nyajima:sonicrainbooms:Hey, Americans! Support fast food workers, don’t cross the picket line. No fa
nyajima:sonicrainbooms:Hey, Americans! Support fast food workers, don’t cross the picket line. No fast food on Feb 16.It floors me to see all of the equally underpaid employees in the notes arguing thatWages should not, in fact, be raised Unskilled labor not only exists, but has no functional use to societyHave we all been living through the same global pandemic? The United States in particular has been decimated by federal incompetence and late stage capitalism. The latter is why everybody except the upper echelons of society have been in financial ruin and mortal peril.The service industry is thankless work that requires aptitude, strength, and fortitude in multiple areas. You know how it sucks to multitask? That’s the entire workday in food and customer service – on-site advertisement, restocking, cleaning, customer relations, company representative, inventory manager, team player, project manager, accountant, negotiator. All while staying on your feet for 4-8 hr stretches, on constant alert, and maintaining an unbreakable persona entirely detached from your own feelings. The majority of food service employees aren’t actually teenagers, either. The average employee age is somewhere around 30 in the U.S.The biggest secret of all is that those managers that you do consider worthy of living wages are never the ones to keep operations running. It’s exceedingly rare for them to even be effective oversight. That’s all the employees! It is dehumanizing, demanding, grueling labor, and pays next to nothing. It doesn’t help that workers are both discouraged from best practices (like wearing masks and staying home at the start of a pandemic), and often functioning with skeleton crews that just have to make it work, or it’s their jobs.The real kicker to all of this is that these arguments against (a frankly still unlivable for 80% of the population) $15/hr are coming in the midst of the pandemic. The one where everybody began referring to service industry employees as essential workers. Because for a moment, people finally understood that modern society starts to crumble without janitorial services, grocery store staff, chefs, transportation workers, and every other employee that is barely recognized as human in the U.S.If you’re wondering if maybe this is too much, that it is unfair for those “unskilled laborers” get paid something reasonable? I would like you to challenge yourself. For a week, consider how much you, personally, are capable of doing solely on your own. How would you get your food from the farm to the table? Who will be handling your garbage, recycling, water, and sewage? What will you do on the days where you simply don’t have it in you to cook? Because what you’re arguing is that these are all inconsequential to you.In reality, I believe the real reason behind the knee jerk response folks have comes down to two things. People are so very rarely actually malicious about this, particularly because they are also struggling with being underpaid. First, there seems to be a misconception that increased pay as encroaching on your portion of scarce resources. That scarcity is manufactured. Somebody else’s fair wages do not undercut your value. In fact, these things can be used in your favor – it is only by knowing of wealth disparity that you can demand better. Every study and implementation of higher minimum wage has also proved the inflation can only go so high in response. That, too, needs to be regulated.Second, people believe the narrative that the service industry is a beginner position with minimal skills – or simply do not perceive how many service workers there are. Something like 70% of all jobs are currently in the service industry. This is not a small portion of the population. And as I described above, there is no such thing as unskilled labor. This, too, is a myth that is used against you. Consider everybody you know, their education, their experience, their skills. Now, ask yourself: how many of those highly capable individuals are actually being paid their worth?Minimum wage is a flawed concept to start with, and $15/hr is still actually fucking nothing. It is a start, though, and it ultimately will cost everybody collectively more to not at least get started down the path of universal living wages. That is something that everybody should have access to.You don’t have to throw people more disadvantaged than you under the bua for the illusion of financial security. It’s just that: and illusion. You deserve better, too. -- source link