As we’ve gone through three decades of painful economic change, a whole new language has emerged as part of the managerialist efforts to soft soap hard decisions.
Along with “human resources” and “people management” (as if working people are cattle that need to be herded in the right direction), we’ve also got the deceptive language of the destruction of decent work.
We have “re-engineering, “right-sizing”, “right fit,’’downsizing” and other euphemisms designed to sugarcoat the harmful and very human outcomes of firings and job losses.
Productivity has become another word for expecting a whole lot more for a whole lot less.
And the latest fad is “Uptitling”, where having a fancy title for a job is supposed to compensate for lousy pay and insecure work.
The term “Associates” came to New Zealand a few years ago. Caterair and Marriott introduced this at Auckland Airport for their highly casualised catering staff, as if being given a fancy title meant the workers had some stake in a business, where they really had no say or control.
Uptitling is rampant overseas and it’s becoming a trend here too.
Receptionists have become “Heads of Verbal Communications”, Staff in Call Centres are “Client Liaison Officers” and the local rubbish collector is an “Environmental Facilitation Officer.”
Toilet cleaners are ”sanitation consultants” and leaflet delivers are “media distribution officers”.
From a financial perspective, uptitling is appealing to employers. They believe that rather than increasing somebody’s pay, all they have to do is give them a new fancy title. Employees will feel validated by their new status and maybe won’t pester their bosses for a raise for a little longer.
We’ll see.
Finally something we agree on in industrial relations.
The term “associate” however now has a new meaning as Winston Peters explained in the House. It appears to be less a highly casual one and more a formal arrangement of the rank of those above you.
I personally believe as a Manager the first thing you do is fire your HR staff and manage it yourself. I don’t believe in delegating firing people nor the flowery language attached.
In some cultures however a title is very important. It is good to see youve cut through this nonsense and agree with me that the only thing important in a job is how much you get paid in cold hard cash.
Imma Social Media Collaborator!
Poor pay sucks!
!
GRRR!
!
yup yup.
I’m a JAFUH.
Just Another *Flippin* Unpaid Housewife.
LOL
!!!!!
Same in universities , every other lecturer is now a director of the centre for hi faluting nonsense
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/research/researchaz.aspx
@Cactus : Intrigued : what’s your job title?
I work at a service station, so I’m a Petroleum Transfer Technician, although in that job I clean toilets as well so I’m a Sanitation Consultant. However I prefer the name Human Waste Extraction Facilities Management Officer.
“three decades of painful economic change”
so do we all want go back to Muldoonism then?
Yeah we’d all like to be Greece right now…
agree though, call a spade a spade and stop the politically correct job name calling, which is really just a self denial mechanism for having a crap job, like being in HR, or PR, or ER or…
@Shane : and I bet you get paid megabucks for those jobs. NOT
You would be correct Darien, most people in my industry are on the minimum wage and are not organised into a union, although my employer is slightly more generous, thanks to the EPMU!
I forgot to add my title!
@Shane –
Wow, you’d sound so fancy on yer CV! 
!
“most people in my industry are on the minimum wage”
key says that’s because small business, obviously like petrol companies, can only afford to pay minimum to stay afloat in these tough economic times.
All those kids at the servo being paid youth slave rates must really be keeping the wolf from the oil baron’s door.
That is ridiculous. Labour was in government almost half of the last three decades and implemented the early years of “painful change” and “soft-soaping” hard decisions. Productivity has always meant expecting more for less.
Are these assertions speculation or are they backed by some sort of reality or statistic? I can’t think of any commercial organisation that would expose itself to the mockery of employing a “head of verbal communication” instead of a receptionist.
Associate titles have been “rampant” in organisations more much longer then 30 years. In many organisations a change in title to Associate is an indication to clients, the market and competitors that the employee has potential in the eyes of the business owners. Not a bad thing, and possibly something that ambititous employees would consider of some future benefit.
Darien …… very simple “director”
It’s the dollar figure on the contract that matters.
Happy with mine
Individually negotiated mind you.
If I was running MUNZ I’d have controlled that wharf by now.
I disagree CK, once you get to a certain level of pay there are other things that are more important, particulrily if you have a family.
If you get to a position where your wage covers all costs plus a few luxurys an extra 5k is not more important than time with your kids.
“If I was running MUNZ I’d have controlled that wharf by now.”
And then you would have woken up and had cornflakes for breakfast
Water boy
Snigger. Tell that to Port workers.
Aliens
And how are Labour’s boys doing at the moment? Eating breakfast. Real Unionists skip breakfast and picket on an empty stomach. Your current lot are cowards. Troughing it up in Sydney at end of Feb and sending kids to the picket line.
Or maybe you’re more a weetbix girl
I recall spending a couple of years as a public servant at the beginning of the 90s, ie at a time of similar National-govt austerity measures to today, and even then HR quite seriously suggested uptitling as an alternative to pay increases. It’s by no means a new phenomenon (back then it was of course greeted with such raucous contempt that no uptitling took place – more recent HR types seem to be made of sterner stuff, or maybe it’s just a reflection of the decline of union membership).
Weetbix? Maybe more the ones that go ‘snap crackle pop’.
Snigger. Tell that to Port workers.
The port workers at pains to point out the current dispute isn’t about pay increases but the ability to maintain a stable family life? Well, you could tell it to them, but it would hardly be news. Still, your volunteer role as propagandist for the employer necessarily involves misrepresenting the dispute, so your comment does make a kind of sense in light of that.
In some cases a better title is worth more long term than a few k now.
If you are lower management wanting to move to up and intending to change companys soon uptilting is beneficial to have on your cv.
Things will get better in NZ in a few years and staff will begin jumping companys to better wages again.
Darien , Cactus Cates job title is ‘ Fox for the IRD hounds”
LOL
The impotent quasi-biblical thunder of “Job Creation,” the wrathful Market god, temple whores like cactus catty, and verbal chump change—capital clearly doesn’t have an ideological pot left to piss in. One can almost hear a prolonged, disagreeable sound—something akin to the protracted evacuation of long-withheld flatulence—as the wind comes out of the media-inflated image of nice Mr Key and his (financial capital inter)National(ist) majority. Yet again, the voting public is mobilised to change of government by visceral contempt alone.
The main issue for Labour is where it sits in relation to the failed ideology of liberalism. Your stuttering Rorschach test of a leader, insofar as he can be said to publicly have positions, seems to want to reward his backers in being a Blairist muppet, to make an already New Labour New precisely when Old Labour is most relevant. As Europe falls the role of state repressive force becomes apparent, the bourgeois ideology of functioning capital ebbs, and Labour is betrayed in its collusion and utter lack of popular political acumen? Do the baby-boomers seek notoriety in destroying the remnants of hope in parliamentary politics?
The main issue for Labour is to not sound like over educated prats and to try and connect with normal Kiwis who are struggling to survive in Godzown.
A quote if I may?
“I d like to talk about the things that brings us together.
Things that point out our similarities instead of our differences
coz that’s all you will be hearing about in this country are differences,
that all the media, the poli -tic- icans are talking about , the things
that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society.
They try to divide the rest of the people;
they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other;
so that they, the rich, can run off with all the **ing money (bailout),
fairly simple thing happens to work.
You know anything different that’s what they gonna talk about:
race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status
sexuality, anything that they can do to keep us fighting with each other,
so that they can keep goin’ to the bank.
You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country :
the upper-class keeps all of the money pays none of the taxes
the middleclass pays all of the taxes and does all of the work
the poor are there to just to scare the shit out of the middleclass, to keep ‘em showin’ up at those jobs
SO stirrin’ up the shit is something Id like to do from time to time”
George Carlin “The Ruling Class”
May we then rename beneficiaries & the working poor as Government & Big Business Scare Tactic Associates or something like that?
@ Waterboy
Not sure if that taunt is aimed at me, but I’m happy to answer on behalf on the growing mass of unemployed “educated prats” in this country.
Labour is trying too hard to “connect with normal Kiwis who are struggling to survive” and not doing enough of the donkey work that’s needed. All very nice to have a baby-boomer “bloke” shearing sheep and mumbling rhetoric about a “clean, green, clever New Zealand,” but, by itself, that’s bollocks. They’re coasting in the hope that the public gets the prick up with Key and his “elegant” (greasy, off-hand) bullshit as the costs of doing nothing and hawking off national assets bite back. What’s the point in voting when the country is up shit creek without a paddle and one party wants to sell the dinghy while the other is still scratching its head and not sure about having sold the paddle?
It’s always been a problem that the working class don’t give a f**k enough to have political opinions or make them known (and usually if they do they’re so lazy, resentful and backward—“shoot the bastard,” “lock ’im up and throw away the key,” etc.—as to be afforded a courtesy of silence in response). Back in the day there were union movements to take up the slack, but now there’s next to nothing. It’s downright stupid to think there’s a warm and fuzzy political security out there that’s going to tuck you in at night and that the sole issue is wages keeping pace with the cost of living a latte-drinking lifestyle.
I’ve done the shit jobs in the past—calloused hands, sore back, covered in mud, pack a day, beers on Friday, and all that—and I’ve got the law school t-shirt, and I know full well where profit comes from; my heart’s with the labour movement. It’s just dumb to think education should be a divide—ever heard of bloke named Marx, joker named Trotsky, or a sheila named Luxemburg? People that just want to stuff their heads with fish’n’chips and watch tele and don’t want things to get worse need to get their heads out of their arses, get political, and look a bit further forward.
I am a Employment Communications Research Analyst and Résumé Distribution Officer = Evaluating the current ghost job market and distributing my CV for jobs with fancy titles that try to offer less peanuts than they should.
HR / Recruiters also try and dress up the content many job ads more than they should be. I have found that when I distributed my CV to the different recruiters recently, they ended up being the same job for the same company. From my employment communications analysis there is in reality only a third of jobs in existence in the current market when you take into account duplicate jobs with changed fancy titles.
@Former Labour Supporter, Yes my comment was aimed at your comment and all the prats in this country who like to over complicate simple things.
Things are tough at the moment, and we may be up sh%t creek and may have sold the paddle, so we find another way to move forward.
We need to work together as Kiwis, im sure 99% of Kiwis dont like a big gap between rich and poor, its just not how we do things in this country.
James,
Lol, Résumé Distribution Officer, great title! (although I’m sure you are not so enamoured with it…)
@Waterboy,
I post here mainly in the hope that MPs might read the thoughts of the common people when they’re not busy scalping tickets, spanking one off in a roadside three star, or enjoying taxpayer-funded junkets. If they have any claim to a ‘labour’ background they would know full well what I’m saying. I’m unapologetically dialectical materialist (old school Marxist), with an emphasis on the ‘dialectical.’ ‘Simplification’ loses the progressive power of the method. Once you understand its philosophical background, it helps identify what’s happening in the world.
So, to take your latest comment, using Marxist theory, we could say that, given 99% of Kiwis don’t like extreme income disparity, why does it still happen and nothing is done in response? As a Marxist you would say that all the rhetoric about ‘Kiwis’ being a uniform group covers up the disparity. If this isn’t true then why do all the strategies for ‘moving forward’ that are dreamt up by the politicians involve sticking it to the people who get up at half six every morning to go to jobs they don’t like that don’t pay enough to cover the bills, while preserving the wealth of the few that don’t? I’m not saying we need to precipitate open class war (though god knows the rich have done enough to deserve it), but how do we ‘move forward’ without recognizing such problems? ‘Moving forward’ is just a slogan if there isn’t any actual policy basis–and if there are all these other magical ways to move forward I’d be interested to hear you explain them.
I’m not afraid of words and don’t think any of that is too complicated. Populism is politically necessary, but, by itself, gave us such memorable figures as Benito and Adolf.
@Former Labour Supporter,
Im not bright enough to come up with the answer to how to move forward to fix the gap between rich and poor, but i know that the first part to solving any problem is to realise that there is a problem. As i said i beleive that 99% of kiwis dislike big gaps between rich and poor, but i would also suggest that most kiwis dont think there is a big gap between rich and poor in this country.
My comment about over educated prats was a bit harch, but average kiwis switch off when people talk, using concepts they dont understand and dont care about. To reach the masses give us plain speach and simple facts. Most of us only have short attention spans so make it short and clear.
the alleged “plain and simple facts” which are not plain or facts is at the heart of what troubles us.
Interesting information now flowing out in relation to POA, AC and the employees. Particularly interesting is a report which states that the only way to increase wharf/port productivity is to accept large ships which requires deeper water. Will the new “flexible” labour being championed by POA be used to wield the shovels underwater????
I just got a job with the title “Technician” … should I have asked for something more fancy?
You’re a Botanical Expansion Technician!
(Ivy grows up walls!
)