Millions Are Out Of A Job. Yet Some Employers Wonder: Why Can’t I Find Workers? is the headline from WBUR News. Only once does it mention wages …. His company has offered higher wages.
While I do not have a degree in economics or business administration, has it not dawned on anyone, maybe the reporter at WBUR to ask the employer this simple question: “Have you considered the possibility that maybe even your higher wages are not high enough and you need to go higher?” This shows me that the blind spot we have in America regarding wages for jobs not requiring a college degree, what you might know erroneously as “low skill”, is alive and well in even the liberal media. By the way, I looked into the company that was the subject of this article, M.A. Industries in Peachtree Georgia. They are, from what I can tell, a plastics manufacturing company. Molders are paid $10 an hour. Supervisors make $20 per hour. Remarks from employees seem to indicate that the working conditions are less than splendid and there is no room for advancement. Average rent of an apartment in Peachtree Georgia is $1,500 a month. Try living there making $10-$20 an hour.
We still hear the lie that undocumented immigrants do the jobs that Americans will not do. Well, that’s a half truth, otherwise known as a lie. Undocumented immigrants do the jobs that Americans will not do for the lousy wages and poor conditions offered by the employers. Before you even start, let me say that no one, not citizens of the USA or undocumented immigrants should be forced to either go hungry or take those jobs with low wages and poor conditions. Let’s put this on the backs of those responsible, the employers.
If the employer’s response is “I can’t stay in business if I have to raise wages”, then my reply is “Well, looks like you are going to go out of business!”
We need to put a full stop to the exploitation of American labor.
There are some sites like GlassDoor and Indeed that at least claim to provide employee-generated reviews of various companies.
I looked at the Indeed reviews for “MA Industries” (https://www.indeed.com/cmp/M.a.-Industries/reviews). Those reviews seem to tell a different story from your thread-starter.
The two most recent entries, from earlier this month, give the company a rating of 3 of 5 and 2 of 5 — neither very favorable. Each of these reviews actually cite their pay as a “pro”. The second more negative review is titled “Only good thing about this company is the pay is decent”.
Each of these negatives cite management issues as their primary complaint (emphasis mine):
…
Perhaps listening and responding to the actual complaints of workers — actually respecting them — is even more important than raising hourly wages.
From Glass Door
Pros
Overtime was probably the only good thing about this place
Cons
Lack of Management
Unprofessional people
Drama
No morals
No appreciation
Yes, when had to work at a food market during the height of the epidemic and I was paid whole extra $2 an hour to risk my health so that you all could have food on your kitchens, driving by the $750,000 homes with the “Bless our front line workers” really made me feel appreciated.
My niece, an RN who spent time on Covid floors said much the same whenever she saw those signs, “Thanks for the pat on the back. I’d much rather you just pay me”.
Maybe we should take that attitude with CEO wages, eh? That’s cool. Let’s tell Howard Grant, CEO of Lehigh Heath that instead of last year’s $4.7 million paycheck, in 2021 we will actually respect him and place a “God Bless our CEO’s” sign on a Route 495 Overpass…
I don’t disagree with you, I’m instead reluctant to accept that your view is universal.
It sounds as though what you’re saying is that higher wages can compensate for the long list of negatives enumerated in these reviews.
Are you saying that you would have been happy to take those risks if the pay differential had been $20/hr instead of $2/hr? Perhaps — if so, you’d be different from a great many people.
Respect is different from money. Is a $5,000/night sex worker more respected than one who earns $50/night? I don’t think so.
I don’t believe that money motivates most people. If it did, we would have no teachers, no science researchers (no, they are NOT highly compensated), no restaurant chefs, no photographers and so on. The world is chock full of people who spend their lives doing what they love to do while somehow scraping together money to keep their heads above water.
The nurses I know don’t do their work because of how much money they make. Yes of course they should make more. Even if your niece’s wages were tripled, I suspect she’d still be rightfully unhappy if she was not provided with the PPE she needs, if her hours were still savagely long, if her management was still crude and hostile towards her, and so on.
“Respect” is not something that can be bought. Mr. Heath won’t get it for $4.7M and a worker at MA Industries won’t get it for ANY hourly wage.
There is nothing easy about running a business. I did it for too many years. He can crash and burn by increasing his overhead (increasing wages), low sales (potentially because of higher prices driving clients to the competition), lost interest (a business can own the owner as much as the owner owns it), changes in the marketplace (consolidation by suppliers, competition from suppliers, competition willing to outflank you with low prices, more advertising and lose money willingly to force you under (this is ironically called competition and is viewed as good for the consumer; hedge funds and public companies can easily crush their small target who must make payroll weekly)). In short, it depends.
The problem is that a gallon of milk costs roughly the same whether you make $10 an hour or $100 an hour. This is regarded as “normal” and fair, but it is illusion. Even if you increase the wage of everyone to $100 an hour, how does the person who is too young, too old or too ill to work get their milk? Are we creating milk to feed people or just to sell it? How much of the stuff the plastic factory makes actually gets used? We create 1-time use plastic stuff with waste that endures for 1000’s of years…but it’s good for their bottom line, and a bad job is better than no job, right?
While raising wages will provide some temporary relief to some people in the short term, in the long-term it doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s a dead horse that we need to stop beating.
When the minimum wage was $2.00, $3.00 was seen as a solution. Now it needs to be $15, but it still won’t be a solution, because inflation will always faster. Why do we have inflation? Is the grass the cows eat any different than it was 100 years ago? Prices fluctuate and wages fluctuate because we think it is all normal, but everywhere everyone just wants ‘more.’ More wages, more sales, more profits, more commissions, etc. The solution is in making the numbers smaller, not bigger. Capitalism is a failure, but socialism isn’t any better. You can’t solve the problem without understanding the cause.
For the record: I was the cause. “Buy low – sell high” can’t work. Taxes can’t redistribute the wealth because they are just another ‘percentage added’ in the cycle of inflation and debt. Follow the math, not the money.
But why can’t they hire someone? Obviously because people are safer at home. The liberal media may be blind, but the voice of the whining owner is the conservative media. NPR is not ‘liberal media,’ despite your protestations. And, it’s highly likely that the reporter, like you, has neither an economics or a business degree, not that either would necessarily be helpful. My experience has been that most business owners don’t have much insight to these economic problems, from Gates and Buffett on down. For the layman, it’s even worse. At the time of the revolution, 50% of white men were self-employed. Now the self-employed are about 3% of the entire population. They won’t be writing a new Constitution soon, they are more likely to own a carwash and get shot to death breaking into the Capitol.
CEO Pay Has Grown 90 Times Faster than Typical Worker Pay Since 1978.
Are you saying this did not accomplish anything? Looks like it accomplished a lot, for the class of citizens in the CEO club.
Kroger will close more stores over hazard pay laws for workers. This just announced after Seattle put into law the city’s $4-an-hour hazard pay requirement for grocery workers.
Maybe if enough stores close, Todd & Melissa who are currently working from home collecting six figure incomes will get upset that they can’t get Fresh Organic Strawberries delivered today for tomorrow’s waffle breakfast…..and maybe start to realize that “essential workers” need to be paid substantial wages, regardless of the unappreciated skills required and lack of a college degree?
OK, you’ve run through the list of everything that can’t or won’t work. What is your solution to income inequality and the pinched middle and working classes?
Update: The EIGHT Democrats who voted NO to a $15 Minimum Wage have a combined net worth of $40 Million.
I was surprised at a couple of those votes at least. I guess they really are procedural sticklers.