So that's where they've been "finding" all these new employment numbers! Heck, if you can't find the right facts, you just have to "find" the right facts!
Posted on 06/01/2010 4:00:22 AM PDT by Scanian
A guy I'll call Mike has worked for Census 2010 several times in California over the past two years. The last time, he was trained at a facility that was an hour's drive from his home. He was paid for his commuting time at $17 an hour -- which is what he also got while working and training.
Mike says that he, like everyone else, was also given 50 cents a mile for gasoline.
The last time Mike worked for Census, the job lasted two weeks. He and the rest of his class had been promised eight weeks.
Mike says that after each stint with Census he, like everyone else, was given an official "termination" notice. And every time he was rehired Mike had to fill out a new employment application (more paperwork to be processed by paid workers).
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I was expecting them to relate “horror stories” of their contacts with the true patriots in this country. Instead, it was the horrors of the system. LOL!!
LLS
$17 an hour?! That is infuriating!
Just an Obama scam to inflate the employment numbers....
Fired and rehired many, many times, and each new rehire counts as a ‘new employment,’ to conceal the dismal failure of Obama’s socialist budget to eliminate joblessness.
More phony baloney from America’s Chairman of the Praesidium, our very own Golfer in Chief.
Worse still, the kids of today will be paying the bill for this fraud well into their dotage.
Since you're new, I will advise you that our practice is to ping (add to adresss field) any FReeper whom we mention by name in a post.
Now, you know
Thanks for the advice.
Cooking employment numbers via the census; how ‘Madoffian’ of the administration.
Don-o told me to ping (whatever that is) you if I mention you in a post. So, here you go.
You know...you mentioned Don-o in this post without pinging him...don't you? I'm just sayin'...
I can tell you that I go to a local gym three times a week and for several weeks the census bunch had a man sitting near the front door with census paperwork. He was supposed to answer questions about the census I think. He seemed to consider it all pretty much of a lark himself, as far as I could see he was being paid to smile and joke with people. He was there until he got to know some of us well enough to act as though he was greeting friends when we came in. I doubt that he actually accomplished anything productive the whole time.
When did I ever say they were a great orginization they were? I just said stated the training I received to dispel myths that census workers were being trained to break into people’s houses and crap.
Thanks don-o. I am reading the article and will let you what I think. I am certainly no expert in the Census Dept, but I was trained and a Crew Leader Assistant so I do know the procedures on the street level.
First, census workers were ‘hired’ as contractor workers, the amount of the contract is an 8 week maximum. Also, each contract is for a specific job. So the guy who said he was ‘hired’ for a position and fired. Then ‘rehired’ for another is absolutely true in a technical sense. Especially if time in between each job would be longer than 8 weeks. Each position (codes represent each position-I had to turn in two pay forms. one for eunumerator work, one for crew leader ass. work with a seperate code on the form) requires a new contract. Wasteful, probably. But we are talking government. I have never worked for the government before, it’s just as much bullcrap redtape as I imagined.
Second, the handheld computers would have been FABULOUS but apparently they were a big damn waste of money and whoever authorized and contracted them out should be fired. Millions wasted on a piece of crap that never got used.
Yes, I had MANY people tell me they mailed in their forms. However this is a matter of idiots laying out the program. The date on the form said APRIL 1, 2010. However the address binders that were assigned to the eumerators were printed just a week later! How on earth would they have time to process all of them? They couldn’t and it was a big damn waste of money to go out and recheck places that had forms turned in, but unaccounted for. You would think as much money as they soaked into advertising they would have let it do it’s job. But as I said, stupid government.
So that’s all I have. I will say I was never ‘promised’ 8 weeks of work and actually only had four weeks worth. I was told my contract would be 8 weeks maximum and if they needed me for longer, I would sign a new contract.
Lastly, I do not know what 1raider has against me for dispelling myths that people have stated or explaining what we were trained to do. I was merely stating my experience and that all census takers were not ACORN members out to break into people’s homes as some were hysterically fearing. But whatever, I can only say what happened in my district.
The second incident, I was at a neighborhood yard sale and a census worker came and started asking the lady a lot of really personal questions right there in front of everybody. I told the lady she didn't have to answer those questions. The worker just looked at me in an irritated way and the woman kept on answering his questions. After he left she said she shouldn't have answered his questions. Well duh! Anyway on a side note, I saw how he got people to answer his questions. People love to talk about themselves and he was asking her questions like how many bedrooms in the house. How long did it take for them to get to work? Did the children ride the bus to school? That sort of thing. She was just tickled to death to answer his questions, even volunteering information he hadn't asked for.
autumn,
I second your effort to add sanity to these census strings that portray us as rude, crude malevolent stalkers. I joined to satisfy myself that it wasn’t a biased ACORN operation. In my area and within my exposure, the team leaders and enumerators are doing the best they can within the rules and given the minimum wage support we get from the regional office.
People make the mistake of thinking the census is personal. In fact we are just tasked with estabilishing whether an address is a legit housing unit and if so, how many people reside there. That’s the constitution. I question the purpose and intelligence behind the remaining questions but really, they are pretty benign. And people can REFuse to answer any question at that.
Our team has had one dog bite requiring rabies treatment and one case where a man came to the door with a shotgun (oddly the enumerator still got form completed anyway). Had several drunks answering doors mid-day and one of our ladies tolerated some sexual harrassment. The only enumerators we’ve lost were due to lack of activity(not going out at all), poor production(too few results relative to hours charged and/or miles driven), one enumerator with a drinking problem, and one where the enumerator was making up info. Team leaders took care of these in a competent fashion.
Like you, I can only speak for my territory/teams, and I also conclude that the goverment is much less organized/efficient than a normal business would be. But thus far, all seems on the up-and-up.
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