How admirable of McDonalds. :)

We don't have those sort of ads here for McDonalds. They do have this one where little people pop out of the stomachs of big people and go get them Macca's for lunch and bring it back. Very cute...with a lovely jingle too.

Generally speaking, I agree. I think it's been a mistake to put them in charge of the Human Resources department, though.

You've noticed that too, eh?

:(

They just gravitate there on their own. "I like working with people!!!!!!"

A little bitter, are we, Wolf? That's what you get for not reading the posts properly. ;)

On that note I went to a DELARC meeting on Wed night. DELARC is a countywide association of parents with disabled children. There were about 20 parents there discussing young adults with varying degrees of physical and/or mental disability. Many of them have been unemployed since graduation.

The talk centered around the different types of jobs. 'Real world' jobs, sheltered employment, volunteer work, and jobs just to give them a sense of accomplishment.

Jeffrey and another young adult were the only people there with disabilities. The rest of the audience was parents and a few siblings. Some of these parent's children are so disabled that getting them there would require an effort. It was just as well since 20 people were packed into a conference room that could fit 10.

The fact is that the supermarket, convenience store, and dry goods chains are hiring disabled where small businesses will not. Maybe some of them are just doing it for PR, but at least they are doing it. Jeffrey has one advantage over a 'normal' adult. He does not get bored with the tasks he is given. Even at home he insists on cleaning and vacuuming his room, which is a huge difference from his brother.

Personally, I don't like the word 'retard'. It is a pejorative and if one is really talking about retarded individuals, it implies that one is blaming them for being retarded.http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/headshake.gif

I'm even a little uncomfortable making 'retarded' jokes about others, although I can do so if I really want to.

Example:
Why does President Bush ride to work in a limousine?
Because the Secret Service couldn't figure out how to armor plate a short bus.http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/smile.gif

No hard feelings, that's just how I see things.

I apologize.

My intention was to insult the people at WalMart in charge of HR decisions, like taking out life insurance policies on their employees, or how they decide who gets health care and such.

No such insult was intended toward anyone else, I promise.

As I see it, we're dealing with two fundamentally opposite ways of looking at issues like minimum wage.

One side believes that a person is owed a living — that, independent of all other factors, no human being should ever have less money than is required to meet basic needs. Regardless of whether a person works, how hard, with whatever level of conscientiousness, he should never be denied the opportunity to buy a new shirt if he wants one. While personal responsibility is a good thing, someone who lacks it shouldn't be punished by not getting a check from SOMEONE.

The other side thinks that if someone wants a living, it is their responsibility to find it for themselves. Although there are certainly people who are down on their luck, this is in nearly every case a temporary state, if that person will cowboy the fuck up and go to work. We should build our social system based on providing opportunity, not taking from those who work to distribute to those who will not. The person who decided to start smoking crack, have 8 babies from 8 different fathers before the age of 30, and drop out of high school to hang with her friends is not my responsibility. She is an idiot. If she wants to turn her life around, that's great. But it's going to be an uphill battle, and the reason isn't because the rest of us are mean or selfish. It's because she did a bunch of stupid stuff.

I just realized that sounded pretty harsh. There is definitely no excuse for being callous. However, charity should come from individuals, and it should be freely given. It's our responsibility as fellow humans to make sure the other humans in our sphere of influence are taken care of.

It's not the job of government nor of corporate entities.

Corporate entities are in the business of making money. Period. The purpose of government is something else again. Why do we have a local police force? To try to prevent law abiding citizens from being harmed by criminals. Why do we have an army? To protect our citizens from foreign aggression. We have government to "promote the general welfare," bottom line.

I am not going to argue that people should have a social conscience or an imagination or feel empathy. Been there, done that on this board.

What I have discovered is that arguing social conscience is like arguing religion. It seldom gets one anywhere. I find it especially interesting that so many fundamentalist Christians actually have very little compassion for the disadvantaged. Noodle's If she wants to turn her life around, that's great. But it's going to be an uphill battle, and the reason isn't because the rest of us are mean or selfish. It's because she did a bunch of stupid stuff. is a nice summation of the religous right's outlook (and the conservative outlook, in general).

I have often wondered why this should be so. I think people want to beleive that somehow life is fair and God rewards the good and punishes the guilty. This outlook allows a person to beleive he can remain safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by working hard enough and being good enough. It also has the by product of allowing the person who is well off to feel superior to those who are not - be they retards, drug addicts, whatever.

Whatever floats your boat, folks. I happen to disagree with this point of view. And I'm not going to beat a dead horse. Over and out. :headshake

I fail to see how a company should be allowed to profit by making the state pick up things they don't cover, if they're employed but still eligible for food stamps and free medical, the company should be paying it.

That said, if you didn't have such a stupidly inefficient and unfair medical system in the first place it probably wouldn't be such an issue.

"Employed" in this case counts part-time employment, which a large number of Wal-Mart's employees are. They're willing to let you work 10 hours a week if that's what you want.

Heh! Don't know about other states, but here in Colorado, many outfits get around providing health insurance, etc. by only giving employees 35 or 36 hour work weeks which makes them "part time." I worked for a place that gave me 38 hours of work a week spread out over 6 days a week and I was considered a part time employee. I'd have loved to have those two extra hours but they wouldn't give them to me. I found another job, but if there's an economic downturn or a person lacks the skills, its not always that easy to find something else.

What was the name of this place? Beestie needs to know.

;)

It really all comes down to children. While any conservative can argue that a mentally and physically able person should be able to find a job, any job, they still do not have an answer for the children.

Because some fiscal conservatives are also social conservatives, it gets even more confusing when sex is factored in. If a woman fails the abstinence test and does not use the contraception which some conservatives disagree with and does not get the abortion that many conservatives disagree with, then a child is produced.

Except for some obscure technical issues in some doctrines, most people agree that a child is innocent. He or she did not have a choice and can't 'cowboy up' and get a job until age 14 or older in most cases.

The bottom line is that some politicians do not care about starving children as much as they do about aborted fetuses. Recent cutbacks in welfare rules were opposed by some social conservative Congressman a few years back because they were afraid it would lead to more abortions.

It costs $20,000 to $30,000 a year to care for a healthy human being, in an orphanage, prison, or mental facility. Parents and foster parents do it for a lot less. Putting a welfare mother in prison and having the state care for her 8 children would cost taxpayers $100-$200,000 a year.

One of the reasons we are seeing so many abuse stories about foster care is that a) resources are being drained from social services, and b) more and more children are being placed in foster care, forcing social workers to lower standards.

As stated in this post in a recent thread, the 'good old' days were filled with desperate mothers and murdered infants. This does not even consider child labor in dangerous conditions without the benefit of public schooling.

True rock-bottom conservative capitalism is social darwinism. The unfit die, and the children of the unfit usually die first. In this case the church may actually serve a practical function in providing some services, at least for members of their faith. They also provide an outlet and promote social order, possibly avoiding revolution.

Fortunately, we live in a republic where every adult citizen is guaranteed the right to vote. If voting were limited to landowners or people with household incomes over $75k, it is possible that the safety net would disappear. Since our government is responsible to 'all' of it's citizens, removing the safety net would require convincing citizens that they don't need it. Doing so would require that proof be provided that the game is not rigged against the middle and working classes when it comes to accumulating and keeping wealth for retirement. Anyone reading the headlines would realize that this is not true.

The safety net right now is unwieldy, and probably needs to be fixed. However, health care, illegal immigration, and a lot of other topics, some of which the president is avoiding with all of his singleminded determination, are mixed into the goal of universal employment. Taking care of them includes taking on some very big lobbies that have now aligned themselves with the ruling party to prevent reform.

For example, to get businesses to hire people off of welfare, non-farm employment of illegal aliens would have to be curtailed Even under pressure by common sense conservatives in the Republican party, there has been no real progress on this. This is because illegal immigrants are the drug of choice for businesses looking at the bottom line. It is cheaper to keep people on welfare and pass the cost along to taxpayers than to make the extra effort to give a job to a citizen with a history of chronic unemployment, or a single parent, or a recovering substance abuser.

Part of our welfare system is designed to prop up the people displaced by illegal aliens and allow more corporate profits, which, thanks to tax cuts, are not even taxed sufficiently to balance the cost.

What do you mean by "get around"? Is there a federal law that defines a full time employee as one who works 40 hours or more, and thus must be provided with health insurance? Can I get a link please?

richlevy, i bow to your entire post, above. You really ARE the bee king! :notworthy

You all know I go to a university around here (a rather, ahem, lame one, but! one nonetheless!) you should hear the kids. Pro-life, Anti-AssistedSuicide, Pro-Bush, etc. I worry. I worry.

Then I think: eh, what do twenty-somethings know? And then I feel better.

Find your own link, sorry. I speak from real life experience. Hibbard's would keep us at 39 hours a week because that way they could avoid having to pay us a higher wage and/or health insurance. I am not going to slog thru the Federal Register only to have Wolf reply that I'm living off the taxpayer and therefore have no right to post the facts much less voice an opinion, or to have Beestie post "Quote/Marichiko "The Federal Register steals and lies"/Quote."

Go back and read Rich's post if you want to read something, and if you want to prove me wrong, go research the Federal and US Code yourself. :p

ah, you girls...

I've been (un)happily employed for years and years. If you worked forty, you pulled enough weight to have insurance. If they could stick thirty-eight hours to you, they could claim you were part-time (with the exception of folks they WANTED RE:nurses. As an RN, I could, and DID, work 36 hours/week and carry F/T bene's). Happens everywhere. That's not the Question, though. I am reasonably sure that there is a law about how many employees you have and how much/how many bene's you must cough up. Lots of stuff about this. gads.

You know exactly how much faith I have in your "real life" experience.
I looked. Didn't find anything other than;

Didn't find anything on mandatory benefits or pay increases (beyond time+ .5 for 44+hours).

Point me in the direction of it eh? I'm genuinely interested.

No? REALLY?!? :mg:

Whatever. Believe what you want. Its nothing to me. :right:

That was a rather Godwinian statement Mr Noodle...

Marichiko and Brianna both mirror my experiences with IBM, a company every bit as manipulative as you can find but very aware of their legal issues. So aware that they called meetings to discuss the hours-per-week/day with us every time they were getting the shaft ready. We were told that according to law only a regularly scheduled 40 hpw made you a "full-time employee" and only then could you have benefits. You couldn't just get them by working a scheduled 20 hour week and an equal amount of "overtime". It was not until later that I discovered that did not include the special "consultant" status that they gave hourly employees who were so special that they needed extra persuasions (but none of that applied to me anyway since I was in sales support/administration). They see-sawed back and forth so many times about overtime being forbidden to overtime being compulsory that finally they solved the problem by making every administrative employee above a certain grade "exempt". That meant that no matter how many hours per day/week you worked over your scheduled 40, you got paid a flat rate (formerly that was just for management). This allowed them to legally work you into the ground without having to mess up their budget for salaries. 20 years later, they are in court facing a class action suit over non-payment of overtime :D But as far as benefits, those of us with the required 40 hours got all expenses paid for any psychiatric care needed to cope with the stress the company caused.

Tonchi, are you saying that IBM is being sued for not paying overtime to their salaried-exempt employees?

I've "heard" this too and was wondering if it was true - it doesn't appear to be. I would have checked into it had it affected me, but I received full bennies with 35 hours at my last real job.

I think so much of it depends on who you're working for and how valuable they think you are to them. In the many hospitals around here it all depends on what STATUS you hired in as. If I was hired AS a part-time employee and they gave me 60 hrs/week, I'd get paid OT for anything over forty,but no benes. I was part time until I found an opening that gave me full time status.

I don't know when the current rules went into effect, but according to the Dept of Labor the minimum for 'exempt' is $455 per week which works out to about $23.5K if you don't take vacations. That is above the poverty level for a family of four, placing someone in the 'working poor' category, especially if they have to pick up their own health care.

• That last item is open to a lot of interpretation.

After college in 1975
 

I worked part time for my city's park department.
At that time part time meant that as a municipality they did not have to pay time and a half for overtime and there were weeks when I worked for 50 hours or more. Quite a deal for the city. They strung me along for 2 years, promising to put me on full time "next spring" or "next fall". Finally the union got it in their contract that after 180 days they would either hire the part timers onto full time or lay them off. No more stringing along. In spite of the city saying they had no money, I got hire that summer. And then surprise, surprise, they hired 4 guys after me. I quit after 4 years--the flat out most stupid thing I have ever done and that choice cost me tens of thousands of dollars in lost pay. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

P.S.,
Republicans' concern for life begins at conception and ends at birth.