This basically confirms my suspicion of those “personality surveys” that many minimum-wage jobs make you fill out–they want compliant drones who do what they’re told and respect grovel at authority. I, of course, being the militant anti-authoritarian I am, always lie through my teeth on those and tell them what I know they want to hear from a deferential wage slave.

Actually, my take on the story is that they are inavertantly telling us that American candidates simply aren’t as qualified as their foreign couterparts – nor as clean smelling evidently. This, of course, speaks to the dreadfuly prohibitive cost of education for more and more Americans. I don’t think the problem is that we are less pliant; it’s that we (a) are st00pider, and (b) infected with an unearned sense of entitlement that prohibits us from recognizing that the guy or gal who hired us, might want us to do things that tend to cause the company to (i) make money, and/or (ii) not lose money, regardless of how many more boards we have to clear in Mario Brothers.

This is what I’ve noticed vis-a-vis the service industry, any way.

I’ve lied on those things too, and got the job. I wonder if the upper management of corporations that use that thing suspect that many people lie on them, but keep them for their chilling effect on new employees. It is kinda chilling, in a way, to consider that upper management really wants to control you on that level.

Nothing to see here folks. Nope, no economic policies that enrich the rich and screw the little guy, no, none of that at all! The problem is that you’re a bunch of lazy fucks!

Reminds me a bit of this, old sport.

That would be Labor Secretary Mrs. Mitch McConnell.

Can we outsource Chao’s job to someone smarter and better-smelling?

I’d like to see a “better attitude” from some of these fucktards in power. Overpaid corrupt slackers.

Beyond the cheaper cost of labor, U.S. employers say that many workers abroad simply have a better attitude toward work.

When I am paid relatively well I have a better attitude. An American dollar can still go far in a lot of places. I’d rather have a Euro though.

“American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately and have good personal hygiene,” says Chao.

Ah, I SEE. It’s not due to corporate globalization and the need to minimize labor costs; it’s Americans just aren’t Zestfully clean. Ah.

(…though aren’t the wingnuts always telling us that furriners are dirty, smelly, lazy and hostile?)

I wonder if the upper management of corporations that use that thing suspect that many people lie on them, but keep them for their chilling effect on new employees.

I always assume that anybody who wants me to fill out one of those “personality surveys” is telling me “Around here, lying is what we do, so if you want to get hired, start now.”

And I think that’s what Elaine Chao really wants to convey with her “Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something” comments: American workers just aren’t the kind of flamboyant liars our new Repub masters expect us to be.

I mean, I’m sure that whenever Dubya orders Karl Rove to bring him a cheeseburger, Karl doesn’t “bristle”, he just politely goes and tells the nearest coatholder to get the Chief’s usual and be quick about it. And when that cheeseburger is delivered to Karl, he brings it in to Dubya’s office very politely… and Dubya never complains about Karl’s “special sauce” either, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Anyone in an administration that lost a US city to standing water has ZERO right to criticize ANY American worker on punctuality and workplace skills.

Mitch “Don’t Ask” McConnell and Elaine “Don’t Tell” Chao
have such a lovely marriage.

and discipline.

they dislike employing Americans because we aren’t as pliant as some poor bastard from Latin America who can be threatened with deportation if he acts too uppity.

Baseball player Gary Sheffield recently got into a bit of controversy by saying that very thing about MLB and Latino players . . .

rea- My argument isn’t that Latino immigrants who aren’t in the country legally are more servile than Americans. My argument is that they’re the ideal employees for these corporate creeps because THEY HAVE NO RIGHTS. If they start to question orders, they get reported to the INS. That’s why so many countries lurve employing people in, say, China: because the people there have no right to demand better conditions.

Should be “companies” not “countries.”

So we’re even offshoring the job of being a Republican Senator’s wife to China these days? Is marrying a Republican another example of an immigrant “doing a job Americans won’t do” that Bush was talking about?

I remember when the Bush EPA (back in the CT Whitman days) made some odious decision that was in the papers, one of my friends who doesn’t know much about politics was baffled and outraged. He said something about how “It’s the Environmental Protection Agency–they’re supposed to protect the environment! How can this happen?” I explained to him that everyone in the executive branch of the government ultimately answers to the President, and therefore is bound to carry out his policies, etc.

But obviously there was a good deal of validity to his bewilderment, and I can’t help thinking something similar when I see things like this. She’s the Secretary of LABOR–shouldn’t she perhaps consider doing something with her time other than fellating Fortune 500 CEOs and passing their every whim on to the American workforce as an official decree? The fact that she mentions HYGIENE pushes this into a realm beyond parody–even the most trivial desires of big business are gospel to this little toady.

I wanted to post this before but couldn’t think of any funny way to put it. But I figured fuck it.

I think she is at

elaine.chao@dol.gov

NobodySpecial’s line should be repeated to her inbox.

“Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something.”

You know, like working unpaid overtime…

…or ignoring building codes in construction…

…or bypassing safety regulations…

…or falsifying bank records…

…or overstating financial earnings…

…or lying to Congress…

Ungrateful punks!

“I’ve Got a Porsche!”

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. As a life long fan of the Young Ones….It had to be said.

“and Dubya never complains about Karl’s “special sauce” either, if you know what I mean and I think you do.”

Anne Laurie. You’re fired.

Take your place with blumpkin-boy Specialist G.

One point that may be worth making, although this is not in any way to defend Elaine Chao: we on the left routinely despair at the rampant stupidity in American society, and send around emails suggesting that the rational parts of the country should secede from “Jesusland.” Is it necessarily surprising that the denizens of Jesusland are losing their jobs and their economic security, therefore? And, if I may play an asshole who woke up on the wrong side of the bed, might we not look on and say, “fuck ’em, this is what they get for being Bush-loving Jesus-snorters?”

Gee, Elaine!

Outsourcing: How to Skirt the Law
Want to hire cheaper foreign workers instead of Americans? A lawyer tells you how to game the immigration system—and it’s all on YouTube

The video looks as though it could have been shot at almost any sleepy corporate seminar in the country, with one camera panning between a man in a suit and tie standing at a podium and others seated nearby. But the dialogue is riveting: It’s a group of lawyers openly discussing strategies for helping their clients pretend that they’re trying to recruit American workers—as required by law—while they, in fact, hire cheaper foreign workers.

“[O]ur goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker,” says Lawrence Lebowitz, director of marketing for the Pittsburgh law firm Cohen & Grigsby, before an audience of employers at the firm’s conference. The seminar provides details on how employers can meet the government’s requirements for the Permanent Labor Certificate program (PERM), which lets employers sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency if they can demonstrate no U.S. worker can fill a job. The trick, according to Cohen & Grigsby attorneys, is to only go through the motions of hiring Americans without ever intending to.

The video, which has been posted on YouTube (GOOG), is now sparking a sharp backlash. On June 21, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) fired off a letter to Cohen & Grigsby demanding an explanation for its advice, as well as going so far as to ask for the names of its clients. “Your firm’s video advises employers how to hire only foreign labor, while making it nearly impossible for a qualified American worker to get a job,” they wrote. “We look forward to hearing from you on how such advice is ethical and does not undermine the programs by enticing fraud and misuse.” (See the lawmakers’ letter here.) A public relations firm representing Cohen & Grigsby did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Temp Work Program Under Fire
The same day, the legislators wrote a separate letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. They asked for information about how the government is managing the program for temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs. The workers that are sponsored for permanent residency typically come into the country on such temporary visas. “[W]e are concerned that companies are abusing the H-1B visa program,” the lawmakers write. “The video explicitly shows how attorneys are aiding companies in this effort.” Grassley and Smith then voice concern about the Labor Dept.’s failure to monitor fraud in the visa system, and they request a breakdown of exactly how anti-fraud dollars are spent.

Somebody needs a shower and it ain’t American worker.

“I always assume that anybody who wants me to fill out one of those “personality surveys” is telling me “Around here, lying is what we do, so if you want to get hired, start now.”

I’ve heard conflicting stories about those quizzes. One version goes – the questions are so transparent, what they’re really seeing is how honest you are. If they ask whether a series of questions like “Have you ever taken anything that didn’t belong to you, even a paper clip?” and you give too many impossibly-morally-pure answers, you’re flagged as a liar.
Of course, then you have to decide if you’re going to be honest and get flagged as a thief instead.

Nim, I think it’s way simpler than that. I think they just want to remind you that you have absolutely no right of privacy from them.

I don’t think they want to run a sophisticated computer analysis of your answers to understand whether you are lying on their test, telling the truth, stupid or drunk at the time- the energy expended would be totally unproportional to what they hope to get out of you.

Hold it, hold it, hold it…
What’s this?

280,000 jobs in the service industry out of 115 million are outsourced each year

How the fuck do you outsource service industry jobs? The voice at the Drive-up at Taco Bell is in Bangalore?

Lesley beat me to it. If you haven’t seen that YouTube of the corporate fucks getting out of hiring Americans,and you’ve got a cast iron stomach,watch the whole thing.

This is a big part of why this country is headed for a really hard fall if things don’t change soon.

Uh… Having worked several years in both the food service and manual labor related industries, I actually kind of agree with thew labor secretary. It’s not 100% true, but many of the nicest and hardest working people I’ve known have been immigrants. Though I’m sure it varies from place to place.

How the fuck do you outsource service industry jobs? The voice at the Drive-up at Taco Bell is in Bangalore?

Well, yes.

Keep the out sourcing of jobs safe, legal and rare. If you are a young, unskilled worker, do your part, show up on time, keep your pants pulled up, use deodorant and say “yes m’am” and “no sir.” They’ll just use cheap overseas labor if you start to become more trouble thn you are worth. It’s not the government’s job or private businesses’ job to make sure American jobs go to you just because you were born on the right side of the fence.

What’s that you say? Yes, you with the cap on sideways. Uh-oh, looks like someone needs some anger management skills before they’re worth a minumum wage!

How the fuck do you outsource service industry jobs? The voice at the Drive-up at Taco Bell is in Bangalore?

Well, yes

But..I mean.. what the…

OH COME ON!!!!

Baseball player Gary Sheffield recently got into a bit of controversy by saying that very thing about MLB and Latino players

And teammate Carlos Guillén appreciated his saying what he did.

McDonald’s (MCD) wants to outsource your neighborhood drive-thru.

“If you’re in L.A…. and you hear a person with a North Dakota accent taking your order, you’ll know what we’re up to,” McDonald’s Chief Executive Jim Skinner told analysts at the Bear Stearns Retail, Restaurants & Apparel Conference in New York.

“North Dakota” is the code name for a charming hamlet just east of the Kashmir border. Sheesh.

The only time I got irrated that a customer service line was in India was when they lied to me. “Hallow, my name ees Sally Heeggins…” Sure, lady. And I’m Pope Bernie Weinstein.

“You have a professional order taker with strong communications skills whose job is to do nothing but take down orders,” said Matthew Paull, McDonald’s chief financial officer.

Might be more boring than MY job even!

Paull said a “heavy percentage” of complaints the company receives are from drive-thru customers who got the wrong order.

“Even if 95% of the time it is right, those 5% are very upset with us,” he said.

Even if! Oy vey, they’d be kissin your fricken FEET if you got 95% of the damn orders right. That’s why on those rare occasions I end up at McD’s (I don’t go there, I only only ever end up), I don’t try anything fancy. And remember the axiom: Special orders? Special sauce!

Though, in fairness, they’re better than Dunkin Donuts, who can hardly give you the right doughnut, even though they’re all labeled in brightly-lit bins. It’s too much to ask them that they make my coffee right, so I don’t even bother griping about it anymore.

“I’ve Got a Porsche!”

“HURRAH, HURRAH, HURRAH, WE’RE OFF TO SMASH THE OIKS!”

Two-time Academy Award winner Emma Thompson, ladies and gentlemen.

Y’know, if these places paid their employees a living wage, they might get better customer service.
The demand for ever increasing rate of returns will either end up leading to massive business reforms, or a socialist type revolution.
Me, I’m waiting for a terrorist group targeting the mega-rich to emerge, those 100,000 Bush calls his base. You want change, you gotta scare the right people.

“American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately and have good personal hygiene,” says Chao. “They need anger-management and conflict-resolution skills, and they have to be able to accept direction. Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something.”

As someone who has hired and supervised student workers (and adults who are borderline unemployable), I have seen this and don’t think that’s asking too much. It might be with the starting wages we offered, but there are plenty of college grads in professional jobs that have the same attitude…. f da man. If that makes me a Bushite fascist, whatever.

MCH, I think they train Indian employees to have a flat Midwestern accent. Still, I don’t know why they don’t just hiring midwesterners. If they can’t get native American-English speakers to understand the orders, how is someone from India suppose to do better?

Also, I think Chao is partially right. Teenagers can be horrible employees. But the workplace is made up of more than teenagers.

Still, I don’t know why they don’t just hiring midwesterners.

Maybe it’s be they talk right not.

Regarding immigrants, comparing a self-selecting pool of those who are ambitious enough to trade cultures for a better life to the slobs who will never leave town is not really fair.

Also, if the unemployment picture is as rosy as the numbers seem to indicate, it may be possible to get away with a fuck-the-man attitude, which in my experience is a lot more fun than a suck-the-man attitude. Somewhere there’s a happy medium between the fucking and sucking.

Unfortunately, not a simple issue. I recall Toyota dumping Georgia, for Canada–feared they couldn’t get a sufficiently educated/talented workforce–in the face of significant incentives to be “Made in America.” I’ve also seen the beef industry, which never saw a method to fuck the workers that it didn’t like. Gee–if enough of us stop pissing on education, expertise and real government, in favor of Big Daddy in the Sky and Imperial America, we might work and vote our way out of both problems. In the meantime, don’t tell me to take a shower, dickwad…I mean, boss.

Some Guy: If someone’s starting wage is not enough to live on, as is so often the case (in other words, if The Man is fucking you) why the hell shouldn’t you have a poor attitude about it? Especially when the raises are (allegedly) figured out by some obscure formula involving statisical gobble-de-gook, percentiles, quartiles, blah, blah, blah, and you know your future increases, no matter how well you do at your job (and no one ever seems to do well enough to get the maximum permissable raise, unless they’re blowing the boss in his office every day) will be around 2% a year. Often anger is absolutely justified & righteous. The average wage for a farmworker in the U. S. is $8.50 an hour, yet there are many national corporate entities (bookstores, copy/print shops, Wal-Mart, you name it) that start their “associates” or “team-members” @ $8.00 an hour (probably less in somewhat less-expensive non-urban areas) even though the wage-slaves are expected to be computer-literate, to kiss the asses of every cretin who walks through ther front door, etc., while the skill set of the farmworker is differentiating between ripe/non-ripe produce & putting it in a bag. And the farmwoker doesn’t have to pay rent, ’cause he or she gets to sleep in the fields under a tarp. (Not necesarily a good deal, but it does save on rent.)
So when you treat your employees like shit & pay them like crap, what the hell do you corporate fascists expect in return?

How the fuck do you outsource service industry jobs? The voice at the Drive-up at Taco Bell is in Bangalore?

People commonly assume the service sector = the retail trade but it’s quite diverse and employs millions. Here’s the breakdown.

Trade (Wholesale and Retail)
Transportation and Warehousing
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate and Leasing
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services
Business, Building and Other Support Services
Educational Services
Health Care and Social Assistance
Information, culture and recreation
Accommodation and food services
Other services*
Public administration

Other services includes:
Repair and Maintenance
Personal and Laundry Services
Religious, Grant-Making, Civic, and Professional and Similar Organizations
Private Households

The Goods sector
Agriculture (imports workers on temp visas)
Forestry, Fishing, Mining, Oil and Gas (imports workers)
Utilities
Construction (imports workers)
Manufacturing

MR. BURNS: “Well, that’s odd … I’ve just robbed a man of his livelihood, and yet I feel strangely empty. Tell you what, Smithers – have him beaten to a pulp.”

This is what they want and they want it for a nickel per item.

Made in China: Skill

This guy works at the factories that sew the chumby bags. Apparently, he’s not their fastest employee. They have one who is about twice as fast, and he has been with the company for about seven years. I went to his workstation, but when I got there he was already gone to lunch because he had finished everything. And I mean, there were two enormous bins of finished cosmetics cases next to his workstation.

I was wrong. All those words, colors, and letters–they are drawn by hand.

BTW, read the comments, they’re pretty interesting.

Wondering, just wondering idly about how zestfully clean ole Mitch is? Does he have dandruff flakes on his suit coat shoulders? Are his socks full of holes because he fails to cut his toenails regularly? Does he have “uncle smell”?

People ask my why I kept picking the pickles off my burgers at McD’s rather than asking for one without pickles. Chances are, I’d be doing it anyways, and might end up missing a different ingredient.

But yeah, that’s pretty transparently corporate bull. “Accuracy”… heh.

It’s not the government’s job or private businesses’ job to make sure American jobs go to you just because you were born on the right side of the fence.

Is so!
Unless you’re telling me that all the ICE raids to sweep up undocumented workers are just another Bush administration boondoggle?
What happened to “Enforce the existing laws!”?

People ask my why I kept picking the pickles off my burgers at McD’s

Besides, while the pickles are nasty, if you get them on your burger and then pick them off, you get just enough “pickle essence” to make the burger taste right. It’s no different than rinsing the martini glass with vermouth, then tossing it out. Just the right “essence” of the thing without the thing itself…

mikey

Besides, while the pickles are nasty, if you get them on your burger and then pick them off, you get just enough “pickle essence” to make the burger taste right. It’s no different than rinsing the martini glass with vermouth, then tossing it out. Just the right “essence” of the thing without the thing itself…

It’s the Homeopathic Gourmet.

Hey, c’mon. Sure, maybe I “experimented” a little at summer camp back in ’63, but it doesn’t make me a Homeopath…

mikey

les,

I think that Toyota also went Canadian over a little thing called “national health care.” Check it out.

And the different tales of interviewing surly would-be employees–it’s called “anecdotal”, people.

Beyond the cheaper cost of labor, U.S. employers say that many workers abroad simply have a better attitude toward work.

US execs get an average of over 500 times the average worker salary, FAR higher than anyplace else in the world… outsource CEOs, improve the bottom line and worker morale!

US execs get… FAR higher than anyplace else in the world
Yes, but they’re that much more punctual, appropriately dressed, and personally hygienic than their equivalents in the rest of the world. They also have better anger-management and conflict-resolution skills, and ability to accept direction.

maybe I “experimented” a little at summer camp back in ‘63, but it doesn’t make me a Homeopath…
I know how it is, Mikey. You break just ONE LITTLE BONE, on only ONE OR TWO PEOPLE, and you’re forever labelled as an osteopath.

It’s the naturopaths that piss me off. A whole beach just for that?

Six different judges in four different states have described me as a “Sociopath”, but not one of ’em would give me the diploma. I asks ya, is that fair?

mikey

Four different states is impressive. Were you actually moving around a lot to enter their various jurisdictions, or did you just annoy them from long-distance? ‘Cos that would make you a telepath.

No, in most cases I tried to stay off the beaten path…

mikey