I love how one person cites a statistic, and another person just dismisses it as false because of their anecdotal experience.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Sounds like every online platform ever.
Actually, that's not true at all. This one time, I met a guy who...
This is how most people think and see the world, which is why we (the US) are in the boat we're in now. People don't see the big picture if they never have to or aren't taught how to think critically.
I think it's a complicated problem. To start with, the studies are usually paywalled. If you can afford to purchase access, you still need the capacity to understand and parse the formal academic language. Most people have neither of those requirements, and have to rely on the media to report the statistics accurately, which doesn't happen.
This leads to a situation where the media keeps trying to say, idk employment statistics are better than ever, and then everybody updates their mental blocklist to filter out the word 'statistics'.
Not to mention most issues are extremely nuanced and complex, not something that can be accurately broken down into 5 second sound bits.
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My thoughts exactly. And how I love this complete dismissal style with the "False." at the beginning, that has established itself online. it's a perfect giveaway for " now my personal but universal opinion, also called Truth bomb, is going to destroy your statement" - which in my opinion is just extremely patronizing and never really true.
Especially when comparing your personal anecdotal experience with a fucking statistic.
Oh and nobody talks like that in real life, or at least the people that do start their verbal line of argument this way are idiots and everybody knows it.
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And I've never heard of a contract that explicitly ties non-union workers' pay to the union contact, but I'd be cheering the union guys on if they ever asked for a raise if that was the case.
That's actually more common than you think. It's not explicit.
My niece who works at a very popular coffee shop where some are unioned, the non-union ones get paid a bit extra and reminded on the daily about that benefit of higher pay for being non-unioned.
And my aunt works as a receptionist in a non-union hospital. Her counterparts in a union, when they went on strike and got a huge pay bump... She suddenly "mysteriously" got a pay bump aligned with it because the non-union hospital was afraid of employees unionizing (which secretly, they were).
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I live in California, so there was a lot of bemoaning the rising minimum wage.
“Why should someone flipping burgers earn as much as I do in a trade field?”
Mate, you should be arguing for increased wages, not trying to keep others down.
Seattle metro area has the highest minimum wage in the country. The top 5 cities in the US are all in this metro. This is because when the wage increases were passed by city, they were tied to the inflation rate so that increases every year, so no new laws have to be passed year over year to get this increase. No arguing every year for a simple cost of living adjustment.
Fucking thank you! Why is this so complicated?? Why fight for $15 or whatever if you know by the time your get the fucking laws past your dollar is worth half as much.
It's so transparently flawed to because tying minimum wage to a formula/basket/col/astrology FFS, Would mean not having to revisit this fight every. Single. Year.
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Mate, you should be arguing for increased wages, not trying to keep others down.
It’s my opinion that people like this aspire to be their own boss, make their own money, and look up to business owners as mentors.
None of that is inherently wrong, until the mentors/business owners start espousing the evils of increased wages, how paying taxes is preventing pay raises for their workers, etc.
So not knowing any better, these wannabes go out and parrot what they’ve heard their heroes say as if it’s gospel. And of course the talking heads that they listen to say the same shit, further solidifying the class warfare mentality.
Those same people get mad if nobody is flipping burgers for them.
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Cathy is a dumbass. Don't be like Cathy.
That’s up there with refusing raises to avoid going up a tax bracket.
I will forgive people who were previously had a low enough income to have benefits that magically disappeared completely at a certain threshold when they received a raise for assuming that making too much money could be a negative. They generally never made enough to understand how tax brackets work and assumed the worst.
If it is explained to them and they refuse to learn, that is on them.
Yes, that is something that really sucks.
Here in Ontario disability gets clawed back as soon as you stop making poverty wages, it’s disgusting.
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Cathy? If I see FirstNameBunchOfNumbers and a twitter checkmark my first assumption would be that its a bot.
"your statistic is false because I have an anecdote" is literally the entire basis of the conservative understanding of science.
union workers don't make more on average because I earn half a dollar more.
global warming isn't happening because I brought a snowball.
vaccines cause death because my friend walked out of a clinic after a shot and got hit by a self driving tesla.
vaccines cause death because my friend walked out of a clinic after a shot and got hit by a self driving tesla.
😂
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How is it even legal to have explicitly preferential pay for people not in a union? Is there a limit to that, or can companies just say, "Anyone who joins a union will be paid minimum wage." Ofc with at-will employment they can always just fire you, but like, if you think about it it's pretty fucked up right?
I wouldn't be surprised if the union has other benefits that more then make up for the 50 cents, e.g. better medical, vacation, or whatever.
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sounds like their pay is based on union rates. that's probably just a company policy for everyone.
What I'm saying is that if they can set "$0.50 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone, they can also set "$5 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone and then cut union rates by $5. It's essentially just bribing people to not join a union or penalizing them if they do. It being company policy for everyone is irrelevant.
They can't cut union rates since they have a contract. So they can, within reason, pay non union workers more but not lower the pay of union workers. One of the benefits of being in the union is that they can't just lower your wages and they may have issues firing you for bad reasons.
There's a limit to how much they can pay the ununionized workers before it becomes clear they're trying to interfere with the workers rights to free organization. In the image, it's quite likely that the extra 50¢ is union dues, or could be explained as related to costs.
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"Rising waters lifts all ships", Cathy. Ever heard of it?
This is what Swedish unions did even more directly. A company hired labour from Latvia I think it was. The union showed up and said that thats all fine, but you have to pay them properly. None of them were members. They picketed the company for the sake of non-members wages. Why? To avoid social dumping down the line.
Lol the fact that she even has a contract at all is because of unions.
Man I was sad as shit when Nina Turner lost. Bernie Sanders backed her up too.
I think she's running again. I was at a UAW conference last week and Nina Turner spoke there. I think she's trying to drum up support for another run.
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This doesn't even need to be in your contract. When union shops get a raise, non-union shops either have to compete, or lose their best labour.
Net income is a small factor. One should compare the total package because the unions are usually way ahead of the non-union.
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When somebody insists, "X doesn't matter because my salary depends on X," it's time to stop beating your head against a wall to teach them anything.
Cathy is a fucking idiot
Cathy is the average American.
Realize that half of the rest are even more moronic
Pretty soon we won’t be able to trust BLS data, which is frightening.
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