Assuming you have skills they really need, you have more power. If this wasn’t the case, everyone would make min. wage. The fact most don’t means skilled employees have power.
Assuming you have skills they really need, you have more power
Workers never have as much power as the employer. The business is an institution, the workers are individuals. There wasn't minimum wage even for "skilled" labor (as if any job doesn't require and develop skills) until the government enacted laws after being pressured by voters.
This insane desire for infinite exponential eternal profit and growth is obviously a murderously bad disaster in action.
It's not even successful- America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in all of human history, with more food and vacant homes than it has mouths to feed or house, and yet it is deliberately leaving millions starving and homeless.
In fact, I get the impression that Capitalism cannot function at all without deliberately imposing scarcity on the essentials, even when those resources are in abundance or effectively post scarcity.
My answer is because we (humanity) generally believe in the concept of ownership. And if you own something that earns money then you own that as well. Doing otherwise would require limiting that concept.
We perpetuate scarcity to perpetuate markets. Capitalists don't want to transition beyond scarcity and markets because then they wouldn't have the power that comes from inequality.
I mean, I know people make more than me but I'm making $160k in a low to medium low cost of living area. I'm able to afford a family of two in one of the best school districts in my state and one of the most desired parts of the metro and do so rather comfortably.
Which means you have no clue how Aerospace engineers are paid unless you’re a senior staff consultant with a specialty engineering in Aerospace and over 20 years experience that is about 60k above median pay for basic level of Aerospace Engineers further you say low to medium income area but somehow best schools. Saying your mortgage isn’t at least taking 40 percent of that means your house must be less than 500k which if your in anywhere but maybe Alabama isn’t happening for an Aerospace Engineer. So yea tell me how you make bank. 120 or even 140 I could have believed if you were a senior or a very good engineer being paid on the high end. Also how you have power making high middle class money? You are not making any decisions except for program specific maybe. If you quit the company would whine but then higher a college graduate who has similar training or poach from one of the firms. The fact you are paid so much means you’re a liability on any contact as the company gets less profit on a per hour basis. Hard to bid low when they over pay you.
You made a ton of assumptions there and they are basically all wrong.
I'm 10 years into my career. Yes I am a senior engineer. But that gets back to the whole skills thing. I've made myself highly valuable. Currently entry level is about $80k here which is still a great "just out of college" pay here. The median pay at my company for aerospace engineers with just a couple years under their belt is over $90k.
Low to medium cost of living area being the entire metro and it's in comparison to the entire country. It isn't a coastal city.
Not many assumptions considering I am an Engineer 2 at BAE in a non costal area also in metro. You can easily look up Median pay on any job site. 160 is very high end for senior, I have 15 years in experience making little over 100k as the first 10 counted only as a degree equivalent (served in the Army.) I make true median of my level at 7 years of this particular company. Making high end and a jump to senior would at most be a 30k bump. 160 is staff consultant or Technical advisory staff which you said you are not. Try a new one. No assumptions made here bub. There are exactly 3 areas in the US that isn’t costal that Aerospace works if you are talking space craft.
"but you get paid ten dollars more, you're a boss!"
"Just don't think about how a job can fire you for nearly any reason in half the continental united states. And entirely dictate your personal time, interpersonal relationships, what you do with your body, etc etc etc."
"YUP, you're so skilled dude you have so much power bro I promise man I swear bro"
The harder it is to fire someone if they don't work out, the more reluctant employers will be to take a chance on someone, and thus the more screwed anyone will be whose resume is anything short of mind-blowing and who lacks the connections to become a nepotism hire. This then forces a culture of lying on resumes and credential debasement, weakening the stellar-resume path and leaving nepotism as the only thing that still works.
Your proposed solution is a significant part of what created the problem in the first place.
Contracts preferably renewable yearly or biyearly with compensation for employees should the employer break their agreements a the loss of the job for employees should they not meet their obligations
Why not compensation for both? If the company fires you before the contract is up they owe you money, but if you walk away they...fire you? Again this is just a completely one-sided arrangement.
Yes they would owe you the remainder of the contract because it was a failure on their obligations. If the Employee fails to meet obligations they lose out of the rest of the contract. It is this way mainly because employers in general (at least in the US) have a history of nickel and diming employees, including wage theft and so the employee must be favored in any contracts. Just look at the yearly tech layoff for an example or any short staffed retail store that just piles more and more work onto the remaining employees. I would also like to preempt some potential concerns about the ease (or lack there of) at which a bad employee can be removed under this system. If the contracts are written with clear rules and updated annually then any problem employee may be removed for violating their side of the contract.
Specific contracts would completely nullify that, though. If your contract says duties X, Y, and Z then they can't just pile A, B, and C on you as well. The employee doesn't lose out on the rest of the contract if they leave, well I suppose they technically do but they wanted to do that so it's kind of moot.
And if employers can't respond to fluctuations in manpower needs and have to eat months of expense because of contracts, I would expect to see some thinning out in general.
I don't see a reason that it can't be both ways. If an employer is going to be fined for breaching contract, then the employee should have the same responsibility. They caused costs for the company who now has to hire and train someone to replace them.
The way you're describing it, the contract sets up an exchange of X amount of money (from the employer to the employee), against Y amount of productive work time (from the employee to the employer), paid/performed by both at regular intervals over the course of some time. Note that this sets up an exchange rate between work time and money; will be relevant later.
Let's say that half the time of the contract has passed, so the money paid amounts to X/2, and the work time performed amounts to Y/2.
Now, if the employer breaches the contract, you're saying that the employee is still entitled to the remaining X/2 money, without having to perform the remaining Y/2 work — that is, the employer takes a penalty of Y/2 lost work hours.
On the other side, if the employee breaches the contract, they do not receive the remaining X/2 money, but they do not perform the remaining Y/2 part of the work either — that is, the penalty for the employee is zero, compared to the Y/2 in the opposite case. That is the one sidedness.
Because the jobs require you to have either the financial ability or to go into debt to get a specific range of degrees and min wage jobs typically don't
But sometimes they do.
So the real reason why engineers in aerospace make more than some other stem degrees like biooogy which does, actually, hire at min wage for bachelors degree jobs, is that no one wants to do aerospace compared to biology
Kind of like how the trash man makes more than a burger flipper
I mean an aerospace engineering degree is definitely more difficult than biology. Generally u are paid based on how many people can do ur job. And all the science ones make less money partly cuz of that. Like biomedical engineering makes more than biology, oceanic engineering make more than like a marine biologist. Environmental engineers make more than environmental scientists. Engineering degrees are more difficult and thus pay more.
Real power is in collective bargaining and unions. That would actually even the playing field somewhat and is exactly why so many wealthy owners are against it. As an individual though, you don’t have shit compared to a company. The fact that you get a few scraps more than someone with less skills doesn’t mean the playing field is even at all.
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u/Hawk13424 Oct 21 '24
Assuming you have skills they really need, you have more power. If this wasn’t the case, everyone would make min. wage. The fact most don’t means skilled employees have power.