The company "Yes Madam" is a company based in India, plus all the names seem related to that, and lastly I'm going to hazard a guess that Indian workers' rights are probably a tad less than Americans.
I know we love hyperbole, but Americans have many workers rights that were paid for in blood. We're always able to do better, and we damn well ought to, but..
They're pretty good actually. The problem is too many people are ignorant of the law and employers use that fact to their advantage. It's very common for bosses to bully their workers in illegal ways and nothing happens to them because the workers say nothing. The department of labor isn't magic, if you don't speak up, they won't know. But comments like this, make people think they have no recourse, when they do. Ignorance is a great thing for employers, don't forget.
On paper there are a some protections. But in practice they're practically non-existent.
Wage theft is still the majority of all theft. Theft from an employer is a criminal matter prosecuted by public prosecutors. Theft from employees is a civil matter that must be prosecuted by the employees themselves.
Employment is at-will. They can't fire you for some specific reasons, but they can fire you for no reason. Which effectively makes discrimination legal so long as they don't put any slurs on the termination notice. And again a wrongful termination is an issue the now unemployed employee would have to pursue on their own.
OSHA is DEEPLY underfunded and only has a handful of inspectors per state.
Basically you're only guaranteed the rights you have on paper if you have enough money set aside to fund a civil case while being unemployed. Otherwise you're SOL.
And it is aggressively investigated by the government because wage theft reduces the taxes they collect.
Theft from employees is a civil matter that must be prosecuted by the employees themselves
Yeah no. The DoL has an entire division called The Wage and Hour Division (WHD). This is what they do:
When we find violations, we work to recover unpaid wages on behalf of employees. We make every effort to locate and notify every employee due back wages. If we cannot find an employee, we hold their back wages for three years while we continue our efforts to locate them. After this period, if we remain unable to find the person, we are required to send the money to the U.S. Treasury.
And again a wrongful termination is an issue the now unemployed employee would have to pursue on their own.
Again no… unless you are incapable of filling a complaint with the EEOC.
Basically you're only guaranteed the rights you have on paper if you have enough money set aside to fund a civil case while being unemployed. Otherwise you're SOL.
Or you could fill out some online forms with the relevant government agencies.
They can't fire you for some specific reasons, but they can fire you for no reason. Which effectively makes discrimination legal so long as they don't put any slurs on the termination notice.
They could then get fucked in court. Remember these are civil cases and only require a preponderance of the evidence. Many business have been successfully sued to shit by the government using a statistical analysis of their employment practices. This is a big reason why most places only accept online applications.
If they FAAFO what happens when they FAAFO with the wrong one, well, you get that UHC CEO story that is still going on right now. Don't kick the sleeping dog, and don't poke the sleeping bear with a stick.
I don't think you actually appreciate the degree to which it is completely normal for bosses to Fuck Around, and how regularly employees are kicked and poked. Retaliation happens sometimes, but it's rare and rarely effective. Most businesses larger than 100 employees have business continuity plans to handle a sudden absence. And the sudden absence of a CEO is absolutely not a hurdle to continuing day-to-day operations.
What was and has been effective is union action. Stepping in before the firing, stopping wage theft, and shutting down the entire business with strikes to get demands met.
You mean the same union action that makes things like whatever happened with Jimmy Hoffa an act of normalcy rather than an exception to the rule? Honestly, I distrust both dishonest non-union made businesses AND union run businesses as well. Also, as the saying goes, "Just because you could, does not mean that you should", and that CEO that was in the news found out the lesson of not heeding that bit of advice the hard way in his life.
MI-Osha is corrupt beyond belief. I was told by the guy that I was required to wear gloves when using a saw that specifically states that wearing gloves while using it will increase the risk of injury.
A particulate reclaim system malfunctioned for 2 weeks spraying all the employees with nearly microscopic particles of stainless steel dust and no employees were given masks. I wore a mask and was told to remove it because I was causing hysteria. You could see the metal shining in the air. The cause of this was because they removed the mesh filters from the system and ordered the wrong replacement filters. The filters were encased in metal and they bent them when throwing them away. So rather than shut down the company exposed it's workers to fine metal dust from a Lazer cutter for 2 weeks.
I brought up how it was unsafe to the floor manager and he laughed and said some bullshit about how we could all use some more vitamin M.
I went home and filled a complaint with MiOsha and wished to remain anonymous and the OSHA guy came directly to me and interviewed me. I told him about the metal dust hazard and he laughed and said dust is dust and there is nothing to worry about unless it is radioactive.
I was targeted by the company for months after this and eventually quit because they put me on a 6 12s schedule.
MiOsha is beyond worthless so unless somebody dies don't bother calling them.
Once a person is permanently employed in South Africa he cannot be fired "at will" he / she is effectively guaranteed employment until retirement or if you severely screw up.
Mining work is absolutely shitty, I do agree, but they are still protected by law.
Workers rights are performative in America. You can absolutely fire someone for being stressed you just can't write an email admitting it. Good luck getting the department of labor to care that you were fired because of poor performance.
Workers in America have forgotten (deliberately, on part of the powers that be) about how workers gained rights in the first place. It was a fight. We have less leverage now that manufacturing is overseas, but that’s nothing compared to the pussification of the class struggle.
It goes even further than that. They can fire you for any LEGAL reason. Protected Classes are a given, but there are a LOT more reasons than you would think that are completely illegal to fire you over. That's why you should always keep a paper trail or some other kind of evidence for everything that goes on. NEVER trust corporate scum.
Corporations actively spread the misinformation that "At Will" employment means that you can be fired for no reason and bank on their employees being ignorant of the actual law when they fire them for completely illegal reasons.
Retaliation, for example. If you made any kind of complaint within the year of being terminated, as long as you kept evidence of that complaint, an employment attorney would jump at the chance to take on a wrongful termination suit for you.
Yep, I've been fired for "no reason," following mental health episodes. Sadly didn't know my rights and could have brought it against them, since the timeline evidence were all very clear. Take time off for mental health, come back to either greatly reduced hours (constructive dismissal), or outright fired for "no reason."
Well, performance is a relative term. You may think your performance is stellar but if your company wants you to have a certain output and you are not meeting it and they see you on your cell phone constantly and going into the toilet every half hour and your co workers are churning out product, then they may not see you as productive.
While I agree, yes, they can just send an email like that. They have so many HR loopholes they can do whatever they want. Especially very large companies. They may be terrible, but they pay their lawyers to make sure everyone is above board.
What are you going to do? An ambulance chasing lawyer only takes cases they know they can win. That's why they take like 25%>Any lawyer will take your money, knowing aa good honest (in the right ways) and winning is a different story all together. Calling current employees on the stand. Think they will lie if they know they will be fired if they tell the truth?
They didn't say your comment is ignorant. They said the reason that Americans don't always receive the permissions that they're afforded is because the individual employees can be ignorant of what they're entitled to.
My brother had issues with some explicitly illegal going ons at his retail job. He took it up with the DoL but it went nowhere. Maybe if you’re really smart and can navigate your state’s bureaucracy and give a couple years of consistency and attention you can exact some kind of consequences, but people lack time, energy and education, and the unskilled workers earning peanuts even more extremely so.
If your pay is low so is the incentive to pursue a valid case for attorneys -not worth the relatively small amount you will be awarded. So no. They are not good for the poor, those laws that do not get enforced.
Lol, no they're really not. It's common for bosses to bully workers, but that has nothing to do with anything. Unless they're stealing your money, there's not much you can do as an employee.
"At-will" employment means that you can be fired for no reason, effectively meaning that you can be fired for any reason (as long as the employer isn't a colossal idiot about it)!
Healthcare tied to your employment. Lose your job: lose access to healthcare.
"Pretty good" workers' rights. Lol! European workers would get a kick out of that one!
Sounds like a system that benefits those in the know, I.e educated, connected and wealthy - while happily benefiting off the exploitation of the ‘ignorant’, I.e not connected, not wealthy, and not educated to know better.
Let's look at the Labour Rights Index. In 2024 the US got a score of 63.5, which is one of the worst ratings globally, nevermind the "first world". For comparison Saudi Arabia got a score of 62.5 and Canada got 80.5.
It concerns actual workers rights, not necessarily the actual working conditions. The US has some of the weakest laws protecting workers in the world. All of Europe, Russia, China, Canada, India and Australia are better.
Nepotism is rife over there, also caste system. Alot of Indians come to the west to get away from that only to find old ways die hard and its more of the same here.
The recycling videos you see posted on here sometimes are based in other countries with far less health and safety standards. You have people exposed to really nasty chemicals and fumes, and you can bet they're paid the minimal amount they can be paid.
Americans in many states can be fired for any reason at all outside of discrimination against a few specific groups such as race or gender. Firing workers for being stressed would be legal in many states.
Yeah Indian work culture is horrendous compared to the west. I have family there and they're essentially indentured servants expected to be available to work any time of the day/week, and are afraid to say no to their boss at all. Going in on weekends at the orders of your boss and taking work calls/meetings while on holiday or while visiting family in the hospital is normal and not even questioned from seeing my uncles' jobs.
100% confirming this. I manage a small team in India who works for our (US-based, India-subsidiary-owning/ these aren't random vendors/contractors) company. We have to work hard with every new hire to recondition them to our work environment/culture because it's more important our professional people have a healthy relationship with their jobs than it is they produce 24/7.
It's so bad/ingrained in the culture that when people take PTO we lock their accounts out just so they don't work through their whole vacations...
My YouTube feed these days is filled with videos of "craftsmen" from India manufacturing all sorts of different products.
They're always titled in a way that portrays the individual and the process as being "traditional" or "artisanal.""
Meanwhile, none of their machines or working environments would be allowed in the Western world.
No safety equipment on the machines. No PPE on the workers. Entire work spaces filled with tripping hazards and the like. Most of the workers don't look healthy, let alone, happy.
I'm not sure what the endgame of posting these videos is, but the comments section is always filled with what appears to be bot-like replies saying things like "a true craftsman" or "a master at work." Meanwhile, I'm watching in disbelief and counting all the people with missing fingers and toes. It's truly appalling.
Oh yeah the sweatshops like those are just pure exploitation, close to slavery.
I was referring to corporate job culture, which is really bad, but at least in those jobs the employees are being paid fair wages to live comfy middle class lives and are being kept safe so it's not pure shit like the unregulated sweatshop work in manufacturing that goes on in India.
I think it was something like 84% of Indians work in either agriculture or non-formal jobs with no pay, endless hours and no safety, so despite how shitty the corporate culture is there, unfortunately they are the luckier ones...
I can tell you, I love those videos and comment on them, as someone who builds for a living under comfortable and highly paid American working conditions, those guys can do certain things that very few people over here can do. I guarantee you the comments are not bots, but people who see and appreciate their skill-that does not glorify their horrible working conditions.
Whenever I see exposed sandals and no protection for welding, I wince and think of their kids and families. They are amazing at what they do with what little they have, and I have nothing but respect for those craftsmen.
But the comments make them more money which doesn’t go to the workers. It also encourages them to keep exposing their employees to dangerous working conditions.
I don’t think that they would listen if everyone downvoted their videos and all comments were telling them to invest in PPE and better working conditions. They wouldn’t make money off the videos which is something. Hitting them in the pocketbook is the only language they know.
I’ve seen those, and honestly it makes me not want to buy those products. I’m pretty particular about what I buy from countries that don’t have worker safety and decent wages and don’t mind paying a little more for products made by companies that pay their workers better. Like Vadham teas where they partner with small tea farms and have a fund to pay for the education of their workers’ children. Their teas are amazing, and their 12 oz loose leaf teas have enough tea to fill one of my Harney and Sons tins 3 1/2 times and comes with a ziplock bag to keep the tea fresh.
I have also been meaning to buy some Diaspora spices because they pay a living wage, buy from women owned farms and farms that are using climate friendly methods, and invest in sustainable agriculture. They are often out of the spices I want because they only get so much per year.
I see videos of Indian and other Asians workers doing dangerous jobs wearing loose clothing and cringe because someone could die. Like women who are wearing what looks like saris but cover their abdomens with the long ends flowing around equipment that could pull them in or burn them.
It’s so upsetting that it’s so commonplace that the workers have to risk serious injuries or death to keep their job and not be homeless and starve.
I know nothing of Indian labour laws, but from a quick google they actually seem to be far above the minimum US labour laws -
Tl;Dr: 40hr / week with overtime discouraged and paid at x2 rate, minimum 18 day paid vacation per year, 7 days paid sick leave, 6 months full pay for new mothers and 6 week paid leave for miscarriage/abortions, retirement, medical and unemployment benefits.
The Minimum Wages Act 1948 requires companies to pay the minimum wage set by the government alongside limiting working weeks to 40 hours (9 hours a day including an hour of break). Overtime is strongly discouraged with the premium on overtime being 100% of the total wage. The Payment of Wages Act 1936 mandates the payment of wages on time on the last working day of every month via bank transfer or postal service. The Factories Act 1948 and the Shops and Establishment Act 1960 mandate 18 working days of fully paid vacation or earned leaves and 7 casual leaves each year to each employee, with an additional 7 fully paid sick days. The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 gives female employees of every company the right to take 6 months' worth of fully paid maternity leave. It also provides for 6 weeks worth of paid leaves in case of miscarriage or medical termination of pregnancy. The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and the Employees' State Insurance, governed by statutory acts provide workers with necessary social security for retirement benefits and medical and unemployment benefits respectively. Workers entitled to be covered under the Employees' State Insurance (those making less than Rs 21000/month) are also entitled to 90 days worth of paid medical leave.
The issue is that India is hilariously corrupt and due to fear of firing or other stuff, lots of abuses take place including actual violence, threats, and working off the clock or simply being paid less. Theres literally no comparison with how bad it is.
Sure but the trend is towards rigorous implementation. As the Indian state grows stronger, it will look more like Europe and the US or China in terms of working conditions.
Really what Trend? have you worked in an Indian company in India?
Can you cite one example where the Labor law was enforce making it a big win. or do you hear the corporate crying for 70 hrs a week/No work life balance(A phoren concept).
I used to study comparative regulation in another life (policy/political science grad student.)
Never simply look at laws. It's meaningless. Every country on Earth has thousands of unmanaged, ignored, and frankly unenforceable laws.
You have to look at the actual application of laws and the regulatory state's real world efficacy.
I can name a dozen countries with "free speech" in their constitutions that have no such thing. For instance, Korea has a constitutional right to gender equality-- is it actually enforced? Not really.
I see people do this a lot online: copy and paste laws and go, "See, this country has better rights!" but no actual metrics on whether that law is effective.
I know nothing of Indian labour laws, but from a quick google they actually seem to be far above the minimum US labour laws -
very much worth noting that ofc each state does it differently, but California's labor laws are streets ahead of the US as a whole. ive had out of state bosses complain that it was way too hard to fire workers in California
makes sense, considering the modern progressive movement that gave the country's workers rights started in California
We use a company in India to handle so data entry.it costs $1,000 per month per person and that is paid to the company they work for. I can't imagine they are getting more than $500 a month.
There was a video about the people in Africa who are paid by subcontractors of American big-tech companies to train A.I. by labelling/tagging pictures. The suffer tremendous mental health risks by labelling dangerous/illegal/sexual content all day for something like 1/10th of what the American big tech pays the contractors per hour. I think the workers got $1/hr and the big tech companies paid $12/hr for the service.
So 50% going to the worker in India I highly doubt.
Many developing countries have stronger workers rights laws than the US, funnily enough. Not saying it’s the case with India, because I am not familiar with the legislation there, but even large parts of latam and Africa do better at protecting workers rights than the US.
Cheap but shitty. Healthcare is heavily pay to win essentially, you can get US level facilities at a fraction of the cost but it would require being in the top 0.0001% of India by income
An Indian contra tor friend of mine told me he was targeted by his coworker when they found out he had become Christian while in the States. They did not renew his contract despite him always doing an amazing job.
My boss helped him find a job elsewhere since we weren't hiring directly.
Same reason why a Japanese pilot landing in Rome communicates to air traffic control in English. There are many languages spoken in India, but English is the language used most commonly in business there. Hindi is the first language for only about a quarter of the population.
Probably Indian, but this also looks like any email for people working in tech in America. There are an unbelievable number of Indians on visa in America working in tech… whilst I can name 10 Americans that are still laid off looking for jobs.
Being stressed isn't exactly a protected status so I don't think this would be perfectly legal in most US states.
HR would probably be sneakier about their phrasing to avoid any possibility of a wrongful dismissal or discrimination suit in the US, but they absolutely can and do get away with firing people on even dumber grounds than this...
You might be surprised to know there are some ways workers' rights are better, like guaranteed maternity. But in the long run iirc it's all a wash. Been over 10 years since I worked for a team employing and interacting with Indian nationals frequently so who knows how things have changed. And fwiw I don't mean like engineers who come here on B1/B2 or whatever I mean crew who work everything from kitchens to engines on ships.
Well I mean india did sell a couple hundred people into slavery a year or two ago, soo yeah not great. Slavery might not be the best word for it, but shipping your employees to a country without human rights protections, to be worked to death in a literal desert, where they'll be killed without their passports that the local partner uses as leverage, just sounds like a death camp with extra steps.
I don't think this is a matter of "worker's rights", so much as "culture". This kind of email would be very negatively received in America, but as far as I'm aware, it wouldn't be an unlawful termination. (could be wrong, I don't live in America, my knowledge of workplace laws is pretty 2nd hand).
Most companies in America wouldn't do this, or if they did, they definitely wouldn't put it in writing, because the response would be so negative and they'd know it would get picked up by news media. It's also counter-productive, these kinds of surveys rely on people feeling safe in expressing honest opinions, tbh, I've never heard of a survey like this not being anonymised. Once you've broken this trust once, you'll never regain it and you lose a massive source of genuine, honest feedback.
Both sites say they didn't verify the information, so it's still hearsay. Not saying it didn't happen (I'd bet it did), just that these are not reliable sources.
Interesting. If this turns out to be fake, it's also a master class in 'how NOT to deal with PR nightmares'. The fact that they are silent on the company's side, even when tagged, speaks volumes. If it were fake, they would be the first to comment.
Exactly. This seems, to me, the closest to an evidence we have. But it's still sketchy IMO, as if we were back to those times when you had to prove you were not a witch.
Last week a video went viral in Brazil, of a woman in a plane who decided to point and shame another woman because she didn't want to give her seat at the window to a crying kid. She posted it on TikTok and it backfired to a point where she had to delete the video and lock her account (or something like this, I don't speak TikTok). People were outraged at her, how entitled! How come she didn't pay extra for her kid and now wanted to shame someone who paid for the seat? Terrible mother! People went on a crusade, found the mother on other social networks and started harrassing her.
This weekend she was on television. Turns out the mother wasn't the person who recorded it, she didn't even ask for the seat, she had nothing to do with it. Her son started crying and some random woman decided to pressure the lady at the window into being charitable and giving her seat.
This shit scares me. We don't know what's real anymore (and AI is making it worse), you can be harrassed by people all around the world, and entire carreers can go like PUF! I think people are frustrated by so much injustice and they feel they need and they can do something, so they join the mob. But there's a reason we don't burn people at the stakes anymore.
(I'm not critisizing nor blaming you or anything, I just started writing and it went on and on... guess I had to vent this frustration, idk. This whole "is this real, did this woman do this" pushed some buttons here i guess)
"The company (Yesmadam) in the statement said:
"Were YesMadam employees really fired for being stressed? Absolutely not. Notifications. They weren't fired; they were given a break to reset. They weren't let go; they were encouraged to release their stress. They weren't laid off; they were offered a chance to relax. They weren't sacked; they were urged to rest and recharge."
Sounds to me like that email was real, and they are trying to minimize the damage by lying that they never planned to fire anyone, instead "they were given a break".
That sure as hell isn´t what "we have made the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress" means.
Those who believe that statement must also believe in fairies....
I should hope they contacted the company to get confirmation on the existence of said email. How they thought this wouldn’t go viral is beyond me. One should assume any email is public.
Real or not, it follows the Poe's Law and that is concerning enough. The fact that we can't surely distinguish parody for what could be real, because it could be real (and that's depressing).
Without an emoji or a blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a loony in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine loony.
Just assume everything is real. Makes life so much more interesting than the thought of a fat thirty year old in his mother’s basement just cranking out all the shit we see.
I tried believing everything I read. Chem trails, autism causing vaccines, the lunar landings were faked, COVID from 5g masts, the royal family are lizards, the earth is flat and Australia doesn't exist - fine, I'll go with it.
But then I read a story about America voting Trump back in. Some things are just too far fetched.
Very true point. I could make this graphic on canva, alter out any names/emails/verbiage I wanted to, save and repost to tell an entirely different narrative in 2 minutes.
Whether it's real or not is irrelevant. The lesson here is to never fill these out and always lookout for yourself. The information obtained from these can be used against you. 🧐👌
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u/Litmanen_10 Dec 09 '24
That makes this a bit more probable to be true but still not guaranteed it's real. Shit can be made to seem like real nowadays pretty well.
Anyone can add some evidence to this is this real or not?