Your boss will read the following on Friday the 25th:

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'Morning, Boss! Someone in your team has asked us to let you know that it's Work Your Proper Hours Day today. February 25th is on average the first day that people who do unpaid overtime would get paid if they did all their extra hours at the start of the year.
It's an opportunity for every manager to say thank you to their staff for their hard work and commitment, and maybe even buy them an after work drink after leaving work at the proper time for once. And if it's any consolation, managers do even more hours. Official statistics show an average manager clocks up nearly nine hours extra a week - worth nearly £9,000 a year. So you deserve a break too!'

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A nice contrast to all that r-w crap about "tax freedom day".

Send a long hours bossagram this week.

[ 23 February 2005: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
His profile says he's unemployed. Maybe he wants everyone to be unemployed too.

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If you can't afford to pay your employees for the hours they work, then shouldn't one be reconsidering the viability of the business?

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Originally posted by No Yards:
If you can't afford to pay your employees for the hours they work, then shouldn't one be reconsidering the viability of the business?...

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it's not always the viability of the business/affording to pay workers their due. it's a "cheapness" mindset that is pervasive in all industries.

for example, in the hospitality industry, there's a double standard in favour of the employer. servers, and now support staff (cooks, dishwashers, hostesses), are expected to be on shift, dressed in attire, and ready to work 15 minutes before their scheduled start time. very few people question it. those that do are usually replaced, or downgraded on the schedule for their whining, causing the person to search other employment. this 15 minutes is unpaid. furthurmore, the double edged sword of employment often makes the server and bartender do their required cashout on their own time, not paid. as a bartender i've often taken 30 minutes to count out that $1000 float with buckets of rolled coin, and submit a $3000 cashout, with visa, mastercard, amex, enroute, gift certificates, etc...all in order and in a pouch. unpaid!. 5 days/week.

on top of that, there are no 15 minute breaks when you have a section. and i haven't had a 1/2 hour break to eat "lunch" on an 8-10 hour shift since working for a major hotel chain, with union. ducking behind the bar to munch a chicken wing, or eating on the run, bread crumbs wiped on sleeve before getting to the table are more like the reality for canada's largest employment sector.

for 20 years i've played that game. duck and cover, feeling guilty for taking a second to have a sip of water. never do you hear the word "union" in a bar or restaurant, nor do i hear many people even in rabble defend the working conditions of the service industry. whatever.

but here's a story, once told elsewhere in babble. after i was let go from a resort restaurant, unjustly (i had requested 2 weeks off, 3 weeks in advance and after the season was over, and denied, so i offered 2 weeks notice of employment, and was promptly fired), i asked what my compensation would be on my final paycheck. i was told they didn't have to give anything, even one week's termination pay. so i contacted the labour relations board in BC. they were so glad to hear from me, because i had all of my hours documented over the course of the year. "we've had lots of complaints about them", LRB said, "did they pay you for overtime or vacation pay?". "nope", said i. "fax us the records".

after the settlement for unpaid vacation time, overtime, and the termination pay, and my subsequent being barred from the establishment, the staff were told in a special meeting that I was the reason nobody would be able to work overtime in the upcoming season. (not that the restaurant selling $5 million/year would pay anybody overtime if they worked it.

and i have been told by management in more than one place: "i have a stack of resumes and applications on my desk for your job. you don't like it? leave. no sweat off my brow. no-one is irreplaceable."

a complaint about one restaurant by a few people doesn't create massive change. when are the unions going to include service staff in an encompassing fair wage, equal treatment, compensation, honest work environment? (textiles unions don't cut it.) aren't unions supposed to be working for the working man? then why isn't the largest employment sector in canada represented by any reasonable semblance of one?

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Originally posted by robbie_dee:
...In my opinion, something needs to be done for sure. But who is going to get the ball rolling?

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how about some of the pro-union types here on babble? i'm sure they know how to organize a union. but would they want to?

sadly - no-one wants to pay more for their pint of beer or pasta salad - and that's what would happen if unionization occured in the hospitality industry. owners would pass on the extra costs of fair wages and more hours to the consumer.

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Originally posted by unmaladroit:
...sadly - no-one wants to pay more for their pint of beer or pasta salad - and that's what would happen if unionization occured in the hospitality industry. owners would pass on the extra costs of fair wages and more hours to the consumer.

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Originally posted by verbatim:

Yeah, but how much could they really up the price before they priced themselves out of business? At some point they'd just have to suck it up and take less profits. Which would probably mean less restaurants and bars, overall...

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i agree that there would be fewer restaurants and bars, and the quality of those establishments' product would increase to entice people out of their homes. i like those ideas.

i see there are a couple of other threads that are addressing unions and minimum wage. why aren't those arguments showing up here? imagine a hospitality industry union that provided nothing else other than job security. i'll be shocked to see it happen in my lifetime.

I've found in the past that it is really hard to get this sort of thing together in the retail or service sector precisely because the jobs are so bad. You can often get a small group of people together who are fired up and ready to rumble. But unfortunately, there are a lot of other workers would rather just quit and move onto a different job, rather than staying and fighting to try to improve the one they have. Likewise, as Verbatim points out, the industry is often so competitive that even if you manage to get a union into one business, it is difficult to win very large gains, at least in pay, because you'll undercut the employer's ability to compete. Heck, even without unions, many of these businesses are opening and closing all the time.

That being said, I think there are strategies to deal with this. One of them is to focus on nonmonetary issues like job security. Another is to focus on tactics that would seek to raise the standards for workers in broad geographic areas, rather than trying to organize workplace by workplace. A lot of the big existing unions don't do much of this because it is outside their normal range of experience and competence. But I am sure we could kick around some strategies on this site as a starting point? It might be worth a separate thread, though, I don't want to drag this one off-topic.

[ 22 February 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

owners don't like hearing the word either...talk about upsetting the status quo. i've heard of people getting fired for thinking such a thing. (albeit aloud).

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how about some of the pro-union types here on babble? i'm sure they know how to organize a union. but would they want to?

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Primarily, (but not exclusively) its been HERE and UFCW who've organized in the hospitality sector and yes those unions definitely want to organize more folks. I can't think of any union that doesn't want more members.

Basically, the rules vary from province to province but you approach a union that you want to organize with and you get your co-workers to sign membership cards. Important...you can't sign workers up on company time.

Some jurisdictions allow for "automatic certification" once you've signed up the majority of workers (Quebec for example)...others don't and everything has to go to a labour board supervised vote (post Mike Harris Ontario).

Going to a vote is always harder because it gives the employer a chance to intimidate workers between the certification application and the vote.

You also can get into legal hassles about who has the right to vote and who doesn't...and employers have this habit of trying to drag things through the courts forever on flimsy grounds...they just about always lose...but winning/losing isn't the game...the game is delaying in the hope that support for the union will weaken, some of the folks who did the original organizing will have moved on to other jobs etc.

If you get past the certification stuff and your co-workers are solid, the next thing is trying to negotiate a first contract.

If you end up on strike, only Quebec and BC (Saskatchewan?) have anti-scab legislation...everywhere else employers can scab you...and in the hospitality sector they most likely will.

Quebec and Saskatchewan do have first contract arbitration laws which allow either side to apply for binding arbitration to settle a first collective agreement. I think Manitoba has "final offer selection"...but someone could correct me.

Anyway, "on paper" organizing a union is fairly easy. In practice, its extremely hard. Firing people for organizing a union is illegal in every jurisdiction, but its done all the time.

Organizing unions for service and hospitality workers

I hope I'm not derailing anyone here or anything. I just thought it would be better to have a topical thread rather than one under the ambiguously named "the bossogram." I don't know?

[ 22 February 2005: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

(it'll be interesting to see how many current or former hospitality babblers, who read the labour and consumption forum, weigh in on the subject.)

as far as doing the bossagram goes, my current situation doesn't allow me to contend my current situation. i'm the only employee in a business of three, working under the table that i'm working. (i have to make ends meet any way i can, living in the economically depressed east kootenays, well-known for its family compact protectionist hiring practices).

Still, there must be a way. Freelancers in my biz get manipulated into working for free, or for lower rates than agreed upon, all the time, and if anything that is getting worse. I'm sure many contract workers have similar problems.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
Freelancers in my biz get manipulated into working for free, or for lower rates than agreed upon, all the time, and if anything that is getting worse. I'm sure many contract workers have similar problems.

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Argh, I can identify, as a translator. Part of the problem is that in one sense it's so 'easy' to get work on the Internet but that means you're not really a person anymore, you're just an e-mail address. You don't have real human needs, but you are programmed for efficiency. Therefore, outsourcers see no problem in sending texts on Friday at 5:00 with a Monday am deadline, and you will be paid, by company 'policy' two or three months later. I really hope this situation doesn't get worse...

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Originally posted by skdadl:
Over the years, we have regularly heard of company accountants instructing managing editors to delay the freelancers' invoices for as long as possible, and that delay gets longer and longer year by year.

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Therefore, outsourcers see no problem in sending texts on Friday at 5:00 with a Monday am deadline, and you will be paid, by company 'policy' two or three months later. I really hope this situation doesn't get worse...

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Originally posted by pogge:
Minor correction: it's important when something breaks and no one on staff knows how to fix it. The rest of the time, not so much.

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This stuff breaks???

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That's the cash flow game and it's by no means limited to your industry.

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Here's the citation:

McGarrigle, Gavin. "Hope in Hospitality - Winning a First Contract at the Cheesecake Cafe". Our Times. July/Sept 1999

Here's a preview from the Our Times archive site: http://www.ourtimes.ca/contents/99jul.html