CEO says American Workers are Defective

[monsoon]

.....an enormous percent of the population sitting on their butts collecting welfare,unemployment griping about how no one does anything for them while they play their x-box and i-pods watching color Tv all day and talking on their cell phones......

[Gusterfell]

The unemployment rate would drop to almost zero if some simple work ethics were instilled into todays young minds and everything doesn't revolve around paris,jamie lynn and over paid sports figures.

[Justadude]

To echo what has already been said here, there is really no sense in working for $6 an hour unless you are a student making gas money. In this day and age, I'd say the cutoff for supporting oneself is right around the $8-9 dollar range, and higher if a family is involved. Anything less than that, and you'd do better with a combination of welfare and illegal activity (drugs, prostitution, etc.). That might not be a palatable concept, but it is a hard fact of life for those living in abject poverty. Many of the people we are calling "lazy" in this thread do a tidy business in their "free" time, because it's their best option for making a living wage.

[MadVlad]

What CEO's are REALLY saying is not that they can't find Americans that can do the job, but they can't find Americans to do the job for peanuts. Everyone wants to have workers do more, quicker, for less money. The problem is, there is only so much you can bleed from a stone. For instance, a large company has just laid off 200 call center workers here in Connecticut because it's too expensive here. Let me explain that Connecticut has one of the most educated, highly trained workforces in the country. I'll give you one guess which company that is provided you don't read the first post in the thread, and you tell me they can't find non-defective workers. They can't find non-defective workers for peanuts. Read THIS ARTICLE, it makes a ton of good points, and don't believe the hype, Americans are plenty smart, they just won't work for nothing....

[Gard]

^^^

Exactly. What we need is for these companies to be subject to special taxes on each employee they have overseas for a job that could easily be done here. When they move the job back to the US, they don't have to pay the tax. If they hire out a company to do the work overseas when there are companies here they could easily contract with company here, they should have to pay taxes on this contract.

[Allison Slater]

Where exactly would this "enormous percent" of the population find jobs in an economy where employers are laying people off and sending their jobs to cheap labor markets overseas; where even well-educated, ambitious workers are having trouble finding work? There aren't millions of vacancies in the burger-flipping industry.

it isn't that Americans "won't do" the work being done by migrant workers. They won't do the work for the criminally meager wages these employers want to pay. Migrant workers, particularly those here illegally, will.

As others have pointed out, unemployment benefits don't last forever, especially if the recipient isn't actively seeking work.

[Justadude]

Even in-store management does not receive good pay. Most of the general managers I know still rely on assisted living housing and food stamps.

[Allison Slater]

In fact, you're right. My current store manager effectively took a pay cut when she was promoted to store manager. The pay per hour for the 45 hours she was working for the couple weeks after the previous manager walked out was higher than what she got out of manager's salary for 45-50 hours a week after becoming an official store manager.

When minimum wage went up in our state, shift managers at Little Caesars were not boosted up a proportional amount.. instead trainees earned minimum wage with shift managers making about 25 cents more, the exact same pay rate per hour as they did when there was a several dollar difference between trainee and shift manager. Raises were simply not issued for a year after that to ANYBODY, not even the shift managers; nor did store managers receive an increase in salary.

See why nobody at fast food resturaunts ever seem enthusiastic about their job? Well, maybe a few are, but they're either good actors or still in training. More commonly the later.

[Justadude]

^ But you better believe the folks in HQ got raises on schedule. A very basic problem with American capitalism is that raises grow disproportionately as you move up the corporate ladder. It's one thing for an executive to make more money than his subordinates, it's another for him to receive a 10-15% pay increase every year while everyone below him settles for 3%. It's such a simple and obvious injustice that you'd think there would be enough political organization and will to stop it, but ironically the blue-collar voter typically opposes regulation on salaries. One of the great political switcharoos that the GOP has managed to pull off.

[swh1972]

I'm not disagreeing with what you say, but also keep in mind that as you go higher up the ladder, your compensation is increasingly tied to the performance of the company. On the flip side, the regular worker rarely shares in the successes of a company that is doing well.

[Justadude]

I'm not disagreeing with what you say, but also keep in mind that as you go higher up the ladder, your compensation is increasingly tied to the performance of the company.

[davidals]

There is much truth to that statement as the number of imigrant workers increase each year in the millions to do work that we americans won't do,all the while we have an enormous percent of the population sitting on their butts collecting welfare,unemployment griping about how no one does anything for them while they play their x-box and i-pods watching color Tv all day and talking on their cell phones.

The unemployment rate would drop to almost zero if some simple work ethics were instilled into todays young minds and everything doesn't revolve around paris,jamie lynn and over paid sports figures.

Countries like Japan who make learning and hard work prioritys seem to be much better off as a nation.