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[McTraveller]

Just as a random question - my family personally has more than a 50% "profit margin" - that is, more than 50% of our income is disposable.  Am I abusing all the people buying my employer's products, or abusing my employer, because I'm pocketing that much?

I'm contributing to price escalation of everything, after all, because I can pay for stuff, so it's not just an isolated phenomenon.

[Frumple]

Unless your family is secretly the personified ghost of Ma Bell or somethin', you're not a business and you're not setting prices to any degree worth noting. The power of your personal pocketbook is vanishingly small, even when it's giving tremendously strong signals (e.g. millennials being accused of killing entire industries, or as the case at hand, labor participation staying low in a particular industry despite increased monetary remuneration); as the saying goes, the markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

There's a degree of immorality in most participation in modern markets, though, sure. It's just that it's damn small for any individual or organization that isn't, y'know, bankrolling lobbyists. Your family has other things to concern yourself with, like the likely fact that 50% disposable income is one bad medical emergency from vanishing :V

[McTraveller]

Sure I'm not impacting things personally - but collectively.  And that's the point isn't it? Corporations are collectives after all, yes?

I'm not actually arguing there isn't abuse here, but how do you pick a non-arbitrary point at when it's abuse versus "eh whatever?"

[lemon10]

Just as a random question - my family personally has more than a 50% "profit margin" - that is, more than 50% of our income is disposable.  Am I abusing all the people buying my employer's products, or abusing my employer, because I'm pocketing that much?

I'm contributing to price escalation of everything, after all, because I can pay for stuff, so it's not just an isolated phenomenon.

I'm not complaining about their profit, I'm complaining about them going to cry to the government over the issue like they can't just fix it with a tiny amount of their money.

Obviously if they had money flow issues it would be different and they might actually need to cry to the government so the economy doesn't shut down, but it's stuff they could fix trivially without resorting to that.

[McTraveller]

Sure.  I'm observing that while these companies don't have money flow issues today, there's no guarantee of that changing. Same as the example above for me personally: I have good disposable income today, but could have it wiped out by "a big medical bill."

I guess an examination of historic performance would shed light on that, but I'm admittedly lazy.

[JoshuaFH]

IMO, if the president says you shouldn't strike, then that's all the more reason to dig your heels in and strike even harder. If the government wants to turn you into a slave, they should at least say so and not dance around the issue with "oh what about the economy and my approval ratings?". The working man should always, stalwartly, belligerently defend their own rights to the exclusion of everything else; it doesn't matter who or how many suffer for it, if their rights and well-beings aren't being respected, then the entire rest of the world can get fucked. If the government and the uber wealthy don't like it, then they should either bend the knee and start respecting the members of their working class, or they can go fuck themselves.

[McTraveller]

I guess some of us believe that, while the individual is indeed important, the individual is not the most important thing.

I can't advocate focusing on any single goal "to the exclusion of everything else", not even "the rights of the working man."  What about the rights of those who cannot work, as a trivial example?

[JoshuaFH]

The idea is that the Working Man should worry about what's good for the Working Man, to the exclusion of everything else. If the establishment and the entirety of society burns down because they refuse to negotiate fairly? That's their problem, not the Working Man's.

[McTraveller]

I dunno, having society burn down doesn't really sound like it's good for the Working Man.

[JoshuaFH]

Having a society that's built from the ground up to subjugate the Working Man isn't good for the Working Man either, so something's gotta give.

[Lord Shonus]

You seem to think this is purely a money issue - that they aren't offering sick leave because they're greedy and want to keep all their cash. Except that they've agreed to massive pay raises.

I mean, they clearly are greedy and want to keep all their cash, though -- despite all the problems they're having, the major companies involved are posting record profits. They're extremely clearly unwilling to cut into that in order to fix shit, because if they weren't, shit would be fixed and their profits wouldn't be appropriate for a satire. It's almost certainly not solely a money issue, but there's absolutely signs it very much is to a large degree.

You can't chalk it down to deliberate understaffing either - there's dozens of job postings at $67K+/year with essentially now requirements. It is a matter of not enough applicants and an extremely lengthy training period required.

If you're not getting enough applicants at 67k+/year (though that's actually pretty shit if you're talking some of the schedules that are apparently involved -- if you're getting that little for 80+ hour weeks, you're getting screwed, hard), then you're clearly either not offering enough for what you're asking of people and/or there's something else wrong with how you're operating. You can be hiring at 67k a year and still be deliberately understaffing if you're asking people to work themselves into an early grave with long hours and shit scheduling and such.

Record profits cannot materialize trained labor out of the aether. They can offer more money - and the new contract does offer a pay increase of nearly 25%. Note that the wages I mentioned are starting pay for trainees - experienced workers are promised $100k+ before the potential pay increase. This isn't a "just start taking applications and raise the pay from minimum wage" situation. They are trying to hire, and the wages they're offering (which are set by contract, and can't be arbitrarily raised without a contract amendment agreement) are fairly significant. The increase in the current contract proposal would be more than I make in a year.


And again, the "no" vote is not nearly as decisive as people are saying, and may not even be an actual majority once you break down the vote total.

[Dunamisdeos]

The idea is that the Working Man should worry about what's good for the Working Man, to the exclusion of everything else. If the establishment and the entirety of society burns down because they refuse to negotiate fairly? That's their problem, not the Working Man's.

Fuck everyone everywhere for not thinking about me to the exclusion of everything else, how could they be so selfish.

[JoshuaFH]

The idea is that the Working Man should worry about what's good for the Working Man, to the exclusion of everything else. If the establishment and the entirety of society burns down because they refuse to negotiate fairly? That's their problem, not the Working Man's.

Fuck everyone everywhere for not thinking about me to the exclusion of everything else, how could they be so selfish.

I did place my belief in very reductive, absolutist terms; I apologize if I've been sounding irrational and angry (though I am angry at the state of society nowadays). The general idea I've been feeling lately is that the system is built with only selfish actors in mind, so the most rational strategy is for everyone to behave selfishly. Not selfish simply to mean prioritizing ones' individual self, but simply rational self-interest, including one's class. Altruism (or anything that isn't self-interest) isn't certain to produce lasting results, but the ongoing, perpetual existence of self-interest can maintain the equilibrium between all parties in a system, assuring everyone gets their needs met.

That's the idea I'm feeling lately. The feeling is very cynical and I don't like it.

[Dunamisdeos]

Eh sorry, I was mostly taking the piss. Our nation is really bad at taking care of its working population, and its population needs to stand up for itself way more than it does. I get you.

It's ok to stand up for oneself and one's fellow workers. People shouldn't have to be afraid of doing that.

[Frumple]

Record profits cannot materialize trained labor out of the aether. They can offer more money - and the new contract does offer a pay increase of nearly 25%.

Record profits can do a lot to start ginning up that trained labor if you're willing to use it, though, yeah? Can do a lot more than just offer more money -- you could, ferex, run slimmer margins so you're not working your labor force so damn hard, heh.

... anyway putting some numbers on it, the 67k you mentioned, on a 335 day working year, comes out to like 16 USD an hour if they're seeing 12 hour shifts (i.e. it's barely more than bloody minimum wage in some states). That is shit when you're talking the hours and labor involved, minimal requirements or not.

It gets better if you're looking at a more reasonable calendar (the 250 day year proposed upthread would be 22-ish, which is still pretty goddamn abusive for 80 hour workweeks, but not as bad), but it doesn't approach actually attractive unless the hours involved are made reasonable (and one of the things causing this fight is that they're not, and the companies involved do not appear to be interested in making them so). A pay raise from shit to less shit is still shit, et al. People work those kinds of hours for less, but it's not something they do by choice, y'know?

100k+ (call it 120k, just for a ballpark) would be closer to 30-40/hr on 12 hr days (depending on the calendar involved), which is approaching at least less unreasonable for a schedule that could be including 80+ hour workweeks, but like... still. If that's what they're offering to get worked like a dog it's zero bloody surprise they're having staffing trouble. They have trouble managing that with nursing, and they see average wages even higher (the attempts to actually attract nurses, i.e. travel nurse wages, average around 50 USD/hr, stateside -- it's still not enough to manage to fully staff due to the labor conditions involved, of course).

... or in other words, it sounds a lot like that proposed pay raise is a joke, and a bad one considering what's being asked of the workers involved. They don't need a 25% pay raise increase if they're going to try to attract folks to 80 hour workweeks, they need to add another 0 somewhere after the 2 in that percentage.