Last week, I spent two days of my that I will never get back, in Leadership Meetings. Because of my position, I was selected seven months ago to participate. It is at these sessions, the brain trust of our company rolls out corporate drivel for us to feed to our staff, washed down with appropriate amount of Kool-aid.
The latest drivel was the pending payroll changes. It was initially rolled out a on a mandatory conference call a week before our Leadership Session. Unlike many employers, when your employment starts, a week of pay is not held. We get paid on the 15th & 30th. The new system
would be bi-weekly.
The perky Stepford Human Resource representatives informed us this change would occur Sept 1 of this year. Why is this happening? Some bullshit about state regulations prohibiting our current pay structure.
The questions were fast and furious:
Why now?
What percentage of the population are affected by these "state regs"?
What planet are you living on?
Who can afford having a week's pay held?
The response: Crickets
You could tell they were generally surprised by the push back. A peasant uprising. What wasn't stated was a reminder, that there was a budgetary short fall of $6 million dollars that was disclosed at our January meeting. You connect the dots.
Fast forward to last week's meeting. The unintended primary agenda item was the payroll change.
Participates who rarely speak up led the discussion. Finally, our Senior Vice President turned to me and said, "You've been quiet, your thoughts?" Struggling to keep the profanity out of my response.
"The decision makers are millionaires, this is an inconvenience for them, for my people, this presents a hardship. This smacks of class warfare. It has been a week and I can't put a positive spin on this one. While I'm not even close to being a millionaire. But, I am blessed to make enough to be inconvenienced."
Our SVP is number four on the org chart. After trying unsuccessfully to tell us how honorable our CEO and President are, to angry glares, she took a break.
After the break, she informed us, she scheduled a conference call that afternoon with these wonderful men to address our concerns.
The next morning, we learned, that the payroll change has been put on hold "for now".
Just like Congress stepped up to help irresponsible corporations on the backs of the taxpayers, my execs were trying to clean up their budgetary shortfall on the backs of their employees.
1 comment:
I guess I'm fortunate that I spent most of my career working for Uncle Sam. At least when Uncle tried to screw us we had employees all over the country go screaming to their Congress-critters.
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