Diminishing quality of the labor pool

originally posted by: mymymy
a reply to: DBCowboy

But then again, earning a good job requires effort.

In my experience, earning a good job requires nothing more than who you know or who you're related to

I truly believe the good-old-boy network has killed the economy. The worst part is that this is considered a talent and skill.

They have re-branded favoritism as networking skills. A few major companies even write it in ALL their job descriptions.

People need hope and goals, without this they simply give up.

a reply to: Daughter2

They have re-branded favoritism as networking skills.

Biggest problem in America.

Some moron gets his college buddy hired who's another moron and together they engineer poorly thought out and uncreative work environments and corporate cultures that are built solely on nepotism and not actual skill level and hard work and boom.

We have what we have now.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: Daughter2

They have re-branded favoritism as networking skills.

Biggest problem in America.

Some moron gets his college buddy hired who's another moron and together they engineer poorly thought out and uncreative work environments and corporate cultures that are built solely on nepotism and not actual skill level and hard work and boom.

We have what we have now.

Yep
I have lived a good life so it is not my fight
But I also support those younger than me fighting back

Big Business wants all the rewards and profits via Global Military, Shareholder Value and Taxes that support their infrastructure but none of the costs

originally posted by: pexx421
A few points here. First off, us productivity has soared the last 5 decades. So I'm not sure where you get your statistics. But, I will also point out, minimum wage provides less than it used to. So maybe this race to the bottom in wages is having the end logical result. Those whose time is worth more are not taking the low wage jobs, and you're getting what you pay for. Second, I'd like to second what the other poster stated. Jobs aren't holding up their end like they used to. Used to be, if you staid with a company a long time they would take care of you. We had pensions, that paid a salary until you died. We retired at an earlier age and had time to enjoy that pension. Benefits covered everything. You could depend on noticeably wage increases. We haven't had wage increases in 7 years. Insurance is a joke. 401k is a bad joke. And like another person said..... We're not being asked to take a promotion, were asked to do more work without more pay. So maybe the bad workers you complain about are the results of the bad business paradigm that manages our nation.

Very, very well said. Thank you

originally posted by: Vroomfondel
Schools are turning out some blank stare stoopid people. I have spent the majority of my career in R&D, engineering and design more specifically. We get college interns every year. The quality has dropped to a staggering low. Our last intern was an engineering student. We determined in less than one day that he should, under no circumstances, be allowed anywhere near engineering. We ended up sending him to the shop to help out there. As is typical for our shop guys, there was some kidding around. Think of it as a right of passage. They told him that one of the machinists drilled some holes in the wrong places in a piece of steel and we needed to fix the mistake. They sent him to the tool crib to get a "hole puller" so we could pull out the holes and re-insert them in the right place. It took him about an hour, but damned if he didn't find one... The shop foreman, ever so quick on his feet, took one look at it and said, "Nope. That's standard. We need metric..." We didn't see the kid again for the rest of the day. The next day they had him pushing a broom. It didn't take long before he showed up at the shop foreman's office with a two piece broom. The shop foreman told him to take it to the welders and ask them if they could weld it together for him. He went and asked and the lead welder sent him to the tool crib to get some oak welding rod. We never saw him again...

Seriously...I would Flag the daylights out of this if I could!

I work in a drug-free semi-skilled shop. The stupidity every shift is awesome!
Last night's debate was on the used by Brits of the word "governor" it took them 30 min of debating to decide that the UK didn't indeed have states or a need for governors. They were undecided if the UK had provinces?

At least two of them were college grads and some were over 40.

Pretty sure all that's actually required is a pulse?

originally posted by: jacobe001

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: AssiduousSpook

Like it or not better pay begets better help. Ever notice when you are in an expensive restaurant the waitstaff is friendly and tables cleanliness are set at a higher standard?

We apply that maxim when we want to get the top talent to run our companies, but somehow, loose that maxim when it comes to lower level workers
I can go to India and see the same thing at the lower levels.
Pay peanuts, you get peanut level quality work

We talk about paying a basic income to people and then question where is the incentive to work if we do that
We pay people peanuts and then wonder why they do not have the incentive to work? Umm

There is a high suicide rate among the younger crowd as well, so the idea of starving them to work will not work either

I worked on a 1500 unit apartment complex in 1996, and the pay was $11.00 hr. I was a "mechanic" that means toilets, boiler, ac units and central, plumbing and anything else that comes up. I worked there for 1 year. In that one year a management decision was made to hire temps (low paid temps) to help with apartment turn overs.

After a week or so the full timers were told how wonderful the temps were, how quickly they turned over apartments. So the managers started the back slapping and hurrahs about their super smart business decision.

Problem: Then new tenants started to move in. I still remember getting the pleasure of staying late on a Friday night (big move in time) to, Oh, mount toilets that was left in the hallways, or install dishwashers and garbage disposals that were put in the apartment but not installed. As you can see no one was checking on the temp workers, but the apartments were complete or that was what the paperwork said.

If I was the owner of the apartment complex I would have fired the management staff, they are lucky they didn't have an apartment fire, or get a real bad temp that used master keys to get into someone's apartment and hurt a tenant/steal something. But they retained their jobs.

This is a prime example of what happens when silly ideas are tried by stupid people. And I believe we are seeing this being tried though out our American economy. We will need real mechanics, plumbers, electricians and smart managers to clean this place up once the back slappers get fired. Sorry for the wordy post.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Kali74

Bull.

I can't even get qualified people TO APPLY!

why would they?....you said previously that they would be on call 24/7.....all you want is qualified "desperate" people

a reply to: jimmyx

You're right.

I should pay some special snowflake 100K just to work a few hours a week and not actually do the job.

Really?

My partner and I currently have 4 LLC operations, Retail, Mfg and 2 service ops.

It's been our experience that if you pretend to pay someone they will pretend to work.

We always hire people first as interns or apprentices before they ever get the chance to hire on Full time.

Get a kick ass manager and stay out of their way....that allows you to follow your passion or help others follow theirs.

Union proud, Union Strong....

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: jimmyx

You're right.

I should pay some special snowflake 100K just to work a few hours a week and not actually do the job.

Really?

then don't, do the damn work yourself....I'm just on ATS typing, don't know you or the job, and I wouldn't work for you either.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I'd do that for 80k.

Any other qualifications needed?

a reply to: CantStandIt

An engineering degree.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Afraid that takes me out of the running. My degree isn't in an engineering related field.

But others here might fit the bill.. what's the next aet of qualifications?

originally posted by: Vroomfondel. Our last intern was an engineering student. We determined in less than one day that he should, under no circumstances, be allowed anywhere near engineering. We ended up sending him to the shop to help out there. As is typical for our shop guys, there was some kidding around. Think of it as a right of passage.

Nope, I think of it as bullying and humiliating your employees.

Even if it was possible to determine in one day someone wasn't suited for the job, the decent thing would have pulled the person aside and told them privately they need skils X and Z for this job and the person doesn't have these skills.
If you couldn't find another job for this person, simply tell them to reapply when they have the skills.

How did it benefit your company to humiliate the person? The only thing this did was give you sick pleasure from seeing someone embarrassed.

I'm addressing this post not only because of this one story but because I think this is a real problem in many companies.

originally posted by: CantStandIt
a reply to: DBCowboy

Afraid that takes me out of the running. My degree isn't in an engineering related field.

But others here might fit the bill.. what's the next aet of qualifications?

how about the ability to proof read 2 sentences for spelling errors

a reply to: jellyrev

You sound like one of the oak weld rod crowd...

In places like machine shops, and most union type jobs, there is always some hazing of the new guys. Its not like college kids and the stupid crap they get into for fraternities. This is just a right of passage, good natured kidding. We are not stopping someone from learning. In fact, it is our job to make sure the new guys learn the right way to do things. Most people know that the real education starts when you get out of school. We do not expect anyone fresh out of school to know everything. But we do expect an engineering student to know you cant pull a hole out of a piece of steel and re-insert it somewhere else. We expect an engineering student to know you cant weld two pieces of wood together. You can try to blame that kind of stupidity on old people being jerks but the bottom line was we gave him a shot in engineering and he showed no aptitude at all. We gave him a shot in the shop and he failed miserably. At the end of the day we need to be productive and get the job done. The interns are supposed to help us accomplish that task and learn something in the process. When we have to spend our day making sure the intern doesn't hurt himself with a push broom we are not getting our work done. There is a limit to how much ignorance you can excuse for being young. A twenty year old engineering intern should have known much more than this guy. Much more.

I think we've already sorted this. You have #ty jobs offering #ty benefits, expecting us to do more and more, while cutting back on our pay and compensations. And you wonder why the workforce you see is garbage. If business actually cared about anything other than profits, maybe we could work on getting some quality stuff, people, etc, rather than the disposable quantity based society we have become.

a reply to: CantStandIt

Anyone interested can simply PM me.

I'll look at any resume's.

a reply to: jimmyx

Lol, got me! On my mobile at the moment... tiny, tiny keyboard!

originally posted by: pexx421
I think we've already sorted this. You have #ty jobs offering #ty benefits, expecting us to do more and more, while cutting back on our pay and compensations. And you wonder why the workforce you see is garbage. If business actually cared about anything other than profits, maybe we could work on getting some quality stuff, people, etc, rather than the disposable quantity based society we have become.

We used to make steel in this country...Now we make "Happy Meals"!