goodness-gracious-great-balls-of:
Full time work should entitle someone to enough pay for rent, food, bills, and leisure activities. Full time work for a full life wage. You put in your 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? You should be able to afford the basic shit you need in life, no matter where you work.
pisses me off that this is considered a radical statement.
I do agree with this but from economic standpoint if you are working at a job like McDonalds as someone flipping burgers and making fries you are getting paid for the amount of skill needed for the job. But if its any other job that requires you to have an actual skill that you can make a career out of then yeah you should be getting paid enough to live a standard life.
If you work FULL TIME you should be able to afford to fucking live. No, it doesn’t matter if it’s flipping burgers, these people contribute to our fucking economy and they MATTER. They should be allowed to be alive.
Jesus fucking Christ do you people hear yourselves?
People like this are why we can’t move on to issues like reducing how many hours is full time, or working out UBI.
We’re going to need to do that. Most people just don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline, without a major change to the structure of the economy, we’re looking at large scale permanent unemployment, even in the “skilled” labor force.
Also? Making food is a fucking skill. Running a fast food kitchen is a fucking skill. Operating a drive-thru is a goddamn fucking skill.
I do not know how to do these things. I have a masters degree and I have no fucking clue how to operate a deep fryer or make coffee drinks. I’d probably not be very good at it, because that kind of hands-on, fast-paced work is very hard for me.
But thankfully, there are people who are good at it, so I can do my job, and they can do theirs, and we can benefit one another by putting our skills to use in different areas. People who work in fast food are not less deserving of comfort and security in their lives just because their skills aren’t valued like they should be. That is a myth developed to deprive people of rights.
My friend works as a medical assistant and I’ve worked at McDonald’s and Starbucks. You know there’s a lot of things you gotta learn in this typa job?
Like in addition to it being physically demanding (standing up for 4-6 hours straight, carrying heavy ice/coffee, constantly getting burned by boiling water and an oven, a lot of reaching and squatting (like a lot a lot I lost 40 FUCKING pounds in a year okay this job demands a lot from the body)), there are actual skills required. Also your skin splits from using so much antibacterial soap.
Do you know what temperature different foods have to be to prevent contamination? If it’s a “cold” or “hot” plate?? Do You know how long food can be out before bacterial contamination can happen?? Do you know the difference between say 1% and heavy whipping cream? Can you teach a chemistry class using milk????? That’s p much what you gotta learn to be able to do. My friend who works as a medic was surprised, because I do more in my day than they do, and THEY told me that. They were shocked how much I actually do; I am on my feet more, talking to more people, I have a working knowledge of food germs food born illnesses and chemistry, I gotta do the same shit with sterilizing my tools the same exact way a doctor sterilizes theirs. Etc etc.
There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.
“There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.”
Okay, let’s brake this down. How long does it take to train someone to work fast food? What are the repercussions of that person fails to do their job?
Now, how long does it take to train a structural engineer? What are the repercussions if they fail at their job?
How long does it take to train a plumber? What are the repercussions if they fail their job?
How long does it take to train a ditch digger? What are the repercussions if they fail their job?
Someone of these things are not like the other, some of these things a little more important then the others.
If a fast food worker messes up with their job, they may not properly sanitize surfaces and people can die.
If a structural engineer messes up their job, buildings will collapse and people can die.
If a plumber messes up their job, sewage pipes can leak and people can die.
If a ditch digger messes up their job, they can hit a gas pipe and people can die.
Just because you deem some jobs more “important” doesn’t mean that the people working them don’t deserve a decent wage to live on.
I’m going to tell you the same thing I told the other three people. The easier it is to train a position, the easier it is to replace someone in that position. Get to a position that is difficult to train into by improving your skills, and you have a better point to negotiate.
Consider: Even the people working the “easiest”, most “low skill” job in the world deserve a living wage. Your time itself is worth money. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, of your time is, at a minimum, worth enough money to scrape by, regardless of the exact nature of your labor.
You are not wrong, but life does not care about what you deserve. Children do not deserve cancer. Good drivers do not deserve to die in car accidents.
This world is cruel. And there is little that can be done on a macro level that will not have negative if not deadly implications.
Do not attempt to change the macro scale, change the micro scale.
Those who work hard are often rewarded with opportunity. If all that put in is the minimum effort during those eight hours, one shouldn’t expect much.
Children dont deserve cancer, but we should do everything we possibly can to cure, prevent, and treat children who DO have cancer. Like, wtf.
“Life isnt fair” should be a rallying cry to action, not an apathetic declaration of complacency. God dammit.
People’s time is worth money. Any job that asks for full time work entitles a living wage.
Okay, what makes you assume that increasing the minimum wage with lift up employee’s income? why wouldn’t an employer just fire everyone already below what the new minimum income level would become?
Because then they have work that presumably needs to be done that, ya know, isnt getting done.
What? Were they employing all these minimum wage jobs for shits and giggles?
I do not understand why this concept is so hard to wrap one’s head around.
If you work full time, you should be able to afford to live. Full stop.
If you work full time, the work that takes up all your time should pay for your survival. To suggest otherwise means you want low-skilled, low-wage workers to die, frankly. Or be dependent on others, up to and including the government, I suppose.
I’ve written about this before. I don’t want to write about it again.
It’s so simple. If you work full time, regardless of the job, you should be able to afford to live. It takes basic human decency to be able to understand this
pain-lies-inside 