A major topic within many American communities now days is the topic of Health Care. I feel we are focusing way too much on the broad aspect on health care and I am wondering if our politicians are looking into why so many working adults do not have health care. There are a variety of reasons, some considered valid and some considered wrong (subjective of course) but there is one business practice that I feel is one of the wrong reasons; that is the practice of large lucrative companies that hire long term contract employees (basically permanent temps.
There is no doubt that the reason for this practice is to avoid paying for benefits (such as health care) or sick pay and can save a company thousands of dollars. This may be fine for smaller companies that could not afford to lose so much; but what about the larger companies whose CEO's are bringing in record profits of multi-million dollars? The argument largely relies on the idea of consent. Most managers will remind you that you agreed to this and they may even deliver you the infamous line of "If you don't like it here, then go work somewhere else."
However as I normally believe that nothing in this world is that simple and here is something to think about. That is the idea of hegemony. The dictionary defines hegemony as simply influence or authority over others, however hegemony mainly means domination or slavery by consent. The slaves or people being dominated consent to being enslaved because they know that their choices are limited.
So as far as office contract workers go, they agree to the contract because their choices are limited; especially in this economy, one most likely does not have the resources to drop everything and find another job. These companies know this and use this to hire contract employees without paying them benefits. Of course now days people every where who are employed should be thankful to have a job; but I still feel it is wrong for companies to take advantage of the average worker in this fashion.
I agree, but how would the employees change this unless they got together and decided to all fight it? All they really have to do is, as one united voice, say "This isn't right, and we demand better!"
ReplyDeleteHowever... doing so is why most companies outsource their labor... we Americans occasionally remember that we are supposed to fight for what is right, and that costs the companies a lot of money, so the move on to employes who are eager to work for much less with no benefits.
It's a viscious cycle, and the first step to breaking it would be to pass a law that forbids companies from hiring people in other countries. The second step would be to pass a law stating that no company may have an employee without giving them benefits... but then that would be socialism, sigh!
People don't fight it because they need their jobs to feed their families...hence the cycle of hegemony.
ReplyDeleteAlso you could pass a law that states that a company needs to prove they have a temporary need to hire contract employees. This would make them have to hire full time staff for these jobs.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of passing a law that makes companies prove the need is only temporary. As there are times that jobs really are only intended to be temporary and/or people who are only looking for temp work. However, the trend of the public's feelings about gov't right now is that they are too involved in our personal lives so a challenge would be to get support behind these ideas.
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