[advisedwang]

Read the article - they aren't complaining about pay, they are complaining about job security. They are doing work that is going to be needed for the foreseeable future but can only work 2 years before they have to leave (for a period).

[plank_time]

They are low value workers. They don’t get job security. That’s the reality of it. They are replaceable with people with no experience. They have to understand that. There’s no job security to waiters either or Uber drivers. Just because they work in a datacenter doesn’t mean they deserve more money for a low value job.

If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves. Educate yourself, get a degree, find a new job, become management etc. Lots of paths to job security. Just because people want job security doesn’t mean they deserve it.

[lhorie]

> If they want a full time job, they need to elevate themselves

This suggestion only makes sense until it doesn't. Suppose everyone actually took that advice. Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs that are appropriate to their skill level and who still have to take crappy jobs. Paradoxically, maybe even you are one of them. Then what?

Now consider that this upleveling actually does happen for many people, and yet the issue of risk of financial ruin continues to exist for the bottom rungs in perpetuity.

Also, the point about deserving feels a bit myopic. Does someone deserve to be so poor that their family ends up resorting to tax funded programs like unemployment benefits, or worse, they turn to stealing, landing in jail and imposing a $40k tax burden per head on the rest of the population?

If the money flows from big corps to privileged highly paid workers pockets to the IRS to govt-run programs, why not just route the money directly to the less privileged so govt programs are less needed in the first place? The status quo is really not that different from Omelas[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...

[Chris2048]

> Then you'd have an entire population of overqualified people who cannot find jobs

Why would you? In the time it takes to train, those jobs could be created; if some of those workers become business owners, for example.

[lhorie]

You still need someone to pick your potatoes in the farm for you. If everyone has white collar skills, then that means one of two things:

1) white collar jobs don't pay as much comparatively to blue collar (meaning your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs because there's no supply of workers)

2) people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs and are forced to take low pay blue collar jobs so that they can put food on the table, while you can continue to enjoy $1 potatoes.

The latter is actually how the world works now: there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber, actors working on starbucks, etc. One can argue that most adults are in fact overqualified for physical labor: they can read and write and do math, which are arguably "higher level" skills than what is required for those jobs (cf. farming in the feudal ages).

[Chris2048]

If there is a dire need for potato-picking manual labour, pay will increase, as will the price of potatoes, short-term at least, assuming the change is sudden and of immediate effect, which makes the scenario even more unrealistic. Realistically, rather than labourers becoming indefinitely well-paid, and potatoes indefinitely expensive, alternatives to manual labour will rapidly be developed, incentivised by high demand for potatoes and low supply of labour e.g. potato picking machines (which already exist btw). The sudden increased supply of automation and robotics engineers won't hurt either.

> your supermarket potatoes now cost $50 due to high labor costs

which is as meaningful as $1 potatoes since we don't know the value of a dollar in this hypothetical "everyone is a white collar worker" world. More likely the value applied to all jobs shift, and previously lucrative jobs are not so lucrative anymore; that said, this may not be zero sum, the average standard of living may also increase - but many humans derive their satisfaction relative to the average, a metric that can never satisfy everyone, a poor man in the west today may have better nutrition, health, welfare and SoL than a kind hundreds of years ago.

> people with white collar skills cannot find white collar jobs

This is what I asked - why do you think this is? I'm not convinced.

> there are people w/ master degrees doing Uber

master degrees, in what? If if need to be said: get an education in something useful, and paid well by the market. STEM is usually a good bet.

> they can read and write and do math

But how do those skill translate into something useful for someone else? And how does demand compare to supply?

[lhorie]

> This is what I asked - why do you think this is? I'm not convinced

The simplest way to explain is to just look at basic math: if there are 3 doctor jobs and 4 doctors, one gets the short end of the stick.

> master degrees, in what

In STEM, most surprisingly, but also other careers that sound fairly reasonable. You'd think stuff like civil engineering or accounting would be fine careers, right? But somehow, Uber drivers have the craziest life stories...

[thethethethe]

Why do you have so little compassion for people? Just because a person has "low value" skills doesn't mean we _have_ to treat them like they are disposable. These "low skill" jobs are critical to the function of society and the people that do them deserve respect, security, and acknowledgment.

[plank_time]

I’ve worked a ton of low value jobs. I’ve worked in factories, as a receptionist, as a secretary, in a bank, etc. I never felt that I deserved to make more money just because it was compassionate to give me more. I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.

That’s what motivated me to study my ass off and work hard at my job and elevate myself. Some people are okay with not working harder and making what they do. Half my close friends are like that. That’s great and I don’t look down on them. But I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.

[thethethethe]

I think you are letting your personal experience with "low value" jobs cloud your vision in this situation. Its great that you worked your way out and I am sure you deserve whatever position you are in now. However, I think there is some survivorship bias at play here.

> I understood exactly where I stood and why I was being paid.

I am sure that the people in the article know this as well, but that doesn't mean they are treated fairly. The way society is structured and businesses treat people is not just by default. If this was the case, there should be no worker protections and we should simply pay people "what they are worth", which, in the past, resulted in factory towns and child labor.

Nobody in the article is demanding more money by arguing it is the compassionate thing to do, they want pay _parity_ with their coworkers who do the same job, which is pretty different in my opinion. They also want to keep their jobs after 2 years instead of getting fired for basically no reason other than it saves Google money through a regulation loophole.

> I don’t think they need to make more money “just because.” It’s whatever the market bears.

We do not live in a free market economy by any means. The reason why these people are being treated so badly is because of a poorly thought out regulation. Acting as though the system is a "free market" is just an indirect way of justify oppression of workers under the current mixed market system