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Aug. 11th, 2005 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilstarchildI got some things done today, yippy skippy!
I had someone drive me to the max after work so I'd get to Finnegan's with a little time. As it was, I had fifteen minutes to hurridly write out an application, hopefully I didn't fuck up too much, and was still in there three minutes after they closed. . It wasn't a xeroxed thingie like most places, they had a laminated paper that said what information they wanted, with some lined binder paper and a pen. I perched on a stool that an employee took from behind a counter and tried to write it out as quickly as possible without having messy handwriting. I think I did okay, even if I did forget to write what my job actually required and then wrote it down later in the application. Also, I couldn't remember my supervisor's name or contact info for UPS.
I'm not worried, though. I'm kind of leaving it up to fate. Because as it is, if I'm even interviewed I'll have just as many questions as the interviewer--how hard is it to get weekends off (for pirate stuff etc.)? What's the hourly pay? What are the benefits? If they pay and benefits are worse than what I have now, forget it. I have no idea, though.
All the workshifts are 10am to 6pm. Which means, I could go back to my semi-normal sleeping habits of midnight to eight.
To truly complicate matters, I emailed SEIU's local to ask if my workplace would be eligible to unionize. Turns out the answer is yes, and a union rep wants to talk to me. Hoooo boy.
See, here's the thing. The pay and benefits at my job blow monkeys, and the management isn't so hot. My first instinct is to flee. But that's part of the problem--my department in particular, and most of the MA sections, have incredibly high turnover because the pay/benefits/management sucks so bad. So do I try to start a union not just for me but for other people who will work there, or do I just get the hell out of dodge?
Then there's the fact that my office is in Beaverton, which isn't exactly a hotbed of pro-union sentiment.
Speaking of work: The records department is basically run as inefficiently as humanly possible. Due to high turnover, we're often shorthanded, and when things back up everything takes so much longer because of the stupid way shit is done, leading to a vicious cycle where we're constantly behind.
This is boring, but try to bear with me: When loose papers come into the records department--say, dictation, lab results, that kind of thing--they get dropped off at the desk I'm working at right now. They're sorted and then put into folders, which takes about a day and a half. When someone needs to send a chart out to a doc's office for any reason, someone has to flip through the folders looking to see if there's any loose papers that belong in the chart, which is very tedious and time consuming, before putting them in the proper parts of the chart (aka chart assembly) and then sending it out. Keep in mind, we send out hundreds of charts per day. If four people are doing chart assembly, they're also all trying to reach around each other to find loose papers on those shelves.
We're all assigned sections of charts, and in theory we regularly put all of the loose sheet for our section into their charts. Pssht. Yeah right. The folders of loose papers take up four times as much space as they should currently, there's just that much of it. I'm assigned to 54-62, and doing half of one section takes me several hours, which I almost never have. And not everyone's even trained on chart assembly right now.
Most medical offices do what's called "dropfile." The sorting job would still exist, but instead of being fine-sorted into folders that someone has to go through, someone would go through that section of charts and just drop the loose papers into the proper chart as they came into the department and were sorted. The papers would be loose in the charts until someone ordered that chart for something, and then when the chart was pulled and given to chart assembly, the loose papers for that chart would already be in there. We would only need half as many people doing chart assembly, and the actual dropfiling could be done by anybody who knew how to do filebacks.
It's not like it's a new idea to The Portland Clinic, the South office does it that way. So why don't we!? My supervisor's looking into it. If we get permission, we wouldn't have to hire four more people, because that's how many people left recently, including one girl who'd been here all of a month and got a better offer elsewhere.
I bought these boots today. Go me. Good for dancing, or pirating. Either way, I'm good.
Speaking of pirating, the front of the Mercury this week, is a guy who has a booth at pirate events. I have pictures of him in front of his booth of pirate-themed pottery/ceramics. Apparently he lives in Estacada.
Yay, getting laundry done. Aren't I all productive and crap.
I had someone drive me to the max after work so I'd get to Finnegan's with a little time. As it was, I had fifteen minutes to hurridly write out an application, hopefully I didn't fuck up too much, and was still in there three minutes after they closed. . It wasn't a xeroxed thingie like most places, they had a laminated paper that said what information they wanted, with some lined binder paper and a pen. I perched on a stool that an employee took from behind a counter and tried to write it out as quickly as possible without having messy handwriting. I think I did okay, even if I did forget to write what my job actually required and then wrote it down later in the application. Also, I couldn't remember my supervisor's name or contact info for UPS.
I'm not worried, though. I'm kind of leaving it up to fate. Because as it is, if I'm even interviewed I'll have just as many questions as the interviewer--how hard is it to get weekends off (for pirate stuff etc.)? What's the hourly pay? What are the benefits? If they pay and benefits are worse than what I have now, forget it. I have no idea, though.
All the workshifts are 10am to 6pm. Which means, I could go back to my semi-normal sleeping habits of midnight to eight.
To truly complicate matters, I emailed SEIU's local to ask if my workplace would be eligible to unionize. Turns out the answer is yes, and a union rep wants to talk to me. Hoooo boy.
See, here's the thing. The pay and benefits at my job blow monkeys, and the management isn't so hot. My first instinct is to flee. But that's part of the problem--my department in particular, and most of the MA sections, have incredibly high turnover because the pay/benefits/management sucks so bad. So do I try to start a union not just for me but for other people who will work there, or do I just get the hell out of dodge?
Then there's the fact that my office is in Beaverton, which isn't exactly a hotbed of pro-union sentiment.
Speaking of work: The records department is basically run as inefficiently as humanly possible. Due to high turnover, we're often shorthanded, and when things back up everything takes so much longer because of the stupid way shit is done, leading to a vicious cycle where we're constantly behind.
This is boring, but try to bear with me: When loose papers come into the records department--say, dictation, lab results, that kind of thing--they get dropped off at the desk I'm working at right now. They're sorted and then put into folders, which takes about a day and a half. When someone needs to send a chart out to a doc's office for any reason, someone has to flip through the folders looking to see if there's any loose papers that belong in the chart, which is very tedious and time consuming, before putting them in the proper parts of the chart (aka chart assembly) and then sending it out. Keep in mind, we send out hundreds of charts per day. If four people are doing chart assembly, they're also all trying to reach around each other to find loose papers on those shelves.
We're all assigned sections of charts, and in theory we regularly put all of the loose sheet for our section into their charts. Pssht. Yeah right. The folders of loose papers take up four times as much space as they should currently, there's just that much of it. I'm assigned to 54-62, and doing half of one section takes me several hours, which I almost never have. And not everyone's even trained on chart assembly right now.
Most medical offices do what's called "dropfile." The sorting job would still exist, but instead of being fine-sorted into folders that someone has to go through, someone would go through that section of charts and just drop the loose papers into the proper chart as they came into the department and were sorted. The papers would be loose in the charts until someone ordered that chart for something, and then when the chart was pulled and given to chart assembly, the loose papers for that chart would already be in there. We would only need half as many people doing chart assembly, and the actual dropfiling could be done by anybody who knew how to do filebacks.
It's not like it's a new idea to The Portland Clinic, the South office does it that way. So why don't we!? My supervisor's looking into it. If we get permission, we wouldn't have to hire four more people, because that's how many people left recently, including one girl who'd been here all of a month and got a better offer elsewhere.
I bought these boots today. Go me. Good for dancing, or pirating. Either way, I'm good.
Speaking of pirating, the front of the Mercury this week, is a guy who has a booth at pirate events. I have pictures of him in front of his booth of pirate-themed pottery/ceramics. Apparently he lives in Estacada.
Yay, getting laundry done. Aren't I all productive and crap.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 04:23 am (UTC)I've always understood the benefit of unions and their purpose but I have a hard time thinking of "Union Reps" as more than some kind of slimy lobbyist lawyer. I'd love to have a rep come down to our offices and introduce a "phone service" union. It'd probably just get us all fired though, that's what happened to the last call center.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 04:24 am (UTC)If you were a boy I'd say you were "a boot pirate" in an accent that emphasized the double entendre properly.
Hee hee
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 05:40 am (UTC)Let's look at it this way, in regards to retail work: Any retail company wants to compete on prices. One way to make things cheaper is to lower wages, benefits, etc. Well, if one place does it, than the next store has to, to stay competitive. This is what's known as a quick race to the bottom. Now, if all the floor employees unionize and start a union that covers the employees of all the stores, they can bargain as a unit for higher wages, since no one place will pay less.
This is one reason why Wal-Mart can destroy towns. Their stuff is so cheap because they pay their people so crappy and give them such shitty benefits (usually, none). So when they move in, everyone shops there, and the unionized stores can't compete and go out of business, making it so everyone has to work at a place that pays like Wal-Mart.
Fred Meyer's union sucks. UFCW is one of the most pansy-ass unions on teh planet. But part of that is because none of the people seem to give a rat's ass about their union, which doesn't make any sense considering how much it affects their jobs. Bink and I went to a UFCW meeting. It was for voting on teh contract for all non-food workers, in a district spanning from teh Willamette river to Seaside. There were thirty people there, tops. How many hundreds and hundreds of people was that affecting? It was a sucky contract, too.
Speaking of dues, look at it this way: Fred Meyer didn't make you pay a dime of your health care premiums (assuming you could get it, but wtf-ever). Mine are free where I work, but if I had a dependent it would cost me more than $300 a month for even our shitty insurance.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Phone jobs like customer service and tech support, need a goddamn union.
Dood. The history of labor unions is kinda awe-inspiring. People actually died for the forty hour workweek (as opposed to seventy or more). People in other countries can still be shot outright for trying to unionize factories that make shoes etc. Fucking sucks.
Technically it's illegal to fire someone for unionizing. I looked it up, as long as I'm not interfering with work, I'm legally allowed to wear union buttons, pass out union literature, and talk up the union in general. But companies find all sorts of fun ways around that one, which is one reason why there aren't a lot of unionized Wal-Marts.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 05:55 am (UTC)Tech support and such really need a union, but because they are so expendable it's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 06:03 am (UTC)For a bit I worried about getting fired for something vague for unionizing, I wouldn't put it past my head manager. But 1. if the unionizing had got far enough, it wouldn't matter, and 2. SEIU covers so many places, it probably wouldn't be hard for me to get a job somewhere that's got that union.
Interestingly enough, SEIU's local is hiring union organizers. I don't have the experience now, but I might after unionizing TPC. Ha!! I can see it now: "I've quit...to work for the union! Neener neener!!"
no subject
Date: 2005-08-14 06:54 pm (UTC)Woo! End wage slavery!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 06:07 am (UTC)If you get fired for complications related to starting a Union, you get 1,000 kickass points with a bonus +1 legendary status for your ego.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-12 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 12:40 am (UTC)I saw a study in Sociology class once, that said that across all industries or any job imaginable, what makes for an unhappy job is a combination of low pay and having absolutely no say in things, no power to control your work environment. Most retail/food service places are run so that you have no control over anything (it's all decided by people who have never done your job) and the pay generally blows.
I LOVE my union
Date: 2005-08-12 05:19 pm (UTC)I have had a lot of problems with them, and the only thing this office called them to mediate ended badly and made my boss fear the word "UNion." However that made her much more careful about how she treats us.
I've thought about becoming a Steward when Bianca graduates. But the union seems really dumb about realizing that we may have lives other than the Union.
Re: I LOVE my union
Date: 2005-08-13 12:44 am (UTC)That seems to be true of most activist organizations, of any kind.
My immediate supervisor is a sweety, it's the woman who runs all the medical records departments that irks me so much. Grrr.