Blizzard employees post their salaries to protest

spartaman64 · August 5, 2020

42 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Then stay and don't complain. You don;t get to choose to stay and complain about the pay. Either the pay is a problem or it isn't.

I would if they weren't paying what I considered to be reasonable or forced me to live below reasonable standards for a full time worker. It is the only way any work culture is going to take pay seriously.

why should they not complain and ask for better wages?

mr moose · August 5, 2020

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

why should they not complain and ask for better wages?

I don't know, why should they?

the post I made said nothing about not protesting.

Donut417 · August 6, 2020

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Then leave and go to an employer who does recognize it.

Thats not always an option. This might be the best you can get in a given area. Plus most employers treat employees like shit. Even since Union's lost their power employees have been treated poorly. God help you if you work for a large corporation, because then you're just a number.

At the end of the day Union membership in the US needs to grow. When Unions have support, they have power. Unions are the reason we have a standard work week and most of the safety standard. Ive said it before and Ill say it again. The entire working class in the US needs to go on strike, PERIOD. Just say enough if enough. Fix the issues or loose your profits. Thats how change happens.

mr moose · August 6, 2020

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Thats not always an option. This might be the best you can get in a given area. Plus most employers treat employees like shit. Even since Union's lost their power employees have been treated poorly. God help you if you work for a large corporation, because then you're just a number.

Again reflecting a society issue, if the cost of living is too high for the wages the company is paying then move to a cheaper area. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Clearly there is a problem with employees not having any bargaining power. So if they don't all leave on mass or start their own union and make it work then they will continue to have nothing. Just sitting around complaining they have no options will not change anything.

2 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

At the end of the day Union membership in the US needs to grow. When Unions have support, they have power. Unions are the reason we have a standard work week and most of the safety standard. Ive said it before and Ill say it again. The entire working class in the US needs to go on strike, PERIOD. Just say enough if enough. Fix the issues or loose your profits. Thats how change happens.

Agree here, absolutely. So long as the unions don't get too strong. We are facing an issue where we are where the union has so much power over the state that other sectors are starting to suffer. Don't get me wrong, unions are important and they should have enough power to deliver safe and reasonably conditions including decent pay to their members, however when they become a business of their own and it starts to effect the economy, fuck that shit.

Bombastinator · August 6, 2020

15 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

I'm $25,000 in debt, have a network security degree, and I make $13.50 an hour to basically deliver laptops in bulk to customers. While there is a bit more to it, and I do bust my ass at it, it's not a highly skilled job that requires a lot of training.

Does it underpay? Yeah, but not by all that much.

Another issue is that the state I live in is a shithole where nepotism is the name of the game. Our biggest sector is government jobs, and I can tell you from first hand experience that those job advertisements go up with someone already selected for the job.

More importantly, my inability, either through effort or talent, to capitalize upon my training, is my biggest issue.

Training is nowhere near 100% of the issue. Motivation is the single biggest factor for every single person out there. Some are driven, some are not. I can tell you, again from first hand experience, that a LOT of those who are not driven, end up in government jobs. Be it motivation to work hard, or get better training on your own, or simply motivation to look for a better job.

You are the ONLY person 100% responsible for your own success. I say this, although I struggle with it. I'm all too happy to just come home and drink beer and watch youtube videos, and occasionally play some games. But I am trying, just looking for a path I think is a good one, and when I find it, I'm going to take it.

To quote:

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

It is your personal responsibility to yourself to succeed in spite of adversity, not only in the absence of it.

Rereading my comment it does sound like I was claiming a single issue. Responding I guess to a previous claim of a single issue. It’s not one single issue. Training is a prerequisite though. You’ve got training you are barred from using because you lack sufficient privilege, but also because you don’t want to or can’t apply yourself to do the things necessary to be able to apply that training. It’s not the only factor apparently. More than one. Federal job application is supposed to be based on testing. You take a test and according to that score you are selected. This appears to be missing in your state, or is gamed or something. I find it odd that government jobs are considered the best ones in your state. In mine they are considered moderately terrible. Pay is low, advancement is rare to non existent. There is far better than average job security these days in such positions. Mostly a factor of government employment moving more slowly than private employment. All jobs used to be better. Government jobs are merely reacting to the lowering of standards slower than other employment. 40 years ago my father who was well trained and had a government job was regularly offered double his current working salary to work in the private sector. He didn’t do it because of ethics concerns. he felt he was doing good. So for him it was because his job was “cool” to him. This doesn’t seem to happen so much these days I guess. My best friend’s wife is also a government worker. She had to have training to get her job. The pay is barely living wage. so low she couldn’t survive without the assistance of her husband. She also has a “cool” type job. Her degree is in psychology, and a private sector psychologist makes far far more than she does. Takes more tim and money in school though. It’s not a job I’d want. Her job can be quite dangerous for one thing. I trained for a “cool” type job. Graphic design. Sort of a lottery job. Not nearly so much so as say, acting, which is sort of the penultimate lottery job. One makes millions the other 10,000 eat gainsburgers. All arts jobs are like that though. There were 300 trained applicants for every job opening when I graduated. That’s a stat btw. Literally over 300 applicants for one job opening I looked at. I knew a guy who was on the hiring committee. The majority who applied couldn’t do the work, but after they got down to the top 50 or so it was basically random. 50 people who had everything needed. They had the certification, they had the talent, they had the drive. Training and drive aren’t even everything. Sometimes mere luck is involved. Without the training they couldn’t even have applied though. To make drive a factor training is required. If training is denied it’s a non-starter.

In the graduation speech the university president literally suggested that graduates learn how to drive a cab. It was actually decent advice. Depressing and offensive, but rational. They had bought nothing but a chance at a job. Not the job. The US trains too many people for some professions and not enough for others. Whether one can get the training though is based on whether your parents can afford to buy it for you though. Not ability, privilege.

Donut417 · August 6, 2020

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

The US trains too many people for some professions and not enough for others.

Thats because the baby boomers told their kids, Go to School, dont work with your hands. And that's kinda stuck. The issue is skilled trades are suffering as a result, well that and they drove down all the wages in the trades, making people think twice about getting in to them. I think more emphasis should be put on skilled trades as for some, its probably a better option. The fact is all these people cry about China producing all the stuff, but what they dont want to understand is that the skills necessary to make things, dont really exist in America any more. My dad works in the tool and die trade, about 10 or so years ago he read an article in the paper, the average age of a person in that field was 50 years old. So when all these people start retiring there will not be enough people to fill those jobs. Then more jobs go overseas.

Kisai · August 6, 2020

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Not unprofessional at all, that's just a societal thing large employers want you to think so will keep pushing the narrative. Just like not tipping is rude, Employees want you to tip so they can pay their wait staff less. FUK that, pay them what they deserve and up the price of the meal if you have to. Tipping is not a thing in many parts of the world because insisting a customer pay more as part of some non-negotiated pay deal that only benefits employers is BS. Not talking about your pay is BS.

So do you want to start every day with a meeting where people whine-bitch-moan about who is responsible for things going sideways merely because they were paid more? No thanks. And for the record I tip 20% at restaurants unless the service was miserable as hell.

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

No it isn't, there are ways to do it professionally or it's public information for where you work and makes it irrelevant. It is not at all like your example, just don't be a muppit about it.

Again, if the subject is brought up, fine, but if there's not a line drawn somewhere, people will just ask out of habit, like asking what country you're from if you're not white.

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

It's not unprofessional to ask, it is highly unprofessional to continue to ask when someone says "I'm not comfortable discussing that with you".

You can ask, in fact you have a right to discuss it, however the other person has every right to decline that discussion.

Correct. And the reason that tends to be is because they don't want to turn it into a "why are you being paid more than I."

Those doing payroll know who is making more than who, so those are the people who don't want gossiping about new hires.

mr moose · August 6, 2020

14 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Thats because the baby boomers told their kids,

7 minutes ago, DutchGuyTom said:

Not only did boomers tell their kids "go to school," they said "follow your dreams!"

What the vast majority of the boomer generation said was "work hard" and "earn your keep". I know because the boomer generation is every adult role model in my life until I was 30.