I turned down a job at a nice Italian place to work there because of that lie and a $1 difference per hour in the base wage.
I did it a couple times and found it so demoralizing I quit. Later I found out that practice is very illegal.
This is the life today for zero-hours, at-will employment in the university sector. As a visiting professor I've had universities ask me to deliver a semester course a year in advance, and call the week before to say they're not running it. At the very minimum a 12 week course takes 40 hours of preparation even if you're just refreshing the notes and practicals from last time.
I've had Russell group universities not pay me for two years. They've flat out "lost" my invoices, three times! Two major league universities tried to stiff me out of over £2000 and had to be threatened with legal action. One London uni asked me to prepare a DSP course, then instead of hiring me to deliver it plagiarised my slides, took my name off them and got a junior lecturer to deliver the course instead. The last university I worked at were so careless with my payments that my accountant advised me to "extricate immediately" because there so many "anomalies" she couldn't keep track of them all.
Universities are absolute f*king gangsters.
I have let many people go who I would persue in a world with my hours being paid(at a lawyers rate) in the event of a victory in the courtroom.
Ahhh, should land...
Which, based on all of the bad experiences, might be a blessing in disguise for adjuncts (UK or otherwise!)
Amusing as that desperation is, in a way it's more terrifying how the machinery of blind capitalism works. The system isn't capable of sentiment like that. They don't care what I say. It's just business. They're not there keeping a score of 'friends' and 'enemies'.
Universities run on people like me who are of the "academic mindset", who can and will do things like teaching because we love it as a vocation even though the salary is a quarter or fifth of what is on offer privately.
In the end, the only solution is to say no, even when you'd really like to do it. It's a weird modern tragedy.
Everything runs like this. Jobs people want will pay less than jobs people don't want.
Unironically, yes. Most people don't have enough exposure to actually understand what the job of a CEO is. I have had that exposure, and I don't ever want to be the CEO of any sizeable company. Once you become CEO, work/life balance utterly ceases to exist, because you are the person imbued as the corporation, meaning you are literally always working, always on call, always stuck with the most difficult or intractable decisions where maybe all the options are wrong, and no matter your choice everyone will hate you. It's a terrible job that people only do because it pays so well.
I am not the CEO but I'm much higher up the food chain today than I was when I started. I often reminisce fondly about my time working phone tech support, because I could work my queue and walk out without having to give any thought to anything that occurred that day. That's not the reality of being in any sort of management role, and the higher up you go the less that matches reality.
That is grossly incorrect. Also, general managers don't make $12/hr. The average general manager in the US makes ~$87k/yr, and can be as high as $150k/yr, and depending on the specific industry you can end up with relatively sizeable compensation based on profit sharing and bonus structures. A general manager typically oversees a single location of a much larger business entity, with oversight for less than 500 staff, compared to a CEO that may have tens of thousands of people and their myriad workstreams that they are trying to weave into some unified vision/strategy plus dealing with the personnel challenges that go with that scale.
I realize you were trying to be pithy, but let's not do that on HN.
I'm sure you've seen all the before/after pictures they always do for POTUS. If you saw similar photos for folks becoming CEOs of a major company, you'd see a similar change. Being a CEO is a job that will literally run you ragged. It destroys your health, and is not something most people can tolerate for longer than a decade.
[1]: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/02/12/ceo-tenure-rates/
Possibly, but once that's satisfied, or even the satisfaction of that is well in the rear view mirror, other things become important. E.g. company mission; prestige; moving in the right circles; pushing into politics.
"You know, one day, my mother, she put me on her knee and she said to me, 'Gaston, my son, the world is a beautiful place. You must go into it and love everyone, try to make everyone happy, and bring peace and contentment everywhere you go,' and so, I became a waiter. Well, it's it's not much of a philosophy, I know... but, well,... fuck you. I can live my own life in my own way if I want to. Fuck off."
Replace waiter with CEO and I think it would still work. I mean, why do any of us do anything?
You've committed the fallacy of the single cause. A reason doesn't mean the reason for lower salaries.
To be clear: where's the fallacy of the single cause in what I wrote earlier? It's clear in what you said: you misinterpreted my saying "desirable jobs pay less" as "jobs being desirable is the only cause of the market paying less for some jobs". A cause - from my message, vs the cause - the assumption in your response.
Desirable jobs don't pay less than undesirable jobs. In a capitalist market things are set up so that there is a segment of the population who is desperate for money enough to do jobs that other people don't want regardless of pay. You have offered zero evidence for your original claim nor any supporting arguments that a job being less desirable somehow means it will pay more than a desirable job nor have you defined what makes jobs desirable or undesirable. Does high pay make a job desirable? Maybe to some people. You're applying a blanket statement to a heterogeneous population with nothing to back it up.
Rain days.... Too cold days(-5°c)...
So like a much-dreaded union for employers except it’s underhanded and illegal.
And it’s underhanded and illegal when employers do it, because there’s an imbalance of power between employee and employee.
Unions exist to even out that balance of power. When employers engage in that kind of activity it further increases the imbalance of power.
For example, in this case, they were using that tactic to support their ability to steal from employees.
The employer is already a collective, "A business", and the hiring manager is operating with the full power of that collective in hiring/firing negotations.
A union is a collective to balance power against the business (collective).
A cartel is a collective of collectives (ie., a group of businesses) operating to defeat free market competition regulation, in this sense the cartel is balancing power against the state -- which is the only permitted "collective of collectives".
Cartels challenge states (power to create free markets), whereas unions challenge businesses (power to hire/fire).
This is why unions are permissible and cartels are not.
First and foremost, states do not, and cannot "create free markets" the existence of a state to regulation a market makes is de-facto non-free
This is also a very rose colored look at unions, while simultaneously demonizing businesses. In reality it is completely possible to have an exploitive union. At the end of the day, power corrupts, and the more power a person or group has over another person or group the more corrupting that power is.
Thus in a very large union you will likely see just as much employee abuse, as in a very large company.
The sweet spot has always as well always been in Medium sized organizations, or unions, above 300 employees, under 3000 employees. Anything larger or smaller and the risk of abuse and poor conditions go up considerably even if you are represented by a large union
By default, an unregulated market becomes non-free essentially immediately, as cartels form (indeed, as cartels of cartels form, hence states).
As Hobbes observed, in the state of nature there is no motivation to remain as an individual, so you form groups in order for self-protection. In an "anarchical market" you end up with incredible levels of monopolisation (etc.).
A free market is a state construction whereby cartels, scams, fraud, (murder, theft, etc.) is prohibited so that limited liability collectives (another state construction) called "businesses" can freely compete for labour and profit.
Perhaps one day we might see capitalism as an "iterated socialism" (ie., socialism as thought about if you include time in your imagination).
And communism, libertarianism, anarchism, etc. as all products of a time-free form of reasoning where you can just pause the world and imagine that all people will "run the same program".
Stability and guarantees from a strong central state really grease the wheels of commerce.
I disagree, and history has shown that free markets absent government control doe not instantly become monopolized, and infact through out most of history monopolize form when the government regulates the most
Look at todays market as an example, the most competition is present in markets where the government has the least influence, where markets like energy, healthcare, etc which are the most regulated are also the most monopolized
Neutrally, using the term "anarchical market", i'd say that these markets are empheral. Everyone them has to act against rules which are not in their self-interest, it's highly unclear why a subgroup of market participants wouldnt immediately collectivise and outcompete everyone else.
Collectivisation is human's superpower, and the obvious an immediate thing basically everyone does (hence: mafia, warlords, cartels, etc.). It would be remarkable to see this anarchical market of yours remain free for very long, so I'd gladly hear of one case.
The main mechanism against collectivisation is that some biggest baddest collective decides to prohibit it (hence the state). There may be others, but I can think of none that would operate under anarchical conditions.
The Hanseatic League. This was basically its own trade association across North Europe, based on maritime trade. It had considerable market/economic power, but no legislative power; most participants were city-states so they were self-reliant to a degree, but none of them had jurisdiction or power over the entire group.
> Hanseatic Cities gradually developed common trade regulations.
> That year, the merchants of the Hansa in Cologne convinced King Henry II of England to exempt them from all tolls in London[26] and to grant protection to merchants and goods throughout England.[27]: 14–17
> etc.
> By the mid-16th century, these weak connections left the Hanseatic League vulnerable, and it gradually unraveled as members became consolidated into other realms or departed, ultimately disintegrating in 1669.
So it looks like the league was parasitic on the relevant states involved being able to implement regulations, so, basically exactly the point i'm making.
And secondarily, insofar as the legague itself lacked a mechanism to enforce transnational agreeement, it was weak and collpased.
So QED: insofar as participating states had viable regulating mechanisms the system work; insofar as challenges arose which requrired transnational mechanisms, it fell apart.
Of course it matters what kind of regulation; it's also possible to regulate markets in a way that protects monopolies, and some governments do that. So it's important to have a government that understands the importance of a free market.
To give you some examples, the Dutch markets for health insurance and energy are entirely privatised but heavily regulated, and quite competitive. It's easy to switch from one provider to another, and so they compete hard on price. Although perhaps more so in the early days after privatisation than more recently.
On the other hand, the market for software is not very regulated, it's heavily monopolised. Sometimes the EU makes moves to increase competition, but that's only piecemeal and not always terribly effective; Microsoft still rules the desktop, except in those areas where Apple now rules it.
Monopolization requires control of land or resources. This is because any cartel's attempt to set artificially high prices can be undercut by new entrants to the market who aren't in the cartel.
> On the other hand, the market for software is not very regulated, it's heavily monopolised.
Software is monopolized primarily through regulated monopolies on software (re)production i.e. copyright.
It's not copyright that monopolises software, but api support. The need to reverse engineer other people's work. A lack of open standards. There would be more competition possible in software if regulation mandated open standards and open apis.
So no, you don't need control of land to enable monopolization. You don't need IP law either. There are a million different factors that can drive monopolization, and many of those factors do require some degree of regulation to mitigate them.
Although you could argue that corporations themselves are a government-created construct, and removing those would remove the problem. That could be true, but that's a very big step.
The threat of jail time for people sharing pirated copies or circumventing copyright protected measures changes the pros/cons people weigh whether or not some people copy or reverse engineer despite those risks. There would be a lot more competition if pirates weren't incurring all these additional risks and were able to compete fairly without state backed copyright monopolies.
> There are a million different factors that can drive monopolization
The primary driver is restricting competition. If your competition is unrestricted then why would they join your cartel when they can outcompete you? Someone will always see that they can get a larger piece of the pie by outcompeting the cartel. Monopolies always use force to prevent winning in fair competition.
Could you give examples of this happening? When the prices are low that sounds like a good outcome for their customers. Assuming the price drop doesn't affect other aspects customers care about like quality.
The problem is when prices are raised above what they would otherwise be in a competitive market. You phrased this as "once the newcomer is gone", but there isn't anything preventing another newcomer from emerging, or several. The action of raising prices is openly visible to the market. This will attract entrepreneurs to the industry as a result of the perceived success of the monopolistic firm. In other words greedily raising prices above what the market wants to pay is a suicidal move for a single firm that relies on its customers to continue to buy whatever it is selling. This opens a market opportunity for newcomers where it did not exist before the price hike as customers would be encouraged to look for an alternatives.
Monopolies backed by force are not reliant on their customers' voluntary decisions in this way so the analysis above only applies to situations that prevent forcing customers to choose a particular firm against their wishes.
> When the prices are low that sounds like a good outcome for their customers.
No, because it's only temporary. They only lower the price to drive the competitor out of business, and once they're out of business, they raise the prices again.
> there isn't anything preventing another newcomer from emerging
Yes there is: investment. If every newcomer goes out of business like that, that makes it a bad investment to enter that market. You are already at a disadvantage entering a new market because of the investment needed. If you then can't recoup those costs, there's not much point in even trying. And the established big players can and will drop their prices to run you out of business unless stopped by regulation. Your argument only works if you ignore investment costs necessary to enter a market.
There's literally more than a century of legal history behind this.
I would argue that it's good for the state to take some sort of interest in regulating them, one of several ways that I'm not a free-market fundamentalist.
But arguing that the formation of cartels makes a market non-free is backward. Cartels emerge through free association in trade. Regulating them might make for a more functional market, a more efficient market (or it might not) but it makes for a less free market, always.
I will add that I consider the very idea of "absence of the state" to be badly-formed, states vary considerably in their constitution but there's always something serving that role, even if it's a few elders in a village.
A cartel sets prices, and is one of the many ways markets are unfree.
There's a ton of confusion created by libertarian sorts who fail to distinguish between government regulation which sets prices, and regulation necessary for the operation of the market itself. Basically delusional ideologues have denied the latter exists, by just ignoring it.
If a government acts to set prices it makes a market non-free, just as much as if a cartel does so. "Free" cannot plausibly mean that a mafia is fine but a police force isnt.. and the claim that it does is just libertarian propaganda.
Governments which regulate markets so as to prevent cartels are acting to prevent the very sort of price-setting which "free" denotes does not occur
That's true, but cartels can't enforce this. New or external firms can compete with the cartel. If a cartel reduces production or raises prices then it incentivizes competitors to meet the market demand with lower prices. The only way the cartel can exclude new firms is by controlling the entirety of some resource or enforcing the cartel usually in the form of lobbying for regulations.
You're assuming also that the cartel is operating only "economically", not also, eg., bribing, blackmailing, (stealing, murdering, ...), ...potential competitors. Why not just invite any competitor into the cartel? Why not buy them out? Why not "make life difficult" for them?
The underlying assumption that "things wash out" requires supposing that an extremely simplistic newtonian model of an economy where politics doesnt really occur. But people are foremost political, ie., engaged in tribal behaviour, collectivising, using force, and so on. This doesnt "wash out".
It may not be in Ontario. In a free market (i.e. one that respects property rights) it would be worthwhile. To see why, let me take your objections one by one.
Bribing competitors: The point of a cartel is to use force to prevent competition. Successful firms who are outcompeting their peers don't need to rely on force in this way, and enacting force is costly. The cost of the bribes must be factored into the cartels bottom line rendering them less efficient at meeting the market's needs. On the other hand the cartels inefficiencies require that the bribed competitors are leaving money on the table by taking the bribe instead of competing.
Blackmailing competitors: This supposes that you have some illegal or taboo information that can be used to blackmail competitors. This method of force will not work for any firms you cannot find dirt on. The cost of acquiring the blackmail is another source of inefficiency in the cartel at meeting the market's needs.
Stealing: Property rights are required in order to have a free market. Corrupt courts or enforcement of laws can prevent free markets from forming in the real world. Preventing corruption of these privileged offices is a difficult problem and could use more research.
Murdering: This is a special case of stealing as people own their own bodies so murder deprives them of their property.
> The underlying assumption that "things wash out" requires supposing that an extremely simplistic newtonian model of an economy where politics doesnt really occur.
I wasn't trying to say that "things wash out" no matter what. My point was that the circumstances surrounding monopolies affect their ability to prevent competition. It's easy to see that when an industry is doing well it attracts new competitors. Analyzing the reasons competitors are not able to compete in monopolized industries is the best way to understand how to prevent monopolies.
Are there any states that don't forcefully take property and life without people's consent? States are well known for taxing their citizens and fighting wars.
There are certainly small communities that don't steal or murder from anyone, but scaling them up has many challenges. I'd argue cultural attitudes around property rights are more important to creating free societies than top down laws and enforcement. Obviously some legal framework and enforcement would be necessary.
Have you got any examples of this?
When I look at large unions where I am, it goes one of two ways. They get large and hopeless (teachers union and nurses union) or they get powerful enough that they can dictate such that they can make a meaningful change for their members.
I’ve seen some impressive conditioned earned by doctors unions, police unions and one I belonged to for allied health professionals.
None of them seem to be exoloiting their members, but I’m not sure how I’d find out about that.
If they're good or bad is another matter.
But a cartel is never required, since businesses competing with each other is the goal of a free market.
I would agree that if unions become more powerful than businesses, so it ends up single-business vs "union-of-unions" you can get the same effects.
Hopefully the asymmetry is clear though. Cartels are never permissible in a free market, but unions often are because of the need for labour to compete "on the same terms" as business.
ie., the mere existence of a union isnt a sign the market is non-free; whereas the mere existence of a cartel is.
It’s pretty clear what you think though.
Depending on the country, that varies from "totally illegal" to "well of course you're gonna solidarity strike, that's how it's done".
Which is kind of the problem with unions. If they stuck to negotiating pay levels while leaving businesses free to hire and fire who they see fit I think employers would be much more willing to work with them. Higher salary expenses are much less damaging to a business than not being able to fire incompetent workers.
At worst, you won't get a positive recommendation from an employer like this if somebody calls and asks. The idea that employers are busy maintaining "no-hire lists" and collecting names from all of their industry peers doesn't hold up, at least not outside of maybe weird small-town social bubbles.
But it’s not like the small-town social bubble of West Coast software development is a stranger to collusion. What was that thing again? Apple and some other giant tech companies colluding on wages? Well, it was on HN a few times at least. I don’t remember the details.
However, in a small town, business owners may warn each other, and in a small bubble of companies, they may talk to each other.
And if you need a reference, better pick a fellow employee. Other than that, ignore the boogeyman!
For my part, the fired workers that were added to the list had been escorted out by police or wheeled out by EMTs after causing property damage and physical harm to other employees. I didn't think much about it at the time. I was young and foolish and happy to have been promoted off the call center floor into management.
I think the list had started a decade earlier for sharing across sister companies. My local company had been acquired by a larger foreign company which had several US subsidiaries in similar businesses, one of which was just the other side of the river from us. I think they first shared the list amongst themselves which despite them being different companies, is almost "internal", but eventually they started sharing it with another Austin business with a large call center over on Mopac that shared a bunch of workers across different shifts. They'd work for us during the day calling businesses and work theirs at night calling residential. Then a third company joined and I wouldn't be surprised if they shared it even more broadly after I left, but by then I suspect most of the phone workers in Austin were covered at that point.
There were two other companies we regularly swapped low-skill call center workers with and the management teams of all three, I was on one, shared a list of disruptive and dangerous workers we'd had to fire and discouraged any of the three firms to hire. On our end, the list was in Lotus Notes and it was someone's job to make sure it integrated updates from the other call centers.
That was the late 90s and the list sharing started in the late 80s before I got there but it was one of the thing you learned about when you got promoted to management, check the list before the interview!
I started out on the phones and had many friends still on the floor when I got promoted, so learning about the list was a little bit disturbing, but the names I recognized on it from my time in our call center, had been escorted out by the police or carried out by EMTs.
That firm was wild. We literally took on 20 guys from the child sexual abuse convict halfway house to work the phones. Only half made the cut after the trial period and only three of them stayed on more than a few months, and those three were quite good, one making the "CEO" team which was the highly capable group that could hold a CEO on the phone for a 45 minute interview about, for example, printers and multi-function devices conducted on behalf of Dell Computers to see if they were making any headway eating into HP printer sales or whatever.
My point is that back in the '90s lists you say don't exist absolutely did. I not only knew of one, I used it, added to it, and I have every confidence that two other companies employing the same kind of people were using it as well.
(This to point out that most lobbies are to employers what unions are to employees)
An interjection: Under GDPR this is illegal. (Just a reminder that "tech" legislation sometimes also improve on broader levels)
I see a lot of US websites with annoying GDPR popups and they really don't need to do that over here.
The societal impact of this crime cannot be overstated. Billions of dollars stolen from workers, practically free of consequence.
Mist companies dont pay what theyre supposed to as there are countless loopholes.
If you define being late with payments as theft, then I'd bet that rent theft is way larger than wage theft. I don't see why you would say that it is theft when you are late with payments to a worker but not theft when you are late with payments to a company.
If being late with payments isn't theft, then "wage theft" isn't theft, just like you missing to pay your rent one month isn't theft.
- They must use the court system, and do so probably without legal representation unless they can find a lawyer willing to work pro-bono. This requires time and money
- At the same time they’re almost certainly job hunting because while retaliation is (sometimes) illegal, it’s trivially easy for businesses to cite other bullshit reasons for firing people and be entirely in the clear, because that’s even harder to prove in court than wage theft
- If they do manage both of those, they now have a documented history of fighting for their rights as workers, and bosses do not like that. It makes them inherently riskier to hire.
This isnt "being late with payments" that is as you have correctly pointed out, not theft. "late" implies that eventually the wages are in fact paid. This is not what people are talking about when they are talking about wage theft.
People refuse to pay rent all the time unless you start to threaten legal action over it. We call that late payment, but they would never pay unless you went after them, just like these companies.
> This isnt "being late with payments"
"Being late with payments" doesn't mean they are late, it means they haven't paid you yet. That is equivalent to wage theft, we just call it "late" to make it seem like a lesser evil, and "theft" when corporations do it to make it seem worse than it is.
Of course some companies will never pay and will take you to court over it, but I don't see why you should lump all of that into a giant number alongside the very benign cases.
If you rent an apartment and agreed to pay 3000 a month for it and instead only pay 2500 a month you would be taken to court and lose the case. If an employer did the same it would be "a civil matter" having seen this firsthand I can attest to the truth of this.
Both of those are decided in civil court, I don't see the difference.
We had what we thought were the dream landlords. They kept our rent low because we kept their property in good condition and we were tenants for literally a decade. I mowed both sides of the property, too, so they wouldn't need to service it. I replaced outlets, I was on-time with rent every single month.
Then they wanted out of the business. We were harangued constantly by their real estate agent to arrange tours of the property, oftentimes without the requisite 24-hour notice by our states law. We had to allow strangers THROUGH OUR HOME routinely for a month. Then they sold the property, and the new owners increased rent by the maximum legal amount the next month, almost $400 at the time, fully intending to continue increasing it until it was at "market rate" which essentially doubled our rent over the course of the next few months.
Thankfully my parents were in a particularly great position having had a windfall from a family member passing away, and they helped us a great deal in completing our savings for a down payment several years ahead of schedule, and helping us pay off some ancillary debt to give our credit score a shot in the arm. We managed to buy a home thanks to them and I will live in a fucking cardboard box before I kiss some landlord's ring again.
Fuck em.
Ah. You're a landlord. That explains a lot.
All the bemoaning and bitching I've ever heard from you lot has one answer: If it's so fucking bad, then sell your excess properties to people who actually want to live in them and leave the business. No one forced you to buy more housing/commercial space than you needed. You did that, because you wanted to profit from it while doing no work. In that lens, I hope it sucks for you. I hope you have problems every day from your tenants, from your buildings. I hope they hold you feet to the fire over every last problem they have with every ounce of legal leeway given them. I hope you're miserable.
And I hope all of this because nobody made you get into that business and you're free to leave it at any time.
To suffer the indignity of collecting rent by sitting on property. How do you live like that?
Those two are the same, a person who is late would typically never pay if they didn't get threatening mail to "remind" them.
Hot, hot, hot fucking garbage. When I was in college and broke, and struggled to make rent, I was KEENLY FUCKING AWARE I owed it. It was a fact that was on my mind 24 hours a day, including inducing stress nightmares about losing my place to live.
Just absolute, 100%, shit from a bull's ass. Bullshit, you might say. I dunno where in the world you got this notion, but as someone who spent a youth in the poverty grinder, allow me to dispel you of it. Fuck no. Rent NEVER left my mind, even when it WAS paid. Making my rent payment every month was what kept me going to work when sick, what kept me at work when my boss treated me like shit, etc. etc. etc. This notion that people "forget" rent is some of the most ludicrous bullshit I've ever heard in my fucking life.
I don't mean to personally attack, I don't know you, but I cannot fathom how you got this idea in your head if you've ever rented a place before that you had to personally pay for.
Edit: You see plenty of stories from company owners who worry if they can pay salaries next month and it is all they can think about, that is the kind of person you are calling a "wage thief" here, even though they just like you are just struggling and trying to make ends meet.
And even if they are, remind me where your constitutional right to a profitable business is? If paying your workers means you can't keep the lights on, then you can't keep the lights on. Too many even in this situation think the answer is "keep the lights on, before paying workers".
But highly profitable businesses (up to and including Apple) also commit wage theft. So please don't try to turn this into yet another "poor small business owners" trope.
Source: wife worked as a credit controller.
I only called sick a handful of times, never was late, and did my job to the best of my ability. it is called work ethic. I started at $0.25 above minimum wage, as we given several raises, and position changes by the time I left at age 18, why because I was one of the most reliable teens they had, and they did not want me to go to another employer.
Some parents instill work ethic in their children even teens, sadly we do not have many good parents these days it seems like
and for the record, walmart never asked me and I never did work a single second off the clock...
It turns out that there is a lot more to what makes a person than just the behaviour of their parents.
Most college graduates likely could not pass a 8th grade exam from 100 years ago, the social cost of that is immense.
Yeah I thought that book sucked too
> Most college graduates likely could not pass a 8th grade exam from 100 years ago
I highly doubt it, though we have no way to prove this one way or another. Maybe there'd be some like dates that we haven't memorized in modern times because priorities have changed, or some outdated home ec or shop practices.
Much more interesting is imagining a tween from 1924 trying to grapple with the advanced math and science (not to mention language skills) required to even take a modern AP class, let alone pass the exam.
But it's fine, it's developmentally appropriate for middle-aged and older men to find the days youths and teens lacking, your following in a time honored tradition of moral panics about how sure, we were idiots in our own special way, but these teens, these teens, are really something else, uniquely feckless in a way never before seen in history. Yes, every generation preceding mine has had this opinion, and has been soundly proven wrong, but, for the first time ever, we're right about it, and it just happens to be this generation of teens that is accurately described by the grumblings of old men, right when I want to start grumbling.
Yes there is "kids get off my lawn" but to just dismiss all of the data and problems as that is ignorant and dangerous
Also I have to ask, and I mean this seriously. What did you do with the money from that job? Did it go into savings? Did you help with household bills?
My parents provided shelter, basic food at home, and transport to school and official functions...
If I wanted anything beyond that like access to a car to go out with friends. Or to buy a new game.. or go to a party etc. I hade to fund that with my own money
My parents were terrible at personal finance. They were not savers nor did the schools teach me anything about saving.. investment or compound interest so I did not start any of those things until my late 20's.. I failure instill regret....
That said my parents never asked me to contribute to the household finances.. and now today as one of my parents has no retirement they now live with me and I do not ask them to contribute to the household finances...
He kept jerking me around, paying fractions of what he owed me, then "forgetting" how much was left, etc. I probably ended up getting about a quarter or what I was owed.
This was a "friend" (note the quotes). I can only imagine what happens with the contractors that hire laborers from the side of the street, in the local hispanic district. Those chaps don't have any recourse (Unless you count the local MS-13 chapter).
I hear a lot of people tell me about the "wait to clock in" gig. Many of them "help themselves" to their employers' assets. I don't condone that, but I also don't condone their getting ripped off.
Large-scale, white-collar employers probably reap billions from stolen wages. My first job was hourly, and I made a lot of money over my standard wages (it was actually an honest employer -defense contractor, so they were audited with a proctoscope).
During my exempt career, I encountered all kinds of nickel-and-dime behavior. Those nickels and dimes add up to new Porsches in the driveways of senior managers.
The most they'll be screwed is one day's labor. They're in demand because they work very hard, and they'll quickly find work.
This is exactly one of the key responsibilities for labour unions to manage this interest on behalf of their members.
The idea that there's a cabal of restaurant owners who get together to discuss in detail how they're breaking the law and maintain a blacklist is absurd when you stop to think about it.
But they're more than happy to let those kind of rumours keep doing the rounds to scare the naive young people into not sticking up for themselves.
There are Whatsapp groups of HRs working in a particular group (tech, construction, etc.) where they communicate. Obviously they don't discuss the names openly but they do ask if someone is willing to give feedback on a candidate that worked at XY.
In many cases it's just teenagers being dramatic and coming up with external reasons why they are dealing with suboptimal conditions and not asking the owner about it.
It's unfair competition though, so it's really important that this doesn't happen. A restaurant that wants do to the right thing shouldn't have to worry about a few % worse competitiveness on wages because the asshat across the street has his staff work for free.
If something like this earned you a $10k fee the first time and a 5 year ban from running any kind of business in the state if you repeat it, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.
And culturally treating it like any other theft: a crime that should subject the thief, in a practical sense, to the risk of imprisonment.
If you steal $100 worth of food from a store, they'll call the cops and arrest you.
If the store steals wages from you in the tune of $1000+, <POOF> its a.... CIVIL MATTER (waves hands).
No one will get arrested for even stealing $1000s of dollars of luxury items on camera (at least in CA, a trend setter for other states).
https://amhsnews.org/10386/justice-awareness/shoplifting-the...
> On September 30th, 2023, Governor Newsom signed into law Senate Bill No. 553, essentially making it illegal for retail workers to confront looters, burglars, and shoplifters.
> A Walgreens employee working in San Francisco told a reporter that thieves come around 15-20 times per day
> any theft under $950 is only considered a misdemeanor, which means it doesn’t lead to anything punitive by law
Edit: Present data countering the virtue signaling and get downvoted. Keep it up folks.
And frankly, there were times in which I saw people steal food. And in those cases, I never saw a thing! Especially when formula was being "acquired".
One time, during Black Friday, someone stole a whole register full of cash. Again, not my job and not my problem.
https://city-attorney.columbus.gov/pdf/press/babyformulaband...
There are a lot of organizations that give out formula for free but not at scale required for nefarious uses.
As a parent, I feel people like you are the reason formula ends up being unavailable for real babies as you enable gangs to steal them driving up cost.
Here is a list of places with free baby formula and stuff in the Bay Area:
https://www.211bayarea.org/sanfrancisco/food/food-programs/f...
https://www.findhelp.org/goods/diapers-%26-formula--san-jose...
https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/san_francisco_and_s...
One advice: Stop with harmful virtue signaling. It is easy to virtue signal like you do here with looking at any data or bearing any of the real cost of virtue signaling. I will repeat. People like you are the reason formula ends up being unavailable for real babies as you enable gangs to steal them driving up cost and causing shortages during real crises. As a parent this is frustrating and rage inducing.
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/form...
1) Support low income people by giving them formula if they need it, AND
2) End the war on drugs and move people into treatment instead of the carceral slave system
Sounds like a win-win.
You must have missed the part of the post where they stated:
>I worked at $retailer for a time, and even their statements were to "DO NOT ENGAGE SHOPLIFTERS".
"People like [them]" are being told from their employers to not engage shoplifters.
> Wilson has a history of drug offenses: felony drug abuse, felony possession of cocaine, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
"Offenses" is carrying the whole team here. All this says is that he was charged with the crime of doing drugs while black. I could have been arrested for all of these at one time in my life or another. Without a trafficking charge they're just speculating he might be a dealer.
> While a black market exists for stolen baby formula to be resold for its intended purpose, reports indicate that baby formula also is used as a cutting agent for cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine by drug dealers looking to dilute their product and stretch their supply.
So he could be cutting drugs with it, or he could just be stealing it to sell directly. He even could even be selling it to actual drug dealers. Not saying that's better but the police kinda gloss over that as presented that's the more likely option.
I promise I'm not trying to drag you or anything but I'm originally from Columbus and you have to take anything the CPD says with a shaker of salt. Columbus is a fairly boring city and so CPD always tries to punch up the stories.
It was probably all theft to exchange for drugs.
During the pandemic there was a formula shortage and allowing theft rather than punishing it probably ensured some children went without unnecessarily.
And really, if 1 out of a thousand "cuts drugs" with formula, so be it. At least that's non-toxic... and frankly, laughable as DARE propaganda.
https://www.211bayarea.org/sanfrancisco/food/food-programs/f...
https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/san_francisco_and_s...
Just recently there was a baby formula shortage. And we were not prosecuting gangs stealing formula. Shameless and laughable.
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/form...
Edit: To person calling me a techbro below, I can't provide data for 1000s of cities in the US, genius. Feel free to do so.
Non tech folks also live in the US (you would know if you live in the US). Also look up why we are discussing the Bay Area.
Non tech folks also live in the US (you would know if you live in the US).
Also look up why we are discussing the Bay Area.
California, in fact, has one of the lowest felony theft thresholds out of any of the states. In fact, it has the 10th lowest felony threshold in the union. [1]
It was actually Oklahoma who started the trend to increase the felony threshold in the early 2000s.
Newsom passed the bill you referenced so that minimum wage workers aren’t playing security for their employers. This bill did not raise the felony threshold.
Do you want to know which states have the highest felony theft thresholds? It’s Texas and Wisconsin at $2500. In 2010, California went from a threshold of $400 to $950. In 2015, Texas went from a threshold of $1500 to $2500, so California’s threshold has always been much lower even in the recent past. [2]
So no, California has not actually been any sort of trendsetter when it comes to felony theft thresholds, but it certainly is a convenient bogeyman.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/felony-thef...
[2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-retailers-close-stores-...
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1202264923/major-retailers-bl...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/target-closing-stores-2023-san-...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/business/target-retail-theft-...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-stores-theft-1.69794...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11965589/The-stores...
------------------------
However, on the actual wage theft side, is scattered articles about a single bad company, or policies from stuffy think tanks and "boring" and non-sensationalized sources.
https://www.cohousedems.com/news/wage-theft-prevention-passe...
https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2024/2024-10.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/wage-theft-law-new-york-v...
https://blog.dol.gov/2024/02/07/protecting-workers-rights-at...
https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/01/wage-theft-c...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-...
Was there theft at that store.. I don't doubt it but never saw it in all the times i was in there searching, often without success, for some home item that would suit my place.
It was just a bad target variant store that was plopped into the middle of a neighborhood that ended up being specialized in the wrong thing, if any target mucky muck had ever walked the neighborhood before putting the store in it could have been very successful (because we could really use a store where I can buy various home goods without jumping in my car and driving 10-15m).
And if you're a person of color, if you try to pass a counterfeit $20 bill (unclear if you even know it's counterfeit) then the police just murder you and the person in charge of it gets a cheesecake sentence
The system is working as intended.
Government is quite literally a criminal organization except it was decided by someone (people, representatives, a monarch, whatever) that this particular one is not criminal and any others like it are, within self-described boundaries.
It might or might not be doing criminal things (as in, things we associate with criminal), but it wants and needs a monopoly on those things, otherwise it risks dissolution by internal and/or external forces. It’s thus obvious it’ll prioritize protecting the mafia bosses/sovereigns/elites and thugs/enforcers.
It's not just that. There are people that will outright deny that it's happening. The reasoning trotted out is that if it were true that this were happening then it would be squashed. In other words, if it were happening, then it would not be happening. From the article:
> According to a 2018 report by Good Jobs, between January 2000 to 2018, Walmart paid over $1.4bn in fines and settlements over wage theft violations, FedEx paid over $500m during the same period, and Bank of America paid over $380m.
Sans data about Walmart's $1.4bn in fines, they'll reason to themselves that Walmart, even if it's not somewhere they personally would ever shop, is a reputable company, therefore this isn't something that happens at Walmart.
I have experience firsthand (from a low spot in my life) that FedEx continues to do the same thing, especially to people who are powerless to do anything about it. To wit:
Their warehouse workers get paid low wages and the arrangement is that you need to be available between 4:00 AM and ~10:30. It's not that you'll be working during those hours. No, instead what happens is the night before they determine how high of a load they have and then set the hours for that time. So you as a worker call in at around 9:00 PM the night before, listen to a recorded message that states e.g. "On Tuesday, February 13, package sorters will begin work at 5:30". So far not so good, but there's nothing especially illegal about this is as far as I know. (It stretches morality and ethics, however.) What is illegal as I understand it is incidents where they tell you to report to work at that time, people show up, and then find that the timeclocks are papered over with a sign saying not to clock in because there was an issue at the warehouse overnight and the systems aren't running, so they've moved the clock-in time ahead 45 minutes to when they expect the systems to be up and running. You are expected to wait there off the clock despite not being paid and being expected not to leave.
One of my buddies said they did this to them. I don’t know how common it is but it does happen. They were satisfied with their pay, though, compared to what many jobs in the area offered.
Note that this is US law enforcement in general. The "if middle america were using drugs at the same rate of inner cities then we'd see arrest rates at the same levels" argument we here. While studies show that drug use is similar between these groups, enforcement in cities, specifically against minority groups is much higher.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...
The true crime is as always the impact on businesses.
It’s a way in which this is bad that folks may not immediately connect to it.
It's hard to tell if you meant this as sarcasm or not, but... it really is a big deal. If all your competitors are screwing their employees in order to increase their margins, that means they can out-compete your on price. Which means you can either screw _your_ employees.. or risk going out of business. And eventually, the only players left are the ones that are screwing their employees.
So yes, if you want to look out for employees, then you need to look out for businesses by making sure everyone is following the same rules. That doesn't mean the businesses themselves are more important, just that their health is vital to the well-being of the employees.
The context is that the OP complained about one business colluding with others by way of informal no-hire lists for employees that don’t tolerate this wage theft. The response to that is to focus on how other businesses that don’t collude will get out-competed…
And yeah I’m pretty sick of this framing. It’s an anecdote where employees are direct victims, and then the focus gets shifted to hypothetical and indirect victims (businesses). Even in my own social democratic place of residence there seems to be dominant narrative of “job creators” and how we need to “create jobs”, the outcome of which is to sacrifice things in order to directly benefit businesses in order to (ostensibly, in rhetoric) benefit workers. This was concretely demonstrated when, during the pandemic, the right-wing government was very insistent on giving handouts to failing businesses that obviously were going to have a hard time (like the travel industry) under the guise of “protecting jobs”. Meanwhile, the government proposed that we should temporarily make it easier for employers to put employees on temporary leave (whatever the English/American term is) in order for them to not just die. Which is fine in itself… except they wanted tax payers and workers to dis-proportionally pay for this temporary measure. What’s the only thing that made them “change their minds”? Labor groups and other such organizations.
And then there was inflation, a predictable outcome of the spending-spree during the pandemic. So the central bank raised the rent. And again. And again. And the acknowledged consequence of that was that the poorest among us would struggle to make ends meet. But that’s not a problem at all—that a predictable outcome of a previous spending spree on businesses would impact regular people and make some people have to choose between mortgage/rent or food; not a problem. That’s just Economics.
What’s the problem with corrupt politicians? On one hand you can simply say that the problem is that corrupt politicians corrupt the political system. On the other hand you can frame it as the outing of corrupt politicians causes “political distrust” and a “crisis of legitimacy” among the (stupid) voters. So you re-frame the issue as a few bad apples (politicians) which causes the real problem of voters/regular people becoming (justifiably) cynical and distrustful of the whole system. That’s the power of framing.
And that’s why I don’t buy into the framing of helping businesses in order to (pinky swear) really helping workers. Yeah, those hand-out to businesses? Oh would you look at that—a “profit party” half a year later for the shareholders. Who woulda thunk it. But too bad about that inflation, though. Guess you should rethink owning a car or having hobbies other than taking walks in the park.
No, the focus gets shifted to
> We need to make sure that businesses that _do_ treat their employees well are able to succeed. And, to do that, we make sure that treating their employees well isn't turned into a penalty. We make sure that all companies are playing by the same rules.
The thread went like this
>>> Businesses should not be able to steal wages from their employees, and we should punish them harshly
>> Yes, if businesses can get away with that, then the ones that treat workers well will go out of business
> (you) Stop making this about the business being a victim here
Seriously, what the heck. Everything about that bit of the thread was about making sure it's better for businesses to treat employees well.
But somehow companies seem to have more rights than people.
Our family has a small farm, my parents didn't think we did enough of that and put me in a white van full of migrant workers at 12 years old (hey the 80s!) to go pick produce in a field all day... It was grueling work but I got a first hand account of migrant farm workers and the way they are treated.
Why are you asking me to be responsible for the tangential discussion, that I did not start, on migrant status? Or are you going to post this exact same question to everyone up the chain including people you already agree with?
Except way worse because you’re fine with bruises apparently. Death is where you draw the line. Disgusting.
> When the United States sends migrants to Mexico, criminal cartels are enriched by kidnapping them and then extorting money from their US-based family members to secure their release.
Just to comment on what your "good option" means for many. Maybe you meant the option is good for the US and employers, rather than for the migrant worker
Mexicans are US Americans human neighbors.
You are speaking with an adult. These arguments do not work on me. I pay income tax to the US, not Mexico, and if I don't, the US throws me in a real prison cell. Countries are very real to me.
Parent was talking about how they can not "see" USA and Mexico from space, so the topic I am addressing is borders and the control of borders.
If we don't want to acknowledge borders when it comes to asylum seekers, how can we expect others to respect them when it is easier for them to ignore them.
...Because we're all human beings?
And a human responsibility to not exploit people running away from a violent dangerous environment.
If you only care about people with a certain piece of paper then it says something about your total lack of ethics and human compassion.
I agree don't steal and let's prosecute those who do. What about those in Mexico that steal from the the people who are fleeing violence?
Why stop there, how about we do something about the violent dangerous environment? Would you support military action in Mexico and South America to try and fix the problems?
But I also know that it will be something that get tried, probably more than once if the US thinks that it has a moral mandate to fix the problem in Mexico and South America as the parent was suggesting.
A worker that does not put up with petty BS is surely less likely to put up with major BS (like wrongful termination when getting pregnant or whatever).
Not to mention the chance that you'll be found out by the authorities; I want to believe the punishment for wage theft is much more than the savings. Of course, that depends on how many people report it and how much evidence can be retrieved I suppose.
There's no justification in being shitty to your fellow citizen over this paltry sum of money. None.
Can't buy your way out moral bankruptcy with $10,400 over 2 decades.
As a server, aside from taking orders and carrying food, we had 'sidework' before and after our shift- stuff like cutting lemons into wedges for water, rolling silverware in napkins, refilling condiments, etc. That all needed to be done before/after clocking in. Additionally, if diners stayed late, our timecards were edited to reflect the hours we 'should have' been working.
And the last thing that bugs me the most, is that we were required to give 10% of our tips to share with the back-of-house employees like bus boys. The manager collected this money directly and there was no accounting or way to see how much of it actually made its way to the other employees. That pisses me off the most because it was so arbitrary and so completely in the control of someone who was already stealing from us.
The places I worked
- busboys were not back-of-house employees; they were out on the floor helping take care of tables (bussing them, refilling coffee, making deserts, etc).
- the wait staff gave the 10% (or whatever it was) directly to the busboys. And some to the hostess, and some to the bartender; basically all the client facing staff.
I have no memory of the owners doing anything dishonest to the staff (at any of the places I worked), so either I was blind to things, or there _are_ (were) some good ones out there.
If they did so could you not bring up the suspicious timing with the labour board?
What you are describing is typically called "side work". Basically work that is not directly related to waiting a table. Folding napkins, putting up chairs, moving tables, etc. Even in cases where the restaurant clocks in their workers for every minute they are doing work, servers complain about doing side work because "it costs them money". And they want the federal minimum wage during that time.
Which naively makes sense. But that's not at all how tipped wages work under the law. The formula is basically: (([hours worked] * [tipped minimum wage]) + [tips earned in pay period]) / [hours worked] = [hourly wage over pay period]
So if you work 10 hours in a pay period, that's $21.30. If you collected $51.20 in tips during that time, you made $72.50 or $7.25/hr (based on current federal minimum wage, obviously numbers are different for different areas where the minimum wage is different from the federal). The restaurant is in the clear. Even if you worked 5 hours doing "side work" and 5 hours waiting tables where you got $51.20 in tips.
Servers want to essentially prorate every minute they are not physically collecting a tip it seems. Worked an hour and every table stiffed you? They want $7.25 for that hour. Regardless of the fact that the previous hour they took in $20 in tips.
Serving is more akin to being an independent contractor. You need to make hay while the sun is shining. The fat sustains you through the lean. You look at your per hour over the aggregate, not counting every hour. It's why contractors charge the rates they charge. If you are only billing half the year, those billings need to support you through the other half.
Now, in your case, the reason they don't want you to clock in isn't to save $7 over a week. It's to up your average. Which is still wrong. Let's say at your current rate of collecting tips, you totaled $225 over 30 hours. That's $7.50. Restaurant doesn't owe you anything. Now, $225 over 32.5 hours (your low end over 5 days), that's only $6.92 / hour. The restaurant is short, not $7, but $41.28
And true, If you instead made $300 over those 30 hours, the extra 2.5 hours don't even matter to you. Your check wouldn't have been that different. But, it's money that's not coming from their pockets and it's really to push people near the bubble over their limit.
So you earn $16/hr for all time you’re at work, plus tips.
Which is how it should be. You’re being employed. Those tips are for the employee, not a gratuity for the owner to offset their costs.
“Tipped wages” are just another form of theft, bought by the restaurant lobby.
> So you earn $16/hr for all time you’re at work, plus tips.
This is not true. According to California Waitress & Bartender Minimum Wage Laws California Tipped Minimum Wage Laws for 2023, 2024 [1],
> California labor law allows tipped employees to be paid a lower cash wage than the standard California minimum wage by their employers, with different allowed tip credits applying to different classes of employer.
That lower amount is $11 or $12 per hour, depending on the size of the company (vs the normal $16/hour rate for non-tipped employees).
The numbers are lower for most (all?) of the rest of the country.
[1] https://www.minimum-wage.org/california/tipped-employee-mini...
>They want $7.25 for that hour. Regardless of the fact that the previous hour they took in $20 in tips.
Good. It is the companies job to pay the minimum wage rate per hour regardless of weather customer come in or not. If the restaurant industry cannot survive this they have no legal right to slave wages to survive.
The restaurant owner is encouraged to keep the restaurant open much later than "profitable" hours because the cost of the additional late-night hours is only $2.13/hour per employee. So if even one table comes in during the 11PM to 1AM hours, that breaks even for the business. The business owner benefits from externalizing the true cost of staying open for those hours onto the employees. The workers end up working a lot of no-profit hours.
If they were making $7.25/hr then the incentives would be (more) aligned for them to keep working those hours.
But currently this is NOT a legal requirement. So your statement "they have no legal right to slave wages to survive" drips with hyperbole.
It is in California, Oregon, and Washington. And probably a few other places in the US.
But you're going to want to advocate to get paid the full minimum wage and to get gratuity on top of that. Usually to the tune of 20% or higher even if the service was bad.
And it's why the tipping system persist despite any issues it has. Because servers who make more money than the service they provide is worth because they get to hustle the customers don't want to give that up.
You can believe what you want, but you're just wrong. I don't know a better way to put it. The fact that you get to hustle customers for money above and beyond the value of your service is what you get for giving up the normal minimum wage. Prorating per hour makes no sense. At that point, abolish tipping and pay a fair hourly wage.
> You can believe what you want, but you're just wrong.
> The fact that you get to hustle customers
Wow. This is so incredibly intellectually dishonest that I'm actually flagging it. I don't advocate/believe/want anything of the things you just ascribed to me. I'd like to see restaurant workers earning static livable wages without tipping. Please don't try to start flame wars using strawman arguments and then telling people what they believe.
However, there's no shame in the actual hustle. But that is what's happening in the tipping system.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar. Accusing others of that is just as intellectually dishonest as you think I was. And inflammatory in and of itself.
As to "you can believe what you want, but you're just wrong", is the belief that the incentives are misaligned. The cost to keep the kitchen open is prohibitive enough to not do it for the random straggler. You need better than half a customer an hour.
Servers do not want tipping to end. They want to be tipped and to be prorated when they're not actively tipped. They want it both ways.
These are not comparable as working an extra 15 minutes is a consensual tranaction where getting $7 stolen from the business was an unconsensual transaction. A better comparison would be along for a $7 per week raise.
You have to be operating in a very narrow niche or a very small community for illegal behavior to be the norm.
what most employees don't know is that this type of theft is often a smokescreen for theft by a manager or someone below ownership.
mention to owner anonymously, if no action, report the business that does this to you, put it on yelp, and move on.
For example, one of my jobs right out of high school was waiting tables at a local restaurant. If you were opening, the expectation from owners and management was you'd get in early to help open but would wait 15 minutes before service started before clocking in. So on those days you'd do 30-45 minutes of fully unpaid labor. There was well understood that if you complained about this not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. At the time I was pretty naive and didn't think much of it, just figured that's the way the world worked. Doing the math, because I always made more than the tipped minimum wage, I think it only ended up costing me $7/week in wages - but if I stole $7 out of the till each week for a year in a half I'd be charged with a felony.