Canadians are also big complainers when it comes to job satisfaction, the quality of employer-employee relations and work-life balance, according to the study by market research firm FDS International.
On all three indices, we're near the bottom of the list. We score lower on the job satisfaction scale than even Russia, China and Romania, for heaven's sake. Only the Germans and the Japanese complain more about employer-worker relations than Canucks.
And only the Portuguese, the Poles, the Australians and the Japanese are in more of a snit than us over work-life balance.
What is it about workers in the Netherlands and Ireland that makes them so happy? Why is Thailand near the top of the employee morale list and Germany and Japan at the bottom?
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/05/16/4183841-sun.html
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 16, 2007]
Note: http://www.edmontonsun....
A Country Of Complainers
Posted on Wednesday, May 16 at 06:58 by jensonjContributed By
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Workers are complaining because, first of all, they have no career choices, but have to fit into jobs they hate, to "make money". Their job security is nil. They're cut off from any decision making processes at the workplace, have no idea what is going on and are treated as "commodities" by domestic and foreign owners, and now even their simple democratic rights as citizens are being eroded under fraudulent "free trade" deals.
When I was an employer, my workers were involved in all major decision making, from the buying of machinery and equipment and contracts, decided their own working hours and
now, 30 years later, still think of those times as the best of their working years. When I left, all my old staff also left within one year, because the new owner treated them like dirt.
Many times I've told managers that all they have to do is tell the workers what they're supposed to do and then get the hell out of their way.
They said, they can't do it because they were hired to "manage" and the "shareholders wouldn't be happy". So they're trying to chisel the workers out of pennies,push them around like animals, making them unhappy, which ultimately shows up in the balance sheets, as unhappy workers are poor producers.
Now try to explain logic to "individualist conservatives" !
Ed Deak.
Ed makes an excellent point when he advocates the contribution of workers in decisions that directly affect their work. I can personally attest to decisions that saved many tens of thousands of dollars, that were reached by canvassing the workers on which way to proceed, or NOT to proceed.
Unfortunately only one company I have experience with did this on a more-or-less formal basis.
As Project Manager I always found this decision making methodology as having a great pay-off. It does, however, necessitate that the workers have available ALL the information regarding the job at hand.
It is absolutely astounding how many executives refuse to disseminate information that workers really ought to have in order to allow them to make informed decisions and choices. There is a very good reason why in many places of business the axiom 'keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bulls**t is an apt description of the working environment.
This harmful working environment is promoted by owners and upper management hiring incompetent foremen, supervisors, managers, who are so insecure in their jobs that they will not accept advice or opinions from the 'trenches' because they are afraid that a more competent person may take their job. Neither will they hire competent people for their departments because these will show up the incompetence.
Needless to say I am no longer a contributor (albeit unwilling) to this promotion of incompetence. I now run my own show where I am chief cook and bottle washer as they say. Hope to live longer because of this decision 3 years ago!
H. F. Wolff
Bingo. The three letter company I work for is going through a 'purge'. 1/3 of the people I worked with got the axe two weeks ago. Some had 10 and 20 years with the company. I'm a contractor, they were employees. I know each day can be my last, and I accept that, but longtime employees are just starting to realize it too.
My boss is constantally chirping about our 'work/life' balance, but with the same amount of work to do, and 1/3 less manpower, my 60 hours weeks are fast approaching 70 hour weeks. He parrots the 'Work/life balance' thing, but doesn't seem to be helping in that area any.
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The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.
Pressure, Stress and Control: What a Trinity!
What I live under is identified as stress.
I am subjected to pressures from multiple angles, money or the lack there of being rampant of a field of chaos (for those into heraldry or symbolism) and at the head of it.
Money that is manipulated via a grand conspiracy based solely on what some identify as “agreement” while I choose to call it “indifference to…”
The stresses of banker /law-maker/enforcer exert pressures that affect control, whether it be ‘self’ or imposed control.
The pressures of relationships that result in a national divorce rate of fifty percent.
Every one of us vying for some kind of control over some issue or another, Raising prices of energy, housing et al.
The writers point of view is so flawed as to not be dignified by response except for perhaps the obvious “Blame the victim” syndrome usually acquainted with thought-manipulators or as I prefer to call them sheep herders and cattle drivers..
I may promote individualist thinking as defined as bullshit spotting.
Society is operated by liars (sometimes pronounced as ‘lawyers’) and liars /lawyers are Masters of Language, and are so to best operate within the dominant adversarial system.
One of the linguistic tricks is to deflect attention ‘away from’ the position of the status quo in some cases and ‘towards’ where that strategy is appropriate.
My personal strengths are in the area of analysis and as all who read here know, weak in English composition. And, My Friends there have bee plenty of the Language police here to slog me for spelling punctuation and whatever other Bullshit deflecting tactics that have at their recourses.
Be mindful of the “always right”!~
Of which I am also one. he he!
Any who…
Where there was Heraldry in days of yore we have the modern version of logo branding and badges or visual recognizable symbols to imprint on our minds: Visual messages, signs
And we obey the signs or the enforcers step in. to control.
Presented as an incomplete concept, add or detract at will… or not...
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"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
—Sir Josiah Stamp
-Max Planck<br />
<br />
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"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
—Sir Josiah Stamp
To: mailbag@edmsun.com
Subject: Country of complainers
Dear Editor,
Mindelle Jacobs' article " A Country of Complainers" is sheer nonsense.
Canadians have all the right and reasons to complain about. We have the richest country on Earth, with a low population density, being sold off from under our feet by shyster politicians working for directorships with the multinational corporate mafia, enslaving, colonizing and stripping the world, wrecking the ecology to feed the insatiable demand of the stock and money markets, empowered by the neoclassical market economic theory , the biggest crime wave in human history.
Our economy is not "booming". We're living off the sale of our resources and country, pacified by the fraudulent figures of the GDP, Growth and Productivity statistics, reporting the sale of our capital as "earnings", against all known and acceptable business practices.
Our economists and politicians have made us into saleable "commodities". Our so called "democratic rights" of decision making have been eroded and are now being destroyed by fascistic treaties, falsely called "agreements", like the NAFTA, the TILMA, the WTO and especially by the now being negotiated GATS, SPP, NAU and Amero treaties, planning to give multinational big business free hand to search and destroy anybody, anything, anywhere. In the name of "wealth creation" of course.
I have seen the nazis and communists at work and am glad to be 80, so I won't have to see the world these same crooks, under new flags, are now building for the enslavement of future generations, under "rules based trading regimes". Otherwise known as Soviet style collectivization under new, international politbureaus, destroying the family farm and real private enterprise with the perceived power of imaginary capital created by some bank from the air.
Sincerely, Ed Deak, (Independent business owner in BC since 1957)
I once broached a columist here in the okanagan about the style he chose to use and was told flatly the idea is to draw readership so the advrtising rates can be justified
sweet!
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"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
—Sir Josiah Stamp
If you're getting your very first job, there's a darn good chance you'll be getting paid the 6 dollar an hour "training wage" for your first 500 hours instead of the 8 dollar minimum everyone else has.
Good luck with any hours after that.
Back just prior to Campbell's first term, the British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association (BCRFA) did major campaigning for the 6 buck wage.
They also lobbied for a "gratuity based wage" for those who got tips of 7.60 and hour instead of the 8 everyone else got.
In other areas, instead of being paid for a minimum of four hours work if you get sent home early, they now only have to pay you for two.
So, in short, you can get called in on your day off, work for 2 hours, and then be sent home, secure in the knowledge that 4 hours of your time (because chances are you were out, and had to go home and change etc)was essentially wasted because your cheap ass boss knew they would get away with it.
Now, the worst slap in the face of all, the ever increasing number of migrant workers coming up from Mexico.
Gee, sorry we're not more thankful for being screwed over.
Mindelle Jacobs, take your opinion and shove it up your fat neo-con ass.
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The two most common things in the universe are apparently Hydrogen and stupidity.
Dear Editor
I took offense at Mindelle Jacobs article.
Here in BC, workers have a lot to complain about.
If you're getting your very first job, there's a darn good chance you'll be getting paid the 6 dollar an hour "training wage" for your first 500 hours instead of the 8 dollar minimum everyone else has.
Good luck with any hours after that.
Back just prior to Campbell's first term, the British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association (BCRFA) did major campaigning for the 6 buck wage.
They also lobbied for a "gratuity based wage" for those who got tips of 7.60 and hour instead of the 8 everyone else got.
Thankfully they didn't get it.
In other areas, instead of being paid for a minimum of four hours work if you get sent home early, they now only have to pay you for two.
So, in short, you can get called in on your day off, work for 2 hours, and then be sent home, secure in the knowledge that 4 hours of your time (because chances are you were out, and had to go home and change etc)was essentially wasted because your cheap ass boss knew they would get away with it.
Now, the worst slap in the face of all, the ever increasing number of migrant workers coming up from Mexico.
Gee, sorry we're not more thankful for being screwed over.
Mindelle Jacobs, take your opinion and shove it up your fat neo-con ass.
My Name
Prince George, BC
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The two most common things in the universe are apparently Hydrogen and stupidity.
Canadian workers bitch and moan because they have seen their standard of living steadily decline for decades, as taxes and inflation march up and wages toddle along in sad comparison. Canadian workers are smart, educated and savvy, and do not have a mentality of servitude and 'one's place' that is typically drilled into the working class in many of the countries she cites. We KNOW better, and DEMAND better, but we aren't getting it, finding that under a Capitalist economy, all roads eventually lead to the Fascism of Rome.
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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”
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"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Max Planck
Thank you for being such an inspiration and thanks for sharing your wisdom and insight here.
among the luckiest people on the planet?"
What's the matter with you all? You should be grateful
that you are being treated like crap by some scumbag
inconsiderate selfish and manipulative employer. Don't
you know it's an honor to be treated like a slab of meat?
How lucky can you get?