Tell me, when did Walmart and McDonalds hold a gun to peoples heads to work there?
What about the 7 Elevens? What about every employer who pays a salary in that range?
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So you are saying people should get paid on what their bills are and not what the employer offers as a salary?
That is quite a concept.
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SK the thread has nothing to do with fulfilling a contract (ie – the employer paying the wage that he/she is obligated under an employment contract) It has to do with an employer paying low wages and the poster pointed out that paying higher wages may help this particular employer due to longer retention.
Yes I, and anyone else who enters into a contract is entitled to receive compensation under the terms of the contract. However the terms of the contract are not set by the needs of the employee. Sorry you were confused by the point of the thread.[/quote]
There is no need to hold a literal gun to anyone’s head. The fact is that people need jobs in order to survive (absent a social safety net, which is why Shoveler is correct about people throwing stones without these safety nets in place — witness almost any other country without social safety nets). There is no “free market” from a worker’s perspective, especially when all/most employers conspire together to offer the lowest compensation possible. “Immigration reform,” free trade agreements (that seriously hurt American workers), the systematic dismantling of unions, etc. have all been pushed for by corporate America. They OWN our government, and control all the rules and regulations. There are no more checks and balances between labor and capital; and without that, there is no free market.
In a truly free market, people would have the right to refuse something. With jobs, people do not have the ability to refuse whatever is offered to them simply because they need a job — any job they can possibly get — in order to survive. That is the figurative gun that is being held to their heads.
The employer-employee relationship has two sides, but only one (the employer) really has the power to refuse something if they don’t like the terms. They have been doing everything in their power to make sure that labor doesn’t organize, and have forced open our borders in order to ensure that there is a never-ending stream of desperate people who are willing to work for slave wages that cannot support a single person, much less a family.
A truly free market requires a balance of power between labor and capital, and we do not have a balance of power in this country. Capital has hijacked our entire political and judicial system, steadily weakening any power that labor has fought so hard for over the years.
Most job-seekers, especially at the lower end of the wage scale, are more desperate and do not have the luxury of being able to refuse what is being sold to them (the job/compensation), and have to pay whatever price (their labor/bodies/time, no matter how dear to them) in order to consummate the deal. They do not have a choice, and this is no free market.
