Deny promotions. Small raises. Substandard evaluations. It’s pretty easy to harass out higher-paid employees in favor of new replacements whom you can pay an ever smaller slave wage.
I remember a Dutch supermarket chain that hired mostly underage employees, then fired them on their 18th birthday. That way they could avoid most of the benefit costs, because those didn’t apply to anyone underage. The practice was banned eventually, but it said a lot about them
This isn’t really a new thing. It happened to my husband around 20 years ago. He’d worked at a convenience store which name rhymes with bell and of course received the periodic raises, but inflation increased faster than the raises so that after 10 years he had less buying power than when he started. After 10 years the new people being hired were being paid what it took him over 5 years to arrive at. Then the new people started complaining that he got the best shifts since he had the most seniority and they started giving him the worst shifts, and did other things to cause him to want to quit. This is how they reward long term employees. I don’t want to say what happened after that, it’s still painful to think about. But companies like this deserve to go under for how they treat their employees. Oh, BTW, he never got any breaks. He was on his feet for 9 hours at that job, no lunch breaks or even a lousy 10 minute break to use the bathroom. Of course this is illegal but what can you do?
It’s not illegal in many stares if there’s gas pumps attached. I have a friend who has worked at two different convenience stores with gas pumps. These stores are exempt from the labor laws. The store rules are no breaks nor any sitting down at any time during the shift. The reason, allegedly, is that the gas pumps cannot be turned off to allow someone to leave the store. This is absurd because there are multiple people working on some shifts and the no break rules apply to them as well.
Deny promotions. Small raises. Substandard evaluations. It’s pretty easy to harass out higher-paid employees in favor of new replacements whom you can pay an ever smaller slave wage.
Don’t forget “make them do manager’s work without paying them as a manager.”
That’s my previous job all over. They’re always hiring but they never like anyone to stay for too long.
I remember a Dutch supermarket chain that hired mostly underage employees, then fired them on their 18th birthday. That way they could avoid most of the benefit costs, because those didn’t apply to anyone underage. The practice was banned eventually, but it said a lot about them
This process only works if it’s easy to get replacement employees. In 2023, that seems to have changed.
They made their bed, now they can lie in it.
*the corporations, not the workers, in case that was unclear.
This isn’t really a new thing. It happened to my husband around 20 years ago. He’d worked at a convenience store which name rhymes with bell and of course received the periodic raises, but inflation increased faster than the raises so that after 10 years he had less buying power than when he started. After 10 years the new people being hired were being paid what it took him over 5 years to arrive at. Then the new people started complaining that he got the best shifts since he had the most seniority and they started giving him the worst shifts, and did other things to cause him to want to quit. This is how they reward long term employees. I don’t want to say what happened after that, it’s still painful to think about. But companies like this deserve to go under for how they treat their employees. Oh, BTW, he never got any breaks. He was on his feet for 9 hours at that job, no lunch breaks or even a lousy 10 minute break to use the bathroom. Of course this is illegal but what can you do?
It’s not illegal in many stares if there’s gas pumps attached. I have a friend who has worked at two different convenience stores with gas pumps. These stores are exempt from the labor laws. The store rules are no breaks nor any sitting down at any time during the shift. The reason, allegedly, is that the gas pumps cannot be turned off to allow someone to leave the store. This is absurd because there are multiple people working on some shifts and the no break rules apply to them as well.