Blue Collar Blues; Two Get Fired !
Posted 08-26-2013 at 08:22 AM by Fortoggie
A plant near here had some large orders come in for the upcoming christmas season. They hired four temps, to help handle the workload and worked them right through the weekend. Sunday afternoon, six policemen arrived at the plant with guns drawn. One of the new hires, a young woman had called 911 and said that a black man [ one of the new hires had a gun.]
After extensive searching and having the black man telling them over and over that he did not even own a gun and never had carried one; the management nevertheless fired both the man and the woman.
You can see management's point of view on this. No doubt the disruption of the high speed equipment cost the company far more, than the wages of the two workers. It didn't matter that the black man had walked three miles to work each of the three days that he had been employed or that his firing would impact, his children.
Management undoubtedly wanted to impress all the other workers that they ran a tight ship and would not tolerate any foolishness of any kind.
So what is the blue collar worker to do? The police had to respond, the company could not ignore the incident but at the same time it sets a tone, a feeling of a police state and the worker is reminded that he or she is vulnerable.
After extensive searching and having the black man telling them over and over that he did not even own a gun and never had carried one; the management nevertheless fired both the man and the woman.
You can see management's point of view on this. No doubt the disruption of the high speed equipment cost the company far more, than the wages of the two workers. It didn't matter that the black man had walked three miles to work each of the three days that he had been employed or that his firing would impact, his children.
Management undoubtedly wanted to impress all the other workers that they ran a tight ship and would not tolerate any foolishness of any kind.
So what is the blue collar worker to do? The police had to respond, the company could not ignore the incident but at the same time it sets a tone, a feeling of a police state and the worker is reminded that he or she is vulnerable.
Total Comments 3
Comments
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What Would you have done if you had been fired?
In years past, I have sat in many meetings with other employers; where we have had experts come in and tell us how to avoid law suites and how to never be held hostage with labor laws,etc..
The average blue collar worker is seldom aware of how much attention is paid in protecting the company from all sorts of assaults. This includes, competition, trademark infringement and of course many kinds of employee problems, including sexual harassment and of course injury and medical claims.
However this doesn't mean that the worker always gets treated fairly. The two who got fired in this original post probably have a case to make in their defense [ at least one of them ] but they have no one to advocate their case. The best they can hope for is that this particular incident will not show up on their record in anyway.
In general the worker needs to get a lot smarter about the system they work in and in doing so will be able to avoid the land mines that seems to be hidden all along the way.Posted 08-28-2013 at 09:52 AM by Fortoggie
Updated 08-28-2013 at 09:55 AM by Fortoggie (missing word) -
Tale # 2
A young man That I have been coaching, had a spat with his ex- wife, I tried my best to get him to settle down last night and cautioned him that he would not be able to focus on his work if he didn't put it out of his mind.
Well today they sent him home after only two hours. He had made a costly mistake and the boss, rather than fire him gave him two days off. Will he learn his lesson?
When you get to be a man; you need to be able to control your thoughts and actions.Posted 08-29-2013 at 11:16 AM by Fortoggie
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Companies Swap Workers
My home town of about 50,000 has a history of swapping workers around that benefits the companies but seldom helps the worker.
First the town has several thousand low pay, manufacturing workers and often tempers flair and the worker either quits or gets fired.
In most cases he can go to work right away at another plant that has similar work. In many cases he is replacing someone who got fired over there.
For the company though the,"new" worker comes in at a lessor wage than what he was getting and he has no benefits for at least 60 days. In addition the foreman will say, if you get in and work and show me that you can produce, i'll get you a raise in 30 days. etc. So the worker is on a merry-go-round and it often takes 20 years to figure it out.Posted 09-06-2013 at 12:49 PM by Fortoggie
