Mar
26
Post #11- Nick Djamalidinov
March 26, 2015 | Leave a Comment
The articles today focused on the treatment of workers by companies. These articles tell of a somber story where corporations steal wages, give irregular hours, and do not compensate for holding people up after hours. Corporations like McDonald’s make billions so it does not make much sense that they would do this to their minimum wage workers. Also the irregular work schedules make things especially difficult for people with inflexible lives. And the fact that companies like Amazon can hold you up after work and not compensate you and such actions are supported by law is simply unfair.
The NY Times article read like a movie synopsis. This woman, Ms. Navarro, struggled with irregular hours from Starbucks while taking care of her son. She had to move like twice and had to beg her family to take care of her son. The way the hours apparently worked was that there was a computer program that tells managers when the stores get busy so they could hire people as needed. This meant that if they needed like 5 people during peak times and only like 3 people in the evening, two people were going home. I personally think it is incredibly unfair. People need to work full-time in order to cover their costs. It was explained before in previous classes that the minimum wage does not keep up with the cost of living. So taking away precious hours from minimum wage employees puts them in a dangerous situation where they could lose their homes or other possessions just because Starbucks did not need them for those few hours when there were less customers. I understand it saves money, but is it really that big of a cost? Are corporations so cold-hearted that they would rather save a few bucks (which does not mean much to them) rather than help a worker ensure he is not sleeping the street? I personally have felt frustration at my job when they call me to work for only six or eight hours and I can barely cover my own expenses. I cannot even imagine how tough it is for adults to lose hours in a week because of some computer system.
Another injustice, which was examined in the Cohen Milstein article, was McDonald’s stealing wages by altering time cards, making people work off the clock, and not paying overtime. The article said that McDonald’s brought home 5.6 billion in profits last year. It again makes me wonder, if these corporations are so rich, why would they need to steal from their workers. These guys are making minimum wage and McDonald’s is trying to steal from them. This reverse robin hood style thievery needs to end because workers cannot afford to lose money but these corporations can. This obsession with the bottom line is actually pretty sickening to be honest.
The Washington Post article seemed troubling to me. It said that the Supreme Court ruled that Amazon does not have to compensate for holding its workers past usual hours for security checks. The article expressed that this gives companies like Amazon free reign to hold their workers up and not compensate them. I think they should because it is just the concept that your employer is taking more of your time. The workers said it takes away like twenty five minutes from their time which is actually a considerable amount of time. It seems like Amazon can hold its employees for any reason that does not pertain to the worker’s job performance and not compensate them which is dangerous. Maybe Amazon could have even stricter procedures in place that keeps workers for hours.
The last article was actually a response to Nick Hanauer’s TED talk. I will first say I liked his TED talk and I thought he brought up some interesting points like emphasis on a middle class over the super rich. This forbes article seemed to just defame and verbally attack Nick Hanauer. It did bring out the main point about how financial investment drives the economy and how it is vital not to tax it too much. But the problem I see is that the super rich are not investing enough and nothing is compelling them to change that. This Forbes article author sounds like one of those people who would hand over the country to the super rich thinking it will make things better. Also when he said that the 15% tax rate are on capital gains and not on the rich I felt like he was trying so hard to absolve the rich of any blame. He says it like poor people receive capital gains. It is pretty obvious that the rich have the most to gain from it. The fact is that the rich are not investing enough and keeping too much which the tax code does not punish and instead rewards.
