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Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

latimes.com

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Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#91

Post by inertiatic »

muse900 wrote: post #41
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the min…

Just a few notes: After a few years of full time employment I received a bit over 300 euro a month I believe, for a full year, when I was fired myself.

And I believe the maximum amount of time where you can be eligible for unemployment benefits over here in Greece is a year or so.

I believe a large cause for the apathy in people who you'd expect to work these jobs is the fact that working a job like that doesn't move you forward in any way.

Back in the day, you could work for a few years and survive on your salary and hope to open your own business.

Now what's the dream for these workers? They can never afford to save up on their 500 euro a month. They can never get a loan to open their own business.

The best they can hope is that they won't be discarded and their job given to a more young-looking person down the line.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#92

Post by rglullis »

jhasse wrote: post #73
merinowool wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> you have to give away sometimes more than half of it Where? This is the tax in Germany for example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/ES...

Bear in mind this is only income tax. If you put deductions like health insurance (mandatory, and also dependent on income level) my take-home pay was indeed less than 50%.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#93

Post by geezerjay »

Nursie wrote: post #72
merinowool wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh shush, taxes are not 'extreme' in most of Europe, and you get a lot for your money - healthcare for example.

Income taxes tend to cover up to 50% of your income.

Then there's VAT syphoning an extra 20% of the remaining cash.

Then there are hidden taxes charged throguh other fees being levied, even to access mandatory state services.

In the end you get healthcare, but in general the service is practically unusable and you end up having to pay for health insurance anyway.

And by the way, a large portion of your taxes is effectively "lost" between your wallet and the public services provided to the population.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#94

Post by eertami »

vfc1 wrote: post #77
Nursie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot in the UK, and it's why I'm now a contractor. You will have 10 years experience, a relevant degree, security clearance and no boundaries when it comes to overtime. We will pay you £35k! The sad thing is, they will fill that position, with someone not very good, with low expectations and no confidence in themselves. And they will get mediocre work, which they expect.

In the UK I guess it depends a lot on the region, those are not, for example, London rates, right?

Anecdotally, it doesn't seem so. Even straight out of University with 0 years experience, salaries among my cohort seemed to be between 30-40k GBP and this was some years ago.

Not to say that there isn't companies making terrible offers in London, but I don't know people working for them.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#95

Post by swebs »

muse900 wrote: post #41
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the min…

>The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros

Is there a limit to how long you can collect unemployment? In Finland if you still haven't found a job in about a year, you stop getting payments altogether. And while getting payments, you still have to prove that you're actually searching for a job and not just trying to scam taxpayers.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#96

Post by fifnir »

maccard wrote: post #86
merinowool wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> and yet you have to give away sometimes more than half of it It's not being given away. How are the roads, police, schools, defense budgets funded? > so that people who don't give a flying toss get their benefits I just checked. The US and the UK both have a 4.1% unemployment rate. Many of those people are unable to work at all. our social security net means that if you're disabled you shouldn't end up honeless. No…

>It's not being given away. How are the roads, police, schools, defense budgets funded?

Domino's streets, McDonalds Police, Facebook Schools, Nestle Fire department,

The army is the only taxes they are okay paying

because they think their money goes towards punishing poor people instead of helping them

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#97

Post by mabbo »

geezerjay wrote: post #53
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

That's so true. Employers in general complain that they can't buy filet mignon for the price of hot dogs, and that's suppose to be the employee's problem. To make matters far worse, the industry in general pays lip service to on-the-job training and some employers also avoid junior/inexperienced developers, because they don't want to train anyone. And don't get me started on the absolute cancer that are HR/outsourcin…

> they can't buy filet mignon for the price of hot dogs

I'm going to use this analogy in the future. "You want filet mignon, but you're only willing to pay for hotdogs- and you're blaming the meat".

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#98

Post by CamTin »

vfc1 wrote: post #48
gt2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that enforced on the employer side, keeping employees in their contract?

They can terminate your freelance contract with a one week notice, but on the other hand, we can't terminate the contract on our side under any circumstances. All we can do is wait for the contract to finish and then not renew it. Its perfectly legal, a lawyer told me.

Surely they can't make you work, right? That's called slavery.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#99

Post by pjmorris »

snarf21 wrote: post #71
lkrubner wrote: post #4

It’s interesting how much momentum there is in these processes. After several decades of big wage gains, during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the nominal increases could not be stopped, even as the economy weakened in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then all the wage cuts had to done through inflation. Nowadays there is no inflation, and no momentum to restart wage increases. This part of the article says it right: “””The u…

This is absolutely correct however the one dichotomy is that we are also the collective shareholders (obviously not majority). People love seeing their 401K go up 15% annually year over year. That is only happening because of this funneling. Collectively we need to stop wanting it both ways. We want cheap goods but then complain about offshoring and outsourcing of labor. Look at dollar stores: Their boom happened alm…

> we are also the collective shareholders (obviously not majority)

It's that 'not the majority' thing that's the fly in the ointment. I owe this claim a link, but most shareholders are part of the wealthy and/or the professional classes, skewing stock gains toward a few, and away from the many.

EDIT: Added link supporting claim. Per WP article, chart 'Stock ownership is heavily concentrated', top 20% of US households by wealth own 90% of stock, and even that's skewed heavily to the top.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/18/for-r...

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#100

Post by martimarkov »

merinowool wrote: post #55
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

[flagged]

That’s factually incorrect. For example the max tax band in the U.K. is either 40 or 45 %. So you don’t give more than half of your earnings. Also every country in Europe decides how to tax ppl in that country.
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