Misandry Review » Marty Nemko

Wage Theft: How Employers Steal From Employees and Job Seekers

Marty Nemko — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:37:00 +0000

A client who is a fashion designer told me that when she goes on a job interview, she's usually asked to create a "mock" design. She says she has seen her "mock" designs on companies' line of clothing--including a swimsuit in Vogue.

That reminded me of how often employers ask job candidates to create a work "sample." One employer admitted to me that he had no intention of hiring anyone but placed a job ad. He had all the applicants write a plan for marketing his company's core product, which he then used as free work product. He said, "They were all so eager to get the (nonexistent) job that they killed themselves in creating their plan. I got great ideas." Pig.

And of course, there are internships, which are proliferating: employers convert what used to be paying jobs into no-pay or pittance-pay internships. It used to be you had to be a student to be hireable as an intern but that seems to have gone by the boards. A relative of mine worked as an unpaid intern in the Clinton White House writing Hillary Clinton's daily briefing. After a year of that, she asked Hillary's chief of staff, Evelyn Lieberman, "I feel guilty living off my parents. You have me doing important work for a year now. Could you see your way clear to paying me?" Evelyn responded, "Don't you realize how lucky you are to have an internship in the White House?!" My relative, incensed at the hypocrisy of Hillary, who gives speeches on behalf of labor, wouldn't even pay her, who had won her university's outstanding student award, minimum wage. She quit.

And then there was this employer of mine--a major corporation--that asked me to write 50 articles as an "investment" in the magazine's website, with a promise that as soon as advertising revenues came in, I'd be well paid. Indeed the advertising, lots of it (all national ads, including Viagra!), came in. How much did I receive? $3,000. That's $60 an article. The managing editor said "That's a down payment." I never received another dime.

It ain't easy being a worker, let alone a job seeker in this economy.

For more on wage theft, see wagetheft.org and the book, Wage Theft in America: Why millions of working Americans are not paid and what we can do about it.

Fast-Prep Careers

Marty Nemko — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:43:00 +0000

Julie Sloway, who runs The Prime Time Speakers Bureau has a son who is seeking a rewarding career that requires neither a bachelor's degree nor many years of training. Here's what she's come up with. (To learn about the career, click on the link.)

Orthopedic Technician

Nuclear Medicine Technologist

Prospect Researcher

Medical Meeting Planner

Personal Trainer

Orthoptist

Prosthetics Technician

Sign-Language Interpreter

Diagnostic Medical Sonographer

Electro-Neurodiagnostic Technician

Physical Therapy Assistant

Anesthesia Technician

Electronic Technician

Veterinary Technologist

Speech Pathology Assistant

Animator

Accounting Assistant

Health Information Technician

Respiratory Therapist

Diesel Mechanic

Air Traffic controller

Civil Engineering Technician

MRI Technician

Bio-Medical Equipment Technician

Environmental Technologist

And if those aren't enough, here are descriptions of my favorite careers for 2010 and beyond.

Why Any Recovery Will Be Jobless

Marty Nemko — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:18:00 +0000

I recently read the summary of a panel presentation of leading employment attorneys, which made clear to me why an economic recovery, assuming we have one, will be a jobless one.

Why would an employer want to hire when he must incur all of the following:

Pressures to hire, retain, and promote on factors other than merit: gender, race, sexual orientation, older workers, and people with disabilities. And now, efforts are accelerating to pass laws that would prohibit an employer from not hiring someone just because he committed a felony.

Even if an employer's intent is non-discriminatory, if an employer's decision to hire, promote, or terminate employees has "disparate impact," on a gender, racial group, or workers over 40, that may be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit against the employer.

Large and complicated payroll costs beyond salary: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance (now up to 79 weeks,) plus various state and local levies.
Mandated leave: 12 weeks per year with rights of rehiring (the Family and Medical Leave Act) which may be expanded by the '"Healthy Families Act," which would mandate up to 56 hours of paid sick leave to take care of themselves or a family member very loosely defined: "anyone closely associated with an employee."
The Americans with Disabilities Act, in addition to adding pressure on employers to hire people with physical and mental disabilities, requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodations" for all such employees.
Laws granting plaintiffs lower burdens of proof regarding discrimination as well as sexual harassment. For example, an employer can be held liable for an employee's being harassed, even if the employer is unaware that the harassment occurred. The financial and human costs of defending such lawsuits are enormous.
The proposed health care legislation will force employers to pay for the ever escalating health care costs.
New legislation makes it easier for workers to organize into unions, which, of course, increases employer costs while making it often prohibitively difficult to fire even low-performing employees.

If you ran a business, wouldn't all those mandates make you want to hire as few people as absolutely possible--even if the taxpayers gave you $5,000 per? That certainly wouldn't seduce me-I'd rather stay small than endure all those burdens and increased risk of having to close down my business.

To the extent I'd have to hire, I'd feel forced to use independent contractors on a just-in-time basis, and would outsource/offshore as much as possible. I might, for example, find such workers using websites such as odesk.com, elance.com, guru.com, virtualemployee.com , ifreelance.com, and these that Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Workweek recommended when I interviewed him on my radio show yesterday: www.99designs.com, www.crowdspring.com, www.asksunday.com, and www.hiremymom.com

I believe that President Obama and the Democrats are truly trying to help employees but the inadvertent effect of their initiatives will ironically be to eliminate jobs, not create them.

Under-the-Radar Careers

Marty Nemko — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Just a quick post to bring your attention to a few under-the-radar careers that don't require a four-year degree: forensic artist, forensic animator, air traffic controller, and orthopedic technologist.

On Harry Reid’s Calling Men Abusers

Marty Nemko — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:04:00 +0000

On the U.S. Senate floor, while being televised on C-Span, Majority Leader, Harry Reid said "Men, when out of work, tend to become abusive."

Most unemployed men become abusive?! So, according to Reid, if we filled a room with a 100 unemployed men and 100 unemployed women, many men and far fewer women would be abusive.

What's his evidence? He had none but post hoc, his staff dug up a 2004 Dept. of Justice study that found merely that men who are unemployed are more likely to argue with their wives than men who are unemployed. Duh. But the percentage difference is small, the percentage of men who abuse their wives is small, and there's no male vs female comparison. In short, the study provides absolutely no support for Reid's statement that most unemployed men tend to be abusive.

In fact, when domestic violence does occur, a metaanalysis of 250 studies of domestic violence by California State University professor Martin Fiebert finds that women "are as physically aggressive or more aggressive than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 365,000."

Instead of lambasting men, half the population, Majority Leader Reid would more wisely focus on identifying initiatives that would create good, stable jobs for men and for women. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among men in January 2010 is 10.8% versus women's 8.4%, That is the largest gap since BLS started collecting the data, as David Brooks reported last week in the New York Times. 80 percent of jobs lost in the current recession have been to men. Indeed, the recession could be called a He-Cession. Yet 40% of the jobs expected to be created by federal job stimulus programs are targeted at women.

Other recent articles, for example, the March 2010 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America, and one in the New York Times, The New Poor: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, suggest that ever more people, disproportionately men, are likely to find themselves un- or underemployed.

Especially because unemployment is likely to remain high, if we are to reduce domestic violence, spouses must be more supportive. That's not easy--it's scary for a spouse to lose their spouse's income. So perhaps this is a time to encourage couples to work on their communication, perhaps abetted by counselors and workshop leaders. That and thoughtful private- and perhaps public-sector job-creation initiatives are far more likely to reduce domestic violence than unfairly blaming men.

My Thoughts on Retiring and Aging Wisely

Marty Nemko — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:25:00 +0000

Most retirement articles focus on the financial. Many others presume you have as much energy and brainpower as in your youth. Here are some thoughts for folks that are slowing down.

Unrandom Acts of Kindness. Some significant unmet needs don't require a person with great energy or cognitive functioning. What's required is kindness, ideally abetted by the wisdom that usually comes only from having lived a long time. Applications: tutor a child or illiterate adult, phone or in-person fundraise for your favorite charity, regularly visit, phone, or SkypeVideo, a homebound person, perhaps bringing your sweet dog as a co-companion, speaking of which...

Adopt a dog. Save a life: the dog's and perhaps your own. So many loving dogs must be killed because there's no room in the shelter or because, after a while in the shelter, they've acquired a serious disease. If you adopt such a dog, you not only may save its life, it forces you into regular exercise--those thrice daily dog walks are the perfect exercise for older people, perhaps for all of us. And it's well acknowledged that hanging out with your pet (I prefer to call it "four-legged family member") reduces your stress and blood pressure, and gives you the unconditional love and fealty that all of us crave. Yes, owning a dog is a real responsibility--they need ongoing care and make travel more difficult but, as busy as I am, I find that having adopted my dog Einstein has been among the most rewarding things I've done. At adoptapet.com, you can find the perfect pet for you. That site contains a nicely searchable database of the adoptable dogs and cats at pounds, shelters, and rescue groups nationwide.

Appreciate the sensory. My mom is old and has a poor memory but she certainly can appreciate the here-and-now. I encourage her to listen to beautiful music, look at photos, get massages, enjoy the beauty apparent when one takes a walk and is observant, and enjoy the wonders available on the TV and computer screens. My mom, fortunately, is still physically vigorous but even if you're not, you can enjoy sensory pleasures--of all sorts. Until recently, my mom had a boyfriend.

How I Could Live WELL on $20,000 a Year

Marty Nemko — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:44:00 +0000

Per the article in the March 2010 Atlantic Monthly, How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America, and one in the New York Times, The New Poor: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, I posted and in light of the beliefs we career counselors quietly admit among ourselves, there will likely be increased numbers of formerly middle-class Americans who will have to work for $10 an hour. That's $20,000 a year.

I honestly believe, with great certitude, that I could live and live well on $20,000 a year. Here's how.

Core to learning to live well on little is recognizing that status is the enemy of contentment. Status costs a fortune and yields little real benefit. Making the decision to forgo status purchases and instead follow the practices below has enabled me to live far better than I otherwise could: for example, to pursue careers that are personally rewarding that I otherwise could never afford to have pursued: hosting a radio show on NPR-San Francisco for 22 years, being a playwright, indeed, blogging as much as I do, while never promoting myself nor taking any advertising.

Here's what I'd do to live well on $20,000 a year. (I do most of these things now.)

Rent a small backyard cottage or a home's basement or attic apartment in a modest but safe neighborhood. Depending on where you live, it may take a little initiative and persistence to find such a place, but they do exist, even in high-cost areas like the San Francisco Bay Area.

Drive an old, small, reliable car--e.g., 1995 Corolla. I drive cars 'til they drop. My previous car was a 1982 Toyota that I bought new for $8,000, drove for 23 years and 273,000 miles, and only sold because my wife begged me to--it was running perfectly and looked fine. Buying long-term reliable cars and keeping them forever has, in itself, saved me a fortune over my lifetime without hurting my lifestyle in any significant way. Because car insurance rates vary so widely, I'd use esurance.com to compare rates against what I could get from 21st Century Insurance, a often low-cost, reasonably good quality insurer.

Get a high-deductible Kaiser Permanente health plan. If I weren't insured under my employer's health plan and we don't get ObamaCare, here's what I'd do. I'm healthy so I have low health care expenses but need to insure against a catastrophic event. As a 59 year old male, I can get a high-deductible Kaiser plan for about $300 a month, and these days, Kaiser is attracting some of the best physicians so I feel I'll get reasonably good care. Here's a link to Kaiser Permanente's instant-quote website.

Eat out only at places like Fresh Choice. At home: fruits, veggies, canned tuna, oatmeal, milk, ground turkey, whole grain bread, are the cheapest and the healthiest.

Buy clothes and furniture at consignment and thrift shops, flea markets, and CraigsList . My wife always dresses beautifully and has never been averse to buying at consignment shops in upscale neighborhoods where, for example, she has bought designer dresses such as $1,000 St. John gowns for under $100, often well under.

Enjoy low-cost recreations: Forgo expensive recreations such as live concerts, clubbing ($8 drinks?!) and frou-frou restaurants (they're more expensive for smaller portions and often taste worse) in favor of taking books and videos from the library, taking hikes or walks, playing a low-cost sport (for example, basketball rather than skiing or golf) watching good TV shows, phoning or getting together w. friends--for example, inviting them over for dessert and to watch a video, or just hanging out with a romantic partner--Or find one by, for example, volunteering at a nonprofit, taking a local adult school class, or hanging out at a bookstore/coffee shop.

Save wisely. On $20,000 a year I would have little or nothing to save, but if I did, I'd get a no-interest, no-fee checking account at a convenient bank, and put my savings in one of Vanguard's All-in-One Funds.

This plan for living very well on little may sound simplistic and/or unrealistic, but for most people, it really is as simple as that.

I Have Deleted One of My Posts

Marty Nemko — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:59:00 +0000

My post yesterday touted a front-page article in the February 14, 2010 Sunday London Times titled "Earth May Not Be Warming, Scientists Say."

I've since received compelling emails from a "Cheryl H' and from an anonymous reader that convinced me that the article's author, Jonathan Leake, has a record of being biased in his reporting on the subject and that some of his cited experts are insufficiently credible. So I have decided to remove that blog post.

I remain an agnostic on whether the opportunity costs justify the massive but likely to be unsuccessful effort to cool the globe. But I've become convinced that that London Times article does not add to the quality of the debate.

More Doubt About Global Warming

Marty Nemko — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:06:00 +0000

The World May Not Be Warming, Scientists Say is the most read article on the Feb. 14, 2010 Sunday London Times.

This is just the latest article in respected publications reporting the growing doubt among climate scientists about whether the earth is warming, and the extent, if any, to which any warming is caused by man.

There is even greater doubt that the world will unite and remain united in the Herculean attempt to cool the planet.

There is no doubt that the planned attempt to cool the planet will impose large and growing opportunity costs on all of us.

In light of the above, can anyone dispositively defend the Obama Administration's willingness to, in an attempt to cool the planet, push the U.S.much deeper still in debt (mortgaging our children's future, bringing the U.S. to a state in which the Chinese and others won't lend to us or will call in our debt, rendering the government unable to function) spend billions of taxpayer dollars on physics-delimited alternative energy schemes, raise the cost of much of what we buy (e.g., with cap and trade), and force us out of our cars with Obama's policy of mass transit, not roads.

Until we get greater clarity on the above questions, I believe the wisest approach is to move from fossil fuels to nuclear, which provides clean air and energy independence, to let the private sector determine which, if any, alternative energy investments are cost-beneficial, and for the government not to impose costly, painful restrictions on humankind--for example, the aforementioned cap-and-trade and refusal to build roads thereby forcing people into gridlock and, in turn, out of their cars.

Can anyone responsibly call people like me who are agnostics on the above questions and who urge a cost/benefit/opportunity-cost analysis of interventions to be"deniers," a term previously reserved for people who denied that the Nazi Holocaust occurred?

The White Male Working Class Doesn’t Have It Easy Either

Marty Nemko — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:19:00 +0000

I received this e-mail letter yesterday. I reproduce it here without comment.

Dear Dr. Nemko,

I appreciate your articles and maybe you'll find my story worth telling.

After working on a job for two years with no problems, a month after my wife's death, the regional manager (a black man) said I was going to be "let go" for breaking some small rules.

I didn't understand why he wanted to get rid of me and why he wouldn't lay me off instead of fire me. I found out why when I went to get unemployment--they denied me because they said I was fired--that way the employer doesn't have to pay.

I didn't have the energy or the money to fight it because I was still trying to catch up on bills from the hospital and funeral. Since then I have been eking by with a very part-time job ($50/month), food stamps, and the help of some very good friends.

Since all this has happened, I have had three lawsuits for unpaid credit cards (most were my wife's), my vehicle was repo'ed (and they are still trying to get me to pay it off!) and have been trying to find a job so I can get back on my feet. In the area I live in, Mexicans are working in plants and sending money by the thousands of dollars back "home". They are willing to work for less than minimum wage and are often paid under the table.

I have paid taxes, voted in elections, been a proper American, yet these situations are causing me to be unemployable. I soon will have to move out of my home of 15 years into a housing project apartment because I can't afford to live here anymore. I deeply believe that reverse discrimination is rampant but I can't do anything about it.

There are times I feel like I have become emasculated by the government. And the people that know me treat me as someone who is deserving of pity. I don't want pity, I want my life back!
(The author of this letter asked that I not use his name but state it as "DLJ from Georgia.")