Month: August 2023

Hi, so the store I work at is inside the mall, and we are one of the only stores with broken AC. It’s a constant 76 degrees in there or higher. We are a jewelry shop so we have to dress up and we have lots of lights which doesn’t help the heat either. And we are a tiny store so it gets crowded easily. We have been trying to contact our regional manager but it seems that nothing is moving forward. I just want a more comfortable work environment, instead when I walk in there I get drenched in sweat. What are your guys opinions?

are insanely exploitative no matter what company you work for. You either get shit pay for okay work culture or you get mediocre pay and shit work culture. At my current job we're all getting paid just at or just under the living wage in my city ($21/h). I've seen tons of red flags: some labor divisions don't get paid for work at the shop or for drive between sites, chronically understaffed, work days vary from 6-12 hours in a super inconsistent way, competition between workers for easier work/using machinery, lack of safety gear, equipment never works properly, etc. I have ignored most of it because I'm a student and this is only temporary for me, but today really showed me how out of touch my boss is about our ability to afford living. My crew leader was ~20 min late for work today (but not an issue because myself…

I'm on a closed work permit in canada. Meaning I can only work for the employer in my permit. This restricts my ability to switch jobs easily. My salary is 78k cad a year as a plant manager in a small farm thar harvests and processes food. The amount of work per week varies but when it's not harvest season someone can expect a 7 am to 4:30 pm shift from Monday to Friday. On harvest season from early July to ends of August, work is daily and could be from 7 am to 8 or 10 pm. One would expect as a plant manager that I have some degree of freedom for choices but not really. The owner of the farm ( a woman , unsure if it's relevant or not but I'll post it here anyways) runs everything and basically makes every decision for me. I'm young (26)…

NSFW for language I guess? I love working from home. I can put on YouTube or music or a podcast or whatever and I don't have to feel stressed about bosses constantly looking over my shoulder to see if I'm productive. Now our company is having us all go back into the office, and I'm dreading it. Working in the office is the most depressing shit to me. Everything is just sterile white and I'm nowhere near a window. The time goes so slow and we can't have our phones out or anything not even to listen to music. Probably gonna look for somewhere else to work, but something tells me every place is gonna be like where I work soon, with everyone forced to go back to the office. How else can they exert as much control over our lives as possible? But in the meantime, how the fuck…

I started this job in May with the explicit written agreement that I was going to get married in September, had plans for a two week honeymoon shortly after (no set dates at that time), and would go to my sister's wedding in November. My boss agreed to all this in writing. About a month ago I found out I need to have surgery. Although it isn't urgent, it would solve my health issues that I've dragged for many years and that interfere with my day to day life. Plus, I can't start a family without this surgery. A couple weeks ago we booked our tickets for the honeymoon and they're immediately after the wedding because it was the most affordable date to travel and it's the only date that fits with the surgery preparation and recovery time. My boss contacted hr and said she'd never agreed to me going…

We’ve had some discussions of people’s salaries so now is a good time to remind ourselves that the “fight” is not between high earners and low earners. Fundamentally, we have two kinds of people: those who work for money—the labor class— and those who own things for money—the capital class. Fighting inside the labor class about how someone deserves more or less is exactly what the capital class wants. Your enemy is not the educated professional making $300k a year on a salary. That lawyer, doctor, or banker making $300k-1mm is much closer to the fast food worker making $12/hour, than to the capital class that owns the Fortune corporations. Ultimately the world we want is one in which labor is given a fair portion of the value it generates, and the fruits of the means of production (be it land, machinery, or AI) are equitably distributed instead of the…

Sorry if this is jumbled, I'm writing this after a night shift and 2 hours of sleep, running on anger alone at this point. This is probably going to be a long post, so bear with me. Problem 1: So I just started working at a fairly big grocery chain here in the US, and I'm already trying to find a way out. I had applied and interviewed for the night crew stocking position, because my partner also works night shift there and I want to make sure we get to see each other outside of working hours. That, and so we could walk to work together for our safety (no car and no friends to give a ride, no bus that time of night). During the interview, I was asked if I'd want to do file maintenance/tags instead, which is just printing and hanging tags around the store. They…

I went to school to be a vet, vet school didn’t pan out, but I still have my bachelors in animal science. I’ve had a fairly successful 5 years in the medical field as a lab tech up to now a technical laboratory supervisor, but I’m burned out and I need more pay. Currently at 28/hrs and I’m wondering what I can use my animal science degree in.

I've been with the same security company for 7 years. The pay sucks, the benefits are terrible, and if you even THINK the word “union” you'll get fired. Honestly, I've been looking at other job opportunities for a few months now, and I'm going to update my resume either tonight or tomorrow. I was thinking about how tight money is last Friday because I'm a single parent, and my wages just aren't cuttin' it. I had hoped to get my foot in the door somewhere else before leaving this place, but when I got in to work tonight I had an email that said my vacation time request was denied. I asked for 6 days off at the end of the month, and I don't request time off very often; pretty much only once a year. Also, I requested the vacation time more than two weeks before I would need…

I work for an environmental engineering consultant company. It is a standard 9 to 5 office job. There is a union for office workers (OPEIU), but none specific to our industry. I have one coworker who has expressed mild interest, but it doesn't seem like anyone else is interested. We don't get sick leave. We get three weeks paid vacation, and are expected to use that if we get sick and need time off. Apparently this is the industry norm, but that doesn't make it okay. We also get zero company stock options, and our pay is on the low end for the work that we do. How do I convince my coworkers that, if we organize, we would be able to negotiate sick leave, better pay, and an overall better work environment? Does it matter that none of our competitors are unionized? My one coworker who expressed interest said…