Weird Idea for a Form of Protest

[Black Aeronaut]

What it says on the tin.

This is kinda crazy, but I got to thinking about how often managers will tell us not to discuss how much we're paid among our fellow coworkers.  This is supposedly to keep workplace conflicts to a minimum, but as some have pointed out, it's really to keep people from having an excuse to demand raises.

So.

What if we just put it out in the open?

For everyone to see.

Literally.

Not just your coworkers, but your customers as well.

Hang a sign around your neck that shows what your company pays you.  Not a weekly or monthly sum, because that doesn't indicate how much overtime you wind up working in order to make ends meet.

Your actual hourly wage.

The thing is, I don't believe people out there understand just how prevalent wage slavery is.  Yes, it's known that there is general discontent... but I don't think people are getting how bad it is out there.

Imagine how someone who makes six figures a year would respond if they went around, doing their errands, and they saw all these signs with figures like  $8.50/hr, $9.75/hr or even waitstaff wages like $4.50/hr.  And these people aren't stupid.  They know what the cost of living is like in their cities.  They will be forced to stop and consider: "How is it possible that someone can make ends meet with so little?"  And, "How can these people be making so little when I'm paying such a premium for these goods/services?"  Yes, where *is* your money going?

A meal or two at a McDonald's easily covers one person's wages for an hour.  A single lunch or dinner rush is enough to cover the entire crew's wages for the day.  So where is the rest of the money going?  It sure as hell ain't the cost of the food - that's pennies on the dollar.

So why don't we force people to confront the question: where *is* their money going?

[hazard]

To be fair, part of the money is going towards the cost of the physical facilities. A hunk of brick, mortar and concrete ain't exactly cheap after all.

Everything after the cost of raw materials, the physical facility and the wages of the production personnel though? That's no small sum, and it's distributed to every management layer and the owners of the company.

And the owners get to prioritize how the money flows. At a remove, yes, but they still get to make that decision. They'd fire a management that lowers their pay out. I mean, why wouldn't they? It's how they measure the success of the company.

[LynnInDenver]

Unfortunately, the idea doesn't work when it comes to ordering stuff online. Plus, we'd be adding on an additional level of visible asshole for the retail worker to get, because some people out there literally think of those jobs as just for the high school student (they honestly believe it's not meant to be a living wage job, yet it still needs to be done), and that the work is being overpaid for as it is.

[robkelk]

What it says on the tin.

This is kinda crazy, but I got to thinking about how often managers will tell us not to discuss how much we're paid among our fellow coworkers.  This is supposedly to keep workplace conflicts to a minimum, but as some have pointed out, it's really to keep people from having an excuse to demand raises.

So.

What if we just put it out in the open?

For everyone to see.

Literally.

Not just your coworkers, but your customers as well.

...

Yes, the private sector really should catch up to the government here.

Here's what I and everybody I work with directly earns. Including pay and benefits. EDIT: Hang on - that hasn't been updated in a couple of years. Add 1.5% to the 2020 line for the 2021 pay.

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, I think that should be something the government mandates, just not worn around the neck of the hapless worker while at work where the customer can see it.

Of course, I also think that there should be a legal limit as to how much the CEO can be paid relative to the lowest paid employee/contractor of their company or one of the subsidiaries/franchisees (the latter to nuke potential loopholes), and should probably be kept specifically to a single digit multiplier, that includes any and all benefits such as insurance and vacation (preferably separately, no paid vacation unless you provide that to all employees, no company provided insurance if you don't provide it to everyone, etc) and not calculated via hourly wage but very specifically on the lowest MONTHLY wage an employee takes in (not counting tips for restaurant servers) so that part timers are the specific benchmark for lowest wage and other benefits.

[hazard]

Actually, counting tips as part of the wage is one of the worst abuses in the US economic system. It effectively allows the owner of the restaurant to charge the customer on top of the stated prices on the menu, purportedly for the sake of paying their employees, without any guarantee that it is so. Or it is, indeed, an entirely 'voluntary' contribution, effectively holding the employee's wages hostage against both the employee and the customer.

Also, IIRC Norway actually had a public record of hourly wages, going by the highest, lowest, median, average and mean, recorded over every sector and job description and the public had easy access to that record. It's been made harder to access because it didn't benefit labour negotiations a lot and negatively impacted mental health.


That said, I've no issue with the CEO's pay being compared to an hourly wage. Hell, the CEO effectively on call 24 hours a day, every day, the time he spends in office is but a small part of the demand the company places on his time, so comparing it to a standard full working week (whatever definition of standard full working week you're using, 40 hours is common) and all the surcharges for overtime, holiday hours, night shifts etc. worked by a theoretical employee on the lowest pay scale of the company is fine.

I mean, a salary basically is like that already.

What you really want to do though? It's not declare 'this much in salary relative to your lowest paid worker and no more'. There's tons of ways to get around that. It's declare 'this much in total income relative to your lowest paid worker and no more'.

[LynnInDenver]

What you really want to do though? It's not declare 'this much in salary relative to your lowest paid worker and no more'. There's tons of ways to get around that. It's declare 'this much in total income relative to your lowest paid worker and no more'.

Very much. Unfortunately, we'd really need to factor in stuff like owned stock (all of it) and property valuation. Oh, sorry, what's that, you earned way more just in stock price increases and dividends than the total income limit relative to that 10 hour a week part timer? You get to pare that portfolio way down, buddy, or start handing out those raises.

On the other side, contractors would need to be considered exactly the same as employees for the sake of the calculations (or significantly harsher, honestly, given the way a contractor has to handle so much more out of what they get paid)... otherwise they'd just go Uber/Lyft with the staffing to get around the income restrictions.

[hazard]

For contractors you estimate on the basis of either an equivalent in company position (if any exists) or presuming market equivalent wages (if possible) or simply and brute force calculating the effective wage after accounting for taxes and other stuff companies pay for by either law or custom for their employees.

[LynnInDenver]

For contractors you estimate on the basis of either an equivalent in company position (if any exists) or presuming market equivalent wages (if possible) or simply and brute force calculating the effective wage after accounting for taxes and other stuff companies pay for by either law or custom for their employees.

I'd prefer to make it to where it specifically weights in favor of having actual on-the-books employees versus contractors for determining maximum pay. While contractors are a legitimate form of doing business (temporary needs like construction or other one-off works for hire), they can and are used to get around certain other things in terms of things like paying benefits and the occasional "I'd prefer to make sure this employee works out before having to pay out for things like unemployment insurance", so make it so it's really less desirable unless you really do have a temporary thing that needs to get done (like office renovations, etc). In other words, yes, you might be able to effectively hire contractors instead of full time employees, but it should shove the effective maximum monthly pay for the CEO and other upper management down in the process if they attempt to use it to cut the amount the company pays out, preferably by a noticeable amount.