What is your opinion on American "work culture" and working conditions?

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From the Catholic.com article:

" When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”

This is straight out of the Catholic playbook. The dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker."
 
But shouldn’t the dignity of the worker be respected by providing adequate compensation, sure a worker and employer should work out terms in a fair manner but people have to eat, use transportation, access health care and have a roof (and bed and ideally access to a private privy) over their heads. It seems like poverty and destitution can be quite discouraging, you try and try but it’s not enough.
 
DarkLight, the Ingalls family never had a “family farm.” You might be thinking of the television show, which was charming but total fiction.

Both Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner grew up in Wisconsin in a heavily-wooded area.

The Quiners and the Ingalls became friends over the years. There were at least two marriages, including Charles and Caroline.

In the Big Woods, the families lived in one-room log cabins that they built themselves. Their primary means of livelihood was hunting, fishing, and raising a small amount of crops. They had a few animals–a cow, horses, a dog, and cats to keep the mice down. They made use of the products that the woods provided–maple syrup, nuts, and berries, etc.

All of the families helped each other survive. The only thing that Pa and his friends sold (actually, they traded) was furs (pelts).

The Ingalls family decided to move to Kansas to try to start a farm, and made the long trip by covered wagon. They never did get a farm going, although they did manage to build a house. But after only a few years, the U.S. Government sent troops to move all the settlers out because they were trespassing on Indian land.

So the Ingalls family moved BACK to the Big Woods of Wisconsin to live with relatives (they had sold their little cabin). Then they embarked upon a series of moves throughout the Midwest–Burr Oak, Iowa, where Pa and Ma helped manage a hotel (and their young girls helped, too), and to Walnut Grove, where Pa also worked for others.

When the Homestead Act was passed, the Ingalls decided to file a claim and got a 160 acre tract of land in South Dakota, in a town called De Smet. They had five years to break sod and plant crops, and they tried with all their might to make a success out of farming. But both the Ingalls family, and Almanzo Wilder ended up moving away from their claims. Between locusts and hailstorms and prairie fires and years of crop failures, they just couldn’t make a living on a farm.

Charles and Caroline Ingalls moved to town (De Smet) and lived there until they died. Charles earned a living mainly through carpenter work and other odd jobs.

Laura and Almanzo eventually settled in the Ozarks in Missouri and bought a piece of land in the mountains which they named Rocky Ridge Farm. THIS was definitely a farm, but it was never profitable. Almanzo worked in the town of Mansfield for quite a few years, and so did Laura (as a bookkeeper), and they rented their farm to others. The main reason Laura started writing (for the Missouri Ruralist) was to earn extra money to pay bills. It wasn’t until she was in her 60s and was successful with the “Little House” books that the Wilders were finally able to pay off debts that had burdened them for decades!

The point is–they worked hard and relied on their own ingenuity to make a good life. With the exception of the Homestead Act land, they never accepted government aid. In fact, Rose Wilder Lane (Almanzo and Laura’s child) was so opposed to government aid and the Income Tax (she was a virulent Libertarian!) that she stopped working so that she wouldn’t have an income to tax!
 
The problem is you can’t feed and house a family with worthwhileness
 
That’s quite true, and a lesson worth learning. While every job might be valuable and worthwhile, a person still has to earn an income sufficient to support himself and his dependents. I may enjoy doing a particular work, but if it doesn’t generate enough income to live on, I’d better find something that does. But every job does provide some level of experience and confidence.

I was rather fortunate when young to have a mom who was a one-woman unofficial employment agency. If we were grocery shopping, she would say “as long as we’re here, go find the manager and apply for a job.” So I did. She would point out potential jobs in the newspapers or even from hearsay. If she spotted a place with a “now hiring” sign in the window, she would have me go in and apply. I was always a little surprised when I got hired. If I didn’t like a job, mom would say, “well, you can quit that one when you find a better one.”

Pretty soon I got accustomed to walking in anywhere to apply for a job cold turkey. Even when I was living on my own, this carried over. I was laid off frm one job and the same day I started walking into businesses to apply for jobs. I kept revising my resume to suit the job.

It doesn’t hurt to always be on the lookout for a better opportunity.
 
Never saw the show.

The point is though, the Ingalls saw a lot more of the products of their own labor than many modern workers. What I saw working a lot of jobs was, you got the same hours and the same paycheck whether you worked hard or did the bare minimum. Most low-end companies have rules against references now too; they’d only confirm that you worked there - if your manager even knew (most only showed up if something was wrong). If you worked hard, your employer benefited, but you wouldn’t see a dime of improvement for yourself.
 
You try to do that now, walking into a place of business to apply and all they’ll say is “Apply online”. It’s like saying don’t call us we’ll call you.
 
Oh yeah - and the resumes are screened by an automated system and picked at a central facility. The local management doesn’t get much (name removed by moderator)ut.
 
No, it’s not like saying, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

It’s saying, “Use modern technology.”

I think that’s a reasonable request in this day and age.
 
But someone’s resume will be selected and they will be hired.

What people need to do is stop wishing for the good ol’ days, and learn WHAT they need to do to get their resume selected by the automated system.

My husband said that there are certain buzz words that need to be in any resume. So if that’s true, use them. I’m guessing there are plenty of employment agencies who hand out pamphlets or even in-person counselling about how to fill out an attention-getting resume.

Throughout history, there have been multiple applicants for jobs, and not everyone will be offered a job. No one is guaranteed a job just because they apply, send in a resume, and have an interview. Someone will be chosen, and someone else will not.

So don’t give up. Nothing evil or unfair about that. This isn’t a public school game where everyone wins a trophy in a game, and everyone gets a "Good Job!’ from the teacher. This is a company attempting to staff themselves with people who are best qualified to help the company succeed and make money for all the investors, the executives, and the employees. If the company makes unwise choices when selecting the right applicants, it could mean the demise of the company resulting in lots of people being out of a job.
 
DarkLight said:
What I saw working a lot of jobs was, you got the same hours and the same paycheck whether you worked hard or did the bare minimum
Click to expand...
Sometimes it’s the nature of the job.
I occasionally sub in the nurses office at school and I get paid the same whether there are 12 walk-ins or 80 walk-ins
 
That doesn’t bother me. What I’m thinking of is more… I do my job as best I can. My coworker rushes through so he can go fool around on his phone in the bathroom and leaves a mess for others. We get the same hours and pay rate and neither of us are eligible for promotion anyway.
 
Min wage is a very arbitrary number. According to my current calculations for the min wage and cost-of-living in my area:
Gross-income: $14/hr × 2000hrs/yr x 1.04 = 29,000, yielding (Ontario tax rates)
Take-home: $24,000

Is that a “livable” wage? Who knows? Depends on your financial liabilities, savings, expenses etc.

Recently, it looked like I was going to move in with a few friends and rent a place for a ridiculously good rate ($1350/mth split four ways). We did some rough math and determined basic living expenses per person would work out to about $600/mth (rent, utilities, groceries, odds and ends for the house). In my area, there is a low-income bus pass as well. So add $50 for that. Total basic expenses/yr: just under $8000. A 67% savings rate isn’t too shabby. Invest that for a few years and collect compound interest and you’re laughing. According to MMM’s financial math I could retire and live off interest in 10yrs if I didn’t change anything. For a single person min wage can be great (more is better obviously). For a family, not so much. “Living wage” is such a poorly defined, and indefinable, term.
 
JimG said:
" When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”

This is straight out of the Catholic playbook. The dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker."
Click to expand...
That is bad logic. The fact that “all honest work is good” does not imply that “all honest work is equal”. Defining one type of work as higher than another in no way contradicts the dignity of any work or worker.
 
I know that some companies screen out a lot of applicants by requiring them to take some kind of test that asks questions about ethics (i.e.–harassment, stealing, etc.) and how one would handle certain situations that might come up. The answers are always along the lines of “agree” “strongly agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, etc.

The key is to NEVER answer with the “maybe” or “neither agree nor disagree”. Those who use those answers, especially if there are several, will be immediately weeded out. I discovered this when my son and nephew applied at Walmart. Being new to the retail business (run by a big corporation) they didn’t know how they would react to several of the situations put forth. As a result, they didn’t get hired. I was surprised and asked the personnel director (I’m a 20-year associate… we didn’t have these tests back then!) why they were rejected and she said it was most likely because of their answers on the test. “Tell them to be decisive–yes or no. That’s what the computer is looking for.” Apparently, even the tests were never reviewed by a human. They applied again and both got hired.

As far as I know, neither was asked for a resume. It was all online application, test, interview, and drug test. The part time job where I work (for fun!) only requires a resume and an interview if your resume is accepted by the general manager. All jobs are different, but bigger companies with large payrolls and a lot of employee turnover will generally let the computer screen applicants.
 
By firing anyone found giving a reference to an employee. All calls about employees or former employees have to be directed to HR who will only confirm the employment record.

And that’s aside from that at a lot of those jobs the managers have no idea anyway.
 
Really? That’s crazy. Still seems like it could be easily gotten around if someone wanted to give a reference. Just have the reference-asking party call on the manager’s personal phone while he is at home. Am I missing something?
 
I mean, it could, but if the risk is there a lot of managers won’t want to take it. It really just depends on which manager you get. I’ve had some that would; I’ve had some that wouldn’t. I’ve had a lot that didn’t have a clue about my work in the first place. They’d basically only come over when there was a problem, and I remember it being pretty common for me to get blamed by certain managers for things outside my control. Or they’d only judge by team results and treated who was doing what within the team as just a personal problem.
 
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