No More Work on Saturdays at Bethels Worldwide

by Lost-In-Translation 40 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  verystupid77

  When I was a Bethel being a sister under the age of 30 I had to work two Saturdays a month. I was so stupid. None of the other sisters worked any. I mean it. All the sisters I worked with never came in. Our overseer was older and did not have to work any Saturdays that I can recall. The only time one of the sisters would come in on a Saturday was when our overseer was there on the rare Saturday. I was so stupid and I never missed one of my work days. I felt I was serving Jehovah not man and if Jehovah said to work than I was going to work. I could have blown them off so easy but I was stupid. vs77
• 

  dozy

  Just my 2c - I heard a couple of years ago that the Bethels in Europe (UK , Germany , Spain etc) were struggling to convince the EU that they should be exempt from the Working Time Directive which restricts the working week to a maximum of 48 hours per week. Although the standard Bethel working week is (I think) 47 1/2 hours , brothers often were working overtime and going over this threshold. It wouldn't have been practical to have different working weeks in Europe from the rest of the world. Presumably just one factor in the change.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time_directive
• 

  darth frosty

  bonafide:

  Wow, I never thought that would happen. A friend of mine at Bethel for over two decades told me that the Governing Body would never allow free Saturdays because the Bethel boys would be out having fun on weekends and be too tired on Mondays.

  Same here B. Bethelites bout to wild out up there. When I was there we got one saturday off a month and we used that to the fullest. We used to do kamaazi runs back home and to other locals, normally looking for sister's. We would get off work fri evening at 5 and hit the road out of town. One time we came back from detroit an waited till the last possible minute. I could make the trip from detroit to NY in 10hrs. We left at 11pm sunday night and pulled up in front of our bldg at 7:15 and head to work.
• 

  isaacaustin

  please refresh my memory on the Spain situation.
• 

  AndersonsInfo

  For women, the younger you are, the more Saturdays you have to work and the girls hate it and it's one of the prime reasons that cause them to get their husbands to leave Bethel. If WT leaders want to keep younger men, they have to be more accommodating to their wives. In addition, young men want to be with their wives all day Saturday for R & R. On Sunday, from early morning until late in the day, Bethelites are supposed to be working with their congregations so when they work on Saturday morning, they have very little personal time for themselves and their wives.

  When we went into Bethel I was 42 years old so I had all Saturdays off, but Joe only had one Saturday off a month. I used Saturday morning to catch up on personal things and when Joe came in after lunch, many times he would be so tired after a hard work-week that he would take a nap. So there went our Saturdays! So if I was not too happy about this, can you imagine how dissatisfied the younger women were who hardly had any time with their new husbands. And believe me, they were vocal about it too. Another point, some of the younger GB members' wives probably don't like their husband's working on Saturday morning either, even if it is just one Saturday a month. These women have lots of clout with their husbands. FYI, I have it on good authority that the reason women over 40 didn't work on Saturday was because GB wives, who were all over 40, didn't want to and complained to their husbands so the rules were adjusted.
  
  It is common knowledge that those who work Saturday morning don't! They just fool around. So offices and factories are using electric for naught. If Bethelites don't use Saturday morning for service, there's a very good chance that they could be called on the carpet if their hours aren't higher. Bethelites are notorious for spending very few hours in service each month and get away with it using the excuse that they had to work. With this new arrangement, perhaps headquarters will check up on them through the local congregations, especially checking up on the single guys.

  However, there is a catch to this announcement that Bethelites will spend more time in service on Saturday if they don't have to work. It's very difficult for Bethelites who live in Patterson or Wallkill to spend time in service because of the location of Bethels to the nearest communities. It's not like Brooklyn where it's easy to go in field service with public transportation and lots of people everywhere. And if the plans are for more of the Brooklyn staff to be transferred to Upstate NY and everybody moves out of Brooklyn, then rural communities will be inundated with JWs calling on them. Also, it's expensive to be driving in field service in Upstate NY. In Brooklyn, no one had to have a car to do field service.
  
  Also, not working on Saturday could attract more young men to come to Bethel. The turnover rate at Bethel each year is 1/4 of the staff leaves. They have to keep attracting new younger workers if they want to continue staffing those factories. They don't want older people with all their deficits, but need that young blood, who eventually leave anyway after four years (the average length for women and if the women want out, so go their young, strong healthy husbands), so are not too much of a drain on health care, etc. as the years pass.
  
  Our take on this new arrangement is if they want to attract and keep younger workers, it is in their best interests to give everybody Saturday off. And not having the buildings (i.e., factory and office buildings) up and running for a few short hours on Saturday morning saves money.
  
  Barb
• 

  Room 215

  With these people, there's always a hidden agenda; and almost always it's spelled: MONEY! The legal department and treasurer's office run the organization, it seems.... whoever said "follow the money!" knew what he was talking about.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  What do you think are the motives for such a change?

  Save electricity?

  Avoid some legal problems or lawsuits associated with slave labor laws. Bet your bottom dollars it has to do with saving money and not out of concern for thier cheap religiously induced slave labor. After all idleness in the cult leaders mentality is the Devil playground and so it is with great reluctance that saturdays off came about worldwide.

  I wonder what all these bethelites with time on thier hands will do? Too much free time spells trouble with a capital T in cult city.
• 

  undercover

  Let's not forget the obvious: It's a cost cutting move.

  ding ding ding. We have a winner.

  This publishing empire is crumbling. In the last 20 years(maybe less), the world changed how it gathers information. And many of the old publishing companies, newspapers included, have not kept up with the times and are quickly becoming obsolete.

  It's pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that the Society has been cutting costs for some time now. From hard bound books to paperbacks. (When you put the Bible in paperback it smacks of desperation). Laying off workers. Selling property. Now they're eliminating one day of the work week.

  Of course the Society will advertise this as a move to increase field service time...but if they're shutting down factories, laying off workers and cutting hours, why do they need to expend more energy selling what they're not producing?

  This is an important transitional period of the Society. They'll have to make some big changes to survive as they have. They're already shifting from publishing to real estate speculating to some degree but the problem with that is how do you keep the cult members busy? You can't have them build/remodel Kingdom Halls all the time and they can't all share in it or travel to do it.

  The days of the field ministry are numbered. Unless they go to a sparse publication library and emphasize studying the Bible, they point of going door to door is moot. Having 6 million JWs roaming around of their own accord without a common goal to keep them busy is going to result in many JWs waking up to the scam of the religion they were once a part of.
• 

  The Berean

  Now let me get this straight .,.. the "slave" that is being "kept" by financing from of the "domestics" is telling them when they will work and exactly what times they will allow anyone to check in on them ? ... Sounds backwards to me!
• 

  garybuss

  Let's get this straight . . . We got a factory with free labor? And they're shutting down one day, and we wonder why?
  
  The reason isn't going to be that they can't meet payroll due to the Saturday labor cost. They only reason has to be, that they don't have orders for products to be manufactured, or . . . maybe they have orders but their customers aren't paying for orders placed. Printing is now a liability, not a profit center like it was before the donation agreement.
  
  Let's see . . . They're closing factories, sending workers home, selling buildings, cutting days worked in their factories, and reducing catalog items offered for sale. If this was a Wall Street traded company would you buy it's stock?