noodles wrote:
traptunderice wrote:
noodles wrote:
(Serially I do think it's weird that university food workers get 18$/hr for doing work that gets you 11$ elsewhere.)
Because they fucking fought for it. Once businesses can hire somebody for cheaper then it sets the precedent that no one deserves to be paid any less. Then you add in the steady rate of unemployment and there is always somebody willing to do the job for less, because less is better than nothing. The best illustration I have of this is from a book on the Campbell's soup company. Back in the day, every morning a guy would come out the entrance of the factory and say raise your hands if you'll work for 37 cents an hour. Most people would raise their hands. Then he would say 36 cents. Less hands. And so on. Once he reduced the crowd to the number of people he needed that day, then he would say come on in at the last given rate, like 18 cents or so. The fact that some people would work for $11 an hour is understandable, but to use that as an argument that those folks shouldn't make any more than that establishes a race to the bottom.
And outside of the public university system, this practice of reducing wages is currently being done in light of record profits by the corporations themselves. Fucking loathsome.
That's true. But I have a feeling that the only reason the university can afford to pay so much is because it's given tons of money by the government. Even the ultra-busy tourist restaurant I worked for this summer wouldn't've made much money if they were paying me 18$ an hour. And there's no way my mom's video store could've stayed afloat paying that much (although that brings in the confusing fact that she'd have been competing with businesses who are only paying minimum wage, so probably not a good example).
Also I've heard things like the Campbell's soup story apply only in a time when there was just one factory/employer per city and travelling was much harder. The corporations could exploit the labour because there were no other employers with whom they had to compete for employees.
idk just trying to think these things through.
No, you're right. Universities are state-funded, and that is the only reason those wages have maintained such relatively high standards.
And you're right small businesses even when busy would have difficulties reaching such standards of pay. However, any small business that I've worked for, I made a few bucks more than if I had been working at Starbucks or Walmart. I made $8 plus tips as compared to 7.57 at Sbucks when I bartended/baristaed and I made $11.50 at a grocery store compared to 8.70 at Walmart. I'm making a structural claim rather than ethical claim that as these companies opt to not let their record profits trickle down that they are actually harming the workers who enable such record profits. This practice is not feasible forever as food prices go up and wages go down.
And given the large rate of unemployment that projects a legit, not the standard statistic, percentage at 15%, at least in America, how is that different than one employer and the inability to travel? There may be more employers and traveling is easier (which isn't always the case, for example, if you're broke and have a family), but there still aren't job openings that enable the workers to have any say in their pay.
I'm not arguing as much as I'm letting you here my thinking out loud process.
They're both pretty dreadful in my eyes.
