Mar
25
Class 17 – Blog #11
March 25, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Profits is the magic word for all businesses. Capitalism urges businesses to gain the most profit with the least amount of cost. But at what consequence? All this micromanaging of minutes and dollars help maximize profits but at the same time harm employees. It reduces people to machines. When they’re not needed, they’re just simply turned off until next time.
The New York Times article was heartbreaking. Ms. Navarro’s situation is dire already with a small child, no degree, and barely any housing. When she finds a great job at Starbucks, it is bottled down by her erratic hours. Without a doubt, Starbucks employing this new technology that choreographs workers in precise moments increases efficiency and definitely adds more profits. But with their mission to improve the lives of their workers, they fail to realize that fluctuating hours does the exact opposite. People, especially parents like Ms. Navarro, depend on consistency. People need organization in their lives and when a fork is thrown in the middle constantly, it causes a frenzy.
I think because I have experience in working retail, I understand the plight of Ms. Navarro. Some days, I was only scheduled for a few hours and other days I was scheduled for back to back 8 hour shifts. Sure, I had put down open availability on certain days but that doesn’t mean I want to be coming in for only two hours to the city when my commute is already an hour. In addition, if a worker was expected to close one night, there was just an unspoken rule that he/she was not to be on an opening shift for the day unless it was really needed. Closing shifts doesn’t just mean when the store closes. It means clean-up and organization of the entire store for the next day and making sure backstock was in order as well. So when the store closes at 9pm, most closing workers didn’t get out till 11pm. Then it’s commuting back home. With Ms. Navarro and her three-hour commute, I can only imagine how tiring it must be.
Another example of wage theft is the case against McDonald’s. At first, I thought many of the reasons for the lawsuit was trivial. For example, the one where they contest that McDonald’s owed them for the time and cost of cleaning their uniforms. But then, I remembered that most of these workers are being paid barely $8 an hour. Since McDonald’s imposes uniforms on their workers, they should also supply the maintenance as well. I think a part of my experience that relates to this is that I was also required to wear all internally branded material when I worked at a clothing store. That’s fairly normal but what was peculiar about this, and this may have just been my stingy manager, was that it wasn’t just the top or bottom or shoes, it was everything single thing we had on our body. Socks, jewelry, even the color of our lipstick had to be something that was sold in our store. Dyed hair was also a no no. However, what made up for this was that we did get a substantial discount on clothing and at times, there were employee only sales.
The decision in the case in the Washington Post article is something I agree on. I don’t think Amazon is guilty of wage theft. It is understandable that a big business would want to check their employees for stolen goods. The clothing store I worked at also had that. It usually didn’t take more than 2 minutes to check. However, Amazon warehouses are notoriously big and has a lot of workers. If they all were checked at once, I’m sure it would take more time than usual. I think instead of compensating workers, they need a more efficient system for checking.
Last but not least, the critique of Nick Hanauer’s speech in Forbes seems a little bit too optimistic. The author states that “the marginal propensity to consume is an essential part of Keynesian economics” because people will use what they save to create more jobs. I think that’s what we’d like to think all rich people do with their money. The truth is, all the money reinvested in the economy tends to go back to them. It may go to them directly or to their family or their future generations. Lowering taxes on their capital gains may only cause more abuse of the Keynesian system.
Stella Kong
