When people say it’s about Money, specifically, it is about Profit. They are making obscene profits, and they can’t sacrifice one single penny of it; in fact, they have to have even more of it. They can’t continue to exist without a constant stream of ever increasing profits, to hear them tell it.
The Federal Minimum Wage has been increased only twice since 1997 for a total of $2.10. It has been at $7.25 since 2009. When people demand an increase in the minimum wage, there are only two outcomes expected from it - higher prices, or lost jobs, and it is always presented as if those are the ONLY two options available. It never occurs to anyone to perhaps demand that corporations should MAKE LESS PROFIT.
That profit should go back to the workers who actually EARNED that profit through their sweat equity. The argument that they already earn enough doesn’t wash when employed people are living in their cars as a housing choice. Push those sorts of lifestyle compromises long enough, and they become normalized. Someday soon, we’ll have celebrities on TV talk shows going on about how they lived in their car for the first few years they were in town, and it was AWESOME!
Since Covid, Transnational Corporations and their Sociopathic Oligarch owners have reset the costs of living in America, raising prices on everything, without any adjustment on the compensation for labor side.
We’ve been screwed since Congress redrew the Tax Code in 1974, which baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code. Ever since then, more and more money is transferred from the middle/working classes to the wealthy. They’ve been stealing from us for decades, and they just want to keep doing it.
The median salary of $43K in 1975 has increased to only $50K today, while they would have been making $92K if the tax code hadn’t been steadily re-written to enrich the wealthy at the cost of the middle class and poor.
In that same time period, the mean income for the top 1% went from $289K to $1.384 million, while they would have been making $630K under the old tax codes.
Thats a 17.4% increase in the lower median, and an increase of 321.6% in the 1% median. Clearly there has been an upwards distribution of wealth at the expense of the middle class since the tax codes started to be re-written in 1974 to favor the top economic tier.
Read more about it :
New York Mag: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/09/rand-study-how-high-is-inequality-us.html
Fast Money: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1
I bet the reason is simple $$$$$$ pay people money and watch how we work.
dumb motherfuckers would honestly benefit if their workers unionized
I’m not a big financial expert and I haven’t read the article but the answer is most likely: the pay is shit.
1- Pay better 2- improve conditions 3-promote unions 4- add benefits 5- profit
This may seem like a humorous comment, but it isn’t. Source: Europe
They don’t want to train anyone. Same story as always. They won’t invest in their workers.
Investing in workers cuts into profit for the next quarter
Without reading I can give a most likely answer: money. If the job is exhausting and dangerous but pays a tenth of what middle management makes, which is a tenth of what the CEO makes, then I think we might have the reason.
That’s a real posting from a large mfg.
Work 12 hour days AND every other weekend for poverty wages? Wow sign me up!
I live in a rural area outside of a small town in the southern USA. The local electrician, basically the guy almost everybody calls if they need basic residential electrical work, earns almost twice the high end of what that job listing is paying. Granted, he’s basically on call 7 days a week and I’m sure his job isn’t always unicorn farts and leprechaun rainbows, but he’s his own boss and works his own hours.
Just having a job where you can say No to unreasonable demands makes life a lot easier. That’s probably the best benefit of being self-employed - nobody forcing you to do stuff you hate.
In oregon an electrician makes $100k/yr, a controls electrician $160k, and an electrical engineer 200-300k.
Was gonna say, I went to college to get a good job that I hate.
If a manufacturer wants to pay me the same to sit on an assembly line I would give it real consideration.As always the “nobody wants to work” crowd conveniently neglect to tell us the wages
You can make good money in skilled trades which would require some training. Could be weeks, months of training.
My friend just became a locksmith. It has opened a lot of doors for him.
my brother is a plumber. he’s rolling in it now.
Consider being an electrician: you’d be shocked
You can make good money in skilled trades if you are in a union. Also the union trains you.
You pay a lot for that training, and typically the trades guys at a factory only make about 10-20% more than the line workers. The only money to be made in trades is owning your own firm
The article doesn’t actually cite compensation as an issue. The actual issue is lack of skilled talent, which is due to a couple of things including
- These jobs require relevant skills; can’t just hire someone off the street as you can in the service industry.
- The US spent ages telling people that they were idiots if they didn’t go to college, which pushed people away from trade skills
- The Trump administration made aggressive cuts to training programs for blue-collar workers
These jobs require training. Which one can only get if they, get a job there.
But that costs money the CEO could be making. Better to just pretend to be unable to find workers than invest the money to train the ones they can find
This is a problem across industries. The programming joke of a job requiring ten years experience in a five year old language is funny because it’s true.
that’s just their point tho. it’s not true. it’s a fiction fabricated by bourgeois people so they can pretend it’s common people not wanting to work rather than them not being willing to invest in the “poors.” they need to not upset the working class while they rape us because the moment we become aware is the moment we throw them off top of us.
you live in a world where these people’s feelings are more important than your livelihood, at least in the company ledger. software dev is a great example of this. the industry isn’t some wild animal who randomly thrashes about. software and IT falling apart are active processes spurred by choices people who hold keys to the kingdom(s) are making, knowingly. every time some homeless developer gets thrown in jail because it’s literally criminalized to be unhoused here - that’s the system working as intended.
No, it is true. Companies got sued because they brought in H1-B visas because no domestic worker could meet the impossible job requirement. So they get a slave who has to keep their job or be deported.
Jobs that are entry level and require years of experience are common.
And, yes, the assholes in charge are doing this.
There are vocational schools for this but there is very little public knowledge about them.
On the job training. Yes, it takes time and money but it is the obvious solution.
Any kind of training even in office jobs has been non-existent for my whole career. Whenever I’ve started a new job I’m always just thrown in the deep end by a manager that doesn’t know how to do the job they are managing
On the job training. Yes, it takes time and money but it is the obvious solution.
A challenge facing many white collar jobs is that the entry level jobs are being automated away. There is no job for them to train on. The floor starts at Intermediate skill level and advances quickly to senior. The grunt work that needed to get done used to be handed to juniors. It wasn’t very difficult, and it was low risk if they made mistakes. It was perfect entry work that was both necessary in that it served a productive purpose, but also allowed someone to get in the door and start working in a particular field. Technology and automation are now doing that same grunt work, so the entry level jobs are drying up and not being replaced. Its going to be a massive problem in a decade or two if the Intermediate and Senior positions are still needed and those that are in those jobs now retire or die off. This assume that the Intermediate and Senior positions don’t also get automated away.
I’m not closely involved in trade jobs, but I wonder if a version of this is happening there too. One example I can think of is jobs like twisting rebar tie wire by hand for concrete work isn’t technically difficult, but it is time consuming and uncomfortable.
However, now there are now robots that can do this work so much faster, and they don’t eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or get injured.
Is this happening in other entry level trade jobs? Will there be nowhere to train on the job?
It doesn’t matter what has been defined as entry level - they can train for any job they need if they are willing to pay and take the time.
But I see what you are saying. It’s different and they will have to adapt.
But I see what you are saying. It’s different and they will have to adapt.
The organization adapting may mean they simply exit that line of business if the costs/risks of training for the required staff it too high.
That’s not why we made business school.
There’s not enough skilled talent because the jobs are not paying enough when considering the physical risk and pain involved compared to what the execs make. I grew up surrounded by factory workers who made an OK salary in Indiana, enough to have a small house and 2 cars, but who always seemed to be on the verge of a strike. Constantly fighting with management to get basic benefits and decent pay, then having their bodies wrecked after years of a hard job. It was a thankless, hard job that was only made palatable by the wages and benefits unions had to constantly fight for. It’s no wonder young people look at that life and decide it isn’t worth all the specialized training to spend your life being dehumanized by the corporations who are making so much more money than you. At least in the skilled trades like construction and electrical you can go it alone and get most of the money for yourself. Not much of an option for that for factory workers.
And the compensation doesn’t cover the costs of getting the skills yourself. American business got what it paid for - nothing.
The Trump administration made aggressive cuts to training programs for blue-collar workers
He didn’t do it for the right reason, but it also should be the wealthy capitalists who pay for training, as well as excellent compensation for the job. Any other way is subsidizing wealthy welfare queens. Nope on that and let’s use precise language that makes it clear who subsidizes who. The wealthy are the greedy, lazy takers, not our regular joes and janes.
CEOs make several hundred times the average worker wage, including middle management.
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Without reading, I’m just going to guess most of it has to do with low wages.
They’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas.
For those of you unwilling to actually read the article, it’s not money.
The pool of blue-collar workers who are able and willing to perform tasks on a factory floor in the United States is shrinking. As baby boomers retire, few young people are lining up to take their place.
…
For some companies, remaining globally competitive involves the use of sophisticated equipment that requires employees to have extensive training and familiarity with software. And employers cannot simply hire people right out of high school without providing specialized training programs to bring them up to speed.
…
“We spent three generations telling everybody that if they didn’t go to college, they are a loser,” he said. “Now we are paying for it. We still need people to use their hands.”
…
The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education
…
The Trump administration’s aggressive cuts to training programs for blue-collar workers have also hurt efforts to train a new generation of factory workers.
It’s money. Companies don’t want to pay people to train them. They want to hire people already trained.
Someone has to spend the money to train people. Company, government, or person.
People did what they were told. They paid money for college training. Not company training.
It’s money.
They’d have to pay for training, which costs money.
it is always money. this is how labor works. need training? pay for it. need me to be trained before hiring? make it affordable. again: money.
This is why I make it abundantly clear to people who ask me about my college choices that i am going to college to LEARN - not for job training. I am willing to pay money to people to teach me new things. I am NOT willing to pay money to get trained to do a job for someone else.
I shouldn’t have to pay for training, let the evil overlords sacrifice a pittance and also pay well. Otherwise, detail cars, clean houses, mow lawns. Tell evil people “bye!”
“this job requires specialized training we’re not willing to provide” is the same management failure as “the wages offered for this job are not sufficient to attract workers.”
Raise the latter, and give the former with a reduced wage for a set number of years.
Yes, it IS money.
And employers cannot simply hire people right out of high school without providing specialized training programs to bring them up to speed.
It is 100% money. You are so close to seeing the point with this sentence. If the factory owners paid for specialized training programs for new hires, then they would have specialized employees who can do the job. They are neither willing to invest money in new people, stubbornly insisting that people already come fully trained, but also not willing to appropriately compensate those who are both trained and willing to put their bodies at risk on a factory floor.
They also mention that they’re physically demanding jobs with inflexible schedules.
Even if I had the training I’d still want way more to have to leave my house and put on pants to potentially get injured, either acutely or chronically.
That’s a lot of down votes for the truth
Yeah, well, dog-piling is Lemmy’s whole thing. Especially when someone points out that there are much more specific factors to blame besides “capitalism bad”.
Fabrication companies don’t (always ‡) pay for your welding certification, hospitals don’t pay for doctors to go to med school, software companies don’t pay for your CS degree, HVAC techs don’t train you straight off the street, etc. People forget trade schools are a thing / alternative to college degrees and that you’re expected to take those paths yourself. Even apprenticeships expect you to have at least some background as to not waste time on you, unless they’re just super desperate.
But no, everything that ails you has to boil down to “capitalism bad” even if that’s as technically true as “breathing oxygen eventually leads to death”.
‡ It’s not unheard of for them to pay for that certification (I can speak for at least one instance), but it’s definitely not the norm.
But it’s false.
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