Employment Rights And Issues

Some preamble about my fall before I go on to blog proper. I forgot to mention a sickly looking dark-skinned foreign worker sedate and in pain by my bedside. An old woman was wheeled in flailing and wailing as I imagined the older generation to be terrified of hospitalisation. One word on the security guard who insisted at one point that I stand behind the yellow line though I was the only person in queue with two others ahead being attended to. He must be a blind bat not to notice my writhing agony as I propped up my back, moaning.

Oh yes and I did fall once, flat on my face, breaking my glasses, smashing my cheeks and thorax prior to one Chinese New Year festival while doing spring cleaning. Same hospital I went and the scan turned up negative even though I felt my diaphragm compressed and painful.

Other times I had major sick events were tonsilectomy at age 15-16 where I spit a mugful of blood every other day and suffered chicken pox at age 30. The latter I contracted at a clinic when a youth with suspicious-looking rashes had it and whoops, days later, I broke out in poxes, running a temperature.

My back is still as painful though it has subsided to a very slight degree. As I slumber, the compression on my spine makes me breathless, spasmic and my every toss and turn excruciates a real pain in the lumbar. I know I will come through this alive but I am going to be holed up like this for at least two more weeks for my vertebra to heal completely.

Right, let us move on to my blog on employment issues and rights. I blog from experience not from some figment of imagination or fairy tale fantasies. Eversince I stopped working for the economy but for myself, I had never gotten sick save the occasional fever and cough. What does this tell you? Anyone caught up in the hustle and bustle of this frenetic and fanatic pace of what we call the economy can only substitute their health for death or illness.

I was working for a commercial school once with the air-conditioner turned on at full blast and I had bad vibes the place was one slimy, sleazy and grimy modern sweatshop with the stale, un-circulated Legionaire infected air kept in. I was coughing my lungs out for weeks with my two evil twin femme fatale bosses sitting idly by, not giving two toots.

Incidentally I worked a year without medical insurance for them. I am not even sure if I am covered for hospitalisation. What is the point of insurance coverage if the insured does not even know the terms of usage? So is it a sincere gesture or just a parody? Can you imagine this? The coverage only kicks in on the 2nd year. So what does that make me during the one year? A pariah dog with a life worth a salamander's? Is this the way private firms treat their staff?

To me, dental coverage is just as important because my greates source of affliction now is my teeth. I have had four wisdom teeth all extracted at my own expense as they turned into harbours of infection. I need my mouth to talk. It is my means to eke out a living. My gums bleed quite often and I attribute this to scurvy (lack of fruits and vegetables for the past 1.5-2 years because I was chasing after the "economy" dream) , lack of calcium and generally the bad shape of my teeth.

I admit I am continually sick at all these firms I work for. It must be the quality of the air , the work environment or the system which psychologically and medically affect me. I would be feverish, cold , suffer flu or cough. As I told someone recently anyone coming into the system can eventually become sick or psycho.

If human resource management is bad enough at some big private firms, you can well imagine how much worse it is at smaller ones. Total lack of transparency and good ethical practices. Like the previous "school" I mentioned, no letter of appointment. An unscrupulous He-Ape of a boss who must have on his mind, rescindment. If I can laugh along with him, perhaps he would be flattered. But I am so sorry, I can't.

No pension contribution, no letters of appointment , no medical benefits, measly wages where the cheapest labor rule the day. Medical reimbursements took longer than the usual time in the case of this "school". M/s Black Widow feigned ignorance untill I confronted her six months later for my General Practitioner visit. No red-ink pens for marking, we all have to buy and then reimburse. I certainly will not, given the time lapse between purchase and reimbursement. She gives me the evil and bad vibes.

Photocopying materials had to be done in zoomed-down sizes, fitting the A4 pages in even numbers to save costs and paper. M/s Black Widow sits by her reception counter, people watching while eavesdropping on every conversation behind her.

The owners of these firms are rich and wealthy, judging by the big landed houses they live in, the big branded cars they drive and the big dogs they walk. They golf, own country club memberships and are hardly around the office to oversee the operations, leaving this to their cronies and kins.

Their scions are all cared for equally richly, lounging in luxury, driving expensive cars with expensive taste in branded clothes to boot. Even simple staff benefits in the form of a pantry stocked with a water fountain or coffee/tea dispensers are missing.

They are not here to care for their staff or look after their welfare. They are here to wring every blood available out of their workers only to maximise their profits and sales. Is it any wonder companies suffer a high absenteeism and staff turnover rate? There is no career path for advancement or better pay. It is dead-end in most cases. We are all only working for short term benefits while waiting attrition to sweep us off before another crop of cheaper labour takes over.
Is there any shred of kinship between firm and staff? The benefactors of this economy are the owners of the factors of production, not the proletariat. Once you have outlived your usefulness and cost, you become a liability waiting to be trashed.

This is how the commercial schools operate on. You expect staff to be loyal and work their butts off? We are first world but is this how a developed nation allows its firms to treat its citizens?

I have been to enough interview sessions to observe the unprofessionalism of the interviewers. A set of hackneyed questionaires coupled with lousy interviewing skills. All manners of bad and unethical behavior. I could recite answers as if I were a repeating groove of a broken down LP player.

I had so many lines of reporting to do at one medical firm, with three sales supervisors, one sales manager and one general manager. Staff strength is no more than 8. The management is cooped up in their own ivory tower totally out of touch with reality while the rest of us rot in the open-concept office, largely unsupervised and like Cleopatra, she turns into a haughty she-bitch, haunting one and all around her. If I had been me now, I would have slapped the bitch's face a few times to rouse her from her high and mighty ways.

Sales commission is a paltry 1% of the sales price and that translate into nothingness for most transactions. In any case, at one contracting firm, I realised I was hired to clean up bad and shoddy jobs done by the previous person. No new contracts on the horizon to boost my earnings.

This accident I had from the fall only reinforce my belief that I will not slog my ass off at the expense of my health and safety. I will not climb any ladder or table to fix a light or clear a storage shelf. Accidents are just waiting to happen and if something untoward like that happens, who is going to compensate me if the Workmen's Compensation only does so for a salary less than $1800.

It is a sorry day for us all. What the economy has done is to make all of us money-centric, money-grabbing and money-motivated. I can't be any exception as this is the state of our lives now, so do not point a finger at me before looking yourself in the mirror. Are you any better than thou?