Author: Olivia

Our company’s annual compensation cycle is kicking off where we receive our reviews and find out our bonus and raises. To say I have low expectations is an understatement. Given all of the inflation talk over the last year I put together a simple Excel schedule of my historical comp from 2017 through 2021. I then went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and adjusted my raises for that year’s official inflation rate. Over the 5 year period from 2017-2021 my total “real” comp increase was .29%. I always felt like I was progressing but guess I was wrong. The point of this post is to vent but also note that most companies do not reward loyalty and in general the only way to receive meaningful raises is to switch jobs. When I plug in my 2022 numbers it will hopefully lead to a larger conversation with the HR overlords,…

I worked as an English teacher for a private for-profit academy in South Korea for seven years. Every year, I had to sign a new contract so that they wouldn't have to consider me an employee and give benefits. One day, they got busted by the labor board because according to our contracts, we should have been considered employees the whole time. So they came to us all happy, announcing we were about to be employees instead of freelancers, and acted as though it was a favor they were doing us. They told us all we had to sign NEW contracts and void our old ones to make it happen, even though the whole problem was that according to our contracts we already were employees. These new contracts were a mess. Halving our vacation time, taking away our sick days, adding more work, and offering generally worse conditions all around.…

I need to vent sorry for such a long post, Tl;dr at the end of the post I started working at an AML (anti money laundering) company 5 months ago. Even before I started, I noticed couple of red flags, but was desperate enough to take the offer. Boy, do I regret taking it. Context: I live in Poland, which, as a “poor” EU country is more often than not utilized as an offshoring/outsourcing haven for western corporations. The company I work for is actually German but was acquired by an American counterparty and I work in a project for an American Bank. Ok where do I even start with all the wrong things about the company. First of all they tell us to come for 8.5 hours but they don't pay for the 30 minutes break within that timeframe, this is not a standard in my country and frankly,…

Getting the multimillionaire owners to come in and see how shit it is for the average worker then making them happy by giving them money and we are all supposed to say, 'wow, what a great person/company'. Its total bull and reality TV propaganda.

Could we (the people) organize a national labor strike to demand higher minimum wages? Even if it lasted one day. Just one day with absolutely no work done (except medical etc) and not a single dollar put back into the economy, the effects would be so insane that I feel like even just the fear of it actually happening would work.

Wanted to share this trend I’m seeing in Canada quickly in 2022. My company AIG is pulling out new stops (in US too) to recruit and they are desperate. They relied for decades on people begging to work here and them holding all the cards. Now, my department barely sees applications coming in, until they raise the wage and/or amend the employment agreement to the applicant’s demands. I can’t say I’m not enjoying this! We are also accepting, for the 1st time, applications without experience or degrees. My husband works in real estate and the same goes for his industry. He was complaining last night his team is showing him the job offers they are getting and demanding more $ now. He is over a barrel and desperate to keep them. But he still has the old mentality of ‘why can’t they just appreciate what they have’ and ‘I paid…