Continuous increases in work without any consultation.

AngryHippie

Quadrivium wrote: »

If only was that "simples" That's part of the proble too, an over supply of labour and an increasing amount of cheap foreign labour pouring into the country to the glee of exploitative employers.

You can't see the wood for trees here pal. This is what I am getting at. Ireland has very protective labor laws, and powerful unions. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but the unions take the p!ss.

As for overseas labor pouring in, look at the amount of highly trained and skilled workers pouring out of Ireland.
The over supply of labor is a global issue, not a national one, and it's not going away. That is why you need to get over your sense of entitlement and get on with the job.

If you don't have time to do what you are being asked to do, that is a different matter. Then it is up to you to discuss that with the supervisor/manager that is directing you, and ensure they know that x will be done at the expense of y not being done. That is your responsibility as an employee, if you are not capable or do not have time to complete a task assigned, you report it. Put it in writing if that makes you feel better. Having a whinge here isn't going to sort it out.

Quadrivium wrote: »

Well if it was only 1 or 3 extra tasks that would be fine, but if you were willing to work an infinite amount of tasks for no extra compensation then that makes you a fool, there's no honour in being exploited. The fact you considered it all part of a days work gives an insight into your frame of mind, sheep like without the ability to form opinions based on critical analysis.

I'm not the one that can't handle my workload mate. Thanks for the personal opinion on my frame of mind though. Really helpful

Quadrivium wrote: »

You've managed to contradict yourself here in spectacular fashion.
If the jobs in a workplace need to be performed and someone needs to be employed to do these jobs then it's likely they wouldn't be standing around discussing the weekend, they would be busy doing those jobs that need to be done.

Contradicted myself how exactly ?
I was actually alluding to the fact that Ireland's wonderful protectionist labor law has been so busy pigeonholing everyone, and deciding what the skill-sets were and how much people need to be paid for them, that they have lost sight of the fact that private sector enterprise would rather pay one person a little more to do a wide range of jobs, than to pay 3 different people to do their own little patch of work.
There are benefits to both sides on this:
One person gets full-time employment instead of 3 people getting cruddy part time work
The company has a skilled and motivated worker to dedicate to whichever task is most urgent instead of 3 slackers doing set hours for jobs that may require varying resources.

Are there more benefits for the employer than the employee.....yes
Is it exploitation....yes, in the second definition of the word: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=exploitation&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&gfe_rd=cr&ei=goLYUrTTAcuN8Qe3ooCQCg

Quadrivium wrote: »

Employers get off very lightly in Ireland. I've seen employers get away with little more than a slap on the wrist for employing illegal immigrants, not paying basic entitlements or pay etc. We need harsher punishments for employers who continually flout employment law.

:pac::pac::pac::pac: Exactly where have you worked overseas ? :rolleyes::D

Try the 80% of countries in the world that we classify as 3rd developing world countries. FFS you are starting to sound like you don't have a notion of exactly how lucky you are.
You sound like the type of person that I would personally hunt out of any company I work for. A sh!t stirring liability.

Quadrivium wrote: »

Again with the assumptions, I've never worked in the private sector and I certainly don't have any sense of entitlement, other than a sense of entitlement for my basic rights as a worker. You obviously have a serious gripe against public sector workers, you sound like a begrudger.

I'll assume that is a typo.

As for no. 2 Irish water, CRC, Dublin Corporation, Leinster House, the HSE , IBTS (back in the day).....the list goes on. Criminality, bribery corruption, back-handers, cronyism, embezzlement, incompetence.
And the average civil service wage is currently the highest in Europe.
Wake the fcuk up.

Quadrivium wrote: »

I have had my own company, I've employed between 10 and 13 people and I always treated them with respect and they received every entitlement and allowance they were entitled to and deserved. Due to the serious downturn in the economy in 2009

I'm assuming things went awry in 2009. I am genuinely sorry to hear that, but do you think that if the labor laws were a little bit more coherent that your business may have survived ?

Quadrivium wrote: »

This company I work for repeatedly flout employment law, don't pay allowances they should, don't pay overtime allowances they should and they have a history of exploiting workers, both legal and illegal workers. Considering all this do you really think this company deserves the continued good will of its employees?

To speculate on your company's performance and activities, without even knowing who they are would be a little bit silly of me wouldn't it ?

Based on the statement you have made, there are some pretty serious accusations, and they don't sound like a company I would like to work for, but again, that is speculation on my part, and probably some reliance on hearsay on yours.

Nobody is forcing you to work for them. It's a free country. Tackle your problems directly, and if that doesn't work, seek alternative employment.

I do feel for your situation, but I think you might be able to manage it better, and I still don't think that your evil employer is responsible for it. They are just an easy target.

Welcome to the layer cake

Gone West

Quadrivium wrote: »

but you don't see accountants cleaning the tables where they work.

I am not trying to sound shítty here, this is written from an economic perspective, not a humanist view, because our society doesn't work on "fair play", rather it works based on a flawed implementation of capitalism.

It's difficult to become an accountant, and most people can't do it, so they earn a reasonable wage and their time is highly valued for the most part.

It's not very difficult to do a security course and get into that industry.
Most people could do it if they wanted to.
Their time is not highly valued. A little more than somebody paid to clean or do manual labour.

From time to time an accountant will have to do more menial tasks, like fill in simple forms.
From time to time an accountant will get to shine and be creative and make important decisions.

From time to time a security guy will have to do donkey work.
From time to time a security guy will have to protect people's lives and make serious decisions.

It's the economics of supply and demand.

Quadrivium

AngryHippie wrote: »

You can't see the wood for trees here pal. This is what I am getting at. Ireland has very protective labor laws, and powerful unions. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but the unions take the p!ss.

Powerful Unions? Maybe on paper they are, but our unions have long ago signed up to partnership with the government, they're compromised and corrupt and do not serve the worker. As for labour laws, they leave a lot to be desired.

As for overseas labor pouring in, look at the amount of highly trained and skilled workers pouring out of Ireland.
The over supply of labor is a global issue, not a national one, and it's not going away. That is why you need to get over your sense of entitlement and get on with the job.

As I have already explained, the only sense of entitlement I have is for basic working rights.

I'm not the one that can't handle my workload mate. Thanks for the personal opinion on my frame of mind though. Really helpful

I never said I can't handle anything, I said it's not right to expect employees to take on countless additional tasks without compensation.

Contradicted myself how exactly ?
I was actually alluding to the fact that Ireland's wonderful protectionist labor law has been so busy pigeonholing everyone, and deciding what the skill-sets were and how much people need to be paid for them, that they have lost sight of the fact that private sector enterprise would rather pay one person a little more to do a wide range of jobs, than to pay 3 different people to do their own little patch of work.
There are benefits to both sides on this:
One person gets full-time employment instead of 3 people getting cruddy part time work
The company has a skilled and motivated worker to dedicate to whichever task is most urgent instead of 3 slackers doing set hours for jobs that may require varying resources.

Not at all, these days most employers would expect that one employee to do the work of the 3 people or else they would take on a naive person on a scam bridge scheme and exploit them for 6 to 9 months without contributing a penny to their wage

Try the 80% of countries in the world that we classify as 3rd developing world countries. FFS you are starting to sound like you don't have a notion of exactly how lucky you are.
You sound like the type of person that I would personally hunt out of any company I work for. A sh!t stirring liability.

That is laughable ignorance and fallacious logic. So just because conditions are terrible in the third world I should be happy getting exploited by an employer that has a track record of flouting employment law?

That is a totally illogical view.



I'll assume that is a typo.

As for no. 2 Irish water, CRC, Dublin Corporation, Leinster House, the HSE , IBTS (back in the day).....the list goes on. Criminality, bribery corruption, back-handers, cronyism, embezzlement, incompetence.
And the average civil service wage is currently the highest in Europe.
Wake the fcuk up.

I'm assuming things went awry in 2009. I am genuinely sorry to hear that, but do you think that if the labor laws were a little bit more coherent that your business may have survived ?

Labour laws had nothing to do with it, it was the lack of credit and cash flow. It happened so quick it was not possible to plan for it. That's life, you keep pushing forward. No doubt I'll be an employer again some day and like before my employees will be afforded all of their rights and will not be exploited.

To speculate on your company's performance and activities, without even knowing who they are would be a little bit silly of me wouldn't it ?

Based on the statement you have made, there are some pretty serious accusations, and they don't sound like a company I would like to work for, but again, that is speculation on my part, and probably some reliance on hearsay on yours.

Nobody is forcing you to work for them. It's a free country. Tackle your problems directly, and if that doesn't work, seek alternative employment.

I do feel for your situation, but I think you might be able to manage it better, and I still don't think that your evil employer is responsible for it. They are just an easy target.

Welcome to the layer cake

You are right, nobody is forcing me to work for them, hence the reason i will be changing jobs very soon. But that still doesn't make it acceptable for a company to exploit staff who are still working with the company.

Quadrivium

Fuzzy wrote: »

I am not trying to sound shítty here, this is written from an economic perspective, not a humanist view, because our society doesn't work on "fair play", rather it works based on a flawed implementation of capitalism.

It's difficult to become an accountant, and most people can't do it, so they earn a reasonable wage and their time is highly valued for the most part.

It's not very difficult to do a security course and get into that industry.
Most people could do it if they wanted to.
Their time is not highly valued. A little more than somebody paid to clean or do manual labour.

From time to time an accountant will have to do more menial tasks, like fill in simple forms.
From time to time an accountant will get to shine and be creative and make important decisions.

From time to time a security guy will have to do donkey work.
From time to time a security guy will have to protect people's lives and make serious decisions.

It's the economics of supply and demand.

I understand all that and agree. But that aside, workers should still be afforded basic working rights and employers should be bound to abide by them. I've seen this company tell a foreign national he had to work 70 hours per week. I've seen them not pay the same guy a penny overtime, not pay his proper public holiday entitlements or his proper holiday allowance. I also know they've been caught employing illegal immigrants who had no visa to be in the country, more than once. None of that behaviour is excusable in any way.

AngryHippie

Quadrivium wrote: »

I understand all that and agree. But that aside, workers should still be afforded basic working rights and employers should be bound to abide by them. I've seen this company tell a foreign national he had to work 70 hours per week. I've seen them not pay the same guy a penny overtime, not pay his proper public holiday entitlements or his proper holiday allowance. I also know they've been caught employing illegal immigrants who had no visa to be in the country, more than once. None of that behaviour is excusable in any way.

Finally we get to the nub:

None of the above are acceptable
None of the above are happening to you

Your bitchy because they want you to clean the HR, Admin, AR and AP work areas while you'd rather be scratching your hole somewhere, so you decide to take up arms for your fellow worker against your evil employer......

Thread title is was : Continuous increases in work without any consultation

Not "my company exploits some migrant workers or illegal immigrants"

Bit of a fail there.

On another note though, your company do sound like a bunch of pr!cks, and yes, they probably should be reported for their activities, particularly withholding payments due.
Sometimes it is a matter of simply putting in a written request to HR that they pay what you are owed.
If that doesn't work, then yeah, go commissioner or union or solicitor.
It all depends on the contract that you have signed.

Mrs OBumble

Please keep this polite please. There are a couple of posts above that had me hovering over the personal-abuse yellow flag button.

/moderation.

Quadrivium wrote: »

Well of course it's the type of work, but it's not just that.
I already do at least 5 other tasks every day that I am not employed to do, as such the responsibility for these additional tasks has fallen to me as well as the consequences involved if they are not done.

It is unfair to expect an employee of any type to do endless tasks and take on endless responsibilities, all of which are sticks to beat the employee with if something goes wrong with any of them.

Where is the line? At what point is it too much?
Many of you here are obviously in positions were you are either exploiting employees in this manner or have done, as such your views are totally one sided and warped and your assessments are certainly not based on the entirety of the situation.

Ahh, there's a big difference between five other tasks and "endless tasks".

No one is saying you should take on infinite amounts of extra work: among other things, your core duties would never get done if that happeend.

"The line" is about what it is possible for you to do in the time available.

Also no one is saying that it's ok to break labour laws, not pay required wages or allownaces, etc.

But asking someone who has time available to do extra things .. no problem with that.

And let's think about the types of security guards who most of us see:

There's the uniformed guy in Lidl: every time I'm there, he is busy watching the scummers who are trying to steal stuff. A couple of weeks ago, I watched him catch a couple of 'em red handed. I don't think it's reasonable to ask him to do anything extra during shop hours, because if there are customers present, there are things for him to do.

There are the non-uniformed people in retail, doing the same thing covertly. Again, I'd expect they're busy when the shop is open, and not rostered to be there when it's closed.

There are the uniformed folks in places like Supermacs or pubs. Again, they're only rostered on when there is work for them to do. And part of being effective for them is to look like a guard. I'd never ask one of them to mop a floor etc if there were customers (even well behaved ones) there, because it diminishes their image.

Then there are the uniformed folks at the door of lots of major companies. These places often have a guard there 24x7. They're busy checking IDs, watching faces, maybe doing random bag checks or issuing property passes at peak work start/end times. They have to do the same things very intermittenly outside peak times. But often there is very little for them to do in between times. These folks are prime candidates for extra duties as required - and provided they have the time and skills or training, then I don't see why they shoudn't be asked to do extra jobs. And it may just give them the opportunity to develop skills get a better paying job.

Quadrivium

AngryHippie wrote: »

Finally we get to the nub:

None of the above are acceptable
None of the above are happening to you

Your bitchy because they want you to clean the HR, Admin, AR and AP work areas while you'd rather be scratching your hole somewhere, so you decide to take up arms for your fellow worker against your evil employer......

Thread title is was : Continuous increases in work without any consultation

Not "my company exploits some migrant workers or illegal immigrants"

Bit of a fail there.

On another note though, your company do sound like a bunch of pr!cks, and yes, they probably should be reported for their activities, particularly withholding payments due.
Sometimes it is a matter of simply putting in a written request to HR that they pay what you are owed.
If that doesn't work, then yeah, go commissioner or union or solicitor.
It all depends on the contract that you have signed.

You're wrong, again.
I was just giving examples of the type of treatment that has become common in this company. I don't believe I am paid enough money to justify my doing infinite tasks, if I was on decent money then yeah but not for just above minimum wage.

Quadrivium

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Please keep this polite please. There are a couple of posts above that had me hovering over the personal-abuse yellow flag button.

/moderation.





Ahh, there's a big difference between five other tasks and "endless tasks".

No one is saying you should take on infinite amounts of extra work: among other things, your core duties would never get done if that happeend.

"The line" is about what it is possible for you to do in the time available.

Also no one is saying that it's ok to break labour laws, not pay required wages or allownaces, etc.

But asking someone who has time available to do extra things .. no problem with that.

And let's think about the types of security guards who most of us see:

There's the uniformed guy in Lidl: every time I'm there, he is busy watching the scummers who are trying to steal stuff. A couple of weeks ago, I watched him catch a couple of 'em red handed. I don't think it's reasonable to ask him to do anything extra during shop hours, because if there are customers present, there are things for him to do.

There are the non-uniformed people in retail, doing the same thing covertly. Again, I'd expect they're busy when the shop is open, and not rostered to be there when it's closed.

There are the uniformed folks in places like Supermacs or pubs. Again, they're only rostered on when there is work for them to do. And part of being effective for them is to look like a guard. I'd never ask one of them to mop a floor etc if there were customers (even well behaved ones) there, because it diminishes their image.

Then there are the uniformed folks at the door of lots of major companies. These places often have a guard there 24x7. They're busy checking IDs, watching faces, maybe doing random bag checks or issuing property passes at peak work start/end times. They have to do the same things very intermittenly outside peak times. But often there is very little for them to do in between times. These folks are prime candidates for extra duties as required - and provided they have the time and skills or training, then I don't see why they shoudn't be asked to do extra jobs. And it may just give them the opportunity to develop skills get a better paying job.

You're assuming these security guards don't have skills, I have a degree from one of the best universities in Ireland, I also have a trade which took me 4 years to learn. The problem is there are no opportunities in Ireland so people like me are left with no option but to sign on the dole or work a job such as security. I earn about €8ph after tax, if you think I'm going to go out of my way to do extra work and the possibility of infinite tasks on that wage then your sadly deluded, if you think I should then you need your head examined.

I do a very good job for the money I earn, I create more value than it costs to employ me. So, no I won't be cleaning or doing any other menial task I am not directly employed to do.

The_Captain

Quadrivium wrote: »

Guys, do you really think the term 'other duties as required' involves cleaning and other non security related tasks?
Do you think this would stand up in the employment appeals tribunal?
So basically, once 'other duties as required' is on any contract that means you are expected to do any and all extra duties regardless of the nature or how many there are?

If you're a static guard, then your job DOES involve cleaning as you are responsible for HS&E problems. Basically they can ask you to clean up anything that may constitute a 'hazard' which could be anything from wet floors to misplaced merchandise.

Many, many store managers will treat you like a general employee. Don't be afraid to say no. Remember, the store manager isn't your boss, you're employed by the security company. If he tells you to do something you genuinely feel isn't part of your job, tell him to contact your supervisor and if they tell you to do it, then you'll do it.

Quadrivium

The_Captain wrote: »

If you're a static guard, then your job DOES involve cleaning as you are responsible for HS&E problems. Basically they can ask you to clean up anything that may constitute a 'hazard' which could be anything from wet floors to misplaced merchandise.

Many, many store managers will treat you like a general employee. Don't be afraid to say no. Remember, the store manager isn't your boss, you're employed by the security company. If he tells you to do something you genuinely feel isn't part of your job, tell him to contact your supervisor and if they tell you to do it, then you'll do it.

Been a long time and I just seen this lol

No, I wouldn't do it if told to by a Supervisor if it was a menial job that I wasn't initially employed to do. As for store managers, they would be told the same. This isn't a hierarchical or cast society, you don't get to decide on a whim, unilaterally what an employees duties are, it doesn't work that way and if you employ or manage people and think it does then I would guess you're pretty bad at your job/business and as such the business suffers a lot of turnover which is never a good thing.