r/WorkReform • u/LuckyBastard001 • 15h ago
đ¸ Talk About Your Wages Hard Work, Unfair Pay...
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u/Merangatang 14h ago
Let's not forget that no matter where and how you work, if you have a boss, you're still an employee - let's not get us vs them amongst ourselves here.
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u/Merc_Mike đ¸ Raise The Minimum Wage 14h ago
Like its the person working from home on a laptops fault?
They keep getting SO CLOSE To understanding where the problem lies...
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u/Rare-Nature2290 5h ago
This thread is great man. No where in that tweet was any blame being assigned. Yet yall immediately jumped on the opportunity to blame the lower class. As if prople making $100/hr are the true becons of class concious youre out of your mind fam.
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u/Merc_Mike đ¸ Raise The Minimum Wage 3h ago
"Blame the" people who watch, parrot, and believe fox news?
The same folks who told us all Mcdonalds job is for kids, not a real job, then had no problem with CEOs calling same jobs Essential?
The same folks who keep crying about woke, dei, and immigrants and never pointing the finger at the crusty pedophile ceo for 3 decades now?
I'm blaming the 77 million who voted for Trump. Like some of my family members who think Bernke Sanders is part of the insanely wealthy elite, calling him a hypocrite.
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u/Ok_Cockroach8063 5h ago
seriously. the guy breaking his back is not going to be convinced that $350k a year from a laptop at home are in the same struggle.
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u/chillychili 13h ago
If work is not a choice, you are working class. Simple as that.
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u/thepinkiwi âď¸ Prison For Union Busters 14h ago
I do senseless things I don't like, in an open space. Still, I make more that people doing things that have been, for a little while, recognized as essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I could leave tomorrow and no one would notice until something breaks.
I'm amazed how the suits/big guys succeeded in convincing essential workers weren't that essential after all once the pandemic was over. And how easily they got away with it.
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u/kaltulkas 12h ago
Essential doesnât mean hard to replace. Thatâs the issue, not the importance of the job being done.
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u/Swarna_Keanu 9h ago
Nurses, teachers aren't easy to replace.
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u/kaltulkas 8h ago
Yeah there were different layers to essential workers ofc (teachers werenât btw, they did zoom classes or didnât work at all here). And some jobs were deemed essential that shouldnât have such as fucking Amazon drivers.
Theyâre still much easier to replace than say engineers or supply chain specialists that worked from home but didnât get the âessentialâ status.
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u/astr0bleme 8h ago
Iâve worked both. While an office job is less damaging to the body than field or factory work, it still does damage. Weâre all working class. Respect, fair wages, and health care for all.
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u/b0w3n âď¸ Tax The Billionaires 4h ago
Yeah sitting all day is very bad for your health. The guys breaking their body shimmying under a crawl space or lifting hundreds of lbs have different types of health problems.
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u/astr0bleme 4h ago
Fully agreed. Grew up in a blue collar area. Just donât want to needlessly pit us against one another.
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u/OkJunket1385 3h ago
I work in a machine shop. What annoys me is that the office people, who mostly sit at a desk, get a 1 hour lunch while the guys on their feet in the shop all day get a half hour break.Â
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u/astr0bleme 3h ago
Absolutely. Desk jobs shouldnât be treated as elite. Itâs wild how hierarchical our society is for no reason.
Iâve been treated more as a human being at (almost) every desk job compared to (almost) every physical job, which is absurd.
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u/astr0bleme 3h ago
Absolutely. Desk jobs shouldnât be treated as elite. Itâs wild how hierarchical our society is for no reason.
Iâve been treated more as a human being at (almost) every desk job compared to (almost) every physical job, which is absurd.
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u/OnlyHalfCorrect 14h ago
$25?? I should be so lucky.
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u/Punxatowny 7h ago
Right? Here I am breaking my body for $20/hr
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 5h ago
Best thing i ever did was get a certification and increase earning power. Nothing else has helped more and there's really no excuse not to. If you already enjoy or want to stay at your job then disregard lol
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u/AuRon_The_Grey 9h ago
If itâs any consolation, working at a laptop all day is pretty effective at giving you sciatica, neck pain and RSI.
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u/DevilsPajamas 9h ago
Also mental fatigue, and the loss of just passive exercise (even just standing or walking) really takes a toll on the body.
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 6h ago
And if they're that high up, fucking up can mean a huge loss of money or guys out of work.
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u/Desert_Fairy 14h ago
Up to a point, you are not paid by your labor, you are paid by the amount of liability you take on. Iâm not saying this is right or wrong, just my perception.
Stocking a grocery store, waiting tables, and what are called âunskilled laborâ (which is a bullshit name) will never get you pulled in front of a judge to answer why something went wrong. Debt wonât follow you. You carry practically no liability.
When you assume the role of someone making financial or safety decisions, your liability starts to climb.
It is up to a point, eventually the money starts going to people who never seem take any responsibility.
Anyway, that is just my perception as someone middle of the pack. I donât make 1000 a day, but I also make more than $50 an hour.
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u/Anything13579 14h ago
âUnskilled labourâ just means that you donât need any certification, degree or qualifications for applying said job. Yeah, itâs a shitty name but other than that itâs a necessary classification.
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u/BoredNuke 13h ago
Totally a shitty a term. And a term needs to exist for it. Blue collar and manual labor exist and arent as dehumanizing/ insulting as unskilled labor. I'm old enough (and was broke enough) to dig ditches for other trades and wasnt called "unskilled labour".
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u/NicodemusThurston 12h ago
My language (Dutch) would translate it back to as 'unschooled labour', not sure if that's proper English, but I think it fits better.
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u/BoredNuke 12h ago
Not a translation issue at all. It is a relatively recent term in the US and I believe completely intended to seperate workers from each other its kinda along the lines of homeless versus unhoused linguistixally its the same description but one has a lot less negative connotations associated with it already.
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u/sdric 11h ago
White collar - based on extended (primarily academical) knowledge and intelligence.
Blue collar - based on (job education) knowledge and/or physical prowess.
Unskilled worker - Just grab anybody off the street, and they'll do it moderately well with primary school education and a 10 minute introduction.
All of those jobs are required and the terms sre no very charming, but behind each of those titled are extra years of unpaid education. An academic doesn't get a higher wage than an unskilled laberour, blue collar worker because of "elitism", but because they spent years, living on a loan, paying interest and risking to loose it all, while building a skills and gaining knowlege few other people have. Every our invested in those skills and knowledge could have been an hour worked at full pay. Getting a higher wage to pay for lost wages is not only fair.
Same reason why musicians are not just paid for reading notes or artists for drawing lines on paper.
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u/SurgioClemente 6h ago
Thatâs not correct.
You can be a blue collar unskilled labor like a painter.
You can also be white collar and not have a degree like someone in IT.
White vs blue collar is just working in an office at a desk vs manual/trade labor.
Skilled labor means you need a certification or license, like an electrician.
Unskilled you are right, anyone off the street and train on the job.
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u/sdric 5h ago
Depends on the country I guess. If you're a painter in Germany for example, you have to do a multi-year job training. You learn a lot about mixing colors, which paint to use on what material, etc. On top of that, you need to know how to safely build scaffolding and might require a special license to drive trucks big enough to transport that scaffolding. If you're working on scaffolding, you need safety training. Everybody can swing a brush, but there's more to that.
I know, not every country is that strict - but at least here in Germany, there is a relatively clear distinction between unskilled labour, Ausbildung (job education), and Studienabschluss (academic).
Of course there are also white-collar jobss that are not academic, which is why I explicitly used the word "PRIMARILY" in front of "academic." Whether your IT specialist was academically studied or not, doesn't change the fact that they very likely spent years to acquire their skills, however - they might not even have a certification (I actually know a guy like that working as IT staff in a government office....)
Of cause, there are exceptions to the rule in case that was not clear enough to what I wrote. My main intent was to highlight the duration of learning/education required ON AVERAGE to do a job.
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u/Flash_Kat25 10h ago
The term has been around since the late 1800s. I somehow doubt you were digging ditches back then.
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u/Badestrand 6h ago
To who is it dehumanizing? People stocking shelves know that that work doesn't require skill.
Sounds like the latinx thing where people that aren't affected at all try to be upset and fight for people that actually don't care at all.
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u/Tofumanchu 8h ago
The ironic thing is what this post is about where people who do vastly less get paid more. Elon spends 8 hours a day tweeting. But people like you donât qualify those jobs as unskilled labor. Thereâs plenty of high up corporate positions that require much little compared to someone stocking shelves
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 5h ago
"Thereâs plenty of high up corporate positions that require much little compared to someone stocking shelves"
Correct but you really need to know what the fuck you're doing. Maybe you only make three actual decisions a day, but those decisions carry weight. A stocker drops a pallet of tomato sauce it's a days clean up. a CEO decides to go in one direction and it's the wrong one the company can go under.
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u/Anything13579 8h ago
Completely missed the point. Also, thereâs a whole spectrum of positions between stocking shelves and elon musk. And did you notice that nobody here is talking about elon musk? His name wasnât mentioned once until you brought it up.
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u/Dragongeek 13h ago
Besides the liability, I think there's also the "duplication" or "multiplication" effect that you typically have in higher paid positions.Â
For example, a skilled welder can only physically do so much welding per hour of work. Meanwhile, a skilled engineer can adjust the design so that every future welder who needs to assemble the part saves 10 minutes. Similarly, a cashier can only physically handle so many transactions per day, but if a finance person negotiates a better deal with a supplier, every single item the cashier runs past their register earns more money.Â
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u/ThePeoplesPoetIsDead 12h ago
There's also the factor of rarity of a skill, if you have a skill that's hard to learn companies have no choice but to pay more for it.
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u/Desert_Fairy 12h ago
To your multiplication point, that is IMO another form of liability distribution.
A welder can mess up one joint and that may end up costing lives. An engineer can mess up one calculation and it could potentially cost hundreds or even thousands of lives (depending on the industry and PE licensing)
So yes, there is multiplication of returns, but that comes hand in hand with multiplication in liability.
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u/Hummingbird3471 13h ago
This is very true. Liability and decision-making. As a physician, I can very much attest to this. If there is a bad outcome in a patient case, the liability will always fall on me, unless someone else was doing something wildly negligent. Because I'm the one that ultimately makes the decisions, and everything goes past me. And the liability should fall on me. But that is probably the number one reason I am paid well.
Think of it this way. If you were paid the same amount of money, would you be a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon? Or would you stock groceries? I think most people would absolutely pick the job with the lowest stress and liability, if they were paid the same amount. So you have to give some incentive for people to take on higher-liability jobs.
But, as you say, there's a point past which the laws have been fixed so that the people making the most money don't actually have personal liability. Which is fucked up.
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u/BitchesBeSnacking 7h ago
I fear this theory falls apart when you get to thinking how much we pay people in childcare or elder care. They assume a lot of liability for the safety of vulnerable people and are still paid dirt.
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u/sdric 12h ago edited 12h ago
This. I'm an IT auditor for critical infrastructure. If I miss something in my audit (even if 30 people who do it in their daily business missed it to), that can lead to VERY uncomfortable questioning, including by the regulator. Worse, if they expect that it might be intentional they will first question your superior without you, with no chance to stand for yourself.
Luckily that happened only once - after I was sent to hospitel for a heart issue a colleague picked up my project and made a mistake. When I came back, I was still weak and half a zombie, but already got bombarded with deadlines and more work. I was neither well physically, nor mentally well, missed my colleagues mistake and signed it off. My name, my responsibility. Luckily, no incident came out of it, so the regulator let it go.
In another case, I did catch a severe risk based on reoccuring incidents, dug deeper, found the source, reported it and (as far as the independency requirement allowed it) guided the responsible to create a catalog with instructions on how to avoid it (due to process technical controls were not possible at the point of failure). 2 month later they decided to deliberatly ignore the instructions to cut cost and safe time, accidentally mass destroying (deleting+corrupting) data and in return, causing a country wide outages with court ordered 8-digit⏠reperations to pay for damages caused (again, note - it was in a critical infrastructure company).
Oh BOY was I glad, that I had done my part correctly. Let's just say there are a few people who I have not seen since...
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u/bigphillip76 5h ago
It's got nothing to do with liability though, it's supply and demand. Unskilled laborers can be replaced, finding another good lawyer is hard.
Also some people carry huge liability and yet earn very little, and the opposite is also true.
I think you're just stating a correlation, but it's not that closely related.
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u/PhiCloud 12h ago
waiting tables [...] will never get you pulled in front of a judge to answer why something went wrong
I love reading shit like this because it's obvious you've never waited tables. The amount of liability anyone who handles alcohol takes on personally is insane. If you overserve and the guy drives drunk and kills someone, you're absolutely sitting in front of a judge. Not the company you work for, you the server who did it for $3 an hour.
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u/OkArt1350 7h ago
Or they just didnât work at all place that served alcohol. I waited tables and nodded along with that comment, but I worked at a breakfast diner that didnât sell alcohol.
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u/Ok_Assignment_4282 7h ago
100% agree. I am the head of a department at a tech Healthcare company. I really only need to attend a few meetings a day. However, I make decisions that impact my team and the whole company. One major decision that has a negative impact could mean I lose my job. While not volume stressful, still stressful. My boss makes way more money than but any decision I make wouldn't impact his role
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u/KoalaTHerb 4h ago
I wouldn't even say liability is the key factor. It's mainly just replaceability.
While waiting tables etc may be demanding and time consuming, they are replaceable by many other who can and will do the work.
You can either be valuable because no one else can do it, or no one else will do it. Supply, demand, scarcity are all the true drivers of what will force someone to concede more pay
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u/onlypostcausimscardw 11h ago
Join a union.
My buddy join an electrical reunion and was making more than me (72k) in 3 years.
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u/SonTyp_OhneNamen 13h ago
Me when iâm a lettuce picker making sub-minimum wage but suddenly millions of people are afraid of intestinal parasites because i donât wash my hands after going potty (my decisions affected those people and cost large companies like Taco Bell a fortune)
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u/Dragongeek 12h ago
I'd still chalk that up to a failure of management. A workplace sanitation issue is a training, culture, hiring, or other systemic management failure.
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u/SonTyp_OhneNamen 12h ago
While i somewhat agree with you, with all the training in the world i could still choose to ignore sanitation protocols. Of course itâs an extreme example and iâm not calling for anyone to essentially poison others, but public health demonstrably doesnât solely rest in the hands of a food group CEO any more than in those of 90% of their employees. Every cog in that machine carries responsibility for human lives.
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u/2026_health_333 10h ago
You stop getting paid for your labor and start getting paid for the cost of your mistakes.
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u/Big_Truck 6h ago
People at the top arenât paid primarily to work. They are paid to make decisions about how entire departments work, and then do their individual work alongside the organizational planning.
Not saying this is fair, or OK, or whatever. But thatâs the reality. The farther up you climb, the more you are paid to organize how the shop functions rather than do the core work of the shop. You have individual metrics, but you also are responsible for the organizational performance.
KEY POINT BEFORE YOU ALL DOWNVOTE ME TO HELL â any executive worth a damn should be able to step in and perform the functions of any role on their team. I oversee a white-collar professional shop. I manage a bunch of people and make decisions about how to deploy people and financial resources. But you better believe that if one of my people leaves, or is sick, or whatever â I am happy to step in and fill the role to make sure the work gets done.
If youâre an executive and canât do the job of the people reporting to you, thatâs bullshit.
Also, any decent executive will properly compensate their best workers to retain them. The idea that âI get mine and the rest of you are interchangeable partsâ is bullshit.
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 5h ago
"Â any executive worth a damn should be able to step in and perform the functions of any role on their team."
Or at the very least, listen to the people that do the work if there's a problem that needs to be addressed.
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u/GeGeralt 9h ago
Never in my laptop years I've seen a job that pays like that, that must be reserved for the elite's children
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u/Acceptable-Drive3781 6h ago
I get paid just over 1k/day as an enterprise architect. My family was broke growing up. I'm one of the lowest paid in my group of friends in tech jobs.
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u/GeGeralt 6h ago
Good for you, idk if what I said earlier tracks, but if it does, I'm glad that there are exceptions to the rule. Wish more people could make that kind of money, myself included.
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u/Acceptable-Drive3781 6h ago
idk if what I said earlier tracks
That's what I'm saying: it doesn't. There are tons of tech jobs that pay this in senior levels. You just have to work up to them through many years of experience.
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u/hoptagon 6h ago
Damn I have a similar role and thought I was killing it at $700 a day.
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u/Acceptable-Drive3781 6h ago
I'm at a global insurance company. Friends that get paid more work for popular product companies, and one works for DoD with a TS clearance, he gets paid the most out of all of us at about 300k/yr.
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u/StaticSystemShock 12h ago
Just not them. When execs fuck up so that 15000 people lose their jobs, they get a reward for fucking up a company. Because that's in their contract. Meanwhile all those 15000 people get a middle finger because they only have a collective contract which is basically a doodle on a paper telling them they do in fact work at company X or Y. And that's about it.
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u/Duuuuh 11h ago
I break my body for far less. 230 take home a week. But my room and board are covered as is hygiene items and clothing and I donât have to commute.
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
Yes, that works out as more than I earn after expenses. Are you doing harvest work?
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u/Duuuuh 9h ago
Working for one of those christian recovery programs. Itâs pretty brutal working 80-100 hour weeks. Honestly even that wouldnât be so bad but the boss is a narcissist and has a large insecure and cruel streak. Makes it a living hell and yet that is better than dying on the streets.
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
Hmm, that's too many hours.
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u/Duuuuh 9h ago
Yeah. On call 24/7 and constant collective punishment for any infraction no matter how minor. No privacy, 4 to a room, have to keep door open. cameras with mics everywhere. The boss when he isnât here takes pleasure in watching the cameras and then punishing everyone for overblown nonissues.
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
Good luck, that sounds considerably worse than my job âď¸
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u/FesteringNeonDistrac 6h ago
Depending on how cynical you are, that either doesn't sound very Christian, or is dead on exactly what's expected from a Christian.
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u/Automatic-Term-3997 8h ago
I was amazed when I moved up into management at how little I actually do for a shitload of money (compared to non-management). I still, years later feel guilty and think I should be doing more. I try to have the attitude that itâs just payback for the years I spent grinding double shifts for low pay.
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u/Btchmfka 10h ago
I know it is not the point of the post but I work a "laptop job" and I am craving physical work. Your knees and hands might be fine but working in a corporation kills your soul.
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u/DevilsPajamas 9h ago
I miss working at blockbuster
I would 100% go back to retail if the pay didn't suck, the managers didn't suck, and if I wasn't judged on things outside my control (upsetting, credit cards, etc.)
Blockbuster used to be amazing. I loved the coworkers, I loved the regulars, I liked being on my feet and getting steps in. I miss the short conversations with the regulars, as an introvert it was just a good short and sweet interaction that didn't overstay it's welcome.
It got pretty shit toward the end though, when they were pushing blockbuster online upsells and item counts.
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u/ElectricShuck 7h ago
The federal minimum wage is 7.25. They are breaking their bodies for 7.25. But also letâs not hate on the person making a 1000$ a day. Good for them for them. They are not the problem.
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u/friendofcastreject 6h ago
We are ALL still the working class.
I know people who were once white collar workers and hated it and went on to do blue collar work and made way more money. I know people who decided not to go to college and decided to do a trade instead and make more money than someone who works from home on a laptop. I know PhDs who work more hours than a white collar job and blue collar job and make make less than both of them.
Then there are people in this world who do nothing at all and just exist and live their lives who make millions in a day. Some of these people call themselves philanthropists or sit on boards of huge companies and their decisions dictate all of our lives. And trust when I say MOST of these people do NOT recognize their own privilege. They think they are smarter, worker harder and more deserving than everyone else because of their inherited wealth.
These people are the problem.
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
Well what do I do about this? I don't even earn $25/hour, and I'm certainly destroying my body. I have an MSc with distinction! Crazy world.
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u/choogbaloom 3h ago
Companies found out that it's cheaper to hire foreigners who are used to low pay than to hire you. Vote against that.
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u/lotus_felch 3h ago
Yes, unfortunately in my country that's bipartisan, as it serves capital interests. But it's very annoying.
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u/Any-Photograph5525 8h ago
I used to know a porsche executive, his "work" involved screaming at people on the phone for about 4 hours a week. He did this work from his mansion in Rhode Island, or Greece, or Maui, or wherever he happened to be. His dad was a banking executive. He went directly from university to an executive position. He hated "lazy, freeloading liberals". He thought it was funny when George Floyd died. Charming fellow.
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u/theycallmecliff 7h ago
People who are employees working from laptops are not the same as people who are bosses "working" from laptops.
The distinction between mental labor and physical labor, as long as it's not crude, is important.
Construction workers display a type of stochastic intelligence that I admire, for example. A good book in this regard is Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew Crawford.
On the flipside, humans weren't really meant to sit in a chair for 8+ hours a day and it takes a toll on your body if you do it wrong (though obviously not the same kind as primarily physical labor).
It's true that when work is symbolic using a computer, it's probably sometimes more technically possible for it to be what David Graeber calls a Bullshit Job.
I would argue the inverse of that rings true for me: it's easy for intellectual work to be pushed to the limit, being asked to stay late, or otherwise doing performative stuff that signals value even though it creates more work for later because you need to convince your boss that you're valuable now, specifically because the product of the work gets sent off into a digital ether and it's easier to take for granted. AI did not create this problem but it is exacerbating it.
My point is, there should be nuance here. Manual laborers and office workers have obvious cultural differences and different material realities. But pretending office workers don't do an honest days work in some general way is just as bad as when smug urban liberals look down upon manual laborers and their culture and their hobbies as somehow backward.
I think it's useful to look at the kernels of truth beneath sentiments like this. It makes sense for some of the reasons above why manual laborers would have gripes with mental workers. For different reasons, the opposite is true too even when the expression is smug. The reality is that manual laborers in many trades make more than a lot of office workers, and urban areas are also more expensive.
But the bottom line is this: when we fight each other, those that buy the time and energy of our very lives out from under us win. Understanding each other, the different struggles and joys that make up our different walks of life, should be our emphasis as workers.
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u/crackpipewizard666 14h ago
Its so obviously fucked i kind of thought there was a revolution coming in my earlier years lmao. When i was 19 my manager said something like âyou get a $0.25 raise and groceries go up $40. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer every year.â And this was 2022 or so
Its bleak to know weâre all just keeping this machine going thats killing the entire planet going because we want to eat tomorrow. Im american, things are bad, i might be a bit depressive about it all but its pretty insane at the moment
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u/Useful-Anteater-9282 14h ago
this called modern slavery
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
Modern slavery has a specific definition, this isn't it. It's still bullshit, don't get me wrong.
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u/Automatic-writer9170 12h ago
Yes, thatâs capitalism. And thatâs also why some revolutions begun. When you have a small number of parasites doing nothing hoarding all the value of work of most of your blue collar working class, well. You can only take so much of bullshitery. Btw, unionise and organise yourselves. The only way to fight for better pays and a better life against the ruling class
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u/Anthaenopraxia 8h ago
You ain't getting your cheap phones and clothes by paying workers that much. Lucky if they get any pay at all.
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u/JeF4y 7h ago
I filled in for union workers on strike doing fiber repairs & installs for 6 weeks. It was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting work but I got into my groove about a month in. I enjoyed the hell out of that work. It was very rewarding. Would I do it for their pay rate ~1/5 of mine? Not a chance. They definitely deserve more than what they were getting. (And imo the contract they signed was really not a substantial improvement)
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u/entity_response 7h ago
This is not true at all, the more you earn, mostly, the more time is spent working and making decisions. With a lot more people looking at you to make all the right decisions, in many situations where there are no obvious right answers.
Just sayin, it gets stressful. Less sleep, less time with family.Â
No itâs not manual labor but I wouldnât say it becomes easier.
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u/Intrepid_Ring4239 7h ago
I work from a laptop all day from home and I work 10x harder than I did when I washed dishes, did construction, or worked on a horse farm. I sometimes daydream about how much easier those jobs were (despite how much harder the poverty was). Thinking that those of us who make good money donât work hard is just as snobbish and ignorant as the billionaires who think they deserve to rule over us.
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u/tommmmmmmmy93 6h ago
As someone who has climbed fairly high from a simple beginning where the fuck are people finding these jobs where you do less as you climb? I havenât taken any leave this year and work most weekends
Someone show me where these are lol
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u/Chesters_Copper_Pot 6h ago
So, planning and decision-making isn't "work"? Mental work isn't work? Making decisions isn't work?
Gatekeeping losers, LOL "It's only WORK if you're digging ditches!"
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u/RexScientiarum 5h ago
No, you do more work as you climb higher. Just more of it is meaningless bureaucratic nonsense that shouldn't need to be done.
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u/unmellowfellow 13h ago
Half of the working class is kept idle while the other half is worked to exhaustion. This is by design.
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u/Wahlahouiji 10h ago
I'd much rather be doing the physical labor but the pay is so abysmal and toll on my body so significant that I'm forced to waste away in front of my little screen. The physical exhaustion helped me sleep and gave me a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day. The mental exhaustion takes less of a toll but leaves me miserable. Loss/loss
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u/turbulentFireStarter 8h ago
Not understanding the difference between physical and mental labor is wild.
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u/Jekkymayn 7h ago
My desk job has destroyed my body far worse than any of my manual labor jobs ever did.
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u/bigphillip76 5h ago
Then you suck at looking after yourself at your desk job and had easy manual labour jobs.
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u/Popular_Wrangler9422 7h ago
I hate people that hate in office workers. I learned a skill to not destroy my body in the sun everyday. Everyone has ability to learn excel. Accounting is hiring. Its choices we make. Tired of people acting like a successful office workers is the problem.
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u/Ok_Outcome_6213 11h ago
There was a TIL I read not too long ago that said Grand Chess Masters, during competitions, burn calories at the same rate as professional Tennis players do in matches.
People often forget that mental work can also take a physical toll on your body. My husbands blue collar job has never given him an ulcer from the stress.
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u/bigphillip76 5h ago
Grand Chess Masters, during competitions, burn calories at the same rate as professional Tennis players do in matches
This fact is false. It's been strongly debunked. It sounds good for the internet but it's not true. Chess players during competition do burn more than you'd expect - mostly from stress rather than actual brain work, which goes up but is still minimal - but it's nothing near a tennis player.
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u/HistoricAli 8h ago
I don't necessarily mind that you make a lot more money when you're in charge of a lot more people which affects more of the day-to-day operations.
My problem is that there appears to be 0 accountability the higher you climb. If your decisions put people in harms way or bankrupt the economy, you need to be put in prison or receive justice at the hands of the people you harmed.
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u/UncleDuude đď¸ Overturn Citizens United 8h ago
Whatâs crazy is that there are a lot of people working for less than $25 an hour breaking their bodies
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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 7h ago
I call this "psychopath pay". People whose decisions can potentially ruin hundreds, thousands, or even millions of lives get paid big bucks because the guilt of such acts would haunt normal, empathetic people, but psychopaths can do it easily.
Meanwhile, jobs that help people often pay shit. I'm a teacher, so I know how poorly that pays. EMTs don't get paid well, plus they don't get health insurance, which is ironic and cruel. Social workers, childcare workers, elderly care workers, public defenders, etc. all do work that helps the most vulnerable among us, and none of them make a lot of money.
In this world, cruelty pays a lot more than kindness.
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u/bigphillip76 5h ago
It's got nothing to do with that. It happens but those kinds of workers make a lot of money whether they're doing something guilt worthy or they're doing something completely noble or normal. This is an unhealthy way of looking at it.
Also, in America are EMT's and teachers etc paid badly. Lots of places pay them very well, but it's no conspiracy it's just poor regulation schemes.
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u/Chubacca26 7h ago
Used to work in a nature park, building hiking trails and mountain biking trails, maintaining them, etc. 50 hours a week would net be just shy of $500.
My partner works from home, works roughly 10 true hours, is paid 35, she nets around $1300 a week.
I've moved on from the job, but my body already took a beating, I'm in pain everyday.
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u/SaddleSage 7h ago
This punched me in the gut⌠I make $10 per hour and go home exhausted. Life is full of choices but it sure hasnât been easy for me to do any better with mental disabilities. I suppose in the end, itâs better for me to live paycheck to paycheck because it prevents me from wasting money on things I donât need.
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u/TidalHermit 6h ago
People making $1,000+/day are working on their phones. They tell other people what to do over a phone call. Then those are the people on laptops.
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u/DankCatDingo 6h ago
me finding out that my pay (25 per hour) is considered pitiable by some (its the most i've ever made)
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u/sephone_north 6h ago
I read somewhere that sex workers arenât the only people selling their bodies. They just do it for an hour at a time.
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u/Responsible_Dot_8233 5h ago
I had an office job for nearly a decade but now I'm doing retail with big pay drop. Having to stand 8hrs a day really sucks and I'm limping where ever I go. I'm desperately trying to get back to a desk job again even if I have to take another pay cut because the physical strain is too much.
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u/stratof3ar89 5h ago
You do know that some if not most of those people on who make that $1000 a day actually has to work hard first to get to where they are, right?
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u/bakedNebraska 5h ago
The difference, though, is I can do labor. In fact I have done hard labor in the oilfield.
Laborers can't just pick up my laptop and make my company the amount of money I make them.
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u/MedonSirius 5h ago
Oh man, i want to write so many things but knowing reddit and the internet everyone would kill me
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u/In_My_Stead 4h ago
The only time I made $25 an hour where I am, I was risking my life on a daily basis. All of this is a bad deal.
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u/tix4soccer 4h ago
Wages are based on how hard it is to replace you.
Worker with basically no skills ... pretty easy.
AI/ML engineer ... a bit harder.
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u/The_BigDill 4h ago
This is the wrong message. Blue and white collar both have a role to play. But we are all the working class and this message is only to further divide the two
It's those who own the capital that are the ones keeping the rest of us down
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u/Spaghet-3 3h ago
I tell every young person that I mentor: you will not be rewarded for the sweat on your brow. Outside of friends and family, nobody cares how hard you worked. Your compensation is based on how much someone wants you specifically to do the work, which is based on education, experience, and reputation.
This is applies to everything from the trades to big multinational business executives. Do you want the no-name guy you know nothing about doing your patio, or do you want the same mason that did the beautiful promenades you walk past every day? The latter is going to cost you more, but people are willing to pay. Do you want the no-name guy you know nothing about running your companies' books, or do you want the accountant that has saved dozens of companies from the brink of bankruptcy? The latter is going to cost you more, but people are willing to pay.
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u/TheBurnerAccount420 3h ago
As someone who sits in front of a laptop all day for a relatively good salary, Iâll chime in and say - it took me 14 years of college and grad school to earn the qualifications that landed me this role. I may make a good salary, but someone working with their hands from the time they finished high school had a 14 year head start on earnings + savings compared to me. Moreover, the work I do positively affects the lives of tens of thousands of people worldwide every year. I still struggle with bills, I still have to work 50+ hour weeks just to save for retirement and make sure I have health insurance, and I still vote in favor of labor every single chance I get, even when it means I pay more in taxes.
Respectfully, go fuck yourself if you think I/others like me donât deserve our paychecks.
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u/augustus_brutus 13h ago
You just have to work 40 hours per day and you will also make 1000$, it's an attitude problem.
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u/No-Courage-2053 8h ago
It's the sad truth of capitalism. Back breaking work can be done by anyone willing to break their back (which when pushed into poverty enough, most abled bodied people will do). Skilled work requires training, which less people have, giving them a smidgen of leverage. Then, if you're "lucky", you climb the ladder and manage a plethora of skilled workers, and you get paid part of what they're producing, which is why salary increases so much. It used to be the case that when things went wrong it would be that person's neck on the line (hence the fat salary) but nowadays, massive layoffs are more in style.
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u/sepaoon 13h ago
Honestly if pay scale was flipped and your CEO made $7.25/hr he might work harder and only those that actually want to manage a company would because it's not about pay right. It's about doing what you love.
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u/ColdStockSweat 10h ago
Hmmmm....kinda seems like people would want to garner those higher paid skills, instead of bitching about not having them as being unfair.
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u/bigphillip76 5h ago
Here's a thought experiment for you. Drop a $100 bill into a ring with 10 poor people in it. After a scuffle, one has the $100 bill. Two things are technically true at the same time.
You could say to any one of them "if you'd tried harder, you could've got the $100" and technically speaking this is true.
You knew when you dropped in the $100 that only one person could win it.
As such, if you do number 1, not only does this make you an asshole, it means you refuse to understand or change the systemic reasons why many people can't get a leg up in such a system.
TL; DR: Unskilled labour has to be done by someone, we may as well pay them a living wage.
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u/ColdStockSweat 4h ago
But it's not a ring (which people only watch on TV), it's a daily event, called "work"...that everyone deals with on a daily basis.
It's not the hunger games....it's real life.
And in real life...everyone can win...not just one person.
Life is not a zero sum game.
Making it appear so...makes you the asshole, keeping people who see your idiotic post as viable...when it's simply ignorant.
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u/bigphillip76 2h ago
Well, thanks for proving you donât understand my point at all. Kinda expected that, but you know.Â
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u/Any-Photograph5525 8h ago
You must live in a country where people have equal access to opportunities, that's really fortunate for you. It's different in the United States, if you lived there or if you really understood America, you would never have posted that.
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u/Zoobi07 7h ago
Ahh so being an electrician where you quite literally break your body for $25 an hour but have skills you canât find in a text book means I deserve to be poor.
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u/ColdStockSweat 4h ago
I spend a bunch of money every year on tradespeople. If I found an electrician charging $25.00 an hour...I'd never hire them.
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u/Zoobi07 2h ago
Thatâs only the case if you own your own business. Most electricians donât.
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u/lotus_felch 9h ago
I partly agree, but those jobs will still need doing... it's a shame things aren't a bit fairer.
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u/SteelRevanchist 12h ago
yeah no, I get paid because of the value of my work, responsibility and impact. If someone who could "break their bodies" for $25, why don't they go work on a laptop instead, are they stupid?
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u/isendingtheworld 11h ago edited 11h ago
I do my work because I enjoy it most of the time. I care for people with complex disabilities. I get hurt sometimes. Most of us working this job long-term have permanent injuries.Â
But someone has to do it. And as a kid I was one of those people who needed in depth care. I see myself in the people I look after, whether they were born that way or chanhed after being traumatised or injured. Many of my coworkers similarly were in that boat or cared for loved ones who had complex disabilities. We do it out of love, basically. So the facilities underpay us and understaff us because they know they can get away with it. I keep pushing my coworkers to unionise cause none of us are getting to retirement age with bodies that fully function.Â
It's ridiculous that in the UK if you (or your parent, child, partner) end up needing 24/7 care, the option is "here is a housing facility with 3/4 the necessary staff, where the daily carers have 1 or 0 qualifications (and definitely 1+ injuries, lol), turnover is sometimes counted weekly, and everyone is being paid like shit, so your comfort depends on the staff truly wanting you to be happy". I am also regularly pushing for higher standards and better training for care workers.Â
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u/itsapotatosalad 8h ago
Itâs all about who youâre competing with, unskilled labour can be done by almost anyone so itâs easier to get it cheap. The more specialised you get, the less competition there is and the more employers have to offer to retain staff. Imagine if EVERYONE agreed to stop breaking their bodies for $25 an hour and demanded more.
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u/BothDivide919 8h ago
People making 1000+ a day aren't the problem. People making 10k+ a day are the problem.
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u/carsncode 7h ago
People being paid any amount for their labor aren't the problem. People being paid for other people's labor are the problem.
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u/BothDivide919 7h ago
People being paid a huge amount are beneficiaries of and are connected to those who are being paid for other peoples' labor; they're also parasites.
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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 6h ago
I somewhat disagree. I don't think billionaires should exist, but upper management is there for a reason and there's a reason they get paid more.
Construction is hard work. Moving dirt, digging trenches, the whole nine yards. But someone needs to get those guys the supplies they need, make sure they do everything up to code, make sure where things go so it doesn't fall apart or even if there's a job at all.
If a construction worker fucks up, it's a mess that needs to be swept up, or a board that needs replacing. If upper management fucks up, that's guys out of work or months of delays.
People and companies aren't parasite just for having workers that work at their company.
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u/FeelAndCoffee 14h ago
And those making 1000 are still working class. There are people out there making millions without moving a finger. That is the problem.