• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

After Winning a $15 Minimum Wage, Fast Food Workers Now Battle Unfair Firings

TU Curmudgeon said:
Now THERE you have a real point.

When I was hiring is stopped hiring people with lots of "job skills" and next to no "work skills" pretty damn fast. I figured out that it was easier (and cheaper) to teach a person who actually showed up ready and willing to work how to do the jobs than it was to teach a person who knew how to do the job how to show up ready and willing to work. Not only that, but the people who showed up on time and were willing to work stuck around longer (and I think that was because they realized that I was willing to "give them a boost when they needed it"). I adopted the "strategy" I learned from one of my first employers, which was "I pay you eight hours of pay to do eight hours of work. I don't tell you that ten hours of work is eight hours of work. I don't pay sick pay but if you are sick, don't come to work and I'll still pay you because that wasn't your fault. If you get sick too often, then you don't work here any more.". It worked out fine in the long run.
Click to expand...

Now we have some common ground. My experience with new hires was similar to yours. You could go through quite a few newbies before you got one that would show up on time every day willing to learn the trade. THOSE kind of newbies didn't have to work for minimum wage for long. Soon they were good enough to be productive members of the crew. And they were the ONLY kind of newbie that the established crew would accept. It wasn't me who would be the most critical of sub-standard new people, it was the crew itself. Come in an hour late three days in a row, or miss a day a week, and pretty soon the crew is chewing me out about hiring such a loser. Because it made their jobs harder. They don't have the time or inclination to baby sit or try to reform some newbie who didn't have his/her heart in the job.

Having said all this, I think we should allow employers a lot of leeway with new people, and keep minimum wage low. However, I would not object to requiring a higher wage after one year.

My wife was the manager of a large union health plan before she retired. Their union agreement called for a 90 day trial (probationary it was called) period, after which the employee could not be fired without major cause. Well, most newbies figured that out. Be a good employee for 90 days then do what you want. Almost impossible to fire them after that 90 days. So she started hiring "temps". She could keep them on the job indefinitely, and if they stuck with it and proved to be productive, she would offer them permanent employment. Usually she did that after about a year of temp work. You can be on your best behavior for three months, but few people can do that for an entire year. Eventually they revert to their true habits. Their real personality and work ethic shows up. Using "temps", the quality of new hires improved dramatically. And it saved her a lot of money and time on the extensive training that was necessary.
 
Waddy said:
Well, now you're building a straw man. I never suggested employers were "dedicated" to offering higher compensation. Free internships and illegal workers are both problems. But whether paying a teenager $15 per hour to flip burgers should be mandatory is a fair question. And overall wage expenses can be a problem in the restaurant business. They operate on very slim margins. Another thing to consider is that at some point automation becomes cheaper than paying people. We're seeing that now in places that have raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Layoffs have been common. More and more businesses are testing out automated systems, and eventually they will become common place. And have you ever considered that if we didn't have so many illegal workers the resulting labor shortage would drive up wages all by itself?
Click to expand...

Two points:

I have no problem if one wants to make arguments against the $15 minimum wage. I am not saying that one should accept what I believe without debate. We use arguments, and my big argument is that the ever increasing income inequality makes it a fact that at the time when you were earning minimum wage, the gap between your earnings and the earnings of the well off was lower than the gap which exists today. This is why I do not find convincing the "personal experience" of old timers. I can also add a second point and say that in states like NY and CA where you hear initiatives about this $15 minimum wage, the cost of living is much higher and the actual value of the $15 is not as high as people may think.
 
Waddy said:
Well, now you're building a straw man. I never suggested employers were "dedicated" to offering higher compensation. Free internships and illegal workers are both problems. But whether paying a teenager $15 per hour to flip burgers should be mandatory is a fair question. And overall wage expenses can be a problem in the restaurant business. They operate on very slim margins. Another thing to consider is that at some point automation becomes cheaper than paying people. We're seeing that now in places that have raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Layoffs have been common. More and more businesses are testing out automated systems, and eventually they will become common place. And have you ever considered that if we didn't have so many illegal workers the resulting labor shortage would drive up wages all by itself?
Click to expand...

Two points:

I have no problem if one wants to make arguments against the $15 minimum wage. I am not saying that one should accept what I believe without debate. We use arguments, and my big argument is that the ever increasing income inequality makes it a fact that at the time when you were earning minimum wage, the gap between your earnings and the earnings of the well off was lower than the gap which exists today. This is why I do not find convincing the "personal experience" of old timers. I can also add a second point and say that in states like NY and CA where you hear initiatives about this $15 minimum wage, the cost of living is much higher and the actual value of the $15 is not as high as people may think.
 
By the way, I have mentioned in another thread that it makes zero chance to try to compete with AI under the current economic structure. I have described the talks in Silicon Valley about the effects of AI developments on unemployment and the need to find solutions out of the box to make sure that we have a system which does serve the population. The fully automated cars which will harm thousands of drivers, including well-payed truck drivers will make this effect more clear. It seems any people still believe that somehow, we will do the same thing we did during the industrial revolution and replace the old jobs with well payed ones related to the emerging field. There is nothing to suggest such hope!
 
pamak said:
Two points:

I have no problem if one wants to make arguments against the $15 minimum wage. I am not saying that one should accept what I believe without debate. We use arguments, and my big argument is that the ever increasing income inequality makes it a fact that at the time when you were earning minimum wage, the gap between your earnings and the earnings of the well off was lower than the gap which exists today. This is why I do not find convincing the "personal experience" of old timers. I can also add a second point and say that in states like NY and CA where you hear initiatives about this $15 minimum wage, the cost of living is much higher and the actual value of the $15 is not as high as people may think.
Click to expand...

The minimum wage has little to do with financial inequality. Most of the uber rich don't make their money from a paycheck. Even most of a CEO's compensation comes in the form of stock options and other forms of compensation. The overwhelming cause of wealth inequality is automation and global labor competition. You aren't just competing with some guy in another state anymore; you are competing with a guy in Vietnam or Malaysia. And you're competing with lots of recent immigrants. It's shouldn't be a shock then that there is a widening gap; it is inevitable.

I do agree that high cost of living states can raise the minimum wage; it should be a state issue. Actually it should be a local issue, much like it has generally always been. I object to states or the federal government getting involved. If New York City wants $15 per hour, good for them. But don't impose that on some small town in western Kansas.
 
Waddy said:
The minimum wage has little to do with financial inequality. Most of the uber rich don't make their money from a paycheck. Even most of a CEO's compensation comes in the form of stock options and other forms of compensation. The overwhelming cause of wealth inequality is automation and global labor competition. You aren't just competing with some guy in another state anymore; you are competing with a guy in Vietnam or Malaysia. And you're competing with lots of recent immigrants. It's shouldn't be a shock then that there is a widening gap; it is inevitable.

I do agree that high cost of living states can raise the minimum wage; it should be a state issue. Actually it should be a local issue, much like it has generally always been. I object to states or the federal government getting involved. If New York City wants $15 per hour, good for them. But don't impose that on some small town in western Kansas.
Click to expand...

The inequality is not just between the uber rich and the minimum wage workers. The increase of inequality is across the whole spectrum and includes inequality between those earning minimum wage and the middle class. I think here, the issue is not having a federal minimum wage of $15 dollar. If we make this discussion an issue about federal wage, then I can accept that expecting to pay $15 dollars as a minimum wage in every state makes no sense. On the other hand, I still believe that the federal minimum wage should follow inflation instead of staying stagnant for a decade, as it is often the case.

5 facts about the minimum wage | Pew Research Center

Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.68 (in 2016 dollars). Since it was last raised in 2009, to the current $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum has lost about 9.6% of its purchasing power to inflation.
 
pamak said:
By the way, I have mentioned in another thread that it makes zero chance to try to compete with AI under the current economic structure. I have described the talks in Silicon Valley about the effects of AI developments on unemployment and the need to find solutions out of the box to make sure that we have a system which does serve the population. The fully automated cars which will harm thousands of drivers, including well-payed truck drivers will make this effect more clear. It seems any people still believe that somehow, we will do the same thing we did during the industrial revolution and replace the old jobs with well payed ones related to the emerging field. There is nothing to suggest such hope!
Click to expand...

The manufacturers of automation products are loving every word you're saying.

Back when new technology made it possible to farm on a large scale and farmers moved to the city there were jobs available to them in the factories that they could pretty much walk right into. training was minimal. Today automation is making many career fields obsolete. But there is no new technology that will enable displaced workers to switch right over and make even more money. The lost jobs are low hanging fruit. Displaced truckers, taxi operators, restaurant servers, that will lose their livelihoods won't become robotics technicians. In the past, every farmer could show up in the city and find a factory job, and probably make more money than he did as a farmer. Today a factory full of robots will need only a handful of technicians to maintain them. Read the tea leafs; the nature of work is changing. The smarter will get richer, and the unskilled will get poorer. That wage gap will only widen.
 
Waddy said:
Back when new technology made it possible to farm on a large scale and farmers moved to the city there were jobs available to them in the factories that they could pretty much walk right into. training was minimal. Today automation is making many career fields obsolete. But there is no new technology that will enable displaced workers to switch right over and make even more money. The lost jobs are low hanging fruit. Displaced truckers, taxi operators, restaurant servers, that will lose their livelihoods won't become robotics technicians. In the past, every farmer could show up in the city and find a factory job, and probably make more money than he did as a farmer. Today a factory full of robots will need only a handful of technicians to maintain them. Read the tea leafs; the nature of work is changing. The smarter will get richer, and the unskilled will get poorer. That wage gap will only widen.
Click to expand...

A lot depends on how people will react and how willing they will be to fight for their livelihood. Even during the industrial Revolution there was a period of tension between the capital owners and the workers, and often social unrest led to pretty bold legislation such as that of a 40-hour workweek and of minimum wage. I think when any system is not capable of serving the economic needs of the vast majority of people, people do not stay idle accepting their fate. People demand change and often in violent ways. There are already ideas floating around the Silicon Valley to deal with the problem of automation, including reducing the 40-hour workweek to help with the employment of more people. All such ideas that I have heard have one thing in common. They are bold because people start realize (at least in Silicon Valley) that the current economic structure is incapable to incorporate automation without disrupting our social fabric.
 
pamak said:
A lot depends on how people will react and how willing they will be to fight for their livelihood. Even during the industrial Revolution there was a period of tension between the capital owners and the workers, and often social unrest led to pretty bold legislation such as that of a 40-hour workweek and of minimum wage. I think when any system is not capable of serving the economic needs of the vast majority of people, people do not stay idle accepting their fate. People demand change and often in violent ways. There are already ideas floating around the Silicon Valley to deal with the problem of automation, including reducing the 40-hour workweek to help with the employment of more people. All such ideas that I have heard have one thing in common. They are bold because people start realize (at least in Silicon Valley) that the current economic structure is incapable to incorporate automation without disrupting our social fabric.
Click to expand...

back in those days of labor unrest we didn't have the extensive social safety net we have now. In a sense we already have a guaranteed minimum income. It's administered by social services and means tested. Why do you think poor blacks haven't rioted on a large scale over economic issues these days? Because they all have good paying jobs...? They don't riot because they are taken care of at least minimally. They may protest police brutality, but none of them have to live on the streets with their kids starving these days. What I suspect will happen as automation and global competition increases is that businesses and the technology winners (people making great money because they have tech skills) will simply pay in a little more (maybe a lot more) to widen and deepen that social safety net.

Has the $15 minimum wage reduced welfare rolls in any of the areas it is now the law? Probably not; in a high cost city, where a section 8 apartment can cost the government $60K per year, $15 per hour doesn't get anybody off the welfare rolls.

Results from more credible specifications show that minimum wage increases are largely ineffective at reducing net program participation.
Click to expand...
https://www.sole-jole.org/17713.pdf

over the course of decades, higher minimum wages don’t reduce poverty in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Rather, the analysis finds that a $1 increase in the minimum wage raises poverty rates and government dependency by about 3 percent.
Click to expand...
University of California study
Higher minimum wages increase poverty in poor neighborhoods, study finds

or from the Federal Reserve Ban, San Francisco

mandating higher wages for low-wage workers does not necessarily do a good job of delivering benefits to poor families. Of course, worker wages in low-income families are lower on average than in higher-income families. Nevertheless, the relationship between being a low-wage worker and being in a low-income family is fairly weak, for three reasons. First, 57% of poor families with heads of household ages 18–64 have no workers, based on 2014 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Second, some workers are poor not because of low wages but because of low hours; for example, CPS data show 46% of poor workers have hourly wages above $10.10, and 36% have hourly wages above $12. And third, many low-wage workers, such as teens, are not in poor families (Lundstrom forthcoming).
Click to expand...
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco | Reducing Poverty via Minimum Wages, Alternatives
 
Waddy said:
back in those days of labor unrest we didn't have the extensive social safety net we have now. In a sense we already have a guaranteed minimum income. It's administered by social services and means tested. Why do you think poor blacks haven't rioted on a large scale over economic issues these days? Because they all have good paying jobs... They don't riot because they are taken care of at least minimally. They may protest police brutality, but none of them have to live on the streets with their kids starving these days. What I suspect will happen as automation and global competition increases is that businesses and the technology winners (people making great money because they have tech skills) will simply pay in a little more (maybe a lot more) to widen and deepen that social safety net.
Click to expand...

I have to let you know. I was skeptical of this claim so I looked it up:

fredgraph.png


fredgraph.png


I didn't realize how much things had recovered for blacks, while we've seen a marginal recovery for whites. This is fascinating. It also, in my opinion helps to explain the rise of populism.
 
Waddy said:
back in those days of labor unrest we didn't have the extensive social safety net we have now. In a sense we already have a guaranteed minimum income. It's administered by social services and means tested. Why do you think poor blacks haven't rioted on a large scale over economic issues these days? Because they all have good paying jobs...? They don't riot because they are taken care of at least minimally. They may protest police brutality, but none of them have to live on the streets with their kids starving these days. What I suspect will happen as automation and global competition increases is that businesses and the technology winners (people making great money because they have tech skills) will simply pay in a little more (maybe a lot more) to widen and deepen that social safety net.

Has the $15 minimum wage reduced welfare rolls in any of the areas it is now the law? Probably not; in a high cost city, where a section 8 apartment can cost the government $60K per year, $15 per hour doesn't get anybody off the welfare rolls.


https://www.sole-jole.org/17713.pdf

University of California study
Higher minimum wages increase poverty in poor neighborhoods, study finds

or from the Federal Reserve Ban, San Francisco


Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco | Reducing Poverty via Minimum Wages, Alternatives
Click to expand...

Well, back in those days, we had GI loans which helped WWII veterans by houses and go to school. Right now, the younger generation is threatened with the reduction of social benefits as a result of an increasing debt that was created by the people of your and my generation. They also live in a much more competitive environment in which the US is not anymore the only superpower and other countries get their share of global profits. Also back in those days, people without degrees had more opportunities to find a decent job (usually in unionized factories). Today, the younger people have a higher need to get a degree in universities where higher demand has actually driven tuition cost much higher. In this environment, I see no reason to accept that somehow we should accept the current state of income inequality rate of increase. If anything, if the pie becomes smaller as a result of the stiffer competition, we should be more careful in how we distribute it within our society.

AS for the studies regarding the minimum wage, I am not saying that increasing minimum wage is enough to fix the issue of inequality. There are a lot of things which should be addressed, But all of them have a common denominator the fact that we should recognize the right of workers (including those earning minimum wage) to negotiate a better return for their labor instead of mocking their attempt to secure a better life as some posters tried to do in this thread. This is why I mentioned issues such as supporting stronger labor unions and legislation which reduces corporate power. And having a fed minimum wage follow inflation may not solve poverty but it does not mean that it will not help!
 
phattonez said:
I have to let you know. I was skeptical of this claim so I looked it up:

fredgraph.png


fredgraph.png


I didn't realize how much things had recovered for blacks, while we've seen a marginal recovery for whites. This is fascinating. It also, in my opinion helps to explain the rise of populism.
Click to expand...

Moving a couple of percentage points isn't much change. Look back to the beginning of those graphs. 80% for white men and 75% for black men. Now look where we are.
 
Waddy said:
Moving a couple of percentage points isn't much change. Look back to the beginning of those graphs. 80% for white men and 75% for black men. Now look where we are.
Click to expand...

I disagree. We see significant differences. Black employment levels are about what they are normally, outside of bad recessions. White employment levels are lower than anything we ever saw before 2009.

There are many ways of interpreting the significance of this, but what cannot be doubted is that the trends are significantly different.
 
pamak said:
Well, back in those days, we had GI loans which helped WWII veterans by houses and go to school. Right now, the younger generation is threatened with the reduction of social benefits as a result of an increasing debt that was created by the people of your and my generation. They also live in a much more competitive environment in which the US is not anymore the only superpower and other countries get their share of global profits. Also back in those days, people without degrees had more opportunities to find a decent job (usually in unionized factories). Today, the younger people have a higher need to get a degree in universities where higher demand has actually driven tuition cost much higher. In this environment, I see no reason to accept that somehow we should accept the current state of income inequality rate of increase. If anything, if the pie becomes smaller as a result of the stiffer competition, we should be more careful in how we distribute it within our society.
Click to expand...

The size of the pie is still increasing. I would just be happy if most people saw any increase rather than falling behind the cost of living!

AS for the studies regarding the minimum wage, I am not saying that increasing minimum wage is enough to fix the issue of inequality. There are a lot of things which should be addressed, But all of them have a common denominator the fact that we should recognize the right of workers (including those earning minimum wage) to negotiate a better return for their labor instead of mocking their attempt to secure a better life as some posters tried to do in this thread. This is why I mentioned issues such as supporting stronger labor unions and legislation which reduces corporate power. And having a fed minimum wage follow inflation may not solve poverty but it does not mean that it will not help!
Click to expand...

Absolutely. These people are inadvertently contributing to the likelihood of a socialist revolution. People forget that political stability isn't a given. They forget the many revolutions in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 
pamak said:
Well, back in those days, we had GI loans which helped WWII veterans by houses and go to school. Right now, the younger generation is threatened with the reduction of social benefits as a result of an increasing debt that was created by the people of your and my generation. They also live in a much more competitive environment in which the US is not anymore the only superpower and other countries get their share of global profits. Also back in those days, people without degrees had more opportunities to find a decent job (usually in unionized factories). Today, the younger people have a higher need to get a degree in universities where higher demand has actually driven tuition cost much higher. In this environment, I see no reason to accept that somehow we should accept the current state of income inequality rate of increase. If anything, if the pie becomes smaller as a result of the stiffer competition, we should be more careful in how we distribute it.

AS for the studies regarding the minimum wage, I am not saying that increasing minimum wage is enough to fix the issue of inequality. There are a lot of things which should be addressed, But all of them have a common denominator the fact that we should recognize the right of workers (including those earning minimum wage) to negotiate a better return for their labor instead of mocking their attempt to secure a better life as some posters tried to do in this thread. This is why I mentioned issues such as supporting stronger labor unions and legislation which reduces corporate power. And having a fed minimum wage follow inflation may not solve poverty but it does not mean that it will not help!
Click to expand...

It's just a fact, the safety net is bigger today. And yes, there are fewer opportunities for good paying jobs to the minimally educated. But sorry to be the one to tell you this; getting the right skills is the ONLY way of closing that gap. It will continue to widen. Trying to artificially raise wages will dramatically increase the move to automation. It isn't a case of raising the minimum wage will at least help...it may do more harm to your cause than good. America, (and the globe) are slowly dividing up into those with marketable skills and everyone else. You won't legislate that away.

I read a paper recently that the smart kids are getting even smarter. It used to be the promising student married the girl next door right out of high school, before they had developed their careers, and so one was often much smarter than the other. Didn't mean the relationship failed, just that you often ended up with one really smart spouse and one of average intelligence. So you got a mix of kids intelligence. But today people marry much later, after they're made their careers, and usually smart marries smart. They have really smart kids. These kids will own the future. It's like we're practicing eugenics without even realizing it.
 
Waddy said:
It's just a fact, the safety net is bigger today. And yes, there are fewer opportunities for good paying jobs to the minimally educated. But sorry to be the one to tell you this; getting the right skills is the ONLY way of closing that gap. It will continue to widen. Trying to artificially raise wages will dramatically increase the move to automation. It isn't a case of raising the minimum wage will at least help...it may do more harm to your cause than good. America, (and the globe) are slowly dividing up into those with marketable skills and everyone else. You won't legislate that away.
Click to expand...

Automation is going to happen regardless of wage pressure, as it amounts to an upward shift in total factor productivity. This is what drives long term investment. In the past, technological unemployment was merely frictional, in that other avenues of production would arise with increased demand for labor. Today it is more of a structural phenomenon, as you outlined above, where the only real means of achieving wage grow is through up-skilling. A.I. will eventually (IMO) prove to be superior to humans on a sheer productivity level, but will be infinitely preferable to human labor in highly skilled tasks such as in legal, financial, and medical realms as conflicts of interest/ethical boundaries are internally non-existent for machines. We are still ways away in this regard for not only the fact that humans are inherently biased and humans are building these systems, so it would likely require a second generation of A.I. created by A.I. to decouple it from said biases.

A great example is currently with respect to automated driving. There have been many accidents caused by human drivers swerving out of the way to avoid a small animal in the road... maybe the neighbors cat gets loose, runs in the road, and someone swerves out of the way to avoid the cat only to plow into a bicyclist or oncoming traffic. We are taught to not swerve to avoid animals in the road in highly populated and congested areas. A machine can be programmed to never swerve out the the way for small animals. One of the main issues is coming up with a standardized algorithm that states swerving out of the way of children is preferable to cats, groups preferable to one person, and so on and so forth.

The same idea applies within the context of finance, legal, and medical industries. Automation will permanently replace labor as we know it... even for lawyers, accountants, actuaries, surgeons, etc....
 
Last edited:
Waddy said:
It's just a fact, the safety net is bigger today. And yes, there are fewer opportunities for good paying jobs to the minimally educated. But sorry to be the one to tell you this; getting the right skills is the ONLY way of closing that gap. It will continue to widen. Trying to artificially raise wages will dramatically increase the move to automation. It isn't a case of raising the minimum wage will at least help...it may do more harm to your cause than good. America, (and the globe) are slowly dividing up into those with marketable skills and everyone else. You won't legislate that away.

I read a paper recently that the smart kids are getting even smarter. It used to be the promising student married the girl next door right out of high school, before they had developed their careers, and so one was often much smarter than the other. Didn't mean the relationship failed, just that you often ended up with one really smart spouse and one of average intelligence. So you got a mix of kids intelligence. But today people marry much later, after they're made their careers, and usually smart marries smart. They have really smart kids. These kids will own the future. It's like we're practicing eugenics without even realizing it.
Click to expand...

It is also a fact that the poverty line today is much lower to the median income compared to the 1960's

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Critics of the federal poverty guidelines argue that these numbers are too low, thanks to growing inequality — in the 1960s, the federal poverty level was about half of the median income, but is now well below that

It is also a fact that a modern student will have to work way more to cover college expenses compared to the 1980's

Paying for your college, 30 years ago vs. today

A student making a part-time, minimum-wage salary could pay for 106.5% of University of Central Florida's cost in 1987, while an equivalent job would cover 68.2% in 2016.


Also, the system BY DESIGN is based on a competition in which there will always be some who will not possess the "right skill" There will always be people who will pick up garbage and flip burgers! Also, with the advance of automation and the rapid change of technology it will become even more difficult to get the "right skill".
I can see no evidence that raising minimum wage creates more harm than good. As I said, higher minimum wage means a student can spend less time working to pay for his tuition. It means that he will graduate faster and with lower debt. Higher minimum wage means that a worker will have a more balanced family life and spend more time with his kid and family. It is much more challenging to properly raise a kid when you have to work two jobs to make ends meet.
 
Waddy said:
Now we have some common ground. My experience with new hires was similar to yours. You could go through quite a few newbies before you got one that would show up on time every day willing to learn the trade. THOSE kind of newbies didn't have to work for minimum wage for long. Soon they were good enough to be productive members of the crew. And they were the ONLY kind of newbie that the established crew would accept. It wasn't me who would be the most critical of sub-standard new people, it was the crew itself. Come in an hour late three days in a row, or miss a day a week, and pretty soon the crew is chewing me out about hiring such a loser. Because it made their jobs harder. They don't have the time or inclination to baby sit or try to reform some newbie who didn't have his/her heart in the job.

Having said all this, I think we should allow employers a lot of leeway with new people, and keep minimum wage low. However, I would not object to requiring a higher wage after one year.

My wife was the manager of a large union health plan before she retired. Their union agreement called for a 90 day trial (probationary it was called) period, after which the employee could not be fired without major cause. Well, most newbies figured that out. Be a good employee for 90 days then do what you want. Almost impossible to fire them after that 90 days. So she started hiring "temps". She could keep them on the job indefinitely, and if they stuck with it and proved to be productive, she would offer them permanent employment. Usually she did that after about a year of temp work. You can be on your best behavior for three months, but few people can do that for an entire year. Eventually they revert to their true habits. Their real personality and work ethic shows up. Using "temps", the quality of new hires improved dramatically. And it saved her a lot of money and time on the extensive training that was necessary.
Click to expand...

To "pithify" (a word I just now made up), a company does not need "employees" to succeed it needs "workers" and any decent management recognizes that the "workers" are just as vital to the success of the company as the "financial backers" (even it that term only refers to the "Bob" in "Bob's Handyman Service" (which consists of "Bob" [who started the business] and "Burt"). "Employees" feel that they have an 'obligation to be employed' - "workers" feel that they have an 'obligation to work'.

PS - I've been on both sides of the bargaining table and my experience has been that the "best" solution to the "managed to keep their nose clean for 90 days" problem is NOT to "prohibit firing" but rather to ensure that there are stiff penalties that the company has to pay for "frivolous firing and/or failure to attempt to warn/remediate".
 
Waddy said:
The manufacturers of automation products are loving every word you're saying.

Back when new technology made it possible to farm on a large scale and farmers moved to the city there were jobs available to them in the factories that they could pretty much walk right into. training was minimal. Today automation is making many career fields obsolete. But there is no new technology that will enable displaced workers to switch right over and make even more money. The lost jobs are low hanging fruit. Displaced truckers, taxi operators, restaurant servers, that will lose their livelihoods won't become robotics technicians. In the past, every farmer could show up in the city and find a factory job, and probably make more money than he did as a farmer. Today a factory full of robots will need only a handful of technicians to maintain them. Read the tea leafs; the nature of work is changing. The smarter will get richer, and the unskilled will get poorer. That wage gap will only widen.
Click to expand...

Have you ever read C.M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"?
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
Have you ever read C.M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"?
Click to expand...

That novel may be scifi but it's more accurate than one might like to think. I mentioned in a different post (so I'll be repeating myself) that I read an article about how smart kids are getting even smarter. It used to be that two young people married fairly early, and matured together. So one spouse, as careers and life played out, would often turn out to be more intelligent than the other; and so their kids would vary in intelligence as well. But now people join up later in life, after they have established careers and proven their worth. And what's happening is that very smart people are hitching up with other very smart people; resulting in kids who are very, very smart people.

So your author has a point. But we won't be shipping the morons off to Venus. That gap will widen in every sense, and we will have to find a way to deal with her right here.
 
Waddy said:
So your author has a point. But we won't be shipping the morons off to Venus. That gap will widen in every sense, and we will have to find a way to deal with her right here.
Click to expand...

As the gap between "those who have the innate ability and acquired education that enables them to become 'producers of new value'" (read as "innovators") and "those who do NOT have the innate ability and acquired education that enables them to become 'producers of new value'" (read as "consumers") widens, then the problem will escalate.

Equally, as the gap between "those who have the financial ability to promote/restrict expansion of existing (and development of new) facilities" (read as "big money") and "those who do NOT have the financial ability to promote/restrict expansion of existing (and development of new) facilities" (read as "just about everyone else") widens, then the problem will also escalate.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
As the gap between "those who have the innate ability and acquired education that enables them to become 'producers of new value'" (read as "innovators") and "those who do NOT have the innate ability and acquired education that enables them to become 'producers of new value'" (read as "consumers") widens, then the problem will escalate.

Equally, as the gap between "those who have the financial ability to promote/restrict expansion of existing (and development of new) facilities" (read as "big money") and "those who do NOT have the financial ability to promote/restrict expansion of existing (and development of new) facilities" (read as "just about everyone else") widens, then the problem will also escalate.
Click to expand...

My basic point is the gap will widen, the fundamental forces are in play. To avoid the "revolution" of the "morons" (term from your cited scifi novel) what is most likely to happen is an continuing expansion of the social safety net. We see this already in action, though not on the scale we will see in the future. Some will label it socialism (ie., universal health care, housing for the homeless, expanded welfare and food stamps, etc.), but we won't be getting rid of Capitalism as our economic driver; it's just too good at spurring creativity and producing efficiently. But Capitalism isn't so good at equitable distribution; no system is. That's why we will incrementally increase the scope of the safety net. Incrementally because that's how large bureaucratic systems do things. It's the only real alternative we have.
 
Waddy said:
My basic point is the gap will widen, the fundamental forces are in play. To avoid the "revolution" of the "morons" (term from your cited scifi novel) what is most likely to happen is an continuing expansion of the social safety net. We see this already in action, though not on the scale we will see in the future. Some will label it socialism (ie., universal health care, housing for the homeless, expanded welfare and food stamps, etc.), but we won't be getting rid of Capitalism as our economic driver; it's just too good at spurring creativity and producing efficiently. But Capitalism isn't so good at equitable distribution; no system is. That's why we will incrementally increase the scope of the safety net. Incrementally because that's how large bureaucratic systems do things. It's the only real alternative we have.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the gap will widen.

In fact, in any system that is designed to create a gap, then the gap will always widen.

That means that the options are:

  1. accept that the existing system is designed to create a gap, maintain the existing system unchanged, and allow that gap to grow to a socially unacceptable level (at which point the existing system WILL get changed [but which change you WILL NOT have any control over]); or
  2. accept that the existing system is designed to create a gap, revise the existing system, and keep the gap to a socially acceptable level (at which point you will have a change that you WILL have some control over).

When the system claims that it stands for "All animals are equal." but, in fact, stands for "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." the dynamics can be dangerous (especially for the "more equal" of the animals) once the "more" gets to be too great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom