I have only worked at 2 decent sized companies and both were similiar.

The white collar guys go drink $200 bottles of wine, leave 50% tips when they tip the bartenders, eat the most expensive shit on the menu (stone crab claws..), go golfing, etc.... all on company money... even when times are tight.....

The Blue Collar guys are told how the company is "not doing very well".... it was a "shitty year"..... we have a rough road a head.....and have some of their normal benefits cut back due to such news....


Why not pay out of their own pocket since they are entertaining themselves? (cough..greed).....

What makes the Executives think they are so deserving? Is this everwhere?

 

Do these people really do 10X, 20X the work that I get done in one day?

 

I've been on both sides of the fence and I've never seen that. What I've seen is that the WHITE collar guys get reined in first.

 

They are the reason you have a job in the first place.

As a company owner I can tell you that getting and keeping the business is MUCH harder than just producing the product. Producing the product is cut and dried, it's easy. Generating the business, keeping the good will, advertising, paying the overheads, managing the employees, paying the bills, hiring/firing, trying to get the blue collar workers to give a damn, etc. eats up a lot of time and energy.

Also White collar workers don't get to forget the job when the day or week is done.

So the simple answer to your question is yes.

 

You must be different kind of white color from the ones mentioned in the OP.

 

IMHO - when times are tight.... we should all do some cost savings!!! Instead we have the old "do as i say, not as I do" mentality

 

Interesting article somewhat related to this topic:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Inves...rAnHourJob.aspx

 

I never thought about it before, but I just realized I'm white collar...momma be so proud.

I'll be at the squash courts tomorrow afternoon at 3 if anyone needs me (but I'll be working most of Sunday as well )

 

Hey! I'm white collar. Where's my $200 bottle of vino? I need to work where you work!

Not like that everywhere but some inequities are inevitable. We had a bad year a while back but the top execs got new laptops and some of the company cars got traded in for new (on their normal rotation, I think every four years?). Worth a class war? Not really.

 

The New York Times has written several articles about this recently, as executive compensation since the 1970s has risen from about 11 times the average industrial wage to something like 100 times the average industrial wage, and usually has no relationship to how well the company is doing. This is in contrast to executive salaries in most European and Asian countries, which are far closer to average industrial wages. Very few companies resist this -- I have particular admiration for the President of Costco, who, with a salary of $300,000 a year earns the highest compensation in his company. Costco is a huge company -- the biggest rival to Walmart, yet the company's policy is that most executives are vastly overpaid. They have no problem hiring quality management at lower salaries, and their unionized workforce earns many times the salaries of the non-unionized workforce at WalMart.


Also, while average family income has stagnated in that period of time that executive compensation has skyrocketed, the percentage of the total national income that goes to the top 1% has increased astronomically, with the top 1% of the population receiving something over 20% of the total income. And they get to keep more of it, as taxes are lower or non-existent on capital gains, inheritance, and stock option bonuses, which is of benefit primarily to the wealthy. This is a serious problem as increasing inequities are polarizing society. Other countries do a much better job of this by redistributing wealth through income taxation and better subsidies (such as free health care, child day care and income supplements for low income people). More progressive taxation policies used to be done in the U.S. Those who argue that prosperity works on a trickle down manner in a low tax environment will have a hard time convincing me, since the highest level of income inequity since the Stock Market Crash of 1929 exists in the U.S. today. During the period of prosperity of the 1950s and 60s, income inequity in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the 20th century -- this at a time when the highest income tax rate was 95%! There is something seriously wrong with the system in the U.S., and it goes way beyond executives ordering stone crab claws.

Zeiss