Are there movements in the US or globally to force all business into worker coops? Unions are good but I think this is their ultimate limitation, that employers can just offshore their jobs
Argentina has somewhat of a history of workers seizing their factories. I think it would be extremely hard in the U.S. due to the well-funded police. Generally, I guess the movement would be “anarcho-syndicalism.”
Edit: misremembered worker factory takeovers in the past as occurring in Venezuela instead of Argentina.
Thanks. I didn’t know about Venezuela’s history at all. But I meant not more on a policy level to mandate that all companies must be owned equally by employees instead of shareholders
Forcing is absolutely good. We force companies to do all kinds of things, in terms of corporate governance (publicly traded companies must have their finances audited, for example), ownership (banks used to be prevented from buying stock so that they would not avoid calling in bad debt), and how they do business (collusion between big tech to keep salaries down for example).
By that hyper-simplistic “logic” people shouldn’t be forced into prison if they murder someone.
Clearly some kinds of forcing in some situations are “good”, and if some are good but other not, that means the real discussion is all about “when is forcing right and when is it not?” something that childlike “logic” of yours doesn’t even begin to address.
The meme is right, the claim of belonging is complete bullshit. Your toothbrush and your home belong to you, a business involving multiple people belongs to everyone involved. The idea that it doesn’t is narcissism and evil.
It rightfully belongs to the workers. The firm is basically a vehicle for appropriating the positive and negative product of production. The just basis of property is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor (i.e. the labor theory of property). In a capitalist employer-employee relationship, the employer gets solely holds the whole product while workers are denied their claim to it despite it being a result of their labor.
If my initial reaction is “that’s too bad”, does it make me greedy?
Like, I don’t think US workers are more deserving as human beings than anyone else… but a part of me knows hardcore globalization would hurt people geographically close to me… I’m like some national relativist or something?
I feel like I should want everyone to win regardless of where they were born. And $3/hr is huge vs. the $6/day min wage in parts of PH. Know friends’ friends are farming rice for six bucks a day.
the problem is it circumvents minimum wage laws. They’re employing a person so they should be paying them the appropriate wages to do business in new york or the US. They’re also benefitting from payroll/income taxes but not paying into the programs.
Are call centers the same way? And any company relying on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms?
Would be a lotta layoffs overseas if we restricted all foreign labor making less than local minimum wage. Is that a fair trade off? (Not being facetious, genuine question again)
Oh one thing that’s kinda messed up is when tech companies go through consultancies to hire workers in India, the consulting companies take HALF!! Wild!
Yes it is a fair tradeoff. Any time we make a law we’re raising the cost of goods and services here. If there’s no regulation or import taxes to balance prices with outside the jurisdiction, then the “race to the bottom” de facto negates the law in question.
So if we ban XYZ here, but allow untaxed imports from countries with XYZ, then we haven’t really banned it - we just moved it.
Everything in the US is already expensive, that “great wage going to a Filipino/a” is at the expense of a person in their own hometown not having a job.
Too bad? Put the shoe on your other foot. If we in the US ban imported rice to protect our farmers, would you and friends feel comfortable in that time things take to adjust? The loss of income?
How far does $6/day go in the Philippines? I can tell you how far it goes in NYC.
I don’t know what to think because I want everyone to win, but it’s hard to deny I’m biased towards my countrymen here stateside.
Re-reading my comment, did it sound like I meant:
it’s too bad this job is being outsourced
or
psh, too bad, this is the reality of a global world!
I did mean the first one.
I should want everyone to win but I’m biased towards Americans in situations like this - and I don’t know if I can justify it, if I can universalize the maxim.
I understood you meant the first one. I’m also biased towards the people of my former home city.
There are several sources that collude to raise prices for the average New Yorker, rent and food amongst them. I’m not at all blaming the lady taking the job remotely, there is pain in financing & operating the business, for the employees in getting to and from, and getting paid close to what their work is actually worth.
The bitch is that none of this system is voluntary. Work or starve, how inhumane.
Things in america should be more expensive. We do not pay for the full cost of what all of our goods and services cost, mainly due to exploitative measures like in this post.
You can double down all you want but the real answer is that we just shouldn’t be able to buy nearly as much stuff as we do. We love being consumers anf watching the trash heap grow, while we take advantage of anyone smaller than us in any remote corner of the Earth.
At no point have I ever said our excessive consumerism is good, only that people shouldn’t be competing internationally for an in-person job.
Having been raised in NYC, I can tell you directly that the job market is a bit fierce, and I think offshoring basic service jobs is terrible for everyone involved, owner included.
I agree with your post but wanted to add that I think we are starting to realize the effects of cutting out relationships with people in our community.
I suppose thats just another aspect of offshoring that is problematic.
There’s a movie called Eurotrip. Its about 3 college aged kids taking a road trip through Europe.
I forget what country they get to, but it’s a run down mostly Indian country. They stay at a hotel, and the bell hop handles their bags. They try to give him a tip, but realize they only have like 17 cents. So he gives him a nickle, and says “Its not much, but maybe having some American money is novel.”
The bellhop is shocked. Made to look like he’s angry. So the bellhops boss is just walking by. This is after his interaction with the main characters are done. His boss starts yelling at him. And he yells “FUCK YOU! YOU SEE THIS??? I GOT A NICKLE!!! I OPEN MY OWN HOTEL!!!” And the boss is horrified. He says something like “For a nickle, that hotel will be the nicest in (whatever country they were in).”
Your take away here is that Americans are the real victims? If we are talking about countries, theres not many that have caused as much suffering and death as America. We just do it for money instead of religion.
America exploits the rest of the world, full stop.
America exploits the rest of the world, full stop.
South America, west Africa, some of the Middle East, yea. Rest of the world, not that much. Out of any conquering army, the US installed regimes have been a bit above the Soviets. Japan and West Germany did great, SK had a tyrannical dictator, so was Chiang-Kai Shek- though the US nowhere near installed him. But neither the Kim’s nor Mao were much better. South Vietnam was propped up by the US but created because of the French. Ho Chi Minh may not have been that bad, and his replacements were ok. Pol Pot was very bad though. Lets not talk about the Soviet invasions of Poland, Budapest, and Prague. And even before that how they forced out previous democratic governments. Basically all the Soviet regimes in Europe sucked(Tito may have been ok, but wasn’t Soviet). Not to mention actions in Mongolia and Central Asia.
If we were to mention British, French, and Spanish empires too. I’d say US world order is a bit above average compared to other world orders- especially in more recent years. Definitely not defending a lot of CIA actions abroad and FBI actions domestically.
I would rather use a POS terminal than try to talk to someone over zoom with no headphones. If it’s not a human in person who can just say “hmmm the computer is broken here’s your sandwich” then it’s worse.
Should apply to that as well if they’re interacting with the US market. All the way through subcontractors to the end employee. No hiding behind contracting local companies.
i don't like outsourcing either, but realistically the machine of capitalism isn't going to allow you to be rid of it in its entirety
honestly i don't even know if getting rid of multinational organisations is on the whole a good thing, and that's the only way i can see of getting rid of outsourcing
Outsourcing entirely being gone isn’t realistic… But there’s a huge difference between moving an entire team of say developers to India and having a worker teleconference in to be a cashier. Anyone directly interacting with a customer or end user in any capacity should be paid the same as a local employee in the location they’re “working”.
Remember when we learned that Amazon’s “just put it in your cart to buy” algorithm was really just a bunch of people in India watching you shop on the store surveillance system? That was, like 3 months ago maybe??
The owners take advantage of our commons, tear up our roads, and succeeded because of domestic infrastructure, only to refuse to pay full price for labor and allowing even those wages, in lieu of the taxes they bribe our government to enact loopholes to dodge, to “trickle down” domestically as their always bullshit yay market capitalism talking points lied?
It’s absolutely clownshoes that outsourcing labor/manufacturing is allowed, not because of domestic shortages for a skill, but to explicitly pay pennies on the dollar for the employees you need and screw the country you don’t want to pay taxes to despite record profits even harder.
It’s insane. But we let the owner class dictate whatever they want here, and our well bribed government will even sell it for them by calling it “something something freedom” while never mentioning social consequences, accountability, or responsibility. We aren’t so much a country as a piggy bank and cudgel for the global owner class.
But capitalism has to go with them. Because as it is, the owner class already enjoys a borderlees world, while manipulating those borders against everyone else.
Borders exist solely to maintain and enhance the power of a nation state’s elite. If a people allow an elite class to rise without check, borders will always be inevitable.
Here, for certain industries (might be all but I don’t have first hand accounts of that), the contractors must make sure that the companies/freelancers they employ pay their taxes, otherwise, they are on the hook for it.
Do the same. If a company outsource work, they should prove that they pay the same as they would in their region, and if it not, be hit hard by fines and/or jail time.
Also, y’all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
You misunderstand. We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity. There is no reason to use a teleconferenced cashier for a retail location other than minimizing employee pay, not just by paying the minimum required here but literally taking a local job and shipping it overseas so you can instead pay what would be a clear poverty wage here, while undoubtedly having record profits like all these companies end up with.
So, there actually is a reason to do this beyond pay, but clearly pay is the actual reason they do it.
A restaurant has a set amount of staff. What happens if a few are sick and they have trouble finding someone to fill in?
A remote agent like this could be from a larger organization being contracted out and you’d never have to worry about not having someone to be available.
Edit: 1 person could even be managing multiple stores where they queue the person to assist you as it detects you approaching. Less ideal would be ‘someone will be available in 45 seconds’ type queuing.
Or they just hire enough staff to run the business in the first place. Something that used to just be how you operated a business. If the business wants to gamble on regularly operating without enough employees to cover multiple sick calls then they need to deal with the results of that decision.
Pull from other locations to cover, or God forbid, a manager actually covers a shift, or just close the location for a day if they cannot cover it. You know, what every business that operates with employees deals with.
You’re making excuses and trying to find a justification for a fucking disgraceful, greedy choice by the owner of this business.
No I’m not, you’re just jumping to conclusions. I clearly said it’s obviously about the pay.
The actual idea has potential merit like it or not. It doesn’t have to be scummy. It could be a US based corporation that pays US employees the same or more than what they’d get paid to be there in person.
The employee as I said could be managing more than 1 store, thus be providing more valuable work, and thus earning even more than they’d be earning at the restaurant, or 711, or wherever.
And they could be doing it from the comfort of their home making for a happier employee.
It just turns out that the way this has been implemented has been terrible and exploitative.
Edit: it could even be numerous ipad based kiosks around a mall where you could talk to someone and ask questions about the mall, without having to find and go to the info booth that’s in a single spot (that could also have an actual person there for those that want that). There’d always be someone available since there’d be multiple people for multiple malls all trained on each mall.
We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity
This makes it sound like your problem isn’t someone getting hurt; it’s someone doing well.
Everyone complains about small businesses being driven out, especially in NYC. Their two biggest costs are rent and labor, so of course they try to minimize both of them.
Why are you advocating of transferring money out of the community? Why would anyone advocate for lower wages in their community?
This common sense stuff. Your whole weird play on "deserving" is a clown take. Disingenuous at best. This has nothing to do with deserving and everything to do with labor economic and labour policy which should be set for the benefit of tax paying public.
So again why would NYC or American taxpayer care about an Asian worker competing purely on price? What benefit do they get?
You know rent seeker don't give two fucks about her lol
Yes that is their goal. But they are in competition with eachother, and when there aren’t any people willing to pay absurd prices that have and will come down.
NYC resident pays taxes and consumes in NYC.
Okay?
Why are you advocating of transferring money out of the community? Why would anyone advocate for lower wages in their community?
I am not a nationalist.
labor economic and labour policy which should be set for the benefit of tax paying public.
Benefit of locals, while not benefiting others.
You know rent seeker don’t give two fucks about her lol
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Have you seen nearly Facebook America? They regularly vote against their own interests. Wouldn’t surprise me at all that the same people are the ones barely making ends meet, are advocating against unions, being pro corporate business, and laughing all the way to bankruptcy and homelessness day by day because it makes them feel superior to just one person.
Depends on the region, lowest is about 350 php or 6 usd per day. Most of the call centers are in the big cities however where wages are a bit higher and they well enough to be thought of as a decent job.
We may not agree with it, but this is exactly the same thing as an overseas call center. They’re not physically located in the US and are not subject to any laws here.
Having no actual person guarding your business is a recipe for theft. If this catches on it will be so much easier to steal from places. I’m ok with this
A 17 year old kid paid minimum wage who gives zero fucks about the company isn’t a huge deterrent either. As long as you don’t put them in risk steal from corpos all the time
You shouldnt ever try to protect the cash register at your place of work. They give 0 fucks about you and will have a job posting up before your body is cold.
Fact but it does not negate that physically present employees deters some crime.
High traffic grocery stores who put in self check outs are staffing several guards now and put in some clown fences and gates...
But hey guy who put in self check and guy fired cashiers both got bonus...
Guy hiring security and putting fences also got bonus. These clowns will pay anyone any amount of money as long they don't pay the worker for the actual job.
I remember working in a store and a guy walked through the scanner at the door and it went off, the other employee looked at me and was like “that guy stole something, hey?” And I was just like “yep” and we went back to whatever we were doing lol
Every time in my life I’ve ever seen a door scanner go off, it’s been a false positive.
I’m not saying that they can’t give good results too, just saying that I’m surprised that store’s employees didn’t just unplug them after the third time it happened.
Can confirm, if they give any appearance of being human, even for years on end, it’s a lie, they are complete psychopaths and will throw you into the fire not even to save themselves, just to feel slightly less insecure.
The recommended course of action in a robbery is to follow instructions and hand over anything they ask for. If they grab product and walk out of the store, don’t try to stop them. This is actually less of an insurance liability than having an actual person there.
Yes but in general people are less likely to steal if there is a person standing in front of them watching. I’m not even talking about robbery just people stealing a candy bar or whatever. If it’s just sitting out with no one around people will take it.
Well, I bet the people doing those jobs in the Philippines are stoked. Probably a decent wage for them with currency conversion and the cost of living in the Philippines. Though of course, they could AT LEAST be paying them the American minimum wage :| 7.25/h in the Philippines would be pretty spicy. The work they are doing IS being done in America*…
Exploitation is a bit finicky to define. Unless a laborer gets all of the value of the labor they produce, or they’re in a worker co-operative, exactly at point would you define a job as exploitation? Paying the lowest labor cost is just good business sense. Free market allocation of resources has been the most efficient system humanity has found for economic growth. China does have capitalistic attributes in its society, and they are the closest to a “communist” society that exists on the planet. Though of course, regulatory capture, and as it is called in Hamburgerland “too big to fail” corporations, implies that we do NOT have an actual free market, the Gamestop saga being a shining example of this.
So, at what point would you define something as labor exploitation? There are some obvious examples of it (child coal mine/meat processing/textile workers etc), but where is the line?
Working as a graphic designer in the US since the early 2000’s, every employer I ever worked for eventually used Fiverr to pay someone overseas a fraction of what they paid me to do the same work. This doesn’t seem meaningfully different.
Not saying this is okay, just that it’s not even remotely (no pun intended) a new problem.
There was an article that exposed Amazons cashier-less stores were just bunch of Indians overseas reviewing footage because their classification algorithms failed half the time
I mean every time I go through a drive through I’m asked if I’m going to use the app to order by one person (or ai but I know about 20 years ago Wendy’s tried to put all drive through orders through a remote facility too) and when I say Nope another person actually gets on and takes the order…so they are in many aspects. Hell you can’t order in person from some of the rest stop fast food spots in Florida.
No, that is just a pre-recorded message. I once went through a mcdonald’s drive thru that had just closed. They asked me for my order and after I gave it, I realized no one was in the restaurant. I pulled around and they asked me again every time I stopped at the order point, but there was no cars in the lot.
If a remote worker can actually do the job at a high enough level, then the writing is on the wall.
Globalization will eventually take over those roles and laws that try to prop up a local worker will end up like Oregon’s old law that says you can’t pump your own gas.
The only way to ‘win’ is to equip the local guy with skills that absolutely cannot be done remotely, or educate him to do things at a level unmatched by the remote worker coming from another culture.
Actually, it could be. That could be considered vandalism (you’re intentionally making unauthorized modifications to equipment to prevent it from working as expected) which is illegal.
But this is New York, so who knows if they would even enforce that.
It’s not vandalism. Vandalism is destruction of property (physically destroying it). Unplugging something that was designed to be unplugged is absolutely not vandalism.
So people can just unplug cables at data centers because it’s “$0 property damage criminal mischief”?
Come on, their lawyers would (successfully) argue that they experienced loss of revenue for any amount of time their remote cashier system was not connected and operational…
No, “people” cannot even enter a data center without walking through multiple security man traps and providing identification that gets kept at the desk while inside. A data center is not a sandwich shop.