Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
In my experience, employers ALWAYS pay as little as they can get away with. This is why we've lost vacation days, pay more for benefits, have seen pay cuts or no raises in 2-3 years, cut tuition reimbursement, eliminated retirement matching, etc. In every non-union employment situation I've ever seen, it is common place to increase salary ranges for specific titles but not move the people who are working in that range until, eventually, people with 20 years experience are making 50 cents an hour more than new grads. And, all the while, they say "You're lucky we're not laying people off" and the companies are posting profits. It may be blatantly and demonstrably false for the upper executives who take care of their own, but it's blatantly and demonstrably TRUE for the rest of us.
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To be fair though, isn't your personal experience limited to an area which currently has ~14% unemployment? If labor follows supply vs. demand, it would seem that the prices employers were paying for labor would fall. Why is it not fair that wages would sink in a buyer's market for labor?
Companies are posting profits, but we still have massively high unemployment. Do companies exist to post profits or to pay employees?
That aside, we're talking about deaths due to poverty, particularly homelessness. I'm not sure that labor markets really enter into the conversation as much as the resources and care we give to people with mental health issues.