Some career experts (and I use this title lightly) tell people to work for free as a way to get their foot in the door. This is a stupid suggestion so I was heartened to read a story on FastCompany.com encouraging workers not to work for free.

“If you’re busy doing free work because it’s a good way to hide from the difficult job of getting paid for your work,” Seth Godin exhorts, “stop.”

Godin is a branding guru, and people tend to listen to what he advises. That a great thing because adult internships for for-profit corporations is a dumb way to climb the ladder of success, as Godin points out.

It also can be illegal, which the article fails to mention. (more…)

As the economy improves, many workplace experts are predicting a mass exodus of disgruntled employees who’ve been treated unfairly during the economic downturn.

There are early signs of a slight uptick in workers saying “goodbye” to their employers. “The number of quits was 2.1 million in November compared to 1.8 million at the end of the recession in June 2009,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent data.

But I’m here to tell everyone to think before you say “f__k you” to the boss.

After so many companies were laying off workers, slashing wages and benefits, it’s not surprising that some employees feel no obligation to be nice when they head out the door, says David Kaplan, management professor for Saint Louis University. “It’s understandable,” he adds, “because they feel the employer has violated the psychological contract with employees, and they don’t feel they owe them anything.”

Whether it’s giving notice, training your replacement or abiding by noncompete agreements you may have signed, these post-employment niceties that were expected once upon a time are not a given in today’s workplace.

Yes, it sucks to be treated badly but you don’t want to burn your bridges when you leave. I know that sounds like an old-fashioned concept. But I suggest you take your anger out on management privately, after you’ve written a formal letter announcing your departure.

That’s what a good friend of mine did many years ago. (more…)

The Career Diva posts that got the most people reading in 2012 were all about the stupid things employers do.

Here are the top ten posts of the year:

Turns out many of you are upset about performance reviews, and you have good reason to be. The experts say such reviews are arbitrary and utterly useless.

And quite a few of you agreed some human resource departments can be clueless, especially when it comes to employee benefits such as family and medical leave.

Another workplace problem that gets under everyone’s skin is the rise in employers trying to get under your skin and find out how healthy, or unhealthy workers are.

A disturbing trend during 2012 was the growing number of employees holding multiple jobs.

It turns out if you’re a tough white woman or tough black man you can’t get a break.

What got job seekers angry this past year was the endless amount of interviews hiring managers think they need to decide on a candidate.

And women are still facing the perpetual problem of not supporting each other. Who cares how much Kelly Clarkson weighs? Quite a few of us, it turns out.

Employers are still asking job candidates how old they are, and they’re not always breaking the law when they do it.

My standing desk is still my back’s savoir, and a popular topic for many of you.

And finally, the Diva post that got the most readers reading was actually about a story I didn’t write. Lesson for 2013, don’t believe everything you read, especially work-at-home success stories.

Happy New Years everyone!! Looking forward to hearing from you all in the new year with your job/career questions. (careerdiva@verizon.net)

Government workers can’t get a break.

They’ve become the target of endless negative attacks. Many pundits keep beating the drum that government should operate more like Corporate America when it comes to the workforce. Businesses, not government bureaucrats, know how to save money and motivate employees, they stress.

Turns out, few really believe government managers should take a page from private business managers.

Last night CNN did a scathing piece on the General Services Administration saying they uncovered evidence of wasteful spending. The government agency reportedly provided cooking classes for employees as part of a team-building exercise.

The GSA has come under fire recently for a host of spending decisions on employees but this particular one got CNN’s Anderson Cooper up in arms last night. Cooper is still mad they went to Vegas on the tax-payers dime last year for a conference.

You would think the team-building cooking classes would be getting kudos from critics of how the government works. Team-building workshops are a key tool used by private corporations, including Turner Broadcasting, the owners of CNN. (more…)

Bill Maher on Real Time Friday did a great job summing up the insanity of no mandated paid vacation time for U.S. workers.

Yes, employees in our great nation don’t get paid vacations, unless their employers decide to provide it. And for those of us who get paid vacation, the offering is pretty pathetic. Among the world’s industrialized nations, the United States ranks 9th behind Korea for goodness sake. And we’re one of the only countries that does not mandate even one day off a year for vacation.

There have been attempts to get America on the vacation track, including the Paid Vacation Act of 2009 but the bill went no where. (more…)

The great news this morning that Apple is considering bringing back some production to the United States brought out the pessimist in me.

This was my first tweet of the day:

US-made tech products are best/but will apple bring sweatshops to the US?- Apple CEO wants to make more products in US

There have been several reports lately that manufacturing jobs are starting to come back to our shores, but what’s driving a lot of the turnaround is sinking wages for Americans. No, we still don’t make as little as our Chinese counterparts, but the wallets of average American workers has been getting thinner everyday.

This from a Wall Street Journal article from Monday titled “Flat U.S. Wages Help Fuel Rebound in Manufacturing”:

With unemployment still high and global competition intense, employers have the upper hand in asking unions to relax work rules and restrain, or reduce, wages and benefits. Scores of U.S. companies have negotiated two-tier contracts with unions that allow them to pay new hires less than existing workers or otherwise restrain wage and benefit costs.

Indeed, real wages for U.S. workers grew at their slowest rate in two years, this on the heels of a report that CEOs brought in record pay checks in 2011.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook made close to $400 million in compensation last year. The average Apple worker in China makes: (more…)

You have to wonder how many employees in this country are being screwed out of the pay they’re owned when major corporations with fleets of labor lawyers keep thwarting the law.

On Monday, the Department of Labor announced yet another settlement, this time with mega retailers Wal-Mart, involving unpaid overtime and the misclassification of workers.

This wasn’t just a handful of workers who weren’t paid what they were owed. We’re talking 4,500 across the country. And this comes a year after a $40 million plus settlement for Wal-Mart stemming from charges it didn’t give workers appropriate meal breaks and pay.

I’m glad Wal-mart agrees to pay back wages when caught — the latest to the tune of nearly $5 million — but you’ve got to scratch your head over how this happens.

Office supply giant Staples also settled similar charges of misclassifying workers last year.

Is this just corruption by companies trying to make an even bigger profit, or did someone just not get the memo on how the nation’s labor laws work? (more…)

A group of servers at Hooters are claiming they weren’t given proper breaks and were swindled out of their tips, among other labor law violations. But when they tried to sue as part of a class action their employer pulled the rug out from under them.

The servers, it turns out, had signed an employment contract and in the fine print — which so few employees read — it said they were obligated to go to arbitration, a process to resolve disputes outside of court.

In the end, this story worked out for the servers because Hooters didn’t ask to go to arbitration in a timely manner, according to a district court ruling last month. But most employee-employer disputes like this don’t work out this way.

A case involving a chef at a fancy steak chain, Morton’s, wanted to sue his employer for sexual harassment, and he claimed that “one Morton’s chef would remove asparagus from his genitals and serve it to the restaurant’s paying customers,” according to an MSNBC.com story. The chains owners are now trying to force him into arbitration saying he signed an employment agreement that clearly stated he had to go through arbitration.

More and more workers are unwittingly signing employment agreement that requires them to waive their right to a lawsuit and agree to arbitration. The process, according to some legal experts, is skewed in favor of employers who typically hire the arbitrators who handle the disputes.

For many it’s an unfair David-and-Goliath match up, and it can be expensive for workers. (more…)

Americans aren’t likely to fight for a lunch break. But citizen lunchers from many other nations would, and do. Take workers in Hong Kong.

Last week, about 1,000 securities brokers and traders, and restaurant employees, protested at the headquarters of the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. over a proposed reduction in their lunch break from 90 minutes to an hour, according to Bloomberg.

An hour!? Workers in this country hardly get a few minutes and they don’t seem too upset about it. Most of you are actually eating at your desks. About 65 percent of employees here either eat at their desk or don’t take lunch breaks at all, according to a survey by Right Management, an HR consulting firm.

“Lunch patterns allow us to infer a few things about the North American workplace; and one thing that we already know is that the pressure for productivity and performance can be relentless,” said Michael Haid, senior vice president of talent management at Right Management. “Employees may feel they have to apologize for stepping out, but in the long run this kind of company culture does not help improve performance or engagement.”

And executives aren’t a great example either. (more…)

For many years now, we’ve all heard about the terrible nursing shortage in this country. The line has been, people who went into nursing would be thrown buckets of money and treated like royalty by the healthcare administrators wanting to hire them. That caused waves of workers to head to nursing schools.

Well, it turns out, promises of milk and honey were hype. Nurses are now being asked to take cuts in compensation and to work more.

A nurse told me a few years back that she thought all the hyperbole about a shortage was caused by the healthcare providers themselves in order to end up with an oversupply of nurses and thus be in a position to pay nurses less. I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but the end result she predicted is happening. (more…)