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from the what-will-I-do-with-my-25-years-experience-in-Swift? dept.
Submitted via IRC for Sulla
Americans looking to land a first job or break into a dream career face their best odds of success in years.
Employers say they are abandoning preferences for college degrees and specific skill sets to speed-up hiring and broaden the pool of job candidates. Many companies added requirements to job postings after the recession, when millions were out of work and human-resource departments were stacked with resumes.
[...] "Candidates have so many options today," said Amy Glaser, senior vice president of Adecco Group, a staffing agency with around 10,000 company clients in search of employees. "If a company requires a degree, two rounds of interviews and a test for hard-skills, candidates can go down the street to another employer who will make them an offer that day."
Ms. Glaser estimates one in four of the agency's employer clients have made drastic changes to their recruiting process since the start of the year, such as skipping drug tests or criminal background checks, or removing preferences for a higher degree or high-school diploma.
Source: NOTE: Original submission referenced a paywalled page at The Wall Street Journal; this link appears to link to the same story, albeit with a stock chart for Intel Corp., included: http://www.4-traders.com/INTEL-CORPORATION-4829/news/Employers-Eager-to-Hire-Try-a-New-Policy-No-Experience-Necessary-27016610/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:25PM (44 children)
You hire someone for what he's worth, which is more than nothing, but not much to build a family on.
As the person became better at the job, he'd move up, be promoted, and ask for raises—and he'd ask in confidence, knowing well what his worth is.
You can't have that kind of quasi-apprenticeship model when know-nothing, paper-pushing bureaucrats are telling you what to pay people. You can't take a chance on a newbie when you have to pay them more than they might be worth.
It just so happens that the minimum wage has been largely left untouched with regard to inflation, so it's basically pretty cheap by today's standards, and thus it's increasingly possible to return to this model.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:30PM (3 children)
Correlation does not equal causation. Apprenticeship is very common in Germany despite the fairly high minimum wage laws, which clearly proves your claim wrong - minimal wage laws are no barrier to having apprenticeship programs.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:09AM (2 children)
Your argument is a straw man.
I'm saying that this sort of quasi-apprenticeship can emerge when there isn't this externally imposed risk of a loss.
And, we're not talking about culturally traditional, explicit apprenticeships in skilled fields; we're talking about general employment, including introductory, low-skilled jobs where one is learning the basics of a minimal work ethic (e.g., kids are climbing onto the first rung of economic participation).
FFS. Is there no end to the straw manning?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:40AM (1 child)
So basically you as a business owner want prospective employees to shoulder the majority of the risk of a new hire.
If I as an employee am gonna be the one taking all that risk anyway, then in that case I might as well stop being an employee and try to start my own business and compete with you, since at that point there is no benefit to being an employee. (Capitalists always justify their higher incomes by the fact that they are supposedly taking all the risk, and deserve the reward for that, while employees get a contract and fixed pay, therefore taking little risk, for low reward)
Be careful what you wish for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:19PM
Yes. They have little responsibility at first, and yes, their parents are kind of footing the bill by providing room and board.
That's the way it's supposed to be.
If you're switching professions as an adult, then yes, that's on you. Either you have a network of friends and family to help you out on your journey, or you've saved enough money from your last role in society. That's what being a responsible adult means.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:15PM (30 children)
Minimum wage is hardly onerous to employers for most jobs.
I'd argue that minimum wage ensures that people aren't wasting their lives in pursuits of such little value that they cannot even earn their own food and shelter - if a job is worth so little that it cannot pay minimum wage, that's a sign that the worker should pursue education or other methods of increasing their skills rather than wasting their time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:37PM (29 children)
People feel better when they contribute to society (to family, or whatever) and you'd ban them from that because they just aren't worthy in your eyes.
Maybe they are old. Getting a token job keeps them physically moving about and in the presence of other humans. This beats lying in bed in front of the TV, chowing on potato chips, waiting for death.
Maybe they are young. My son is minimum wage. This is valuable to him as a character reference for getting admitted to college or getting a first job. His resume won't be completely empty.
Who are you to judge that these people should not legally be allowed to work? This is what you do when you price them out of the market.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:15AM (4 children)
Wages that don't pay the living cost mean any person working in that job actually brings money from home to pay their employer.
For the employee, it must be he's purchasing something - e.g. work experience - but that shouldn't last long. He''ll be dead, a destitute or someone else is paying for his living (e.g. parents or the society as a whole - like food stamps and such)
For the employer to continue the practice on long term... sounds to me like a charity-in-reverse. Why would an enterprise need charity money to survive, doesn't the capitalism require unfit enterprises let die so that the society as a whole can progress?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:11AM (1 child)
How can your parent be clearer? We're talking about NEW people.
It's crazy how the left thinks that children's jobs are supposed to support a wife and 2 kids these days. CRAZY.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:34AM
Can you read and understand that: "For the employee, it must be he's purchasing something - e.g. work experience - but that shouldn't last long."?
Should I generalize and say "It's crazy how the right has comprehension problems" based on your answer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:24AM (1 child)
In a country built on slavery, the answer to this should be fairly obvious.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:21PM
Try again.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:18AM (23 children)
My mother has retired with some millions in net worth, and she volunteers at the local library for this feeling that you refer to.
We know a number of special needs persons who struggle with employment, but have found similar "better feelings" when working for similar volunteer positions such as animal shelters or local programs specifically designed for them to feel useful to the community. Tellingly: when they can break that ceiling of volunteering into a "real job" that pays "real money" - they get a much bigger boost in their self esteem.
I don't see a need for a continuum of employment between volunteerism and minimum wage. Somewhere in that range from 0 to minimum is a place where the employer is simply taking advantage of the employee, taking up their time in exchange for so little money that it leaves them dependent on others for basic necessities of life. That's a form of corporate welfare that I do not want to support with my tax dollars.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:28AM (22 children)
I take it you don't approve of teenagers working at all then? Paying them enough to support themselves is absurd in most cases. Finding one able to contribute enough value to earn their keep is rare as hell nowadays.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:43AM (21 children)
I have this dilemma haunting my sleep (not!): is Maccas** primarily an educational company - providing kids with work experience - or is it a fast-food chain exploiting child labour?
** substitute appropriately, Maccas identity used just because I saw a large number of teenagers working there - whether or not they underpay them or ask for longer-than-lawful working hours, I don't know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:39AM (20 children)
Hiring a teenager who comes to you asking for a job so they can save for a car or have some extra spending money is not exploiting child labor. That's the teenager starting to take some personal responsibility and it should absolutely be encouraged. Exploiting child labor was sending preteens into coal mines instead of schools because they fit in the small spaces better than adults. You know this already.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:01AM (5 children)
How about hiring two teenagers?
What about hiring mostly teenagers?
Shouldn't teenagers be in school too? (how come I see mostly teenagers working at Maccas even when is school time?)
Or is it only in the coal mines, but staying for long hours on your feet is actually "health improvement" for teenagers?
You know I have nothing against "showing teenagers how's the real life", except that there's is a limit where showing is no longer "just showing" and becomes no longer beneficial.
(like the limit between smacking your poodle for the piddle with a newspaper and beating the crap out of the dog to teach it a lesson).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:40PM (4 children)
Hire all teenagers for all I care. You get what you pay for and that will be reflected in your profits.
That should be up to their parents until they're old enough to make a moderately informed decision on the matter. Then it should be up to them. It's interesting how you're pro forced mental labor but anti voluntary physical labor.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:59PM (3 children)
This was school for you, I gather. 'teresting, yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:08PM (2 children)
That is school for every child unless you're claiming it became voluntary at some point.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:28PM (1 child)
Not in my experience,
Half of the courses in Uni were though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:00PM
Ah well, here in the US your parents can get fines, jail time, or even have you taken away from them if they don't force you to go to school until the state mandated age. If they can't afford to home school you, get you a private tutor, or send you to private school that means you must attend a government school. It is absolutely in no way optional.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 02 2018, @10:57AM (13 children)
As much as I dislike laws and regulations, I'm going to stick by minimum wage and propose an extra tack-on for your teen labor force, I myself was a teen laborer, for a short time, until I told "the man" than I wasn't working for no stinking minimum wage and got myself started at $6 per hour instead of $3.35.
Anyone working for "pocket money" below minimum wage must also: 1) be full time enrolled in an educational program (this still allows for summer jobs), 2) not yet have achieved a high school diploma, and 3) work hours which do not interfere with school - no more than 30 per week, no more than 4 per day that school is in session, and non-conflicting with school and transport to school times.
There were similar-ish laws in my state for employees under 18 when I was working for minimum wage. I'd say that if you've got a HS diploma, or want to work more than 30 hours per week, the laws should prevent your exploitation - exploitation doesn't always involve dark shafts and dusty air.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:48PM (12 children)
A not entirely disagreeable compromise in the first paragraph. And good on you for bargaining yourself into a better wage. That's what's supposed to happen as your worth to employers increases.
The second paragraph is crap though. Just mark the differentiation at the age of majority, allow those who attend school to refuse scheduling during school hours without consequence and be done with it. I do not agree with government mandated schooling until the age of 18 or graduation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:23PM (11 children)
Age is a poor gauge of abilities - I'd like to see education instead of age to permit extension of these "starter jobs" to the disabled as they continue high school through age 22/25 in some states, and beyond. If they're still in a qualified educational program, I do believe allowing them to work for some money is better than forcing an either/or volunteer/real job scenario on them (just as for teenagers.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:36PM (10 children)
If you like. Extend it as far as you care to for the mentally handicapped (school or no school) and it won't bother me. At some point they are going to learn their job well enough to warrant a raise though; no matter how difficult it is for them to learn. That's on the employer's intellectual honesty and honor to determine though. There's no algorithm that can be created for that and no other human is going to be able to judge it accurately either unless they ride in the employer or employee's pocket all day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:52PM (9 children)
The local groceries are starting to have serious visible programs with Downs and similar help, mostly bagging, but also some other things they can do. In the handicapped situation, they're generally supported by people who help them get the jobs, etc. and, presumably, if they can learn a job well enough to get out of the handicapped employment status, they would graduate, so to speak. It's an obvious expense to the employer to support these people in their jobs as compared to ordinary workers who can at least pass a GED, but it's also a win-win for the employer and the community.
What I see much more of today, in contrast, is WalMart, Dollar Tree and all kinds of other local minimum wage employers scooping in great swaths of able bodied and minded workers and putting them on a welfare treadmill, using my tax money to fund their cheap labor.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @10:48PM (8 children)
Not really, if you're allowed to pay them what they're worth. Bagging groceries really takes very little intelligence, even if you insist they not put the eggs in with the bowling balls, but it's still time and effort that someone would otherwise have to put in. So it's not necessary to pay them more than it's worth but what they're doing is also not worthless.
Yeah, I don't get any adult allowing themselves to be in a position where taking any minimum wage job is ever more than a dire emergency fill-in job. It genuinely does not compute for me when gaining a valuable skill is not remotely difficult. Maybe it's the college thing. Most everyone today thinks college is the only path forward, so it never occurs to them that there are millions upon millions of jobs between Wal-Mart and the half a million a year white collar jobs that don't even require a highschool diploma.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 03 2018, @12:27AM (7 children)
You don't get it, I don't get it - except: desperation. There are plenty of people who need the work or they are looking at their kids going hungry at night, or living in that roach infested apartment another month, or similar unacceptable situations. Yes, there are "answers" for all these things, but when you're money poor you also tend to be time and information, and sometimes intelligence, poor and not fully capable of accessing every available resource...
The reason I got away with telling the man I'm not working for $3.35 per hour is because I literally did not need the job - I even had that exact conversation with the assistant manager one day, shut his ass up real quick. If they didn't need me, I would have been fired right then, but I took the risk because I had other income and support so that job was optional, and since it was optional I could talk my way into a 80% raise that another more desperate employee might not have been willing to risk.
Get yourself stuck needing 70 hours a week of minimum wage and you don't have the time or energy to get out of that situation.
For you, for me, but for someone who is brown skinned in a town where the white skins control the money? Try becoming an apprentice plumber or some such when there are people of the correct color lined up for those opportunities... and there are plenty of other prejudices beyond skin color. Before I got that job in grocery, I had three jobs in restaurants - when I took that resume to retail, some snot nosed old biddy on the other side of the desk basically told me "with your experience you should probably look for food service work" - which, to me, is a clear signal that I am unwanted in their rarified air of clothing sales due to some cultural cue - not my skin color or accent, but something that just didn't fit her (illegal) prejudicial model of what she's building her team with. To this day, I get a kick out of mowing the lawn and then going straight to a high-brow department store just to see the shocked looks on their faces.
Basically, it is, for those who don't have an unusual advantage, like the son of the local car dealership owner... The evolution of business ownership consolidation and wealth de-distribution means that more and more people don't have that half-million dollar white collar job opportunity that doesn't require college, but we've opened enough prosperity so that everyone can at least get college, and as Brad Bird flogged multiple times in The Incredibles: when everybody is special, nobody is - I think we've arrived at that end for college today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @01:26AM (6 children)
Must be a yankee thing. I haven't seen it in the south to speak of. You'll hear a racist joke now and then but as a general rule the teller doesn't actually care which race it's about; Polish, black, Mexican, rival college football team, it's pretty much all the same. On the other hand, all across the south half the folks you work with are going to be black if you're a blue collar guy. I'm sure it's technically possible to be racist in that situation but you'd damned well better keep it entirely unnoticeable in your work life if you want to keep your job. The black guys working along side you aren't there because of affirmative action; they're there because they make a good hand. So if one guy is causing problems with multiple good hands, it's not a difficult decision for the boss who to shit-can.
As for the apprentice thing, nobody is lined up for those jobs at the moment. Skilled labor of all kinds is currently suffering a damned painful shortage all across the nation.
Dude, are you nuts? A welder so shitty you wouldn't even keep him on if you could find anyone else will never be paid less than $25K/yr. A badass welder pulls in a quarter of a million a year and turns down any work he doesn't feel like doing without even thinking about it. Twenty years ago my plumbing/HVAC boss was charging $60/hr labor in one of the poorest states in the nation. And getting as much work at that price as he felt like doing. None of that is even considering that once you hit contractor status it's not that big of a step to hire some hands on and start a company making many times in yearly profit what you could earn alone. Did you really think the skilled trades didn't pay what you could get with a degree?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 03 2018, @03:11AM (5 children)
What south do you live in? In my South, they still get a hard-on when talking about cross burning and castrating catholic priests, and the candy ass cowards still run around in the night spreading red paint and hateful messages on the houses of their ethnic neighbors. In the bigger cities they'll hire mexicans as apprentice plumbers or electricians or lawn service workers, and let the white guys do the sales talking end of the job (and take 80% of the profit), but when you get out to the smaller towns they just quietly shit-can applications from the "wrong sort" of people.
Sounds about right - $12/hr is what they paid that jackass that screwed up the first production run of my aluminum bedframes, had to get the $50K/yr senior welder to fix his mess, he was pretty much of a badass - perfect beads every time, could true a frame with a 4x4 but preferred to use his home-made oak sledge, had been working there for 15 years - that shop owner didn't pay anybody more than $60K/yr even if they could walk on water. That shop charged us $50/hr for labor/machine time, $100 on the waterjet due to maintenance costs - no A/C in Tampa, not exactly an ideal place to work.
If you can step up and be the man quoting $60/hr or whatever for the jobs, then, sure, that's the gravy right there, but you do need a stake to get something like that rolling. I've seen plenty of jackasses try during boom times, spin up a big business on bank loans, then give it all to the bank when the economy turns around on them. Concrete guy who ran a crew "pouring 5 floors a week" comes to mind, watched him live high for about 18 months before it all turned around on him. Another one ran loaders, graders, excavators and trucks - every single one of them financed... It takes a combination of saving enough before you make the leap, taking enough of a risk to grow, and not so much risk that you lose it when things don't go perfectly - then having the discipline to continue to have enough cash cushion to float over lean times. That's a tough thing for most people to pull off, especially the ones with enough balls to try it in the first place. Of course, some do get lucky no matter how poorly they play the game they still win.
My parents were cowards, their parents sent them to college and they became teachers, they sent me to college and I never had enough stake to do anything other than work for a living, or maybe I'm just too much of a coward to have risked a 6 figure salary with benefits against a chance of going broke. My college degree has been getting me a good enough salary all these years, and kids graduating in my field continue to do well, but it's cyclic, and if you come out at the beginning of a recession it can really set you back, especially if you took big loans to get through school. I was lucky - 2.5 years getting a Master's degree took me out of a recession and kept my little student loan out of repayment until I could get a decent start. If I hadn't had that TA offer from school, I could easily have been back living with Mom for a year or two looking for work that just wasn't there when I got my B.S.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @05:19AM (4 children)
Gotta ask you the same question. I've lived in Texas, Oklahoma, the Carolinas, and now Tennessee and spent more than trivial amounts of time in every other southern state (whole bunch of yankee ones as well but that ain't relevant). In my entire life I've met exactly one person who genuinely appeared to dislike black folks south of the Mason-Dixon line. Plenty of kids talked shit but then they all grew the hell up and got over it. The one I knew was family and, me being the wiseass that I am, I'd intentionally wind him up every time I was around just to see how mouth-frothy I could get him.
Sounds reasonable for most ordinary shops. The epic badass welders who make $150K+, as opposed to someone who's just pretty damned good and makes $40-60K, go all over the place and weld the weird shit that nobody else even knows how to weld. They're the guys you call when you need some foot thick titanium that's underwater welded and it absolutely has to be perfect and pass x-ray the first time.
Yeah, I don't get that. It's like grabbing the icy hot to jerk off when there's a bottle of lotion right next to it. Why would you do that to yourself? Do some people actually believe that they can go through life without having major setbacks occur fairly often? Why would anyone not say "Gee, I think I'll save some of this back for when shit turns southward"? I mean it's as certain as gravity that it's going to sooner or later. I've just been chalking it up to absurd levels of stupidity.
Nod nod. This is where non-traditionals have an enormous advantage over traditionals. They've already got something to fall back on and possibly even some savings set aside for schooling. Unless your parents can pay for it or you can manage a nearly full ride worth of scholarships/grants, I'd advise every last highschool graduate to go spend at least five years learning to do something that pays decent and doesn't require college before they even think of enrolling. Taking loans out to pay for an increasingly diminishing promise of success as a result is what I like to refer to as a Bad Idea.
Having done a few years of honest-to-god hard work to earn their living would do every degree'd person I've met some good as well. Y'all are fond of preaching the benefits of experiencing other cultures in academia but if you haven't even experienced the largest part of your own, you're going to sound like a jackass when you talk to most of your countrymen.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 03 2018, @11:41AM (3 children)
I've lived all over the Florida peninsula with family in Georgia, Louisiana, some time in eastern Tennessee, wife spent several years in Muscle Shoals AL, and a couple of years in Houston. Houston didn't have too much open hate, but I never talked to a non-white contractor and I never saw a non-mexican working a grunt job for those contractors. I had limited experience, but in the two+ years I was there that was my experience. The bigger thing I saw in Houston was reasonable diversity in hiring at my company, but essentially ethnic cleansing during layoffs and it was not ability or contribution to the team or seniority based. Good for me, but still pretty much in-your-face when the 10% that gets cut includes not a single white person.
The racial crap in Florida / south Georgia circulates mostly among the poor and stupid, and the politicians they elect, but there's always been and still is a lot of it going around. It really started to wear on us in the smaller Florida towns when the school board started painting our mentally challenged kids with the "not our people" brush they use for the colored folk: you bring your kids in to school by the back gate to drop them off on the unpaved circle by the portables, come late, and leave early if you please. Oh, you don't like that principal who's been pairing your kids with teachers who openly hate them, well, if you insist we can give you a spot in the all-black (well, 97%, all black would be a federal offense) school on the other side of town... the bigger nearby city is much better about treating people of all kinds well, but our neighbors still fly the rebel flag - interestingly less so since Obama left office...
That's not bad advice, but it's almost like admitting defeat up front - if you've got the grades you should be going for that brass ring as fast as you can, that's the dream, that's what all the "best" families are doing, don't you want to better yourself and be like them? Takes real balls to step off that fairy float and go get dirty for money when you're 18. There's also some harsh reality that not every journeyman graduates to master, and there are far fewer contractors than workers, so... true odds are that you're not guaranteed to move up to the jobs that a 55 year old can do every day, and going back to school later in life can be a pretty hard trick to pull off - I've known a couple of people who have done it, but none too spectacularly successfully - it did get one old guy I know out of the A/C business (crawling in attics) into a programming job - not a great programming job, but enough to pay the bills. All in all he would have been much better off studying computers up front and skipping the A/C step, but that's not how his life unfolded.
First thing I learned working the stock room in 1988: if you didn't say F--- at least every 4th word, you wouldn't get or hold your co-workers' attention, period. I rewatched Star Trek IV the other night and they actually pointed that out in some typical Kirk-Spock dialog...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @03:00PM (2 children)
Well you're not going to see any Mexican contractors to speak of for good reason. The workers are illegals, which means they both can't get the license and don't have the money to start a contracting business. You're not going to see white guys swinging a hammer much either because the illegals will work for less than you can live on without piling fifty people in one house and sleeping in shifts. It's a good deal for the illegals since it's a temporary gig for them and then they go home with a pocket full of USD but it fucks the wages for the industry up badly.
So, economics not racism. Also the reason that everybody who does manual labor for a living where there are a bunch of illegals hates their breathing guts. Especially Mexicans who are here legally either on a green card or with citizenship. It's got nothing to do with their skin color and everything to do with them turning any job field they enter into one that's utterly non-viable for anyone who has a right to be here.
As for the rebel flag, I get why black folks don't dig on it and why white folks who think black folks are fragile and in need of protecting don't but it very much don't mean the same thing to everyone. Like I don't fly one myself but you can bet your sweet bippy that if I had a `69 charger there would be one on its otherwise orange roof. Anyone you see with the stars and bars, it's a pretty safe bet that they hate yankees a lot more than they do black folks.
Admitting defeat? Nah, that's what I like to call "covering your ass". Anyone who expects life to hold no setbacks and the first job they train for to always be there and always pay well is fucking insane. Having a fallback position is just good sense.
And yeah, you got the vocabulary down but I was speaking more of shared perspective. If you can't personally relate to what their lives are like you can't even discuss related topics with them much less think you know what's good for them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 03 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
You're more from the South than you think you are. The legal Mexican population is approaching 40% across the South, there are plenty of illegals, but even more legals with the right to not only work but also own businesses, just not the social standing. The greasers mowing our lawn in Houston were probably illegal, but the journeyman plumber was almost certainly not.
I once had a dream of owning/operating a major orange grove... that went down the toilet when I learned that I'd have to harvest using illegals for labor if I was going to turn any profit whatsoever. Not my style.
That used to be the case when I was growing up in west coast Florida in the 1970s, but Yankee hate has kind of faded over the years in my experience.
Meanwhile, in the 1980s in Muscle Shoals, my wife was waiting tables at a Pizza Hut and explicitly instructed by the owner via management to ask a (clean, able to pay) black family to please leave because they would not be served. If that's not hate, it's at least what I'd call unacceptable by ordinary standards of decency.
By that measure, there's lots of insanity out there, I'd say it's in the majority.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:21AM
You're reading what you expect to see instead of what I said. I was talking about construction crews and what I said was absolutely true because legal immigrants can not survive on what illegals are willing to take and have been utterly priced out of the industry except in supervisory capacities. So, yes, they are all illegals.
Have a shitload of kids. That's how farming has been done for thousands of years. Oddly enough, that's also how gay guys came to be known as faggots. A faggot started out as a bundle of sticks, came to mean any annoying burden, and got applied to the men who did not aid the farm by creating new farm hands, that making them an annoying burden.
Okay, you need to take a moment and remember that we're old. That happened but was out of the ordinary even back in the 80s. The 80s are going on 40 years ago though. Things change.
I would not disagree with you. Part of that's always going to be there, part of it's failure to educate, and part of it's by design from those seeking political power by creating bottom-up avarice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:45PM (3 children)
FTFY. Even if you have no moral problem with working somebody to death, that's still destroying a potentially valuable asset because you were thinking only about the next quarter's earnings. Furthermore, not everybody can be promoted: If you have 5 good grunts being paid starvation wages, 7 bad grunts being paid the same rates, and 1 foreman position available to supervise this team of 12 grunts, 4 of the good grunts are still stuck at starvation wages even though they're good at their job, which will naturally breed a certain amount of resentment among them and get them thinking a union might be a good idea.
The intent of the minimum wage, going all the way back to the 1930's, was to remedy the problem of people working full-time and still starving or freezing to death. And by and large that worked whenever the full-time minimum wage was higher than the poverty line. Right now, it doesn't work, because the full-time minimum wage is below the poverty line.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday August 02 2018, @04:38PM (2 children)
And don't forget the official definition of the poverty line [healthcare.gov] still leaves people way below the ability to really survive -- about $12K a year.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)
See, here's where I have to correct you. Surviving means not dying and a thousand bucks a month is more than enough for simple survival for one person. Hell, one person can easily eat for a year on $5,200 without losing weight. Less if they make an effort to spend wisely.
Now what you want to define poverty as, that's another debate entirely.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:07PM
Forgive me. I thought we were speaking about living as human beings as defined in today's modern world in the U.S. in a major city. Perhaps in an apartment with healthy food on the table, able to move around the city with ease when desired, and going out with friends on occasion without having to worry if there will be enough money left over for doctor appointments and saving for retirement when the body becomes too infirm. I am humbled by your detailed reply correcting the things that the common part of my "Common Joe" moniker has trouble fathoming.
Thank you for the correction.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:33AM (1 child)
I will never understand where the idea comes from that as an employer you have some God-given right to pay a sub-survival wage in order to protect your profit margin. By definition, if you cannot pay an employee a wage that they can live on as a human being, you should either be firing that employee and finding one with a functioning brain, or you should not be attempting to employ anyone, because your business obviously isn't viable as an employer of humans. It is a simple self-proving axiom. Living wage = employer, non-living wage = exploiter.
Advocating paying people less than they need for nutritious food and legally-recognized shelter and socially-acceptable clothing and anything else that is necessary to fully participate in society, is advocating for your employees to at least partially enslave themselves to you specifically for your personal financial benefit, for no practical benefit to them in return besides maybe not literally starving to death, with even that not guaranteed depending on the wage. I see zero advantages to a developed society overall to allow that kind of attitude from any "employer". If you can't employ human beings as self-respecting human beings instead the equivalent of farm animals with no rights, don't even try. Do all the work yourself, or go out of business. Show us how terrible it will be not to have you around as an employer.
Societies that require a reasonable minimum wage by law have collectively made the decision that businesses that can't pay reasonable minimum wages don't deserve to exist as employers within that society, and as a human being I am perfectly fine with that sort of balance. You should have no more legal right to exploit my desperation to offer me a pointless wage of 50 cents per day in modern day America than you have the right to put me in chains and force me to harvest your fruit crop for free. It is nothing but pure exploitation either way, and if you push it far enough people suddenly find it very quick and easy and entertaining to stop even attempting to "work" and instead spend time building guillotines and rearranging the social and economic structure. How many times do we have to relearn this lesson?
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @02:49PM
Lemme splain then. Wages are not and should never be based on what the employee needs. They are and should always be based on the value of the work the employee provides.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @10:41AM
Based on my experience with some of the co-workers I've had to suffer over the years, I beg to disagree.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday August 02 2018, @12:50PM
Nonsense. Before minimum wage you had coal mine owners paying people the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $1 per hour and the shift supervisor was getting inflation-adjusted $5 per hour, because the demand for labor outstripped supply. When you died they dumped your body in a ditch and then found someone else so desperate to eat that they would agree to be an 80-hour a week slave next. That's the model you're supporting with your libertarian fantasies.
American corporate profits are at record levels. These companies have the money to pay better, they're just spending it on executives and shareholder dividends instead of entry level employees. But we're in a rare situation where the demand for labor is outstripping supply, so unlike ten years ago when they were asking for a PhD for someone to answer phones because they could, today they're just starting to relax hiring requirements to a reasonable level.
Now, small business is different. I support a law that works this way: Minimum wage for a company with one employee works the same way it does today, $7.25. If you hire a second employee, the minimum wage at your company is $7.30. If you hire a third, it's $7.35. All of the way up to $15.00 minimum wage if you have 157 or more employees. If you do so much business you have 157 employees, you can afford $15/hour (plus taxes, benefits, workers compensation insurance, and so forth) for each.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 02 2018, @01:56PM
Even pre-journeyman apprentice wages are usually a multiple of the minimum wage in the skilled trades. IBEW apprentice electrician in Illinois $26.74... not per day like working at McDonalds, but per hour... Of course you'd expect the guy wiring and programming a VFD in a factory to be a multiple more economically productive than the kid slinging the fry basket at McD based on the nature of the work.