She’s ubiquitous
World’s greatest media whore
Please oh please vanish
New Report Unveils Hidden Cost of Doing Business
WASHINGTON (Royters) — So-called mental health days cost American companies a staggering $61 billion a year, according to a recent report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Employees (NCMEE).
The report, “American Workers Under Attack,” represents the first in-depth analysis of a previously unreported cost to American businesses. It summarizes findings from more than a million survey responses elicited over the past three years from U.S. employees working in all sectors of the economy except for farms and the public sector.
Radoslaw Rakocevic, NCMEE executive director and the principal author of the report, said, “Our report refutes the long-held conventional wisdom that physical ailments are the #1 cause of employee absenteeism. Taking time off for the sake of one’s mental health easily eclipses reasons such as back pain, migraine headaches, and sick kids.”
The survey protocol, according to Rakocevic, “drilled down to identify the subsets under ‘mental health day.’” He said the overwhelming [73%] leader within the set was stated by respondents as “days to recover from mistreatment by incompetent managers and supervisors.”
So how did NCMEE arrive at a figure of $61 billion? Rakocevic said the Center, with support from the Harvard Business School, used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Employment Situation Summary: Q3 2008” (dated October 8, 2008).
According to the BLS summary, (1) there are 146 million U.S. workers in the civilian labor force (non-farm), (2) the average rate of pay (private sector) is $17.64/hour, and (3) the average number of hours worked per week is 37.35.
Using these figures and the reported average of three mental health days per year per employee, the annual cost to American companies is $61,810,560,000, according to the NCMEE report.
Rakocevic added, “As disturbing as our findings are, we shudder to think about how current and anticipated economic conditions—and specifically the jobs picture—will drive the cost of worker abuse to new highs.”
Marshal Will Kane
I just watched High Noon (1952).
The parallels between that film and my life at work are striking. For that matter, most of us who work for someone else all are lone gunslingers going up against a gang bent on doing us in.
Here’s a portion of High Noon’s plot summary found at IMDB:
Will decides he must go back and face Miller. However, when he seeks the help of the townspeople he has protected for so long, they turn their backs on him. It seems Kane may have to face Miller alone, as well as the rest of Miller’s gang, who are waiting for him at the station.
And now my rewrite:
I decide that I must stay and face up to my abusive, incompetent manager. However, I know that when I seek the support of my cowardly coworkers that I have supported for more than a year, they will turn their backs on me. It seems I may have to face my manager alone, as well as the rest of the managers and supervisors, who always close ranks when one of their own comes under attack.
Oink Oink
I apparently missed the occasion on which “pork-barrel legislation” morphed into “earmarks.”
The New York Times reports today: “At the same time, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Orszag indicated that the president would not pick a fight over the estimated 9,000 ‘earmarks,’ or special provisions inserted by individual lawmakers, in the omnibus spending bill passed last week.”
So, in order to get the president’s budget passed, NINE THOUSAND PIECES OF PORK will be served up to districts nationwide. Just imagine what that picnic is worth.
Kudos to the lobbyist who came up with this euphemism.
