TSNE MissionWorks published the 2017 Valuing Our Nonprofit Workforce compensation and benefits report which gathered data representing 171 positions from 342 organizations reporting on nearly 35,000 individual salaries. You’ll find the report a wealth of information to use in your review of your organization’s compensation practices. There is no single right way to develop compensation practices. […]
Workplace classism
Five Human Resources Tips for Valuing Your Nonprofit Staff
We know one of the things that keeps nonprofit managers awake at night is concerns about personnel. In the social sector, employees are an organization’s greatest asset. Nonprofit leaders naturally want to get that critical piece of their work right. But this can be particularly tricky in smaller organizations that don’t have a designated human […]
A Reflection on the Gig Economy
I am no stranger to the gig economy. I have relied on it from time to time to supplement the income from my small business. When business is slow – or more often – when vendors are slow to pay me, I’ve taken short-term temp work, signed up for focus groups or been a “secret […]
The Case for the Maximum Wage
For classist put-downs, a maximum wage just may be the ultimate antidote. How raw can class contempt get? Take a look at the venom that oozed out earlier this spring from Ronald Havner, the CEO of Public Storage, America’s biggest self-storage company. This year, for the first time ever, enterprises like Public Storage have had […]
Janus v AFSCME:
What the Supreme Court May Strip from Workers The roar of the approaching storm can be both heard and felt in workplaces across the United States. The prospects inherent in a much anticipated – and in many places feared – Supreme Court decision in the case Janus v AFSCME has the political Right giddy. Among […]
Oh No He Didn’t!
Check biased behavior before it keeps your holidays from being merry and bright. As I thought last week about Thanksgiving dinner and hosting my extended family, it dawned on me that I should also think about – and be prepared for – the many ways that the dinner conversation could take an unpleasant turn. The […]
Health doesn’t come cheap
Healthcare in this country is not meant for those who are sick. If you’re in good health, you are credited for that good health. The models in ads for health insurance and pharmaceuticals are smiling. All of them, pictured with good teeth, shiny and white, of course. You’re viewed as deserving, as lucky, as having […]
“Undercover Boss”: More TV Class Unrealities
Undercover Boss is a prime time reality show on CBS. The concept is that the CEO of a company is disguised and then goes “undercover” for a week in his/her company doing the low wage work on the front lines to see how things really are. Typically, bosses are white men, although there have been […]
“Sixteen Tons” brings mine wars of ’20s and ’30s alive
“Are the mules okay?” Not to diminish hard-working mules, but the mine boss’s urgent question after an accident captures the cruel reality thrust upon generations of underground coal miners, whose toil fueled America. That authentic quote valuing mules over expendable common laborers jumps off the pages of “Sixteen Tons,” (Hard Ball Press, 2014), described as […]
Grassroots Voices Rising for a New Economy
Imagine an event where the people in control were the house cleaners, the nannies, the family farmers and the unemployed! A little over two weeks ago I attended the joint organizing summit and member assembly of National People’s Action (NPA) and National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). Entitled Rising Voices for a New Economy, the four-day […]
Solutions for servers subsisting on tips
There are plenty of industries out there that we wish would do better by their workers, but the restaurant industry poses a very specific problem. Here’s the largest and fastest growing economic sector in the US producing 6 of 10 lowest paying jobs in the country. Why? The majority of their workforce don’t get paychecks. […]
Relying on diners’ good will
I recently started waitressing at a neighborhood sports bar, where I quickly found that my idealistic image of leaving work at the end of a shift with hundreds of dollars in hand was far from the truth. A great night for me leads to about $100 in tips, an average night is much closer to […]
Pension Cutbacks: The New Normal or Fightback?
We should be as wary now of the mainstream media as Marx was in 1871 when he wrote the following: “The daily press and the telegraph, which in a moment spreads its inventions over the whole earth, fabricate more myths in one day…than could have previously been produced in a century.” And so, for example, […]
Isn’t it Time for All Workers to Have More Job Security?
The United States is alone among industrialized countries in allowing workers to be considered “at will” employees and dismissed for any reason – justified or not, unless protected by a union contract or individual agreement. Labor should seize the opportunity to champion the passage of “just cause” dismissal standards into state laws. It’s a labor […]
Class in the Skies
Some time ago, I read a New York Times Opinionator piece, “Class Struggle in the Sky.” Reading about the growing class divisions was particularly disheartening because I spent a fair amount of my childhood traveling in first or business class enjoying the extra leg room, the doting attention of the airline staff, and generous snack […]
Why I became an adjunct (against the advice of everyone that I knew…)
When I was finishing my master’s degree in creative writing I started telling my professors and family members that when I graduated I wanted to “go into teaching.” I got a variety of responses. When I was lamenting a missed a job opportunity, one teacher responded: “Good. Being an adjunct teacher was the worst job […]
10 Ways a Corporate Workplace is Worse than a Casino
1. A Casino is legally required to post the odds of each bet. Corporate workplaces can lie about your chances of rising to the top. 2. If you gamble in a casino using a line of credit and lose, you can file for bankruptcy. If you take out a student loan to go to college […]
Tales from the Pink Ghetto
My own experiences related to classism are set in the administrative world of work. Frankie Valli once crooned, “If you go for your diploma, you can join the steno pool.” As I suspect many would agree, the administrative dimension of the work world is indeed a “pool,” where undercurrents of classism swirl quietly even when […]
Crossing the Gap in 5 Minutes
How can a physician easily work with the poor and earn their respect, trust, and affection? The key is feeling genuine respect. I have worked with urban poor, working class, and underserved rural patients now for 30 years. What jumps out at me is how everyone incorporates their place in the US class system and then acts […]
The law in our heads
I don’t want to sound like a Paul Simon song, but in my little town I grew up believing in the rule of law. I wanted to work for a unionized company because there, I was told, I would experience justice in the workplace; I would be protected. Well, now that I am a Harvard-educated […]
