Despotism on Demand by Alex J. Wood;

Author:Alex J. Wood;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)

Discounting Wages

As was the case for PartnershipCo, the absence of a strong internal labor market can be seen in the fact that pay at ConflictCo was set at only fractionally above the minimum wage in the external labor market. Also as at PartnershipCo, pay at ConflictCo had been declining in real terms, but here low pay was a major source of outrage among workers. Their low pay was commonly seen as an injustice due to how hard they worked. Omar (a worker) illustrated the relationship between the intensity of the work and discontent with the pay particularly clearly: “There are people … who bust their ass for ConflictCo … twenty-cent raises every year, what is that? … and these assistant managers, as lazy as fuck, disrespecting people, getting [a] $1,500–$5,000 bonus a year. And it’s just not fair … the workers who are making this company the money are getting cheated, are getting discredited and getting disrespected; it just irritates me, man.”

For other workers, the perception of injustice sprang from the disparity between their low pay and the profits made by ConflictCo—much of which flowed directly to the executives and shareholders. For example, Vincent (a worker) explained how his pay was so low that he was unable to afford a separate bed for his child. Vincent felt that “the thing that is most unjust is the wages that they pay us. This is a multibillion-dollar company, they make billions of dollars in profits a year, my store alone this Black Friday made over a million dollars just in that day. You know this company can afford to pay me a livable wage … I should be able to afford a stove or at least payments on a stove … We [he, his wife, and two small children] all sleep in the same room over here as I can’t afford a bed in that one. Here in America the poverty line for a family of four is $20,000 and I make close to $16,000 and I think that is the most unjust thing.”

That ConflictCo made such high profits served to highlight to workers that their low pay was not inevitable, as Mary (another worker) articulated clearly: “I’m just angry and disgusted at ConflictCo. It could be such a good place for the community, the environment, their workers, and they choose not to be, they just have to have all that money for themselves.”

Furthermore, there was little opportunity for workers to increase their wages through genuine mobility, as advancement into salaried management was highly unlikely. Within the pay structure, there was also little incremental difference between pay grades for hourly paid workers. The highest and lowest hourly skill-based pay grades were differentiated by just $1.70 per hour. Workers also received a premium of around $1 per hour if promoted to supervisor and, on average, received a raise of forty cents (5 percent of the standard rate) every year after their first eighteen months. After 6.5 years Andre’s hourly pay had increased by

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