We should all be doing what you did. My employer vomited up a new "choice" for our healthcare this year. There is only one "choice" to "choose" from. Premiums went up again as they always do. Deductibles went up 3 fold. For the usual "discount" for being a nonsmoker this year however, the company will line up employees this summer to draw blood; ostensibly to check to see if employees are cheating in regard to being a nonsmoker.
I will no longer be here by that time, no employer is entitled to a blood sample.
Your personal information has been commoditized and is for sale, at the very least.
Jesus, that's one Nazi employer--or healthcare plan, I'm not sure which. My previous employer made me sign an agreement several times that I could be drug tested, but none of us ever were. I hope you find a saner employer--anyone that would do that is too much NY Management style for my taste.
Oh that's the kicker. This employer is a worldwide multinational corporation and one phase of their operation is clinical testing and drug testing. In fact, this company IS the one that did my pre-employment drug testing. Then a bit later they bought the CRO (contract research organization – engaged in pharmaceutical drug development), and this is our first insurance plan offered under their new management. Now don’t you think that might be a useful negotiating chip to offer the insurance company? Or to use in house? A sample for a bloodwork panel on every employee?
In your specialized line of work, it's not like getting a job as a secretary, but they sound like they don't give two beans about their employees. If your supervisors think that's all dandy, I'm with you--get the hell out of there as soon as you can find another berth.
Nope, they don't; hominids are just necessary commodities they reluctantly hire to do the labor that allows the rest of them to, well, rest. My immediate supervisor? Already gone. The rest? Americans are a funny bunch. They’ll wail about the govt, but roll over and spread for an employer.
Americans are too in debt to walk away from a paycheck. Probably why we have so many ulcers.
And therein lays the updated approach to enslavement in our modern high tech low profile version of post industrial technological age feudalism. Debt and the mass consumption we’ve all been institutionally encouraged to embrace lead directly to our own subjugation, by design. This has been very successfully leveraged against a generation of college students who have unwittingly walked into predatory debt peonage while seeking an education. The “job creators” and the Donnie Trumps of America can get out of their debt via bankruptcies, these kids cannot. The “government” has been demonized as a whole by the think tank oligarchs. This propaganda campaign then in turn gets rolled out via the corporate controlled media machine because if it operated as it should, government would be the collective voice of “the people”. No power structure has ever really wanted to answer to “the people”, so with the Reagan era, we began to see the whole “government is the problem” (let’s leave it in the hands of the oligarchs) mantra. But by controlling the economic system, the political system becomes subservient to the economic system, leaving Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, the “job creator” class, et.al. free to reign, and they have no compunctions about party loyalties and the silly little irrelevant shyte that they can leverage to divide “the people” amongst themselves leaving them free to economically plunder society in their own redistribute the wealth vision; and they have over the past half century done quite well with that.
The same approach to controlling the masses has been instrumental in our inability to deal with our deplorable healthcare system as well. The system wants to keep most americans dependent upon their employer for access to healthcare.
If any power structure can channel the behavior of a people via mind games, a fantasy perceptual reality, lies, mass distraction, religion and economic coercion, it will usually choose those pathways first. Our system at the moment is clearly concerned these tactics are beginning to at long last wear a bit thin on the public. This system full well knows a perturbation is building. All it takes is for enough people to simply withhold consent, participation and cooperation. Power always does whatever it is allowed to, and we have allowed, we “the people”, have allowed ourselves to be leveraged as nothing but modern day sharecroppers in a society that views humanity only as an unnecessary evil insofar as a source of labor is concerned.
The thing is, in a system of globalized capitalism, the system no longer needs us, or as many of us as a source of labor. Our system of global finance capitalism only has need of “the people” when they need bailed out through socialism.
