I’m sure it’s not exclusive to the USA, but useless people can thrive in companies. I’ve seen people who were not good at their job, so they kept promoting them and now they’re managers… the most useless ones you can imagine. Sometimes, it’s not what you know, it’s who you b… yeah.
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Indeed. Employers and unions can both make bad decisions. But I wouldn’t argue that all companies should not exist because some are bad.
A person getting promoted due to nepotism likely wouldn’t get a lower wage if they weren’t in a union. Doesn’t seem like unions are affecting the issue of useless people staying around in companies and getting an unfair wage.
This was going to happen regardless of the push for $15/hr. It’s kind of a staple of automation to replace workers even if it doesn’t mean more efficiency or a better customer experience. Once the overhead is covered, you just have to worry about electricity and the occasional upkeep. A few weeks of use will cover multiple workers’ wages and then it’s profit from there. It may be a wise business investment, but it’s not an ethical one as our social safety nets remain woefully lacking and the process spreads to other entry level work. And if it can’t be automated, you can bet they’ll outsource it if they can.
Technology is supposed to make our lives better, not the lives of people you don’t like worse.
Locations closing can have reasons beyond workers actually wanting a decent wage, as well. A streak of long construction and traffic rework can kill such a business. It’s an old location falling out of code and rebuilding isn’t worth the cost with other nearby locations. They can’t keep the place consistently staffed precisely because people like to treat service workers like garbage and their management choices were poor. It’s in a depressed region that refuses to change and is caught up in other sweeping closures. Crime could be up and cops still suck, better stay away. The possibilities go on.
A few million for a few locations is otherwise a blip on a multi-billion dollar corporation’s radar. Bean counters ruining lives is capitalism’s lack of conscience in action. You can’t just tell those same people to make and repair the kiosks that replaced them, either, as they’re certainly more limited in number of positions. This also disregards the worker’s psychological health and physical capabilities. An old lady can pick up a bag of cheeseburgers, sure. I wouldn’t be so sure she could lift a fifty pound combo of screen, circuit board, wires, and framing. Assuming she’d even want to. Sorry grandma, go starve and die now. You’re no longer useful to our corporate overlords. These jobs aren’t just teens looking for pocket money, after all. “Work is where we go to suffer” also seems a unique “feature” of our current status quo where doing anything and everything about that is frowned upon as long as it’s not illegal. And even then…
Yeah, I saw people freaking out that Twitter HQ had a decent cafeteria, coffee shop, gym, massages, winery, and then some. It’s alien to many because empathetic administration is not the norm. And I have no doubt these were on Elon’s chopping block because the whole “gotta go lean” rhetoric is for his sake and not those he threw out. People are rightfully worried about Twitter’s future because he does not know how to run the platform, just as Trump didn’t know how to run the country and tragically didn’t while being propped up by the obstructionist GOP. The cascade of bad choices that follow are what we’ll have to put up with even if you feel they won’t personally affect you.
Then again, how dare a dozen or so workers not trust their bosses to have their best interests at heart, especially with past experience at play.
Yes, it will happen but this only encourages the wheels to spin faster. My organization is a good example. Painters are very skilled labor and they were demanding crazy high salaries. The company’s response? They installed robotic painting and got rid of painters. This was a pipe dream before the salary demands came in.
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True, and that is what primarily needs to change.
Only more so the further into automation we get.
There’s quite a bit of data on it that supports your claim. But citing sources and posting links won’t matter. There are a lot of bad faith posts in this thread, most of them originating from posters who aren’t going to so much as glance at anything that obstructs their anti-labor views.
In fact, the more thorough you are in providing research and sources, the more some posters will ask you ad nauseam to answer questions you’ve already answered multiple times. Meanwhile, they’ll casually ignore any of the well-documented points you’re making.
Then there are arguments like this:
Oh boy. Where to start?
Let’s keep it simple. McDonald’s can absolutely afford to pay everyone $15 an hour (base). It’s just that if they do, they can’t pay their CEO and shareholders absolutely bonkers amounts of money.
https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds-ceo-chris-kempczinski-got-big-raise-last-year#:~:text=Chris%20Kempczinski%20received%20a%20pay,SEC%20documents%20filed%20on%20Monday
Or maybe this paints a clearer picture:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/08/mcdonalds-ceo-chris-kempczinski-made-more-than-10point8-million-in-2020.html
Or maybe this is easier to read:
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/restaurants/mcdonalds-ceos-compensation-doubled-20-million-2021
So, let’s revise some of that poster’s, umm, “ideas” from this:
Better wages can also mean less on the bottom line.
To this:
Better wages can also mean less on the bottom line for the already ludicrously wealthy and successful bosses.
And from this:
When employees start to push and get higher wages, the costs of things go up as well.
To this:
When employees start to push and get higher wages, the costs of things go up as well but really only for the richest people in the company.
And from this:
In addition, businesses will find ways to not have to pay those wages. McDonalds is a perfect example.
To this:
In addition, businesses will find ways to not have to pay those wages because they’re greedy and chock full of greedy bosses who exploit their workers. McDonalds is a perfect example.
And from this nugget of hilarity:
Those people wanted their $15+ an hour, they got it but now many locations are eliminated team members in favor of kiosks. Instead of my town having 2 people running front counter, they have 0.
To this:
Those people wanted their $15+ an hour, they got it but now many locations are eliminated team members in favor of kiosks so that the CEO can get record-setting bonuses and payouts and so can the shareholders because, again, they’re greedy captains of exploitation. Instead of my town having 2 people running front counter, they have 0 because the company prioritizes massive payouts to a select few over the well-being and success of its many, many employees.
And there we go. Went from blaming the workers for demanding what the comapany can and should be offering to blaming the guilty party. Much better.
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No, not really better. Changing things to fit your agenda is in bad taste.
Next up, paperboys need $20 an hour and severance packages.
Doreen Ford would like you.
I did the paperboy thing in my town in my mid-teens, assuming multiple routes and hundreds of customers. It was a 6 day a week job requiring 2.5-4 hours daily (Sunday being the worst with ad spam) with variability due to weather. Lugging around hundreds of pounds of papers after prepping them (they don’t roll and rubber band themselves), risk of vicious pets, on top of the peculiarity of placement for some customers, people calling angry if the machine tore/missed a page, and the extreme lengths you had to go through to get some to pay after the 25th of each month translated to a job that may sound easy on the surface, but in retrospect, was cruelly exploitative. Like, less than a dollar an hour kinda bad with zero perks or time off. But being a kid in a more rural region, I didn’t exactly have many options.
So if you told me a paperboy should get $20/hr, I would say yes, because I’ve been there. It’s up to the paper to make it happen. If they can’t, they don’t deserve to be in business. That’s right, businesses aren’t entitled to exist because they merely believe they’re job creators or have a “good idea” in their eyes. I’m also well aware of the difficulty print media faces in the digital age. This means to actually make it work, they have to successfully differentiate themselves from fake news, go into more detail than TV reports, and obviously cover a wide range of local topics so you’re more than just an obituary and classifieds. This also includes establishing their own digital presence for subscribers. An impossible task? I wouldn’t say so, but it also wouldn’t be runaway profit. However, sometimes we also have to differentiate a needed product compared to a luxury. I’m more inclined to call this needed, as a step below the post office in similarity of some work and importance. Unless you want to argue a more informed populace is a bad thing – which wouldn’t surprise me in the era of alternative facts.
But I can already hear the scree over the implication of state-funded media even if all they did was provide the infrastructure to make it work and shifted the cost of subs to yearly taxes. But it’s also constant verbal diarrhea from the right that privatization is superior to public, as that runs lockstep with their capitalist leanings and prioritization of profits over people. Covid reminded us that our internet infrastructure wasn’t very good despite all the soft monopolies and lack of any real competition to major ISPs. Can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who’s been perfectly pleased with their ISP, either, especially when they need service. “But this is how it has to be!” we’re reminded by those who tell us to live in the “real world” as if we aren’t calling all this crap out because we have. I called this mindset jungle law with my initial post because the whole idea of the free hand is a farce that gleefully chokes the poor to further enrich the wealthy. We’re better than that, or at least we should be.
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I did the paperboy thing too when I was a boy. I had a bag around me, rode my bicycle around for an hour a day delivering newspapers. No, I did not deserve $20 an hour. That’s ludicrous…
This whole new wave of “I want a job where I have to do very little but expect to get paid a lot” is silly. Again, Doreen Ford…
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If adjusting for the time, it would’ve been closer to $5/hr. Otherwise, consider yourself lucky you had a route you could bike. Peoples’ worldly experiences differ, so just because something worked for you doesn’t mean it’s viable for everyone else.
But I get it, Reagan era welfare queen propaganda seems coded into your DNA at this point. Some of us haven’t forgotten the intent of the minimum wage with its implementation, the shift of single income households toward needing multiple, skyrocketing housing and rent prices, the predatory pricing of higher education you better damn well be a psychic for for your degree before diving in, the inaccessibility of medical care, and other “features” of modern living that are becoming increasingly more oppressive as wealth disparity grows.
Stop trying to convince us that you’ve worked harder, that you’re more intelligent, and that anyone beneath your level isn’t worth a spit. We don’t care because none of that helps anything or anyone. Same goes to the chest-thumping, self-proclaimed lawyer over there fishing for any and all reason to flex. I have people I don’t like, too, but unless they’re genuinely evil, I’m not going to inhibit their own happiness. And who knows, maybe that kindness will help them come around. Or they just remain bitter and spiteful because “kids today” and all that ignorant rubbish.
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It’s common sense, I’m afraid. The effort you put in and the level of education will determine your worth. You don’t get to sit around all day doing drugs then when the party is over say “You know what? I want what everyone else has worked hard to get.”
You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my real dad.
Strawman argument.
Who is “we?” Got a mouse in your pocket?
You anti-work people and your “I walk dogs for 2 hours a day, I deserve $30/hour and a yearly bonus” are nuts.
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This post is an example of why we need a serious education and media reform in the West.
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The irony is you’re right, but not for the reasons or outcome your history of forum interactions would favor.
But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m okay with being the “radical” for thinking things like teachers should be paid better and not have to buy supplies for their own classes, shouldn’t have to worry about being gunned down because we love guns more than kids, alongside that we shouldn’t be banning books because they question christiofacism or traitorous confederacy perspectives. The Holocaust also happened, trans rights, being gay is okay, BLM and ACAB, immigrants are welcome, 'n all that while I’m feeling cheeky and dare I say ANTIFA (which still isn’t an organization, btw).
Content with the attempt of intellectual emasculation now?
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Damn, how come I can’t find the thumbs down button when I need one or several, I guess this will have to do!
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If you need to bring the Holocaust into an unrelated argument, it is usually a sign that something is wrong with your argument. Stop asking others/society to do things and focus on yourself - the one part that you control.
Good luck
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I noticed that too and thought that was odd. Prime example of “grasping at straws”.
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Indeed, nothing odd about calling out recent attempts at revisionist history as it attempts to reform education toward its own twisted end for the sake of churning out more nationalist drones.
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It’s odd because not only is it not even directly related nor has any direct significance on what is even being discussed here but you’re using words you don’t even know the meaning to.
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Blizzard has QA? Could have fooled me.
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Saying someone “deserves” a certain salary is the wrong mentality. In reality, you get paid what you can negotiate, or bargain, for. Which is why it’s called collective bargaining. You collectively come together to demand better wages and working conditions. There’s a limit to what can be bargained for since companies don’t have unlimited funds obviously, but a union will get you a lot closer to that limit than if you went at it individually.
If paperboys or cashiers could bargain for high wages, they would definitely get them. It has nothing to do with “deserving” anything. Making money in the real world is about finding opportunities to extract the most amount from any given person. Having leverage and negotiation power is one of the primary ways to do it.
Now, any person or company with large amounts of resources will naturally have a lot of negotiation power over others. A union in general prevents individuals from being grossly exploited by people with financial power. So if a few bad eggs in a union means the collective benefits overall, then so be it.
I’m not just a welder. I have a BA in finance. I worked in taxes for several years. My dad ran a woodshop for 40 years. I know exactly how much a worker really costs a company (in very strong unions no less), the headache of dealing with clients and getting paid, whatever. I will still advocate for unions every time because life is too short to work 40h a week for a lifetime getting paid less than you could, no matter what your level of ability is.
So it’s expensive. So what? The company only cares about itself. I’ll care about me, because no one else will, thank you very much.
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