We've Been Quiet, but Human Worker is Back
And even more committed to helping improve work life for everyone
Hi Human Worker readers!
It’s been a while since my last newsletter. This year has been a tumultuous one so far and a lot has changed for me in that time. I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and even bought a car for the first time in 14 years!
Aside from writing Human Worker, I’m also a freelance writer for software companies. Worries about a possible (or current, depending on who you ask) recession and the Silicon Valley Bank failure, which has affected many of my clients, meant that I had to focus 100% on generating income–which is why Human Worker has been quiet for a while.
But every week I’ve thought about how we’re still dealing with mass layoffs, union busting, and severe burnout. It’s just as hard for workers today as it was at the end of 2022, maybe harder. So I’m back! I’m excited to get back into writing this newsletter and hearing from you, the readers!
I’m more committed than ever to talking about employee wellbeing, tackling big problems in workplace culture and the laws that affect us, and encouraging each of you to prioritize your physical and mental health before your employer’s profit.
I’m also launching a new format that’s easier to digest and covers a range of topics. I’ll highlight new laws, local worker wins, national conversations, include personal stories from myself and others, and more . Please share your feedback because at the end of the day, this newsletter is supposed to be useful for you, the reader.
The Latest in Employment News
For child labor laws, it’s the 19th century all over again
This is something I never thought I would hear or write about in this newsletter: child labor is coming back across the United States. 11 states have introduced and/or passed bills intent on weakening child labor laws over the past 2 years: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Tennessee.
For decades, restrictive labor laws meant more children were in school and completing high school. Today, reactionary politicians (supported by industry lobbying groups) are worried that record low unemployment rates and labor shortage concerns in some industries, they’ll run out of workers. So they’ve turned to employing children instead.
While states are trying to make it easier to hire 14 year olds to work on dangerous machines in factories and fast food restaurants, the federal government is cracking down on violations. The most at risk children targeted for unfair labor? Unaccompanied migrant youth. These children are eligible for asylum since they fled violence in countries like Guatemala, but a serious backlog and delays means they’re in limbo for years. This makes them targets for exploitation.
What can you do? Contact your federal representatives and senators and your state level representatives and call for them to uphold labor laws that protect children from exploitation. Ask them to press the Biden administration to urgently address a record backlog of 1.6 million asylum seekers who have yet to have a hearing and have no right to work legally.
Many of us had jobs as teenagers that we look back on fondly. I had summer jobs myself. But 14 year olds shouldn’t be working until 10 pm on school nights, especially not while using dangerous equipment.
Food for Thought
Accountability in layoffs
Another week, another layoff. If you’ve recently been laid off, check out the Human Worker Layoff Guide for advice on unemployment, healthcare coverage, severance packages, and more. You can also ask me any questions through Substack comments or send me a LinkedIn message.
As usual, recent layoffs have affected frontline workers the most. We’re not seeing the people who made the strategic decisions that resulted in poor financial performance–the CEOs, COOs, VPs, and Heads of Recruitment and HR–taking the hit. Instead, they blame their failure on the people who were simply doing the work they were hired to do.
As a former salesperson, I’m especially upset at how leaders blame their sales teams for the company’s financial struggles, while almost never giving them credit when things are going well. Sales reps will do everything humanly possible to try and drum up business, that’s the nature of the job. It’s a slap in the face to say otherwise.
Take a look at this LinkedIn post (which includes a transcript as source) from Sahil Mansuri, CEO at Bravado. He calls out Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, for PUBLICLY blaming sales reps for poor fiscal results on his weekly earnings call to investors.
“Although we’ve won ⅓ of the Fortune 500 customers, if we’re honest with ourselves, we saw a lot of our success… because our products were so good and solved real problems…This allowed many of our sales team to succeed largely by just taking orders. When the fish are jumping right in the boat, you don’t need to be a very good fisherman.”
It’s common for companies to attribute sales success to how great their product is, but that’s never just how big deals get across the line. It takes months of relationship building by sales reps who run demos, negotiate contracts, and do whatever is needed for their customer.
Prince continues on to say, “as the tide goes out, you get a clear view of who’s not wearing shorts.” He explains that a significant percentage of the sales force has missed performance targets and the only solution is to “quickly rotate” them out for new salespeople who will be more successful.
In the eyes of Prince, reps only succeeded because they were lucky and they failed because they weren’t good enough. Now, people are losing their jobs. There are always going to be underperforming sales reps who get let go (I’ll even admit that I’ve been that rep) but publicly shaming them is cruel and poor leadership. This logic isn’t isolated to Cloudflare’s CEO.
His words show me how leaders like Prince can’t possibly understand the jobs that their employees do. I’m absolutely sure that a deep dive into Cloudflare’s sales data will show how the sales team worked long hours and were as creative as they could be in order to secure any deal they could. During the good times and the bad.
The lighter Side of Working
Office romance - hush hush but very common
SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management released survey results that show that employees, overall, are fine with love in the office. Traditional advice is to keep your personal and professional life separate.
But when you spend 40 hours minimum talking to colleagues (more than many of us spend speaking with friends and family), romance is bound to blossom.
The old advice might say no to office dating, but in reality, every generation has found romance in the office, perhaps they just kept it more quiet in the past.
According to SHRM, 79% of U.S. workers in office romances are dating their peers, rather than direct reports (10%) or their bosses (18%). Bringing into questions the concerns around unfair power dynamics.
Today, employers are far less likely to require employees to disclose their office relationships. At the same time, most U.S. workers are fine with telling their colleagues, just not HR.
Most heartening, is that 57% of those workers who have or have had office romances say their primary motivation is love! Only 1% said it was to benefit their job or career.
This makes a girl want to go back to office life…just kidding. But the workplace is a great place to meet lifelong friends, mentors, and maybe even the love of your life.
Welcome back! You're covering important topics as always, and I look forward to your future posts!