Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut 412
theodp writes "In an email sent Friday evening to its Microsoft temp workers, Volt Workforce Solutions asked the techies to 'vote' to agree to a 10% pay cut. From the email: 'We want to support you in continuing your assignment at Microsoft and respectfully ask that you respond by going to the upper left hand corner of this email under the "Vote" response option and select, "Accept'" by close of business Tuesday, March 3, 2009. By accepting you agree to the [-10%] pay adjustment in your pay rate.' Microsoft managed to keep the Feb. 20 email detailing plans to slash rates from leaking while it pitched its Elevate America initiative at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the National Governors Association, touting Microsoft skills as just the ticket to economic recovery."
So, that would mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
...and pay the saved 1% as a bonus to management?
Vote (Score:4, Insightful)
"Voting" is a rather hilarious newspeak term for acceptance of a pay cut.
Not that I see anything particularly wrong with this approach. I find it pretty absurd that a company should be "stuck" with the contract rates it offers. And considering how big salaries in USA are, it's a small miracle that they still manage to make a profit.
This is happening in plenty of places (Score:1, Insightful)
So why is Microsoft singled out? Oh, that's right, because they're number 1 in someone's twisted mind means that they can't protect their interests. They should be forced to dole out money until they go out of business so you same fucktards can caw on about how Microsoft's business model outlived it's usefulness.
Give me a break. This same bullshit is getting really old around here.
Re:This is happening in plenty of places (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is happening in plenty of places (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure much worse is going on elsewhere. It's just that this is such a bizarre way to do it. Do the temps really have a choice?
There's the door, you know how to use it.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
wolves, chickens, and all that
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this the real American way for the last 10 years? Cut employees or their salaries and give managers a big bonus?
If you don't think that it is true, look no farther than the republican party when comes to the financial bailouts. They insist that the auto-workers take cuts in benefits and salary. Then they turn around and complain that the government should not be involved in limiting salaries of failed bank executives to 500K. If that is not hypocrisy I don't know what is.
How about (Score:5, Insightful)
And since when is something that's compulsory also voluntary?
Re:volt's cut (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet Volt isn't taking a cut on their obscene margin.
Vote No = Lose Job (Score:5, Insightful)
The email stated "this is mandatory in order to continue your assignment at Microsoft ". So voting yes just means you want to keep your job.
Optioning out? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is happening in plenty of places (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. There's plenty of companies negotiating concessions with unions and regularly staffed employees for pay or incentive cuts. Slashdot villify's Microsoft enough that they don't need to post the common business practices of third parties in the employ of Microsoft. Give us a break kdawson, enough with the sensationalist anti-Microsoft vendetta.
How many of them made $17 billion in profits over the last year?
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
Re:volt's cut (Score:4, Insightful)
> since 1 in 30 employees must start on the first day of the month, assuming people's
> contracts are as likley to start on day 1 as any other day
Considering your explanation above, I doubt any contract starts on day 1, because clearly they don't want to pay, and not starting contracts on day 1 is a way for them to not pay.
Re:So, that would mean (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because management deserves it. We make the big decisions and take the risks that enable the company to succeed.
Probable AC troll, so I won't waste time on most of it.
It's a good opportunity however, to point out that the problem with capitalism in recent years has been that the management have *not* been exposed to risks despite having been paid accordingly. They've worked themselves into the ludicrous position where they get paid bonuses regardless of whether they succeed or not.
They're generally are the *last* people to be exposed to the results of their failure, assuming that they haven't been astute enough to move on before the results of their short-term, shareholder-pleasing actions become evident.
Even when they're kicked out due to extreme incompetence, they'll still end up with comfortable payoff or at worst what they managed to get out of the company beforehand.
Wrong!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So, that would mean (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Contract workers get paid by the hour.
So that would be from $50 to $40 for me. Which I'm okay with that, because I'd still be making double what anyone else in my family makes. I'm not greedy. I just want a decent job with air conditioning & a chair to sit on.
Re:Not with insane copyright laws... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will the US nationalists make up their collective mind? If capitalism and competition are good, then Microsoft can only be bad for stifling competition.
Successful companies are a good thing, they can help improve the industry's efficiency through reduced prices and increased quality. But monopolistic companies like Microsoft rarely do either.
If it wasn't for the monopoly, Microsoft would have been dead between XP and Vista. Six years between incremental product releases? Instant death in any *normal* industry. Fast-paced competitors like Apple and Linux would have eaten it for breakfast. And the economy would benefit. So does the US still need more Microsofts?
Re:So, that would mean (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'll agree few people could do the job of an executive well, I'd argue that very few executives manage to do a good job. Companies are failing left and right, most of the ones that aren't in distress exist on pure inertia. Nor is there any real effort to find good executives by most businesses. Instead they hire people who failed at a previous executive level job (see the guy who drove AMD into the ground, after trashing another company right before being hired), or who have the right networks to get the attention of the existing executives.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm starting to think the economy is just an excuse for pay cuts. Last I'd heard Microsoft was still making a very healthy profit.
I've been through the forced reductions myself, but it was while I was contracting for JPMC, and our cuts were based on the post-Y2K "economy." The only ones who should have been hit with the cuts were the mainframe COBOL programmers who no longer had Y2K work to do, but everyone got hit. A couple contractors quit rather than take the pay cut, but they were by far in the minority. (JPMC was a good gig -- worth taking a few bucks cut compared to hellhole client sites.)
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
FedEx did it too, about two months ago. CEO took a 20% cut, various levels of management took 7.5-10%, and everybody else (well, everybody salaried, aka me) took 5%. The bigger hurt was the suspension of the 401k match.
Still, honestly given the economy, I'd rather see this than layoffs. Not that there aren't people I'd like to see gone, but that needs to come as part of the normal, "You're a moron/sloth, go pursue other career opportunities" methods. Layoffs always seem to get 75% of those people, and another 25% that were invaluable but pissed off the wrong person.
The more layoffs we get, the further down the bottom of this thing is going to be. So, given that a company's options are lay some people off or just make everybody take a little pain for the collective good, I'll take the collective pain right now. I think it's better for the economy as a whole.
Re:This is happening in plenty of places (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
Hate to say it, but that's exactly why. The cost of labor is dropping, because there's a massive pool of it willing to work for less right now. Market forces and all - more supply, less demand, price drops.
Sure, it was awesome for us all during the .com boom because it was the other way around (demand outstripping supply, causing outrageous salaries, etc.), but the point is stop your bitching when it goes the other way. That's just the way an open market works.
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
In point of fact the non-union auto-workers make more (counting benefits) than UAW workers.
So the UAW is working against the interests of auto workers?
Or is it that managers are non-union, and they tend to get paid more than assembly line workers?
Re:fuck volt (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that contractors can stand to make a lot more money than regular employees, when they are in work?
The downside is that your job's temporary and you have fewer rights, as this article shows. That's the risk they choose to take.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If insufficient numbers of people vote for a pay-cut, they _will_ be in the position of having to do layoffs, and in all likelihood, the people who will get laid off in such a case are the people who the company best figures it can replace with a more cost efficient alternative (read as: new graduate willing to accept a lower rate of pay). They can get away with this quite legally as long as they pay adequate severance packages.
How a person votes would likely not affect whether or not they got laid off, should a mass layoff occur, and it would really bite for the individual who voted that they would take a pay cut to get laid off anyways because not enough people voted that way, but hey.... nobody ever said life was fair.
But by all rights, Microsoft _should_ be conducting this vote anonymously... so that they have no means of knowing which employees voted no and which voted yes, because if they don't and they only lay off people who voted "no", then they could be setting themselves up for a large number of constructive dismissal lawsuits... (and what's worse for them is that the employees would have an official paper trail to prove it!). Further, by conducting the vote anonymously, Microsoft would be publicly presenting the notion that they are genuinely trying to come up with methods of retaining their employees in hard economic times because they value them all, rather than simply terminating the ones who don't vote the way they want.
Re:This is happening in plenty of places (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they're publicly-owned, which means they have to at the very least pretend they're coping with the economic downturn in a very visible way. Even if they really don't need to. Otherwise their stockholders will revolt, sell of their shares, and they'd be in much worse state. It also doesn't help that the other layoffs rates in Washington State have lowered the price of tech labor.
Low Volt-age geek (Score:3, Insightful)
It's one thing to cut salaries when you're hemorrhaging. It's another to cut salaries when everyone else is hemorrhaging, and you have a stable, monopoly-protected revenue base, just because your workers have no alternative.
The temp's employer is Volt Workforce Solutions.
Volt joins most but not all firms in deciding to pass some or all of the impact of the [Microsoft] cuts on to their workers. Temp giant Volt informs workers it will make Microsoft pay cuts [techflash.com]
How surprising is it when a wholesale supplier cuts his prices and costs to remain competitive in a recession?
--- but is not so quick to dial back his own profits?
Microsoft is bleeding to death when kdawson's theme is FOSS and Linux. Microsoft is rich, strong and stable when the talk turns to pay cuts and layoffs.
The well-run company survives a deep recession - a depression - by making changes before the situation turns desperate.
The 10% pay cut now is at least a better outcome for the temp than the 100% cut he'd take later if his job is outsourced to India.
It's useful to remember now and again that the median household income in the states is $50,000 -
keeps things in perspective, when you ask yourself how much your job is worth.
Re:Wrong!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Cap at 100k? And you expect to attract high-power, high-earning execs to your company how? Sunshine enemas? Be logical. If a programmer makes thirty to forty thousand per year, and his boss makes twenty percent more - move five or six steps up the logical chain and of course you get million dollar salaries. Is it fair? Not really, by most logic.
But even if you project a 20% pay raise per position five steps up the chain, you still have nearly 100k salaries - and I don't expect jumps as low as 20% are realistic. In my company, salary more than doubles from location manager to district manager - five steps up from that (Which is roughly executive level) puts salaries nearly half a million a year. I'd call that estimate conservative and I work bloody retail, where there is NO profit margin WHATSOEVER.
This isn't an attempt to curry favour with execs, as I don't know any who read Slashdot in the first place. Your use of 100k-no-bonus just makes me wonder where in gay hell your logic is coming from.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case it is far worse. This is a 10% cut in the rate to the employment agency, so they have to cut the employees wage even further, on costs, insurance, profit etc, employees themselves are likely to get around double that cut.
I see that you have some problem with economics. Reduced pay for employees results in reduced spending, which generates lay-offs. A lot of people base their debt payments upon the salary level with out much gap between them. A 20% pay cut will often result in bankruptcy, as the employees can not just whip up a quick letter telling their creditors they will now be paying them 20% less and if they don't like it, they wont pay them anything.
Now is the pay cut to enable M$ to survive or is it to allow M$ to maintain it's current profit margin or even increase them. M$ has a history of having a total disregard for the costs of it's actions upon other people and companies as long their own profits keep increasing.
employee pay (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for starters, autoworkers union != bank executives. The two situations aren't even similar. On one hand, you have a union that's doing nothing more than bleeding a corporation dry. On the other, you have a situation where the free market should really be determining things like salaries and bonuses*.
The auto workers negotiated in just as much a free market as those bank executives did. SO they are the same in that regard.
Truth be told, it would be better for the US Automakers if they went bankrupt. That would dissolve all union contracts, forcing them to restructure. While there are certainly other factors like demand and quality, the benefits alone received by members of the UAW make it almost impossible for American car companies to compete with non-union car manufacturers in the US.
While it may be better if US auto manufacturers did go bankrupt, you're either discounting, ignoring, or don't know something. Even foreign auto makers what Detroit bailed out, "Why Toyota wants GM to be saved [cnn.com]". This is because of the reason mentioned above, they all depend on the same suppliers. If Chrysler goes bankrupt it's suppliers, who also supply Japanese makers in the US may go bankrupt as well. Secondly those foreign owned factories received a lot of government subsidies. State governments [firedoglake.com] have given out billions in subsidies. "Alabama offered a stunning $253 million incentive package to Mercedes [thinkprogress.org]." And one of Alabama's senators, Sen. Richard Shelby [wsj.com] was one of those who opposed bailing out US auto companies.
Its great when a company can afford to treat their people well, but when they can't, something's gotta give. Unfortunately, the UAW doesn't see it that way.
Neither do company executives. Even Carl Icahn [icahnreport.com] says executive pay needs to change.
Falcon
Re:no problem with honest capitalism and never wil (Score:3, Insightful)
Collectivism and Marxism already failed. We don't need to try that again.
Don't recall anyone advocating that. Put that straw man away before it falls apart!
Though expecting 100% free-market capitalism to work without people taking advantage and/or subverting it for their own ends (even through the "legitimate" use of markets to- e.g.- get a monopoly) is just as flawed and dependent on a grossly over-idealised view of human nature as communism is.
Remember that though many will proclaim the merits of a free market, they really want it to be free for themselves... and will certainly seek to shut out competition given the chance.
Re:So, that would mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If insufficient numbers of people vote for a pay-cut, they _will_ be in the position of having to do layoffs,
Nowhere did I see that this was a binding vote. I'd say it's more of a straw poll for Volt to see if they can get away with this. For instance, where did they come up with 10%?
Hell, if enough people vote yes, why not increase the cut to 15%? From the other posters comments I'd guess Volt doesn't really care about their employees and will try to squeeze them as much as possible. The "vote" is merely a means to figure out how hard to squeeze.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's true, then a lot of people are complete idiots. It really doesn't seem logical that employers should factor in their employees' overspending when making these kinds of decisions.
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
"I find it pretty absurd that a company should be "stuck" with the contract rates it offers."
Slow down, cowboy! If you engage me, and then decide to stiff me on a contract, I WILL SUE YOU. And I will win. It doesn't matter how long it takes, or even how much it costs me -- it's just business.
As soon as you announce "You won't be paid", I put down my tools, and walk. Again, it doesn't matter how much I may need the work.
Why? What other leverage do I have? And, trust me, companies understand. If I didn't stick to my guns, I am afraid that others would start to take advantage of me. This is my protection, ok?
About the only way I would take less is if mandated by a bankruptcy court.
Re:So, that would mean (Score:3, Insightful)
What will this really accomplish? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a contractor at Microsoft right now subject to this pay rate decrease. Although I have my opinions about why it is happening, and what should be happening instead, I think more interesting is what the immediate effect of this will be. In my case, I cancelled several services I pay for in order to absorb the hit to my income and will be increasing my W-4 deductions to maximize my current income (up to my allowed amount) in favor of decreasing my tax return next year (here's to hope).
But, I cancelled Netflix who licenses Microsoft's streaming video technology. I cancelled Gamefly who previously rented me Xbox 360 games. I will be providing less revenue through withholding to the federal government. There will be less discretionary spending and less revenue provided to my local and state government, all of whom need it just as bad as we do right now. All of those organizations rely on Microsoft products for their dwindling operations. In a very real way (since I live in northwest Washington) there will be less money for police to protect Microsoft's physical assets.
Don't these circular relationships represent the defintion of a "downward spiral"? Are we sure we understand the impact of these actions?
In the meantime I will buckle under and keep working my ass off. My kid's doctor doesn't accept righteousness as a form of payment.
Re:What will this really accomplish? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't these circular relationships represent the defintion of a "downward spiral"?
Absolutely. This is why economists get spooked when they hear the word deflation. Even now they can't bear to say it, and resort to euphemisms.
Are we sure we understand the impact of these actions?
We understand the economy in almost exactly the same sense as we understand the weather.
In the meantime I will buckle under and keep working my ass off.
That's probably the only thing anyone can do. Good luck, this year is going to be a brutal adjustment for a lot of people.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. The longer someone avoids paying off their debits, the bigger the debt becomes (thanks to the wonder of compound interest). Then, when their interest rate goes up (as it must, since rather than reduce debt, they've increased it and become a higher risk), you get a second whammy.
If nobody had debt, all earnings could be spent on direct consumption, without some (a lot, in many cases) being bled off by interest payments.
We've just come to the end of a very unnatural cycle - one where people not just continually rolled over debt, but also threw in additional debt with every roll-over, to the point where they were using new debt as their chief way of making debt payments (that's what average spending of 103% of income really means - people are using their credit cards to make payments on their cars and mortgages).
Deflation? After a decade of overinflated housing, we NEED a decade of housing deflation, just to get back to historic norms.
Bail-outs? Why bother - this just rewards the greedy, penalizes the prudent, and shows that nobody in government knows the meaning of "keep your powder dry". All the bailout money is not just a waste - it also carries the hidden cost of missed opportunities to both rationalize the car and banking industries, and to invest elsewhere. Every dollar spent out bailing crooks is a buck taken away from schools and infrastructure and retraining - money that could BUILD the economy.
For those who eschewed debt, delaying gratification, deflating prices back down to historic norms brings the reward of buying at proper value, not bubble prices. Call the bailouts what they are, a global "tax on stupdiity and greed."
Re:Ultimately this is the answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, but the cap gains tax should only be on real profits over $500 per year taken as income and not reinvested. Now you pay on purely nominal gains caused by inflation, fill out onerous paperwork over tiny amounts of savings account interest, usually can't deduct all investment losses from profits, and usually take a tax penalty for rebalancing your portfolio. Investment companies don't have most of these burdens, but individuals do. Getting around the ridiculous rules is a big part of why the market is dominated by mutual funds, hedge funds, IRA money-jailers and other parasites.
Inflation-adjusting nominal capital gains using the government's numbers isn't good enough. The have been fiddled with so much over the years that they are 3 to 6 percentage points lower than they would be when calculated using the methods of 15 to 30 years ago. This fiddling has also inflated GDP growth and screwed Social Security recipients by a similar percentage compounded over many years. [slashdot.org]
Also, capital gains shouldn't be taxed if the underlying capital is intellectual property. Ireland got that right; it really paid off for them. (I know this is Slashdot, but individual authors and inventors would be more viable if their product weren't taxed out of existence.)
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
everything is inflated.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The prices of ALOT of things jumped up after 9/11 on fear and during the gasoline crisis. They also take advantage of every weather crisis or flood to publish how it will cause a shortage and a price hike.
Ever notice -- when these things clear up, they don't go back down.
Everything needs to go through some deflation. The price of many things is just ridiculous.
Things going from 25-50 cents in the 70's to 6-10 bucks... That's a hell of alot of inflation -- alot more than the
supposed 2-4% reported by government figures each year. Over 3 decades, 4% would be a 324% price inflation.
Instead, I commonly see things more in line with 20x (2000%). It's not just housing.
$2.99 for a corrupted version of a song (a ringtone). vs. $4-6 for an album in the early 80's. The incremental cost
to produce that ringtone: 0. An album might have ~10 songs... so as ring tones, that'd be $30. That's 7.5-5x and those aren't for the real song. The incremental profit margins are nearly incalculable. Piracy has hurt music companies sooooo much.....
But contrary to what 'should' happen -- the government is just manufacturing more money backed by nothing. It's like stock dilution -- but on a massive scale -- dollar dilution. Soon street bums will be begging $20's for a cup of joe.
Theoretically, we are so screwed...but for what really will happen? Good luck guessing!
Re:everything is inflated.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, part of the problem is the "magic of compounding" ,,, so our dollar has actually lost about 94% of its' value over 50 years. For examples, just look at comic books or paperbacks, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, a gallon of gas, or the minimum wage (50 years ago, it was a buck an hou [oregonstate.edu]r).
If everything stays "in sync", then everyone survives, and everyone has enough money to participate in the economy. The problem is that we have, as you pointed out, NOT kept wages in line with inflation for a decade (the Bush years), and instead replaced wage growth with debt growth as a way to maintain or "improve" the standard of living - but it was a lie for most people; higher debts are not an improvement.
Volt is a TEMP agency (Score:3, Insightful)
These are CONTRACTORS not employees. The whole reason a company uses contract labor is so they can adjust the number of bodies to the workload without having to later layoff their own employees. In other works these a TEMPORARY jobs. Everyone understood they were temporary and would not last. I don't even count not renewing a contract with a layoff
I was a contractor once too. And sure enough we were the first to go. With all of about 20 minutes notice at that. Cutting your pay is just a very nice way to say "Find another job, soon." The more normal way to say that to a contractors is "Find another job."
Read the story "Volt" is a "temp agency". Our company uses Volt too. For thing like when a normal emplyee is on extended sick leave, they might hire someone on a 6 month contract.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The bottom line difference between Fascism and Communism is labels. Both are murderous tyrants. Bandits.
The historic clash between Communism and Fascists was about who would get credit for the creating a worldwide utopian society. Mostly it was over which set of elite get the power and money.
Contrast that to people like the Founding Fathers. George Washington could have been king, but gave up his power and wealth to create something greater. They never advocated a Utopian society. They just wanted a place where WHITE MALES were allowed to live a life without without tyranny.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the kind of language that puts you on the same side as the employer, sounds like to me. "Do whatever you want as long as you're not going to take away my job!" No thanks.
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My kind of democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure there are two sets of elite involved in communism and fascism. To govern sheep you need dogs on both sides.