dzheremi
Coptic Orthodox non-Egyptian
- Aug 27, 2014
- 13,578
- 13,753
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Oriental Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Private
The dignity has been stripped out of work itself at all but the highest levels. Everyone knows Jeff Bezos, but the employees that actually make Amazon (or whatever other company you can think of) work by their own labor are treated essentially like machines. It's the same at any service job, whether it involves 'essential workers' or not.
I agree with TK above. This can't go on as it has been. For at least as long as I've been alive (40 years, basically), I have been told by the older and supposedly wiser that minimum wage jobs aren't supposed to be providing for an actual life; they're meant to give teenagers some spending money and a sense of responsibility. That's not what one of the architects of the minimum wage in the USA, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, meant to be establishing at all. As he said in his speech about the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." (emphasis at source)
So if we're going to talk about how things have changed for the worse, let's not limit ourselves to how our workforce is apparently in revolt. Let's also look at why that might be. I believe the roots of what we are seeing now are in the consistent abandonment of America's lower and middle classes by those with the political and financial power to actually affect change in favor of the American worker and consumer. And so, since we have no one in government (aside from a few socialist-esque oddballs, maybe) who will do what needs to be done, we are now seeing what happens when what power the workers do have is flexed. And not in some kind of communist takeover of the means of production, but simply because they are the means of production -- the business rely on their labor to be productive/to operate at maximum efficiency. Even in the 'lowest' job in the minds of many (a job where people certainly don't 'deserve' $15/hour, say some), without anyone to push the whopper button, the fast food chain can't produce and hence can't sell any whoppers.
I agree with TK above. This can't go on as it has been. For at least as long as I've been alive (40 years, basically), I have been told by the older and supposedly wiser that minimum wage jobs aren't supposed to be providing for an actual life; they're meant to give teenagers some spending money and a sense of responsibility. That's not what one of the architects of the minimum wage in the USA, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, meant to be establishing at all. As he said in his speech about the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." (emphasis at source)
So if we're going to talk about how things have changed for the worse, let's not limit ourselves to how our workforce is apparently in revolt. Let's also look at why that might be. I believe the roots of what we are seeing now are in the consistent abandonment of America's lower and middle classes by those with the political and financial power to actually affect change in favor of the American worker and consumer. And so, since we have no one in government (aside from a few socialist-esque oddballs, maybe) who will do what needs to be done, we are now seeing what happens when what power the workers do have is flexed. And not in some kind of communist takeover of the means of production, but simply because they are the means of production -- the business rely on their labor to be productive/to operate at maximum efficiency. Even in the 'lowest' job in the minds of many (a job where people certainly don't 'deserve' $15/hour, say some), without anyone to push the whopper button, the fast food chain can't produce and hence can't sell any whoppers.
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