Posted on 03/31/2014 12:58:29 PM PDT by MNDude
Germany's labor ministry has banned managers from calling or emailing staff out of hours except in emergencies. The ministry says the measure is intended to prevent staff from suffering undue stress by being constantly on call.
Daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that the ministry is following the lead of major German companies such as automaker Volkswagen and Deutsche Telekom.
“In your scenario, I assume you are salaried. If that is the terms of your job, so be it.”
It wasn’t; it “evolved” into that. I’ve told my children cell phones and laptops are great because you can be reached or work anywhere, and that at the same time they are horrible because you can be reached or work anywhere...
While the potential is great, don’t ignore the job losses we’ve suffered as a result of this wonderful technology.
Some of us ‘accidentally’ loaded the batteries in our pagers backwards. This in the mid 90’s.
Our group wasn’t an ‘on call’ group and didn’t qualify for the ‘on call’ 100% bonus pool. And yet, nearly every weekend we’d get at least one ‘all hands on deck’ page.
_____ that. You want on call service? Pay us the 100% bonus pool on call money.
That was my first take!!
Chuck the digital leash....
I need to find that court case, because they started this crap with me a year ago. I’ll put up with it for a couple more years and then sue them and retire if it’s true :)
“Yes,I was paid for it...as these Germans can be paid for off hours contacting.”
Too many people I know aren’t compensated at all; it has just become “expected” (in the same way 9 to 5 jobs became 8:30 to 5 jobs). It just became an uncompensated drop in quality of life.
“_____ that. You want on call service? Pay us the 100% bonus pool on call money.”
As long as I got paid, I was okay with unlimited OT. I didn’t even care that most of the time it was at 50% lower than the normal pay rate, as most professionals don’t get OT. But when I was there I was working 100% for the company. I had very little down time. If they made us work extra it was because somebody had done some p*ss poor management. As one employee said, “Failure to plan on their part is not an emergency on my part.”
Back in my early days, there is no way I could have advanced in my trade, without my supervisor calling me. No email in the 60s. I worked nights and he would call two or three times a week after I got home, mostly to chew me out for screwing up but I learned how to run that press. Nobody could piss me off like he could, BUT today 45 years later, I consider him my best friend and still a mentor.
Let’s just say that we were all employed there. Briefly. Turnover was horrendous because of the on call not on call on call policy. We were hired with an expectation of 40-50hr work week and were paid base accordingly. Then once hired we found out that management ‘expected’ us to work 70hr+. Marriages and famlies take a hit with those hours. And the non on call bonus pay didn’t make it worth it. At all.
It became a choice of marriage or job. I chose the marriage. Had I known I would get paid non-call pay and work 70+hrs a week I’d have taken the job just across the street (Avenue of the Americas) that paid REAL on call money for on call time. As it was, ‘we’ decided when I was looking for work that ‘he’ would be the 70+hr guy and I would be the ‘stay at home regular job’ wife. We once went 6 whole weeks w/o seeing each other aside from a sleeping body. Yes, I know people do that all the time. We were newlyweds and were NOT expecting that however.
There was a Carol Burnett Tim Conway skit. They were a couple working alternate shifts. He gets home and she gets up and they move through an intricate choreographed bit with no dialog. Finally, she leaves and he settles down to sleep. He’s been laying down for a minute when the door opens, she pokes her nose in and says the first line of dialog. “Oh, by the way, I’m pregnant.” He considers this for a long beat and then says, “No way.” It was hysterical.
I can remember when Macy’s sent their employees home with merchandise to be delivered to customers who lived near their homes. A judge made the retailer pay them to for that trick. Put a stop to it. There is evil in capitalism and slavery was the ultimate. Don’t think anything has changed.
I thought that these rules are in effect for healthcare.gov.
Sorry, Deb, but if you’re at the opera or a concert, your phone needs to be OFF. The people on stage have a job too and they work their asses off to get it done. And the people around you paid big money not to see your phone (or any phone) light up and ring.
Reminds me of when Al Pacino stopped one of his performances, asked a lady to turn her phone over to him. He picked it up and said: “Al Pacino here. I’m working right now, please call back.” The audience went wild.
You’re going to anger the workaholics around here.
Exactly! If you are on call, you can’t go to the opera, etc. So, in essence, your job is tying you down and without pay. (See that my response was to SoothingDave who thought extra pay should be unnecessary when you’re given a phone for free.)
I have some honest advice for you. First, have a backup plan, and then have a heart to heart with your boss. If you’re a good employee and the boss is decent you should get thru to them. Otherwise, quite honestly, you are entitled to OT at anything past 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week.
It’s not right to be on constant standy mode during your off time. We work to live, not live to work. Family and yourself always come first.
It was like that LOL.
Trouble was, the ‘who does the laundry’ arguments were legendary. IF my job had been the one I EXPECTED when I was hired it wouldn’t have been a problem for me to do laundry. IF we had lived in an ordinary suburbia house with its own washer/dryer it would have been no big deal. As it was, it was a humonguous apartment building with laundry in the basement. ‘Doing laundry’ was a 2 or 3hr commitment of your time. And infringed on sleep time LOL.
Some weeks I actually worked closer to 80hrs a week. No time to grocery shop so every meal was takeout or fast food or delivery. House cleaning wasn’t done. Course we were never home so it wasn’t THAT big a deal. But still.
So yeah. I turned the beeper ‘off’ after a couple months of that. At that point I’d called the head hunter, informed him the company had LIED about the job realities (I was like the 3rd person in a week that had picked up the phone and called him about this company LOL) and I wanted OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT. I had 4 interviews over the next 5 days and took a new job the following week. So yeah, I can see a need for ‘honest dialogue’ about job responsibilities prior to anyone getting hired. And I went to a job with real on call with real on call pay. And UNsurprisingly (to me anyways) actually worked FEWER hours. And developed a shoe habit. We won’t discuss the shoe habit...
“You’re going to anger the workaholics around here.”
Maybe; I know we need employers if we’re not self-employed, but the disconnect between some people and what is happening to our standard of living is mind-boggling (I guess for the time being they are safe from some of the more common abuses that are becoming commonplace).
Intersting story. People have to be very careful when taking a new job; a lot of nonsense by employers who know they have the upper hand. I’ve seen “entry level” jobs (paying entry-level wages) that require 2-3 years’ experience, bait & switch stuff where a good job is advertised but something completely different is described in the interview, etc.
“There is evil in capitalism and slavery was the ultimate. Don’t think anything has changed.”
There certainly is potential for evil; I hike in areas along the NJ/NY border where people worked 6 and 1/2 days per week (Sunday afternoons off) - there were no schools for the kids, and the company store was where you spent your wages (and then some).
I agree that they like things done right. The don’t like to deviate from perceived correct ways of doing things. That said, doing things right had better not cut into vacation time, sick time, deviate from outlined responsibilities in a union contract, maternity leave, etc.
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