Microsoft CEO Says Women Should Be Satisfied With A Pat On The Head, Shouldn't Ask For Raises

Classic quote from the new Microsoft CEO that crystallizes how so many business guys think about workers, salary increases and women:

If you are a man speaking at a conference celebrating women in computing, it is probably O.K. to flatter the largely female audience members by telling them they possess “superpowers.”

It is probably unwise, though, to imply that they should not ask for a pay raise.

Just ask Satya Nadella.

Mr. Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, suggested on Thursday that women who don’t ask for more money from their employers would be rewarded in the long run when their good work is recognized. The remarks, at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, drew swift and negative responses on Twitter, many of them compiled in a critical article about Mr. Nadella’s comments on ReadWrite, a technology blog.

...

Mr. Nadella’s comment came about an hour and a half into his conversation with Maria M. Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College and a Microsoft board member. During the discussion, she prompted Mr. Nadella for advice for women who are uncomfortable seeking promotions and career advancement.

Mr. Nadella said his own thinking on the matter was influenced by Mike Maples, a former Microsoft executive, who had a memorable saying about how human resources systems were inefficient in the short term and efficient in the long term. “It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,” Mr. Nadella said, according to a webcast of the event.

But then he continued: “That, I think, might be one of the additional superpowers that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust. That’s the kind of person that I want to really give more responsibility to. And in the long-term efficiency, things catch up.”

So many problems with Nadella's comments.

First off, no, women shouldn't be satisfied with "praise" over a "raise" - that's asking to be exploited by the company.

Second, nobody should trust that the "human resources system" will "give you the right raises as you go along" - not women, not men.

That's also asking to be exploited by the system.

Third, doesn't it seem like everybody who runs Microsoft is an ass?

Bill Gates, Steve Balmer and now this misogynistic jerk.

Fourth, can I remind everybody how well the "human resources system" at Microsoft handled layoffs this year?

They laid people off by algorithm.

Virtual Picket Line At Huffington Post

The Newspaper Guild has called for a virtual picket line at Huffington Post:

That cute little boycott of the Huffington Post just got about 520 times more interesting. The Newspaper Guild, which represents 26,000 U.S. media-industry workers (34,000 if you include Canada and Puerto Rico) is endorsing a call by Visual Arts Source magazine (staff size: 50) to stop providing free content to Huffpo now that its acquisition by AOL has made a fortune for its founders.

“Working for free does not benefit workers and undermines quality journalism,” the Guild said in a statement. “Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and not cross a physical picket line, we ask that they honor this electronic picket line.”

Says Dave Zirin, sportswriter:

I will be honoring the Newspaper Guild's request and their virtual picket line by no longer posting my work at the Huffington Post. While it will be a sacrifice to no longer pull a $0 paycheck from Ms. Huffington or have my work read alongside the brilliant journalism of Jamie Lee Curtis and Andrew Breitbart, I ain't gonna work on Arianna's farm no more.

Huffington has never earned an honest dime in her life. She has plagiarized her books, changed her politics with the wind in order to make her living (she was right wing when married to a right wing millionaire; she's "left wing" now that she has to make her own cash) and used other people's writing to enrich herself at her blog.

She can write about the squeezing of the middle class and working class all she wants and try and justify her actions.

She's exploitative, dishonest and sleazy.

I'm sure she never lost a wink of sleep over it, but I took the link to her blog off this blog a while ago.

Colorado District Tells Charters They Must Educate Low Income And Minority Students

One of the knocks on charter schools is that they don't educate students in proportion to the demographics of their district and they skim students who are more likely to excel in school.

One Colorado district is taking that problem head-on:

GREELEY — A showdown is brewing over charter schools' responsibility for educating low-income children.

On Dec. 6, the Greeley-Evans School District 6 Board of Education will hold a special meeting to hear proposals from two charter school organizers asking to expand or build from scratch.

Union Colony Preparatory — the district's first charter school — wants to expand its sixth-to-12th-grade school to include kindergarten through fifth grade.

Newcomer West Ridge Academy wants to start a kindergarten-through-ninth-grade school.

However, district officials say neither school appears willing to meet the needs of the district's poorer students, many of whom live on Greeley's east side.

The District Accountability Committee is recommending the school board only approve one of the schools and that the school must "mirror the overall demographics of the district."

Of District 6's 19,000 students, more than 59 percent are Latino and 61 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, a common measure of poverty.

Officials say the city's three existing charter schools are examples of a disturbing trend of charters nationwide that are not serving lower-income kids.

All three charters are at or near the bottom of a list of enrollment of nonwhite students, those receiving free or reduced-price meals, or those learning English as a second language.

"These charters simply have not taken on the responsibility of teaching these kids like other schools have taken on," said board vice president Bruce Broderius. "They are just segregated in a very serious sort of way."

Charter operator Pat Gilliam says that charter school doors are open to all students but poor and minority students don't want to work as hard as the white students so they often leave.

Yikes.

Not exactly a strong selling point for the charter school movement - "Hey, come to our Academic Excellence Charter School for white people and nonwhites who are willing to work hard!"

Here in NYC, charter schools are almost completely filled with minority students, but they are still accused of exclusivity - skimming the most motivated students and the students with the most support from parents and/or family.

In both cases, the problem with charter schools is the same - they are NOT educating the same groups of students that traditional public schools are educating.

And despite the statistical advantages charters have by excluding students and skimming preferred students from the rest of the district, they STILL don't outperform traditional public schools.

So good for Greeley for limiting the charters that can open and forcing them to educate all students.

In three to five years, the district ought to re-evaluate the charters and if they're still miles apart statistically from the rest of the district demographics, they ought to be shut down and turned into traditional public schools where every student can be educated, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic class, parental support, or skill level.

Education "Reformer" Steve Jobs Caught Using Child Labor To Make Ipods, Iphones, and Macs

Not kidding.

And those are not the only horrifying labor practices factories that make Apple products are guilty of:

At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.

The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.

Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States.

Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. "In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment," Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.

Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

A spokesman for Wintek said that "almost all" of the affected workers were back at work, but that some remained in hospital. Wintek said n-hexane was commonly used in the technology industry, and that problems had arisen because some areas of the factory were not ventilated properly.

Last year, an employee at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that is one of Apple's biggest suppliers, committed suicide after being accused of stealing a prototype for the iPhone.

Sun Danyong, 25, was a university graduate working in the logistics department when the prototype went missing. An investigation revealed that the factory's security staff had beaten him, and he subsequently jumped to his death from the 12th floor of his apartment building.

Foxconn runs a number of super-factories in the south of China, some of which employ as many as 300,000 workers and form self-contained cities, complete with banks, post offices and basketball courts.

It has been accused, however, of treating its employees extremely harshly. China Labor Watch, a New York-based NGO, accused Foxconn of having an "inhumane and militant" management, which neglects basic human rights. Foxconn's management were not available for comment.

In its report, Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. Apple admitted that at least 55 of the 102 factories that produce its goods were ignoring Apple's rule that staff cannot work more than 60 hours a week.

The technology company's own guidelines are already in breach of China's widely-ignored labour law, which sets out a maximum 49-hour week for workers.

Apple also said that one of its factories had repeatedly falsified its records in order to conceal the fact that it was using child labour and working its staff endlessly.

"When we investigated, we uncovered records and conducted worker interviews that revealed excessive working hours and seven days of continuous work," Apple said, adding that it had terminated all contracts with the factory.

Only 65 per cent of the factories were paying their staff the correct wages and benefits, and Apple found 24 factories where workers had not even been paid China's minimum wage of around 800 yuan (Pounds76) a month.

Meanwhile, only 61 per cent of Apple's suppliers were following regulations to prevent injuries in the workplace and a mere 57 per cent had the correct environmental permits to operate.

The high environmental cost of Apple's products was revealed when three factories were discovered to be shipping hazardous waste to unqualified disposal companies.

Apple said it had required the factories to "perform immediate inspections of their wastewater discharge systems" and hire an independent environmental consultant to prevent future violations.

However, Apple has not stopped using the factories.

In 2008, Apple found that a total of 25 child workers had been employed to build iPods, iPhones and its range of computers.

Wow - there's a lot to unpack there.

So Apple uses factories that repeatedly use child labor and falsify their records to cover their tracks in the practice.

Apple knows about this but continues to use these factories.

Apple uses factories that poison its workers and pollute the environment by sending out toxic waste to companies unqualified to dispose of the hazardous material.

Apple knows about this but continues to use these factories.

Apple uses factories that repeatedly break work week laws, exploit workers and underpay/cheat them out their wages.

Apple knows about this but continues to use these factories.

Apple ought to run a new slogan for the company:

Apple Computer - using 21st century technology to bring the world back to the 19th century "Robber Baron Era."

And Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the darling of Wall Street and the hedge fund crowd, is of course on record saying that the biggest problem in education today is teachers unions:

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

I guess what Jobs wants is for schools to be run the way his Apple factories are run - with 60 hour work weeks, exploited workers being cheated by their employers out of their wages, and hazardous work environments that save the employer/company money but poison the workers.

Steve Jobs of Apple Computer - criminal, toxic polluter and exploiter of workers, employer of underage laborers, and education reformer.