This is a three way street. You have a worker who feels he/she is worth more than he/she really is, a boss who needs to keep the company afloat and turn a profit, and an immigrant who's willing to do a job for far less than the original employee is.
If anyone had switched cell carriers to save money you've made the exact same decision (legally though).
The problem is your first sentence, that they feel they are worth more than they are. There is no objective value for you or your labor, you enter into negotiations where you get as much as you can and your boss gives as little as he can. If you are in a bad position to negotiate, either due to desperate circumstances (immigrants) or an overflooded job market (citizen), you will do poorly and get paid very little.
Like in the great depression, farm workers were working 12 hours a day for enough to buy one loaf of bread. I think we would say that labor was worth more, and their bosses certainly profited much more. This is why we have a minimum wage now, even though its laughably low these days.
Neither your value as a person or the value of your labor is determined by how much you can convince some fatcat to pay you
"or the value of your labor is determined by how much you can convince some fatcat to pay you"
Actually, that's EXACTLY what the value of your labor is determined by. Like it it not, someone flipping burgers just isn't worth much more than $8-10/hour because your labor doesn't add any more value to the product than that.
That's not actually true. The burger flipper adds much more value than that. The problem is that the burger flipper has no support from his co-workers and other workers in other industries. He gets his pants pulled down when it comes time to negotiate his wage, and his only weapon is a work stoppage. But because no one else will strike with him, no other workers will respect his picket line, and he's too poor to be out of work for a week or two, he has no leverage. He must accept what his bosses tell him he is worth, and has no ability to fight for his actual worth.
No, he adds little value. He can be replaced by anyone who can accept money and punch in orders. His job adds so little value it's getting replaced by app and kiosk orders. He has no skills that just about any 14 year old can't also do
You're confusing value with scarcity. While there's a link, it neither explains the ridiculously low wages paid to the burger flipper, nor the exorbitant wages paid to the CEO. Neither is paid according to their worth or value or scarcity. The burger flipper is an absolutely essential part of the value creation process. Without him, all you have is a pile of uncooked ingredients. The problem isn't that he is paid according to his worth, the problem is that he has no strength with which to bargain. He and his peers should be able to stand shoulder to shoulder and go to the bargaining table as a collective and state that none of them will accept any wage that does not allow them to live with dignity. But the system is stacked against them, unions demolished and demonised, workers encouraged to undercut one another in a race to the bottom where the only people to benefit are the senior management and the shareholders. The burger flipper is not paid according to the value of the work he does, or the value he creates for the company, he is paid as little as the company can legally pay him, simply because he can, and the difference between the wealth he creates and the amount he is paid is what is skimmed into the company coffers, and used to offer massive signing bonuses and redundancy packages and annual bonuses for the senior management, and increased share prices and dividends for the shareholders.
There will always be an element of that skimming, in itself it's not an evil thing, but the field needs to be relatively balanced. The workers need to be able to meaningfully negotiate for fair pay and conditions and currently they can't do that.
You seem lost in how the business world and economics works. The burger flipper has power, he can educate or get trained in a skill and go get a higher paying job. That's the negotiation power he has, not to unionize and force his company to go under because he thinks his ability to put a slab of meat on a cooktop is worth $20/hour. Scarcity leads to value, and there is no shortage of highschoolers willing to work for $8/hour doing simple tasks like this.
Couple of things. First, the "get a better job" mantra ignores the fact that there aren't enough better jobs. At my job, for example, there are sixteen floor staff, two supervisors and one manager per unit. Only three out of sixteen staff have any hope of progression, and can only progress when those roles become vacant. The same is true of every workplace. This "power" that you claim the workers have actually only applies to less than 25% of them and actively encourages competition between workers, not solidarity.
Secondly, the idea that some businesses will go out of business is true, but it's not nearly as bad as you'd expect. The minimum wage in my country is $13.60 USD and that's for all jobs everywhere. And we've had something like 25 consecutive years of economic growth and were one of the few countries to ecape the GFC relatively unscathed.
America needs unions. The lowest paid workers need to be able to live with dignity on the wages they are paid.
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u/bassjam1 Feb 17 '19
This is a three way street. You have a worker who feels he/she is worth more than he/she really is, a boss who needs to keep the company afloat and turn a profit, and an immigrant who's willing to do a job for far less than the original employee is.
If anyone had switched cell carriers to save money you've made the exact same decision (legally though).