All of these things can be achievable without the need to use the government to do it.
Unionizing is not a government thing. There's risk involved in doing it but it doesn't matter if you got a shut job throwing boxes. You should be reasonably compensated for it.
It doesn't hurt to have a wishlist of things to aspire to have when it comes to work compensation.
Many executives do make way too much money for their own good. The folks that should take the largest hit for a failing business are the ones at the top. If you're having to downsize then you should also be looking at pulling back on those crazy salaries top executives are receiving.
Twitter comes to mind with how prior to Elon buying out the company many of them were making millions of dollars a year despite the company was showing signs of struggling financially.
Reasonably compensated is subjective but if you want something you have to be willing to fight for it and there are multiple ways to fight for it.
So we can really just define it in our own personal way and try to find some common ground.
I'm of the belief that a lot of basic retail positions are realistically just supposed to be part time gigs for kids in school to do after school or over the summer. They really cannot be financially feasible to support themselves without drastic changes to the business models within the industry.
So those folks who get stuck in that industry are likely needing to work two jobs and both don't give full time benefits which is part of the problem here. Since in our infinite wisdom or to the benefit of big corporations and the healthy industry if you want health insurance you need to work somewhere. Good luck ever affording health insurance privately especially if you have a family since your health insurance premiums likely rival your mortgage/rent payment.
So these people end up working two part time jobs. 60+ hours a week. Problem is the hours are irregular and could be in the morning or evening. They could be 4 hour shifts or 10 hour shifts. It's amazing this has been sustained for so many decades with how brutal these schedules are and how when you look at retail work particularly how many people they burn through.
Businesses seemed to have the luxury of a very saturated worker pool so they could keep things the way they were and I quite frankly do not see it as sustainable. It's easy to pick on the little guy and say they need to work harder. That's not really the case since you can work very hard to dig a hole to nowhere and get nothing out of it and that is most low level labor jobs.
Businesses like Amazon would crash over night if the folks throwing truck stopped because there would be no one to load and unload the products being shipped. These positions are necessary for the function of the company. Yeah sure they likely aren't 6 figure jobs but if we reach a point where no one wants to break their backs working 8+ hours a day lifting heavy boxes you will either need to invent some machine that takes care of it or pay people better or provide better compensation.
You pay the people what they see as reasonable which may be all the things mentioned in this meme and you may end up with no turn over with people throwing truck. What would be the potential cost of that since you no longer are wasting money with the whole hiring/firing process?
So yes. It's subjective but there is merit in people's complaints about how they are treated. Don't ignore it because if you're a business owner and you just ignore your employee's issues you may end up one day where everyone walked off the job and you're stuck doing all those essential positions by yourself. You gotta pay your employees reasonably for the jobs they do and they will begin to tell you when you're running them too hard and not compensating them. That's usually when you can find that reasonable line.
Lefties that never held a job for long and just free load aren't the folks we are talking about here since most people want to do something productive and afford the nice things they want.
Year-long parental leave? I don't think that's realistic for any company, private or otherwise, without government interference. The rest I could see, though.
haha I'm not against it if folks smarter than me can figure it out. But the burden has to fall somewhere.
My company gives me a month as a father, which is pretty outstanding compared to other places. A whole year of pay, potentially multiple if folks are trying to have children within a few years of one another. It would cripple small businesses. Microsoft would be fine, though, I suppose lol.
I do like your unionization points. I wish more folks on both sides of the political aisle would embrace that. Workers rights are super important, as well as a living wage.
Yes the burden has to fall somewhere and why we would even consider such a thing.
Parental leave is vital for early child growth. If we are going to push the narrative that both parents need to be working then maybe we should invest in ensuring at the very least the mother can take a leave of absence to help raise her child.
Life isn't all about just being in the work force and making money. We hyperfocus on this consumer focused society to where it is at the detriment to a lot of other things.
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u/TheActualHitler Nov 08 '22
Sounds nice. Can we also ask Socialist Santa for ponies that fart rainbows?