• SouthernShao@lemmus.org
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      2 hours ago

      This isn’t quite how it works. Generally in medium to large businesses - meaning at least a billion a year in annual revenue - oftentimes how it works is a given business unit (BU) will be given a budget. This is usually based on analysis and projections based on the previous fiscal years as well as projections on growth goals.

      The VP of that BU will need to spread that budget across their unit as best they can. This will include everything from promotions to new hires. Keep in mind that it could cost a business $160 an hour to hire one full time employee who only makes $50 an hour, all things depending. In many roles, it can take a year or more to get a new hire up to speed in their new role. At $160 an hour, that’s $332,800 against your budget and that first year will not recoup 100% of the potential output of that new hire who will likely not be putting out their fullest until around a year or more, so you’re looking at what more or less accounts to over a quarter of a million just to train a new employee for one year so they can start putting out the same level of work as someone of their level should be.

      Then consider if you’re an international company. The business I work for for example is in 60 different countries. All of those countries have different regulatory practices that require a lot out of the HR business unit(s). Some countries have regulatory requirements that force the business to utilize software that can account for those regulations that cost millions annually and aren’t even very good, but there isn’t a good alternative, so it’s either pay that or fall out of compliance, which is not really a viable strategy.

      If you have 100 employees in your unit and you want to give them all a 3% annual raise but you’re not given a larger budget unless you grow that side of the business (in other words, you self fund), then where are you getting that revenue stream from?

      In many cases you have to set up projects yourself from the top-down, such as requesting from your directors that they begin brainstorming ways to generate revenue. This could be through efficiencies, for example. If you were a director in HR for example, maybe you want to take a look at your team’s processes and see what could be automated. That project alone requires expertise, and those kinds of analysts aren’t cheap. Then you need engineers to perform the automation, which are also not cheap, and you need a surefire return on investment there because the end goal might be to free up 25% of your team’s labor through automation of their current processes, but you may not see a return on investment for 2 years, then by the third year the return isn’t even enough to hire an additional 3 people, let alone give an entire team of 100 a 3% raise.

      So you might argue then, “well why can’t the business just give that BU a larger budget?” And there are a few answers. I won’t list them all here, but some examples would be is there something your team could be doing to increase their value to warrant taking budget from elsewhere to funnel into your team? Or every year is it just expected that 3% of the budget go into the employees without an ounce of those employees providing any additional value? To seriously simplify, if the business makes $100 and they pay $50 to their employees and $30 to their shareholders and $20 is reinvested in the company, why should the business pay the employees 60%? HOW do they pay them 60%? They have to take it from the shareholders or the reinvestment, and take too much from the reinvestment and your competition will put you out of business, and take too much from the shareholders and they will invest with your competitors - see the problem?

      Many employees don’t understand that they have to increase their perceived value to warrant more, and few do.

      • Fmstrat@lemmy.world
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        26 minutes ago

        I have worked as an exec in a division of a multi billion dollar business, and in many a startup.

        Often times it’s your boss’ boss’ boss.

  • Pratai@piefed.ca
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    10 hours ago

    I could never understand why people blamed the immigrants and not the places that hire them. This backwards ass logic is what gets you a fascist with over half a voter base supporting his Nazi ass.

    • psycholocomotor@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      This is the logic of fascism. It happened in colonialist empires everywhere.

      There are examples in the US, South Africa, and Rhodesia where white workers unions organized to prevent black slave labor from taking their jobs.

      This is also where a lot of the anti-Chinese racism came from because Chinese immigrants were replacing higher paying white rail-worker jobs. It was a point of conflict between the American white working class and the American bourgeoisie who would rather employ Chinese worker they could pay inhumanely low wages to (although the reason why they were so exploitable was because of racism).

      It’s revisionist to say that this was entirely imposed upon workers from above. White workers were given the easier choice to improve conditions somewhat for themselves without risking much by punching down on colonized workers. In every scenario where this has happened in history, the majority of the racially privileged working class have always sided with colonialism against the colonized working class (it is a statistical law) because it was the safest and easiest way to guarantee some economic security.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      Right, just like everyone kept buying more expensive tools and supplies at Mom & Pop brick and mortar shops when Amazon et al showed up, right?

      Oh those evil bosses.

  • PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space
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    14 hours ago

    Marx to Kugelmann, 1870:

    The average English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers wages and the standard of life. […] He regards him practically in the same way the poor whites in the southern states of North America regard the black slaves. This antagonism between the proletarians in England is artificially nourished and kept alive by the bourgeoisie. It knows that this split is the true secret of maintaining its power. […] Finally, England today is seeing a repetition of what happened on a gigantic scale in ancient Rome. A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.

    • yucandu@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      “Don’t criticize my scab labour importation policy, that’s just like racism” this is bait

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        14 hours ago

        You seem to miss the overall point of the picture.

        It is bosses, not immigrants, who drive down wages. And boy they have plenty to spare a lot of the time.

        They’d just rather have you focused on immigrants instead of the actual people who exploit desperation of migrants and remove any of their worker protections to make this possible

  • MeatballMam@lemmy.zip
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    20 hours ago

    I’m shocked more people don’t realize this. There is absolutely nothing broken with the system. It’s working exactly as intended. The suffering of the lower classes is the desired outcome. If we’re too tired, desperate for enough resources to survive, and too afraid, we won’t be able to stand up for ourselves and demand something better.

    And unfortunately it’s working spectacularly.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      also keeping your population complacent, they wont riot or protest in any unified manner. thats why tiktok, enough wages/jobs, youtube, streamers. also to add in a little cultural wars as distraction in case the other doesnt work usually does the trick. it is the reason why the tech ceos, own children are kept away from social media, they dont want thier own children to be brainrotted.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      17 hours ago

      There aren’t enough workers per retiree anymore. That’s why publicly traded companies have to do nasty things to keep their stock prices growing for said retirees. Remember, retirement funds are usually based on stock indexes, not bonds which are super slow growth.

      We’ve been living in a system predicated on infinite growth. The old can retire because there are so many young people working. Now people live longer than ever (on average; not individually) and are having fewer kids than ever. Naturally the workers need to be exploited if the old people want to retire.

      Migrants would actually be beneficial because they make the economy grow again.

    • BooBees@fedinsfw.app
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      17 hours ago

      And when people do stand up to ask for EVERYONE to receive what they should be given for their work, fare wages, affordable healthcare, half the nation screams at them, threatens to run them over, and says they must not have jobs because they can protest on a Saturday. They’re doing the work for the wealthy for free, busting up worker rights movements as a hobby, just to keep themselves poor and sick.

  • cloudshouter@lemmy.zip
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    16 hours ago

    As I have explained before, I don’t care if an immigrant tries to take my job. For starters, it’s not like bosses are throwing out good employees to make room for immigrants. Next, all those immigrants are going to need housing, utilities, cars, food, education, places to go for recreation, and all the other things. That is growing the economy and increasing the velocity of money. If they bring the whole family, then one of the cousins will open a restaurant with grandma cooking, and those places are peak. (If ICE starts harassing the Honduras restaurant I will have to start shooting fools. Also I really need someone to open a Nepalese restaurant in this town.) Growth and velocity of money. A couple immigrants will do more for the local economy than anything that dribbles down from some billionaire. I think the number I heard was that immigrants create 1.6 jobs per person. The billionaires around here mostly cause the utilities and land prices to go up by getting freebies and buying everything to offset taxes.

    • yucandu@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      What if you’re going on strike, and your boss hires some scabs to replace you, and for a second there you’re really mad at the government and the policies that allow your boss to hire those scabs, and you’re a little mad at the scabs too, except hold on there partner, those scabs were imported from another country. They’re immigrants. What are you, some kind of anti-immigrant?

      This is capitalist bait.

      • cloudshouter@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        Try to get the scabs to join the union too. If a boss is hiring immigrants as scabs, they’re being super exploitative and really need to be taken down a few notches. It’s also a stupid move because now they are going to catch flak from every direction. In fact the local union is going to negotiations now to rase wages for the lower pay jobs, many of which are staffed by immigrants.

        Your capitalist bait is not very good.

        • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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          3 hours ago

          Your expectation of reality does not align with reality, when half the laborers on jobsites are Indians (specificly Indians, not a lot of other foreigners were around) instead of regular young people (this includes second gen Indians raised here) like it used to be and often take the entry level position, it’s clear what happened, it’s why a lot of social programs here in Canada are clearing up and why my younger brother and sister were able to finally get job this year. You can cry racism all you want but it’s obvious that when you import half a million in labor a year, shits gonna brake.

            • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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              3 hours ago

              I’m refering more to the general leftists that can’t interpret nuance, not you specificly, but yah I guess I didn’t really specify that.

  • joecitizen@piefed.ca
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    18 hours ago

    Every worker should be a part of a union. It is worth it to have some one on your side in negotiations.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    evidenced plainly by the fact that they’d invest 1.5+ trillion in the magical “I don’t need workers anymore” word guessing machine and keep doubling and tripling down upon it at the potential peril of the global economy

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    It’s both, but boss is the biggest contributor of the two by far. I’ve worked for few owners, they hate payroll. It’s their biggest expense and that infuriates many of them. They despise paying anybody anything.

    So, of course a huge amount pay the lowest wages possible, and a lot of them would own you as a slave if it was legal, no doubt. And they’d grumble about the cost of the gruel.

    Government’s fundamental job is keeping the general population from being enslaved by these people. It’s what government is for.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      It’s their biggest expense

      I kinda doubt this is true for most businesses to be honest. It’s just the expense that most pisses them off.

      It’s kinda like if you ever get into an argument with someone about US government spending. Many people believe military personnel is the biggest ticket item for the pentagon when it is not even close.

      Many companies spend more on marketing (in house or more often outsourced) than they do on labor. But for some reason, labor is always what pisses them off.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        17 hours ago

        We’ve been working for different types of companies then, because I’m going to have to agree with the other guy on payroll usually being the biggest. Definitely so for office type work, probably less so for industrial work where you need to buy a bunch of input goods.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Yep, no idea which is which. Maybe everyone’s software scammers at this point, couldn’t tell you. Seemed a little me-centric to assume that was the case, but could be. 🤷

          Most produced products seem like production labor is very low cost (they outsource to somewhere to have “very grateful” five year olds do it) and the majority of the “in-house” labor is things like sales and marketing (which aren’t even usually in-house which is why I put it in scare-quotes). But all of this is admittedly anecdata.

  • protist@retrofed.com
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    16 hours ago

    In my experience, no, it’s not your boss at all, it’s the C-Suite. In the overwhelming majority of companies, the people who are 2-3 levels of management above frontline staff have little to nothing to do with setting wages

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    They absolutely are pushing down wages, especially when they come from poor desperate countries, because they’re in a much more precarious financial position, they’re easier to exploit, less likely to join a union, and most importantly, more likely to work for lower wages.

    Separating that, from the notion of racism or people getting mad at the immigrants, and not the elected officials creating the policies that allow your boss to import and exploit people from overseas, is important to working class success.

    How did we get so easily baited into falling for this?