STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 17 January 2013

[kickysnana]

46. Got to give testimony against Datacard in the early 1980's on this.

They would promise you if you worked 60 hours a week no overtime, no benefits that they would hire you on in 30, then 60, then 90, etc etc days. It took me three days to figure out it was a scam and it was a hellish place to work so I left but I had managed to get some people to talk to me. Right after that management got wind of my questions and said that they would fire anyone who talked about ANY company business. No talking except on breaks, even questions about the work had to be discussed in private. (Evidently the answers depended on who was asking?) My immediate supervisor said that if I worked during my breaks off the clock I would be hired on permanent quicker.

Anyway a tech school classmate stayed on for just over 12 months with promises not kept, so finally he sued them for something because they were never going to make him full time, give him overtime or benefits. Perhaps it was the overtime. At that time we had some actual laws to protect workers. He was getting as many people as he could to make affidavits about what was promised and what actually happened.

The rate at that time was $7500 for any employee staying 35 days in 1985 dollars. There was NO incentive to hire permanently. There were about 30 of us in that department. They were hiring technicians to do entry level assembly. They could because of the recession. They made a tidy little sum off of that scam.