No Raises this year.... for anyone!

Lets hope this storm passes within the next yr or so. But even that seems like an eternity when one never knows what's around the corner.

exactly! I make my rent and electric my top priority and for that reason. I would not want to be moving my daughter all around. Years ago when I had 3 small ones, we spent 3 months in a tent due to such circumstances....an eyeopening experience and not one I'd care to repeat.

I hear ya... unfortuantly the utility is on the bottom of the list... if we can't make the car pmts we can't get to work to pay for anything. & of course if you start missing a payment on your credit card they jack you up to a very unreasonable rate wich a person can't afford at all... and if you can't afford it you can get sued ect. I've never lived in a tent before but ya know... I had a friend that lived in a camper on and off. I never heard the real reason but she'd always say her phone was getting shut off because of telemarketers not that they didn't pay the bill. *sigh* but they spent many summers "camping" and whatnot wich to me is perhaps one of many lil factors why her teenagers are unruley... no stability.

I think it would be utterly devistatin for anyone with a family to loose their job. IF you were single and no kids it wouldn't be as bad to crash @ a friend or family members house for a while or whatever.... but taking kids with you is a whole other kettle of fish. I worry about having to sell my house or get it forclosed on and have to jog my kids from school to school til we find a perminent home. My mom moved me around alot (I went to 9 schools from 5k-12th, no way to make friends) as a kid and I don't want that for my kids ya know?

I hope you don't have to move to find work but unfortunatly that's what you may have to do I suppose. I told hubby I was glad they didn't cut his pay atleast. Though I noticed on his check his holiday pay had his shift premium rate on it wich normally it's his base rate.... I don't complain though every lil bit helps. Good Luck finding something in your area so you don't have to move.

That's very true as well Dragon. I could careless bout the raises if prices would decrease or stay put period but I doubt that'll happen because everyones costs are going up so then the they pass those increases on. Though since gas has gone down I don't understand why goods like groceries are still going up, they said it was cause of gas now what? The farmer gave his employees a nickel raise so then the store had to charge more?

I'm sorry to hear the union is scr*w'n the employees near you. I've been thinking that is what would happen to GM & Ford ect. As the UAW won't renegotiate til the current contract is up in 2011, by then GM & Ford could be history. I think it's foolish for these unions to not do what is in the employees best interest rather than their own wallets. Honestly, if the plants close who's going to pay their precious union dues? No union dues, no union employees, no union..... Or am I comprehending this incorrectly? When GM closed a plant that's about 2hrs away in December it's shut that city down pretty much, everyone and anyone worked there. Now, they are fighting for minimum wage jobs because there is no choice and loosing everything in the process.

Thats where if they have an employee like your co-worker they just basically force them to quit, ya know ....cut hours give & them the worst tasks. And I worked with some union folks and they hated filing complaints with the union bout stuff cause it took so long to get any kind of results and the union stewart didn't really want to deal with all the details either like your old work. But you know this whole mess started well over 10yrs ago anyways when companies moved south, then to Mexico (then they wanted better wages & conditions), then they pulled everything to overseas. It's not like this happened over night. The sad thing is if you can't afford American made goods you buy the stuff from overseas, but then you put your fellow Americans out of work all in the same right. Whatever happened to wal-marts old marketing campaign saying when plants were struggling they'd step in to these mills & give them huge orders??? I swear that was their marketing maybe early 90's late 80's. Not this dollar store quality of goods. Bleh...

My thoughts exactly on the union. I've never seen how they've been any good for the employees. I used to work at a grocery store that was a union job once. One of my co-workers was lazy, rude to customers, and impossible to work with. I prayed she'd get fired, but because of the union, they had to go through this horrible lengthy process to fire her, so they never did, but she didn't do her job. It was horrible. We only have 2 big factories left here in my area, a plastic company, and a medicine company. We used to have a GM and Chrysler factory but they closed down probably 20 years ago. Our biggest candle factory is moving to Tenessee because of prices. Carrier has slowly been closing down for the past 10 years or so, every other year they close another branch of their factory, and now all that's left is research and development... that will be gone soon too.

I'm sorry to hear you had to take a paycut. But you are right one can't afford to loose any job right now. As if anyone is hiring they are paying the bare minimum in wages and not many of use can afford to start at the bottom again.

I understand my neighbors daughter (17yr old) took a new job in late summer/fall paying more at a restaurant in a hotel nearby. Well lowe and behold they decreased her hours to nothing over time and had been looking for something else for a few months now. It's sad when a teenager can't even find a job. I hope you are able to continue to hold onto your job. I know the buffet we go to maybe once a month (that's all we could swin before the recession hit anyways) is always SLAM PACKED so I dunno what their secret is but come dinner time or weekend you almost have to wait for a table. Wich makes me wonder why they are doing so well when others are not.

That is true that it is a precautionary measure. They did this when 9/11 happened when the markets when crazy after everything that occured taht day. The hard part is surviving while you wait for the economy to bounce back.

That is true, I'd rather us go without any raise then to loose our job all togeather. I know we're pretty lucky so far, though it's hard to admit. Atleast as far as keeping employed but all the stuff people talk about and new gadgets we don't have any of that for the most part. If I have $20 after bills, gas, & groceries I'm happy as a lark. When we don't that's when I worry and we spend half the year just scraping by and that was before the economy took a dumper.