Observe The Labor Day
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Categories: Career Advice
Today is labor day.
For most of you corporate employees, you’re taking a day off. You rejuvenate. You regenerate. But you don’t celebrate. Because you don’t even know the story behind labor day.
It doesn’t matter really. You don’t have any reason whatsoever to do that.
Because yesterday, like every other day, you reached home the same time burglars used to break into one.
Sadly, the starting point of the labor day is because they were fighting for 8 hour working day. (read more) Yes. Meaning if you come in at 8, you’ll get to go back at 5, with 1 hour break. It was the success of their protest that landed us this holiday.
Which is meaningless.
Today we measure the productivity of a company by merely looking at their total number of office floors lit after 8:00pm.
And today’s career advancement policy:
“We believe in hard work”
which means “You work until midnight everyday and NO, it’s not a shift”. And
“We believe in committed individuals”
which means “You have to work. After working, you can get back to work.”.
With 3 quarter salary gone to financial lenders, employees have no choice but to comply. Furthermore, the jump to entrepreneurship is too risky.
And no, they can’t jump companies. Because all they will see in interviews is:
Today, overtime “claim” becomes a benefit.
Maybe companies are getting bigger and bigger, and there’s too many of them, so the chance of survival is only by buying other companies, or risk being bought over and laid-off.
So, survival needs lots of money, and because HR spends a lot, it’s a no-brainer (literally) decision.
“We’re buying our competitor. We need more money. Minimize the number of people. Minimize the pay. Discourage them from using their benefit. Tie everything according to their performance and benefits usage.”
And that’s when multi-tasking became compulsory. Just short of “Must be able to perform Liquidity Risk Assessment and growing a Hydrangea”, but I suspect we’ll get there soon.
Today, it’s a known fact that today’s corporate success must be achieved at the expense of your family.
“Daddy is a hardworking employee, he always come back late from work”.
With such a great example to follow, imagine what will happen to those children when they grow up. I think, they’ll be happily married- to their work desk.
Change it now.
Uphold the Labor Day. Let’s cherish the 8 hour work-days. Fight greedy shareholders. Be back home on time. Save your family.