It's about to become a "permanent" day job.
My new boss told me Monday that he wants to extend a job offer to me as soon as he and our HR department can work out the details. He considers it an issue of fairness, because he's confident I'm a good fit for what he needs in an assistant, and he doesn't want me without benefits any longer.
Friends, I've been waiting for this since I got laid off from my LAST hospital job in 2003. While I've considered/been considered for other kinds of jobs (including full-time church positions), nothing's worked out. As Arsenio Hall used to say, "It's TIME!"
Since it's not a done deal yet, I was hesitant to post anything. But this really is good news. When I actually accept the job offer, however, I doubt I'll need to post an update; y'all will hear me clear around the hemisphere, I suspect.
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I'm impressed. A boss actually caring that an employee who earns less gets benefits?!? Wow.
God SPEED the day!
Paisley
Thanks, dear ones. Yes, PS, it's pretty remarkable, isn't it? My boss is part of a new crop of execs. One more junior exec was responsible for documenting how much better we should be doing in our environmental services contract. The contractor has been paying low wages and priced their benefits out of reach for nearly all their employees, in addition to other issues that led to unacceptable performance by that contractor. One of the factors in the exec's consideration of other EVS contractors was how they treat their employees. The new contract has been awarded to a company that pays their employees significantly better and makes affordable health coverage available to them. That our board approved the proposed contract and commended the young exec for looking at how a contractor treats their employees, tells me that this hospital system is pretty remarkable. We expect actual hospital employees to get decent benefits, but the attitude too often is "who cares" when it comes to the significant numbers of contract employees who work there. My boss asked some probing questions about my agency's benefits, which is one of the factors in his deciding to get me hired on a little faster than he might have preferred.
I've got a winner there, I know. Without actually "kissing up," I've let him know I think so.
Ever notice how some places decide to save money by no longer employing a certain department because their going to contract out the work? Yep, that means some people surely get the shaft.
I wish my son could find a job....his previous job let him go so that they could hire a woman for the same position for less pay and they wanted him to "voluntarily resign" AND train her! He refused, now they don't want to cooperate with him to help him get his remaining benefits. His girlfriend found a job that is part time, no benefits...which is why people are hired part time, right?
How about some grocery stores? The full time people get benefits, but maybe full time is defined as 48 or 50 hours/week.
Hey Psalmist,
Keeping my fingers crossed for you and saying my prayers. What a wonderful thing this is!!! Finally! Hopefully, your wilderness wandering days are coming to a halt!!!
That's just so wrong, PS. I've added your son to my prayer list concerning his job hunting. Believe me, I know what that's like. :(
There is, IMO, an ethical problem when companies "outsource" entire employee groups or departments/divisions to agencies that either offer no benefits, or pay so low that their employees can't afford them. I don't have a problem with companies that hire temporary workers for truly temporary positions. But even the federal government contracts out on a pretty big scale, so as not to have the expense of giving some of their workers (the "contractors") the same pay and benefits as they give others (the "permanent" workers). When I temped at the SEC, they lured workers with the SEC rule that they could not fill positions with temps for longer than a year; they made out as though they would hire those workers permanently after a year of contract labor. Come to find out, they were working at getting their own rule changed so as to keep contract workers much longer than that. Meanwhile, I had worked for months at a really low rate, no benefits, only to find out that the promised job at the end of a year was just a mirage. All that time I'd been doing the very same work they had an open position for, that could and should have been filled by a worker getting paid according to federal pay scale and having the excellent federal benefits.
And it was little wonder that all but one of their 15 temp positions were filled by women. Most men would not put up with the low pay and lack of benefits. It's a terrible system, and as your son knows all too well, both men and women suffer from it. Part of the slimy underbelly of capitalism, I suppose. We Christians can and should do what we can to stand for something better.
Say, thanks, St. Inuksuk! Good to see you. It's still the wilderness, but at least it's going to be a more stable patch in the journey. My boss talked money to me this morning, and though there was an awful office-political stunt pulled by a (permanent) coworker that I found out about quite by accident (in which she tried to sway my boss from hiring me), I have mostly been in a good kind of shocked state. He's proposing to pay me a wage much higher than I ever expected; it will be well over a 50 percent raise per hour from what my agency is paying me now.
Did you know that one of the biggest "users" of contract workers is the US postal service? Many of the routes are bid on by the drivers, meaning that they supply their own car, gas, no benefits, etc. Our address used to include HCR, which meant Highway Contract Route. Where my son use to live, in a suburb, the mail was delivered by people who lived on each block, after they got home from their other day jobs.
What really bugs me is that when a person looks around a city and especially a suburb, you can see wealth oozing out of every where. Yet, basic services are being cut because of the NO NEW TAXES policy. [BTW, that is why I don't want our governor to be the VP candidate for McCain.]
PS, I had heard that about the USPS. When I lived in a small town in a rural county, my mail was delivered by a contractor in her own vehicle. She liked the mileage they paid her, but she could really have used some good health coverage, which she wasn't eligible for.
I think about how different it is now than, say, during WWII. People collected scrap metal, they rationed things like tires and certain foodstuffs, and people were encouraged to pull together and sacrifice. Yes, it was a very different war, but then and now, wars cost money. We have people who SAY they "support" their party's politicians (from President right on down to city councils), but all they really seem to support is tax cuts, stimulus checks, and "smaller government" (so long as the smaller government still gives them the goodies they expect). There's a shallow selfishness to so many people's patriotism, it seems to me. "Gimme" is the true priority. I don't think that "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" just wouldn't go over very well these days, would it?
I would think that the right politician, obviously not a Dem, could rally "rich people" to have a voluntary tax, a sort of patriot-tax, to help get rid of our big deficit, as a way of thanking this country for getting them where they are now. I would admire a leader who would encourage rich people and successful business people to give back to this country rather than more ploys to avoid taxes.
In the past week, the news told us that most big companies avoid paying taxes. I guess if they already don't pay taxes, they can't get any more tax breaks!
When the Pres. was riding the wave of high patriotism 7 years ago, he could have asked for sacrifice from all the people and they probably would have responded well. Many people, myself included, sort of supported the beginning of the wars. He missed a golden opportunity to pay for the war NOW rather than pile it on our grandchildren.
Well, there does seem to be a truism: The more we have, the more we cling to it.
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