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Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

theguardian.com

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Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#121

Post by ffumarola »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #59
austenallred wrote: post #2

“Back in the day, [the wage] would have been a great number,” said Victor, “but because of Facebook moving in, everything is so expensive. I have to get payday loans sometimes. We barely make it.” They make a combined (rounded) $75,000/year. The real tragedy is that you can't afford to make it in the Bay Area on $75k/yr. I don't think that's something you can blame solely on Facebook.

This is precisely why the USA need to get on the HST gravy train. Fast, reliable trains provide a way for people who cannot afford living in the more densely populated area (or don't want to) a way to live in a huge house with a yard and a pool 100 miles from said populated area. You then have an hour long commute every day (door to door), which is quite long, sure, but bearable.

It's an hour door-to-door from Menlo Park/Palo Alto to SOMA using Caltrain. People do that every single day. So a 1 hour door to door commute that extends the radius to 100 miles would be phenomenal in terms of opening up supply.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#122

Post by humanrebar »

dqv wrote: post #56

>They look at us like we're lower, like we don't matter :\ Please stop doing this. You know who you are.

Management often contracts out food service, security, and janitorial work. This means they do not qualify for perks that are described in the article. It also means they don't qualify for company picnics, etc.

Good managers will often do retreats, mixers, happy hours, etc. to encourage sales and accounts staff to mix with the engineers. I've never seen the same concern about how white collar workers get along with blue collar ones.

I understand all the above reasoning. I'm just saying it's not just a problem in personal interactions.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#123

Post by graphitezepp »

goatforce5 wrote: post #104
Bartweiss wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of every shift, Nicole watches large amounts of leftover food go into the compost – food that she’s not allowed to take home. On that one in particular - is there a law against that? I know rules on food service workers taking things home vary quite a bit.

I knew someone who worked at a supermarket many years ago when they were in college. Apparently staff were allowed to take home products that were damaged (crumpled/torn packaging, etc.), rather than just throwing them in the trash. Apparently chocolate cookies had an unfortunate and inexplicable habit of being crushed under other products and being deemed unfit for sale. Once the policy changed and staff had to thro…

People using policies in abusive unintended ways, this, is why we cant have nice things.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#124

Post by bildung »

tmh79 wrote: post #46

The real story here is how the political conditions of the SFBA have prevented growth of the housing supply. The sad reality is that housing here is now a zero sum game, and any broad based increase in wages would pretty quickly be captured by landlords. The real solution to this issue is not higher wages, but targeted efforts to decrease the cost of living through building a ton of of "missing middle" housing like 4…

The housing supply obviously isn't the main problem as the bay area techies can afford to pay it. The core of the problem is the wage disparity between techies and service workers.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#126

Post by Applejinx »

mc32 wrote: post #71
celim307 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, what point are you making? Your solution is pull yourself up by your bootstraps?

No, but you cannot in good conscience believe that you can raise a middle class family if that's your one skill. We also have people complaining about vanishing steel jobs, listen, they're not coming back and you are going to have to adjust.

Have you considered there is no possible skill that will establish a societal middle class for the population, no matter what effort or resources are put behind it?

In less than ten years you'll be talking about vanishing coding jobs, and the word is they're not coming back. What then? There is nothing we can't optimize to require less human labor. There is no possible skill that will translate to 'humans as a class' remaining relevant to productivity and a labor pool that's increasingly nonhuman. It's like expecting people to hammer in railroad ties, or dig through rock with pickaxes. Absurd, unreasonable, insane.

I quite agree with 'adjust', but I'm shocked by the idea that 'acquiring skills' is your notion of the standard to apply to all humans. There is no skill or skills that will do what you think is going to happen. All that will happen is, desperate people will obliterate the labor value of coding and thinking, during the final phase of human-centric thinking as a type of labor.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#127

Post by purple-again »

FussyZeus wrote: post #108
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are pondering outside of that claim because young programmers in Palo Alto also want cheap real estate so there's a shared interest. But things this article brings up that are more uncomfortable for the members of this board to think about like paying service workers more or pondering this: “They look at us like we’re lower, like we don’t matter,” said Nicole of the Facebook employees. “We don’t live t…

At some point we have to recognize that service workers must be paid a living wage, or be automated. We cannot, morally or economically, have an entire class of worker that we utterly depend on that lives permanently below the poverty line and we just step on them because "they didn't work hard in school" or whichever narrative you prefer to go with for why people who don't have a degree do work that is essential to…

You need to seriously think through every level of what you are suggesting. You want us to revamp the way we handle the complex interactions of individual autonomous groups from one in which your worth is tied to the value you contribute to society (The rapper 50 cent has a lot more money than a brain surgeon because like it or not the value he created for society was much greater than that one surgeons contribution) to one in which you are rewarded simply for existing. Do you truly believe that is a sustainable system without fully automated existence from resource extraction all the way to finished goods ( which we are not even remotely close to achieving)?

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#128

Post by robmass94 »

rbanffy wrote: post #85
dpark wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is their $75k/year going? I totally get that the bay is ridiculously expensive, but they're living in his parents' garage. Are his parents charging him that much rent? I'd think someone living in their parents' garage and earning $75k would be doing pretty well in terms of money. (Setting aside the fact that living with your family in a 2-car garage would definitely suck.)

Maybe the parents also rent the house. At 29/26 the parents could easily be 49/46 and still working. Also, mind that poverty has a role in poor economic decisions (payday loans being one of them). https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br... (edit: added some extra info)

Unless this is referring to a different house, no, the parents do own it:

>When Victor was growing up, his father was able to buy a small house in Menlo Park with his earnings a [sic] landscaper.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#129

Post by whack »

> "Working at a Facebook cafeteria is an enviable job in many ways. Nicole earns $19.85 an hour as a shift lead, while Victor makes $17.85 – well above the $15 per hour minimum for contractors that Facebook established in 2015."

Assuming they work 40-hour-weeks, for 49 weeks every year, they make a combined family income of $74k/year. I've volunteered with low-income families in SF. I've seen families just as big as theirs, getting by in San Francisco, with half their salary. The way they are demanding attention, and comparing themselves with others in far worse situations, makes them sound really petty.

I've personally met people who are truly struggling in horrendous ways. If Mark Zuckerberg wants to use his personal time to help those at the very bottom, good for him. Someone making ~$18/hour really has no business chiding him for doing so.

Re: Cafeteria workers at Facebook struggle to make ends meet

#130

Post by yorwba »

princekolt wrote: post #13
cabaalis wrote: post #4

Serious question, politics aside. How many jobs have been prior filled by teenagers or recent college graduates, that are no longer being filled by those groups for whatever reason? Is every single type of profession required to support a family of 4? Edit: 5, per the photo on the article

It's the opposite. Middle aged people used to work in manufacturing, farming, and other industrial positions. Now that these industries have either died or gone automated, they have to join teenagers in service jobs as well. It is not a matter of how many children they have either because families used to be a lot more numerous in the past and it was not considered a problem at all.

> It is not a matter of how many children they have either because families used to be a lot more numerous in the past and it was not considered a problem at all.

I think in theory you could raise an 1800s-size family today, but you'd have to settle for 1800s-level quality of life, which nobody is likely to do. And in practice you can't just set up a shed on unclaimed land, because there is no unclaimed land left and NIMBYs wouldn't want a slum anywhere near their property. If you tried making your children useful as labor, you'd quickly lose custody for your child exploitation. And so on.

The things our society expects and accepts have changed, so you can't always point to the past and say "it worked then, so it will work now"; because if the social structure enabling it has changed, this may not be true.

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