I work in the insurance industry. People who vacate a job are not usually being replaced, overtime cut, budgets cut, have to work harder to keep up with amount of work creating more job stress. Emphasis on customer service and customer retention is extremely high.

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"My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives." Blazing Saddles...

Ours decided we will no longer have a standard work week as of 2010.
They expect you to work until it is done since we are "professionals".
However it's a global company that is service ticket driven so the work is never done.
At the same time they have done away with overtime compensation since how can you have overtime if there is no standard work week.

"You are professional" is the new North American term for wage slave.

They are also regularly letting entire North American departments go as the work is moved over to India/China.

Then the companies wonder why there is no more loyalty from their screwed over employees.
Or why there are no more first world consumers who can afford the product & services they try to hawk.

Arguh and I am only doing this job to tide things over till the economy actually gets going and our own imaging business picks up again.
I'd be real PO'ed if I was stuck here and did not have a alternate plan.

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Keep on Truckin, Going full speed ahead down the highway to hades.

I'm in the aviation aftermarket. We laid off some management and we actually have a few openings that our top management won't let us fill. Also, many of us are traveling leaving the people back at HQ to do double duty. I myself have logged more air miles already this year than I have in the last three combined . . . but I'm not complaining . . . much.

There is a no hiring policie going on in my workplace. And if the company really needs to hire someone they need to ask the Corp. HQ in Australia if it is ok.

Also they lowered the number of people that need to be on shifts before the shift manager needs to call out someone to work overtime. Which means that some shifts are undermanned during Swine flu season.

I work in the IT dept. for one of the country's largest public transportation agency. So far we are not effected by furlow or pay cuts. We are actually very busy ever since the gas prices has gone up. Been with the company for 19 years. Benefits are excellent, pays pretty good as well...

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http://www.youtube.com/user/gmlasam

We've been OK... we're only a small company, someone left to work somewhere else, and they've not been replaced, meaning everyone else in that dept has to work harder.

That said, the only cut back we've had that I've noticed has been no diet coke in the fridge at work!

I know we are lucky and that its really tough out there for workers in some sectors. I hate hearing the unemployment numbers each month as behind each number is a person worrying about their home, family etc.

I went from 4 days a week to 1 day a week. Looking for a new job, but not too many around in the area...don't really want to move from where I am currently located either, but its getting to the point where I may have to consider that option at some point eventually...

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RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

The year before I was laid off, I had my shift differential pay and overtime taken away. However, since I worked in the IT department and my department was a 24/7 shop, someone still had to work 3rd shift. So what they did was take the work being done on 1st and 2nd shift and bump it all up to 3rd shift. Work that had deadlines attatched to it. So that meant that I had to be there weekends and holidays...

After that, the company sent at least half my work to India. After that, part of my job became providing phone support for the cat who had my work. When my raise came around I received 2% while the part of my health insurance that I pay went up 40%... It was the first time in my life that I received a raise and actually earned less than the previous year. The final straw was when they automated the other half of my work. And I had to test every job before I was out so I would receive my severance package.

I have now been out for almost a year... I'm on the second tier of emergency unemployment. I am now at that point where I have given up trying to find a job in my field and will take anything. That will mean working 2 jobs in an economy where it's hard to find 1... Keeping my creditors at bay has become my new job!...

The sad part is... it's a common story now.

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"...The final truth is, there is no truth..." - (from "Nice n' Neat" by the Boomtown Rats)

I got fired for "poor performance," about 10 months after the company and union renegotiated the hourly wage scale, and my job description lost almost $3.00 per hour. I was working at my armory on active duty orders, at the time of the wage renegotiations, and I didn't even know about it, when I returned to work at the end of my active duty orders, until I'd got suspended for 3 days because of "poor performance." When I found out about the wage cut in my job description, it became all too clear what local management was up to, and had been predicting that once they're finished with me, they'll start on my counterpart, who had trained me and with one year of seniority over me. Whenever they do suspend him, then eventually fire him, it'd be a safe bet that it'll be for "poor performance."

Matt

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Fast Cars & Loud Guitars!

My company has laid off people until bare bones around here. Then they ended the 401(k) match. Then everyone took a 5% pay cut (except the bigwigs, they took 10%)

Trucking is in bad shape right now...

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Ignorance IS bliss - and I am the happiest person here!