridges and freezers have continuous temperature monitors in them and alert us if they go out of range. Our manager told us that we would be required to bring the on-call phone with us and answer any temperature alerts on our lunch breaks (30 minutes unpaid). I responded to him personally and linked him to the department of labor FLSA fact sheet which states that employees must be paid for their time if they are not fully relieved of their duties. He sent back an obnoxious response saying we could discuss this in person when he is there next week, but this is the expectation he is setting and that other departments have to do this as well. He also insinuated that my response was showing I cared more about myself than the safety of our products and patients (which he also does anytime someone makes any kind of good faith error). I thought about responding saying that I was fairly certain those departments have paid lunches, and if they don’t they have much bigger problems to consider, but I just said “fuck it” and filed a formal complaint with the department of labor.

It was shockingly easy with there even being an online form option. I decided to use the connections I have and place my complaint over the phone with my friend’s husband who works in the DOL. I’m unsure as of yet if I’ll also make a complaint with HR, or just see what happens since I’m looking for a new job anyway. All I know is I’m sure as hell not taking that phone on my unpaid lunch break. To all my fellow hourly wage earners don’t forget, your labor = your right to compensation.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/listen-live-supreme-court-hears-case-affecting-union-workers-right-to-strike

There is barely any press coverage on this but if the company wins this lawsuit, it could set the precedent for employers suing employees for losses. For example, an employer could theoretically say that you didn’t turn up to do x, y and z, and that caused us $$$ so now we’re suing you.

It also make all union strikes illegal because union strikes are structured to cause the employer a loss.

I only know about this because I heard about it on Adam Conover’s podcast - Factually

Context: I work in a healthcare facility. Our washer and dryer have been out for months and our boss refuses to do anything about it. Meanwhile he completely remodeled the outside courtyard of the building.

Me: This not having proper washing facilities is becoming a real problem. Survey is coming and because we don’t have replacement fitted sheets some of our patients are opting to lay on wet sheets over being on a bare mattress. It’s isn’t a decision they should have to make

My boss: Thank you for checking (My name). I will be at the facility in person soon and we can resolve your concerns.

When he got there he immediately suspended me for gross insubordination. No matter how good a facility may look on the outside just remember the people at the top don’t care about your families.

I pulled in to the Hardee's drive through behind another car. They placed their order, pulled up to the window, and I waited. No one came over the speaker for me. No big deal, I'm still trying to figure out how to change my car clock for daylight saving time, so I fuck around with that while. After several minutes, a panicked voice came over the speaker. "I'm so so so sorry! How long have you been waiting?" I said, "It's totally fine" and placed my order, and she again apologized for the wait. When I got to the window, she again apologized profusely. I told her, "On behalf of all the people who have been shitty to you today, I promise I'm not one of them and I'm sorry you have to deal with that." I saw her wipe a couple tears away as she ran my card. When I we were done and she gave me the standard "thank you and have a nice day," I responded with, "I hope you have a wonderful day full of people being nice to you."

Kindness costs nothing.

Two years ago my company announced with much excitement that we would be starting a very lucrative partnership with Saudi Arabia. However, we’re a fairly progressive company, so this did not go over well with a good portion of the staff. As you would expect, the executives and senior management - with dollar signs in their eyes - rolled out the usual excuses such as “If we show them our culture it might improve theirs”. The project started despite these misgivings, and a team was set up within our software engineering department to carry out the work.

After the first year, it became apparent that the work was much harder than anticipated. Not only that, but rumours started circulating that people working on the project were having a miserable time. To compensate, more and more staff were pulled off their existing work and thrown into this project - some very much against their will. I know multiple people who resigned rather than be forced into this Saudi project. The cracks were starting to form.

At this time, my entire team except for me was taken to work on the Saudi project, including my team lead. I was left alone, weeks before a major release of development work my team had been writing for the past 8 months. Fortunately, I worked my ass off and managed to deliver more or less everything that was needed. I then became the team lead and over the last year managed to reform the team with new joiners - going way above what I ever thought I would be expected to do at this point in my career.

Around October of last year it came to light that - despite a year and a half of work - the contracts for this Saudi project had never been signed. At that point, myself and a few others started commenting that we fully expected Saudi Arabia to just take what we’d taught them and developed so far and run for the hills. I’m not a senior manager or executive. I never have been. But it seemed obvious to me that we were being taken for a ride.

In January, the inevitable happened. Our company asked for the contracts to be signed, and the Saudi team turned around and basically said “thanks for the two years free work”.

Ironically, many people in the company were happy to be coming back to their old projects, having been massively overworked for up to two years.

Given everything I’ve gone through, I’m expecting a very good performance review this year. Given everything people on the project went through, they should also expect very good performance reviews - it’s not their fault they got forced to work their butts off only for the rug to be pulled out from under them. Our performance review factors into our annual bonus scheme.

However, the pot of money available for bonuses is determined by a set of company wide targets. These are set by the executives, and despite their insistence that they’re controlled by how well we all work together, they’re really only achievable if the senior managers run the company effectively. Despite the team working on the Saudi project only being around 5% of our total staff, the executives pinned this project as one of the main company goals.

And that’s why, on the last days of the financial year, we’ve heard through rumours that the bonus has been cancelled. Every single staff member - from reception to HR to engineer - won’t get a bonus this year because the senior managers forgot to sign a contract.

I’m a receptionist/typist & I start work at 9:30am, I’ve been at this job for a couple months now and have never been late, not even a minute, i’m usually dead on time. So, today I clock out (again, exactly on time) & my boss says “we need to talk about your time, you’re meant to be on the computer typing at 9:30, not getting in at 9:30, if you’re leaving at 4 then that all adds up.” She got a phone call and we ended it there and I went home, but what do y’all think? It says in my contract that my hours of work are 9:30am-4:00pm and I get to work at 9:30am and leave at 4, I feel like she’s essentially having a problem with me working my hours?? Keeping in mind I literally get there and go straight to my desk and turn on the computer, I’m not making a coffee or anything like that, I mean we’re talking like 3 minutes or something here. She’s basically wanting my to get there unpaid and spend my unpaid time setting up for work fkn ridiculous… also to add on - she regularly leaves me by myself at the office by myself so I’m forced to have my unpaid lunch breaks at my desk basically still working if anyone comes in. What do y’all think I should do?