Compensation

So you need some money. You can take up a life of crime and steal whatever you can until you get caught and thrown in the slammer or you can get a job.

Maybe that extended education just isn’t your bag so you drop out of school. Still you need some money.

You find some “Help Wanted” locations and fill out an application. Things are looking up.

Now the folks who posted the “Help Wanted” read your application. There are certain requirements for the job. Does your application show you can perform the task?

The next step is to get an interview. A face-to-face confrontation with a person who can hire or not just by an overview of how you look and act. All the books say to look sharp like you are going to court for this is more important. If you don’t make a good impression then there is a dozen more behind you ready and willing to gobble up the job.

If the job is about flipping burgers or simple assembly you may pass the test, but if the job requires problem solving technical coding and you only learned to read on a 5^th grade level, you are wasting your time.

So suppose you grin and get the handshake for acceptance to the job, what will you be paid for your trouble?

The employer will have to spend the time and money to train you how to do the job and a supervisor will give you hours to work and the costume requirements and whatever benefits of lunch times or break times or use of phones or parking arrangements. Perhaps the employer allows for medical or dental or family leave or maybe not.

How much do you know about this employment opportunity?

Has there been a discussion of the employer’s monetary compensation for your effort to comply with their requirements?

“A good day’s pay for a hard day’s work” might be your goal. The government has set aside regulations on the number of hours worked, minimum wage standards, and safety requirements, but there are always extenuating circumstances.

If you are single and living out of your car, a minimum wage might be enough to buy some gas and a few burgers and you will be satisfied. If you have a family of four living in a ratty one-room apartment, it may not be enough to put food on the table and pay the light bill?

As with any job, requirements change and the employer expects you to keep up with the new process. If additional compensation isn’t given for the higher expectations, friction can occur.

Groups of workers without proper instructional training or desire to extend their horizons for the companies investors can form a union to counter the demands with a threat of walking out and leaving the employer with no one to do the work.

From the employer’s view, keeping cost down and raising profits is what the dream is all about. Assembling a car or grilling a burger or constructing a house or removing the garbage, the goal is the same. Increase profits and reduce cost. The first threat to the industrial age was automation. Finding a machine that could process a task in half the time looked pretty darn good unless you were one of those replaced by the machine.

As global trade expanded, manufacturing in a third world country without the regulations of this country suddenly exploded in low price products flooding the market. At first there was a backlash of opposition to these cheap products but it became clear it was easier to replace with the next model than to repair.

Employers took note and started shipping their jobs overseas to take advantage of this cheap labor. If the quality control standards could uphold the brand then it was a productive move. Plants shut down and employees who had ancestral promises of loyalty to a company were left.

Is it fair? Is it just? Is life?

Now the complaint is that refugees are migrating into this country and taking all the remaining jobs. What’s a poor boy to do? Build a wall? Hate? Them or you?

Trade schools, community colleges, technical training centers are flourishing but generations of limitations may not be able to help a mechanic write a new app?

The consumer’s interest has changed from buying bigger clunky items to staring at a screen hoping to find love or expressing their anger to the world. The consumer knows that everything from food to transportation is easily available and cheap so their requirement for compensation is to have enough money to purchase the latest upgrade.

Is this what society has become?

Raise a question to a friend and see how you are compensated. Take your mate out for a meal and are you compensated for your time and effort?

For emotional compensation is more expensive and valued than all the money in the world. A touch of a hand is better than a king’s ransom. A simple smile lights the sky better than sunshine. A kiss can compensate all the pain and suffering and change a vision of life itself.

A heart needs a home.