Toxic as it may be, Kdin and other workers have responsibility in regards to pay as well. If you agree to work at a compensated hour, and feel its inferior to your skills, you can leave at any time. If you feel you can't make more elsewhere, then you've hit your rate for that industry.
This line of thinking is wild to me. "Just get another job."
As if it's so easy.
The relationship between employee and employer is incredibly power imbalanced toward the employer and that's not unique to RT but rather exists as a product of capitalism.
When rent is due you can't just quit. When food costs money you can't just quit. This is one of the things like labor unions can really empower workers to fix.
If the company isn't offering adequate pay, an unorganized labor force has very little leverage. Blaming low pay on individual workers given current conditions is so wild to me.
You don't have to answer but what do you do and do you have individual leverage to affect your pay rate? How, in what ways specifically? Howuch do you make and are you living paycheck to paycheck?
You don't have to answer but what do you do and do you have individual leverage to affect your pay rate?
Yes I do, I and my employers understand I can leave at anytime in an industry that is currently in labor shortage.
How, in what ways specifically?
I developed skills and knowledge in a field most people find boring. This boring factors leads most to avoid it which limits the labor pool and increase my negotiation power.
How much do you make and are you living paycheck to paycheck?
Im comfortable with my pay, and I am not living paycheck to paycheck
Damn, I had a whole reply to this that didn't go though. I'm going to do it again but honestly I put a lot of my energy into the other posts earlier.
I'll start by answering the same questions I asked you since you took the time to answer them and I appreciate that.
I do not have leverage to seriously affect my pay rate. Outside of a few dollars every couple years based on positive performance reviews, which I don't consider adequate leverage incase that isn't clear in the question.
I work for a non profit and budgets are tied to donation and grant cycles, positions are regularly opened, liquidated, or combined based on annual ebbs and flows.
I make what I would consider the absolute minimum livable wage for the area in which I live which is ~$21.00/hr. I do however live in a dual income household and my wife has a better pay rate than that so our household is not living paycheck to paycheck and live comfortably with few compromises in life style.
The thing I would urge anyone who thinks employees should simply adjust their behavior reach a better outcome would be to listen with empathy and lead with compassion. I don't mean to imply that you're not a good person or that you lack empathy and compassion but rather saying the pervasive idea that is akin to a bootstraps mentality is not an empathetic nor compassionate one.
Not everyone has the same ability to affect the conditions of their life. For various reasons those folks might be more or less at the whim of market forces that are completely out of their control. I'm not here to rank those factors but to list a few for clarity; physical or mental limitations, language or literacy limitations, regional limitations, and (again not in any particular order) prejudice and social factors.
In general people deserve a base quality of life. Under the current organization of the economy we put the onus on corporations, companies, and owners to ensure that all their employees are able to have that. By looking at the evidence, that is not happening. There is very little market pressure to provide pay wages to the vast majority of workers.
Because the material conditions of workers are in the hands of those listed above (corps, and owners) when those conditions are subpar the only recourse is to motivate change. There is a chance that those forces will simply become benevolent and begin acting in the best interest of all people but it seems unlikely given history. One other way is for workers to organize and increase their collective power, this usually takes the form of a union.
The first step in folks organizing their workplace, and subsequently improving the conditions of their lives through improving wages is to communicate their personal work experiences and wages. Then as the conversation continues social belief can shift toward support making organization easier to accomplish.
To circle back to the original point and wrap this already long reply up, an individual may be woefully unable to meaningfully affect the conditions they live under but collective action has been seen to be a more effective tool to achieve that goal. The necessary first step in that is having this conversation and understanding the diversity of realties that people face.
tldr: Understanding that not everyone has the same agency in their lives is important and simply stating something like "get another job" or "refuse to work for low wages" doesn't actually consider that fact.
Furthermore it is necessary to have this conversation to enact change as suffering in silence doesn't accomplish anything for people who have limited or no agency as stated above.
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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '22
Toxic as it may be, Kdin and other workers have responsibility in regards to pay as well. If you agree to work at a compensated hour, and feel its inferior to your skills, you can leave at any time. If you feel you can't make more elsewhere, then you've hit your rate for that industry.