How is the working life in US retail industry?

[Oriental]

I am wondering: how is a typical store manager or supervisor having his vacation leave in a supermarket in USA?

Anyone knows?

Oriental.


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[Canuckster1127]

I am wondering: how is a typical store manager or supervisor having his vacation leave in a supermarket in USA?

Anyone knows?

Oriental.


..

In general, a store manager in the US probably has 3 weeks vacation which accrues at a rate of about 10 hours per month. Some stores may vary as to how long he or she must be in the position before they can begin to take actual vacation days. 3 months to 6 months is common although it will vary and some store will allow the time to be taken at any point.

The US compared to the rest of the world has less time available and often times the actual vacation time may not be taken in full. (Not a healthy trend at all by the way.)

Bart

[Oriental]

In general, a store manager in the US probably has 3 weeks vacation which accrues at a rate of about 10 hours per month. Some stores may vary as to how long he or she must be in the position before they can begin to take actual vacation days. 3 months to 6 months is common although it will vary and some store will allow the time to be taken at any point.

The US compared to the rest of the world has less time available and often times the actual vacation time may not be taken in full. (Not a healthy trend at all by the way.)

Bart

Thank you for your information.

I think you are talking about the annual vacation leaves that he can accumulate and rolling over. How about the normal working hours? Do they take leave on Sunday and Saturday as office guy normally works ? I was told that in Asia, store managers work 7 day week without any leave on Sunday and weekend. The supervisors work the same way; the frontline staff work on shift but they can take leave at least once a week. Is it the same in US?

Oriental.

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[Canuckster1127]

In General, No.

The US has two categories of employees, exempt and non-exempt.

Labor laws, Union negotiations and company policy over the years have resulted in 40 hours per week being recognized as the standard work week for typical employees. Anything over that is over usually paid overtime at 1 1/2 times the hourly wage.

Salaried employees are different. They are paid a set wage and benefits and maybe have some bonus incentives based on overall company performance or some other measure of achievement. They typically are expected to work 45 - 50 hours per week and more if needed.

In a retail store, weekends need to be covered so usually store managers and supervisors will rotate their days off so that they take turns working the weekends.

Hope that helps.

Bart

[Oriental]

Thank you for the information. It does help. It is good that the labor laws specifies the overtime pay-rate which minimizes the strike for overtime work. I doubt how many employers out there actually observe the 40 hour week rule.

Oriental.

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[FFC]

...and then there are jobs like mine, contract Security Officer, where overtime is a dirty word... so instead we are forced to take a the day(s) or hour(s) that we worked over off during the same pay period. This is called Comp time. (Is there a "bitter" emoticon that I could use here?)

[Oriental]

...and then there are jobs like mine, contract Security Officer, where overtime is a dirty word... so instead we are forced to take a the day(s) or hour(s) that we worked over off during the same pay period. This is called Comp time. (Is there a "bitter" emoticon that I could use here?)

Though it may not be coercion, it is possibly a norm that you security officer have to work it over off otherwise the staff assessment may go bad in the end, isn't it?

In Hong Kong, people tend to stay at office overtime; they don't complain but it is something like "we have to because none of us takes initiative to move; taking the lead to move off work is unethical act in employer's eyes". One can't possibly explain how it has anything to do with ethics; plus overtime work doesn't mean that one gets higher compensation. I think coworkers simply are disliking criticism because they are against each other on work.

Oriental.

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[Gman]

Hi Oriental,

I just wanted to tell you how the U.S. views the asian workers over there... We see them as EXTREMELY hard workers... Working day by day with hardly any vacation. They are very loyal to their work... And they work for such low prices. It's almost peanuts... I don't know how they do it....

In one company in China, they actually slept at the factory on bunk beds with wood mattresses..

In my opinion... They are the true Christians...

In the U.S. here all they do is complain....

[FFC]

Though it may not be coercion, it is possibly a norm that you security officer have to work it over off otherwise the staff assessment may go bad in the end, isn't it?

I think my company and many others are just cheap. They would rather not pay the time and a half so they give us days off. Getting time and a half after working 40 hours is a law here...comp time is how they get around it.

[Canuckster1127]

Though it may not be coercion, it is possibly a norm that you security officer have to work it over off otherwise the staff assessment may go bad in the end, isn't it?

I think my company and many others are just cheap. They would rather not pay the time and a half so they give us days off. Getting time and a half after working 40 hours is a law here...comp time is how they get around it.

Comp time is usually allowed for in the labor statutes.

Often times unions will negotiate for overtime for any time in excess of 8 hours in a day regardless of total hours for the week. I worked on the Loading Docks of a Trucking company for part of my life where this was the case.

[FFC]

Hi Oriental,

I just wanted to tell you how the U.S. views the asian workers over there... We see them as EXTREMELY hard workers... Working day by day with hardly any vacation. They are very loyal to their work... And they work for such low prices. It's almost peanuts... I don't know how they do it....

In one company in China, they actually slept at the factory on bunk beds with wood mattresses..

In my opinion... They are the true Christians...

In the U.S. here all they do is complain....

Gman, I read that many asian countries do work long tiring hours but I have also heard statistics that many of them are able to take months of vacation at a time. I don't know if it is true but I'd love to have that kind of time off.

[Gman]

FFC,

This particular case I was viewing involved Wal-Mart where the Chinese worked for peanuts.. Many U.S. companies send their work to places like China because they know the work will get done and with hardly any complaining.. Of course the standard of living is less there, but the work ethic is very strong.. That is what I'm praising.. Also I think that many forget how the railroads got built here in the U.S.. Again, Chinese labor.. It's no wonder how they can be exploited..

Wal-Mart buys much of its merchandise from China

* Wal-Mart reports that it purchased $18 billion of goods from China in 2004.
* Wal-Mart was responsible for about 1/10th of the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2005. [“U.S. Stock Investors Wary of Analyst `Yuan Plays': Taking Stock, Bloomberg, 7/1/05]
* If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada. [China Business Weekly, 12/02/2004]

Many of Wal-Mart's “American Suppliers” actually manufacture most or all of their products in China

* An example of an “American Supplier” is Hasbro, headquartered in Rhode Island. Today, Wal-Mart is the largest purchaser of Hasbro products—accounting for 21 percent of all Hasbro goods or more than $600 million in sales. But Hasbro reports, “We source production of substantially all of our toy products and certain of our game products through unrelated manufacturers in various Far East countries, principally China.” Hasbro specifies that “the substantial majority of our toy products are manufactured in China.” [2004 Hasbro 10-K filed with the SEC]

Wal-Mart's Chinese factory workers are treated poorly

* Workers making clothing for Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China filed a class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart in September 2005 claiming that they were not paid the legal minimum wage, not permitted to take holidays off and were forced to work overtime. They said their employer had withheld the first three months of all workers' pay, almost making them indentured servants because the company refused to pay the money if they quit. [New York Times, September 14, 2005]
* Workers making toys for Wal-Mart in China's Guangdong Province reported that they would have to meet a quota of painting 8,900 toy pieces in an eight hour shift in order to earn the stated wage of $3.45 a day. If they failed to meet that quota, the factory would only pay them $1.23 for a day's work. [China Labor Watch, December 21, 2005]

Source: http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/

[Oriental]

Yes and I can tell people right here may not know well the background. Actually I was born in Hong Kong - a city of China. HK has been colony of British government for a hundred year until its sovereignty handed over back to China in July 1997. The economy and social condition in HK is entirely differently from in China - culture merged with western style and less traditional value. Pay scale for a typical HK guy is higher than in Singapore in general and I guess only very few of the guys in Tokyo and London earn higher than a HK guy does.

There was civil war in China in 1945 - 1949. Afterwards, China has been ruled under Communist rule. HK has never been governed by Communist Party so HK has been developing the same way as other capitalist countries like Commonwealth nations and colonies, e.g. Caribbean... Because of this, people in China live differently from HK people.

Before 1979, under the Communist rule, China was iron-curtained; resources and wealth were forced to be equally distributed. People under Mao's ideology must be absolutely unselfish and patriotic. In other words, a Chinese citizen should not have his self and he, as well as his soul, belonged to the nation and should survive for the nation [It is quite hard to understand how one's soul may belong to the nation, is it?]. Because of this, possession and selfish belongings were evil in Communists' notion. [the possession and belongings, to your surprise, included the intelligence in one's mind] so wealthy people and landlords were heavily penalised, imprisoned and persecuted because they were condemned to be evil [the same way as Paul approved of stoning Stephen because Stephen preached about Jesus Christ]. This movement was called Cultural Revolution. Allegedly over 50 million died because of this political turmoil lasting for decades. Wealthy people (as well as knowledgeable, intellectual and educated ones) escaped to either Hong Kong or overseas countries as refugees or fugitives from the Communists' persecution (because they were condemned to be evil !)

Hong Kong has never suffered such political movement and has been growing like other foreign countries under British rule.

The embarrassing moment came when in 1979, China decided to embark on Open Door Policy and Market Economy. China attempts to navigate itself to capitalism away from the communism.

There is huge disparity between HK and China. After the turnover in 1997 this huge difference emerged. Simply, the living standards and affluence in HK is much higher and better than in China.

That's why you can see the workforce in China earns so little because the historical background has impoverished the country so much.

I am a chartered accountant under ACCA and I live like those in Singapore, Japan, Britain and US. Now I work in Beijing, the capital city in China; my coworkers' living standards are very different from me. I witness their hard work with low pay and I understand the sufferings of history that haunts their social environment.

In another thread where I highlighted the fact of a statement in this website which seems to understate the death toll of Chineses in Second World War and I asked if it smacked of racism, I was not being aggressive to anyone here; I was simply a bit sympathetic about my coworkers and those who are with me in Beijing; because I have never suffered the same way as they suffered that traced back to their parents and grandparents', I found it a bit impelling to air it.

Now communist party still rules China as one-party totalitarism. People growing up here in China are raised up with education of loyalty to the party and only politically correct materials can serve as teaching materials. Unlike HK people under British rule, people growing up in China knows only outdated information about the outside countries and knows very little because tons of information and knowledge have been censored in educational system, media, TV, radio and even advertisments. However, the open door policy and economic reform, in the presence of foreign enterprise like Walmart that increasingly invests in China, people work very hard to compete with them. (putting aside those working for the foreign enterprises, mostly domestically owned enterprises work very hard with low pay; hard-work is to be competing with the foreign-owend firms and low pay is a result of the history that I just mentioned).

Oriental.

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[Gman]

Oriental

Thanks for the info... I'm pretty familiar with Hong Kong and China and realize the difference between the two.. However, I'm not too sure how Hong Kong is being governed now under the communist rule since it became part of mainline China in 1997.

From my understanding, the people of China have a choice now to either become part of the communist party there or be part of the capitalist party. Is this also true in HK now?

On a different note.. I think I understand the work ethic there in China. The people there are very much respectful to the authorities and do not question them.. They also work very hard for them... I believe this tradition goes back thousands of years. The people are extremely grateful for their work and are humble to their rulers.. So it is no wonder how someone could gain power over the people of China and then lord themselves over the people because they know they will not fight back.. Having this Christ-like servant attitude is engrained in them.. But unfortunately certain people can take advantage of that..

In a way, I blame the communist party there for having such a tight squeeze on the people. But also in another way I also blame the big American companies over there taking advantage of this opportunity to exploit the workers and pay them only $3.45 a day.. To me that is disgraceful.. In other words, it's the people that suffer there.. One group is lording over the people, and the rich Americans are benefiting from it.. How can they voice their opinions about it over there?

Anyways, I hope I don't get you in trouble over there over this...

God bless..

[Oriental]

Oriental

Thanks for the info... I'm pretty familiar with Hong Kong and China and realize the difference between the two.. However, I'm not too sure how Hong Kong is being governed now under the communist rule since it became part of mainline China in 1997.

After 1997. the Communist government has been keeping HK as independent city as possible and she never asks how it is governed. The problem is the very independence while British government does not interfere as well, HK becomes some place quite dictated by merchants. Since the merchants and zillionaires always theatened to redomicile their economic base to somewhere else the government policy was always in favor of the wealthy people. Social welfare is quite ignored. Education is in mess.

From my understanding, the people of China have a choice now to either become part of the communist party there or be part of the capitalist party. Is this also true in HK now?

First of all, in China, there is only one party - Communist party. If an enterpeuner and millionaire in China tells you that he does not have political identity, he must be telling lies to you. (this is a taboo in China because Chinese government wants to cultivate some wealthy men and millionaire to combat the foreigners; their racism is grave) All capitalists in China are actually molded by Chinese government. (no new coverage can reveal this, because no one can tell you this truth with verification. I work in a non-state-owned enterprise in Beijing. It portrays itself a private firm. I tell you the truth: the human resource department in our firm is communist party's representative and only members of communist party can have decision making and be key members in the firm; in our language, we describe such guys are politically righteous to be directors and senior management) It is nonsense in the viewpoint of HK people. However, it is career in Beijing people.

In HK, things are different. Freedom of speech and economy and politics, the government is packed with multi-parties. the poorest thing is absence of referendum and the political parties are elected by minority group, ousting quite a lot from voting.

On a different note.. I think I understand the work ethic there in China. The people there are very much respectful to the authorities and do not question them.. They also work very hard for them... I believe this tradition goes back thousands of years. The people are extremely grateful for their work and are humble to their rulers.. So it is no wonder how someone could gain power over the people of China and then lord themselves over the people because they know they will not fight back.. Having this Christ-like servant attitude is engrained in them.. But unfortunately certain people can take advantage of that..

You are correct in saying that people do not question the authorities (because they dare not); however it is not correct to say that they are respectful to the authorities. They bear grudge against the government. (because the places are impoverished and their living a life not as affluent as the expatriates'. It is true, however, that they don't have the nerve to complain. The authorities, the government, are actually soldiers! They do not act with reasons but they act with force.

Other myths of your words include:

1) they work hard, not for the communist party, but for themselves, for power and money, and mostly, for glory and to avoid shame (I still can't find the biblical meaning of "glory and shame". the people here are highly sensitive to "glory and shame" and, precisely, "faces" which are their lives and hatred oozes if you are better than them, and they would combat against you, by whatever means, so that by comparison, they won't be worse than anyone, in whatever respect. Sometimes, they fail, so they can be highly frustrated if they can't win the "glory" and fall into "shame"

2) they are not grateful to their work and they are not humble to their rulers. They are highly aggressive; because communist party bullies the citizens, they are simply afraid of the political party which doesn't mean that they are grateful. If they tell you that they are grateful, they are simply telling lies to you to avoid taboo.

3) the peace in China when the citizens, as you said, won't fight back, is simply because: they are not armed, and second, they don't know how to fight. the social system doesn't bear any channel to complain and there is no ombudsmen (either the concept or the mechanism) to deal with complaints. When US government always hurled criticism against China for lack of human rights, US government is absolutely right. There is no freedom and human rights in China at all, because there is no knowledge of "human rights" amongst the citizens. They simply don't know what rights they should have but sheer pitiful ignorance and naive observance to the rules.

4) I don't think their attitude are Christ-like servant, because the observance ideology is actually likened to: millions of people loyal to one source - the communist party, but millions of people do not care about each other unless they fall within 5 kinds of relationship - kings and officers, father and sons, husband and wives, teacher and students, as well as friends and enemies. Strangers do not have any relationship amongst themselves. In Christianity, Jesus teaches us to love strangers and He died for strangers' sins. Samaritan parable about neighborhood love in Luke gospel does not exist in traditional value in China. Therefore, you may see that the streets and places in China are so dirty. People do not have love for strangers (they don't understand why they should love to keep clean the places where are not their homes at all! see?)

** the so-called 5 kinds of relationship are virtually Confucius value; they are part of the traditional values for thousands of years in China.

In a way, I blame the communist party there for having such a tight squeeze on the people. But also in another way I also blame the big American companies over there taking advantage of this opportunity to exploit the workers and pay them only $3.45 a day.. To me that is disgraceful.. In other words, it's the people that suffer there.. One group is lording over the people, and the rich Americans are benefiting from it.. How can they voice their opinions about it over there?

Yes I am very sympathetic about them. The Chinese government wants to better their country but everything seems to be hard work. The poorest things are the traditional value - some thoughts instilled in social minds since Confucius 2000 years ago. (you are absolutely right the thousands years of history makes people almost impossible to accept Christian faith. ) Confucism is teaching from a saint in China 2000 years ago; the emperors in Chinese history adopt this sort of social value to instil into the people's mind with education to teach them to absolutely obedient to the elderly and, more importantly, the emperor, without any questioning and doubt. (a blind faith to the government). People who are against this notion is accused of being unethical and risk themselves being ousted by the society at large. I really don't know how they can voice their opinions. Walmart is said to have organised labor union in China, but the problem is the traditional value of Chinese people who don't know that they have the rights to complain at all, and worse still, they don't get accustomed to complain! How pitiful they are! they are educated for thousands of years in their minds: don't complain and be good boys in schools, family, and as a citizens just like getting poisoned in their minds!

The same situation is: no body dares challenge Pharisees and Teacher of the Laws those days amongst Jews because they are educated not to challenge.

Anyways, I hope I don't get you in trouble over there over this...

God bless..

I am more than happy to explain more. Fund managers and analysts of investment banks in US, UK and Australia come visiting our firms very often. They are never disillusioned but believe tons of myth about China and I have been having a hard time to explain again and again.

the simplest way to understand China is: imagine a Rambo, finishing his glory in Vietnam war, comes back and grasps power in USA, and being a soldier himself, his policy is: every American has, and is forced, to be a soldier to see the world. How crazy it is!



Oriental.
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