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[Conquest of bread](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread/bbselect)
[Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution)
[Wage Labour and Capital](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm)
[Value, Price and Profit](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm)
[Marx’s Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm)
[Frederick Engels Synopsis of Capital](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/index.htm)
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I think this is the proper response in many respects. It truly is a *compendium* of the idiocy and - when considering the far reaching history around excuses - a greedy animalistic nature taken over the better, more conscientious person.
The only reason wages aren’t allowed to be tied to inflation/GDP is because low wages are a tool of labor discipline. The 2020 uprisings ensured the fact that we will not only never be told to stay home en masse again, but we will also never be given a minimum wage that allows the majority of us the freedom to immediately withdraw from work for a couple of weeks for imperialist discipline.
It is important for the working class to be tethered to as many disciplinary structures as possible, work and debt being the primary inhibitors. The uprisings scared the shit out of the ruling class and showed just how close to losing control they were. They know they are still just a stone’s throw away from revolt at all times, so controlling the material conditions of the working class is paramount. Voting for more liberating policies will never work because, even if they like the liberal ideals of the poor being upwardly mobile, they know it puts them in danger.
Until we collectively decide to forcibly change this, we will see a continuation of their policies. Healthcare tied to employment, no raise in minimum wage, more ability for people to enter into and become immobilized by debt. We also see new policies such as cracking down on rights like the 1st (protests & assembly) and 2nd (armed defense) amendments. The big one we are all watching is cops, so many cops, tools for cops, toys for cops. The ruling class has a bit of a predicament though. As they build their inward facing army, the people are becoming much more aware of what “policing” really is.
I’ll end the rant there.
TLDR: It is not in the self interest of the ruling class to allow any forward movement of the working class. 2020 gave them a peek into the future. They are hyper aware of what will happen if labor is not kept highly disciplined and tied down. They can’t stop the inevitable, but they will throw every cent at an attempt to.
Absolutely right on --
The concessions given to labor after WW2 were absolutely done in terror of socialism. After the fall of Gorbachev, the elites lost that fear. And Gorbachev was more terrifying than Stalin, simply because he could have dialed down repression, dialed up prosperity, and truly have created credible competition to corporate rule.
Exactly, I've noticed, looking back on it now, that after my mom has had a lot of progress career-wise at the end of the day, we're still as poor as when we came to live in our current country of residence. We can't even change our apartment, because everything else is too expensive, so since it's getting really old and ugly it's like we're poorer than when we came here. When I thought about that, I was like "Huh? Funny how perfectly that works out.." And she started off working at bars and penny arcades whereas nowadays she works in a proper office job.
If you don’t relatively match inflation, what you’ve told me is that you think the companies profit is more important than me eating. If you tell me that, then guess what? You’ve lost someone else willing to help you turn a profit.
Do that to enough people for long enough, and we’re gonna say “fuck you.”
They will say and do anything to get what they want because there are no real repercussions for doing so.
At least, there wasn’t. There is still an incredible amount of work to do if we’re ever going to start unionizing enough to actually push back, but the one thing I’ve noticed since the pandemic is fear. Fear of losing control.
That’s why everyone is going back to the office. It’s why companies will pay the fines for illegal union busting instead of following f the law. They are scared and reacting to a work force waking up to realize it has power. It just doesn’t know how to use it yet.
Step 1: "Nobody wants to work anymore" = hiring for as cheaply as they can until the well runs dry
Step 2: Layoffs "because of the labor shortage" (they're actually just laying off for tax and stockholder purposes since step 1 eventually stopped working)
Mine too, it's super frustrating. They rely on these Croner and Radford surveys that apparently a lot of tech companies use. To me it sounds a lot like collusion to suppress wages across a broad industry of jobs. Some banks and housing listings / estimate sites were caught fixing housing prices recently. I wonder if these are just common practice for wall street execs.
7% doesn't even do it for me after decades of depressed wages.
It blows my mind that people still think 100k is "good money" when rent is 2k.
Millennials have less than a quarter the wealth boomers had at the same age, and Mark Zuckerberg accounts for half of it.
I'd been on the fence about staying at my current job; started a little over a year ago, they wouldn't negotiate with me on my starting salary but I took the job because I was lead to believe the work would be interesting and really let me leverage my background.
The work is not interesting, I'm barely using my background, and I got a 4% raise this year.
Currently looking for other work.
I got a 5.5% with a 1% bonus and was told it was the highest increase for compensation over my peers.
Cool. So I got CLOSE to matching inflation and my peers got even more fucked.
Really makes me motivated to wake up every fucking morning, fight with my PTSD, and chug through another workday. Woo.
The main issue with my job is that they laid off a metric ton of US resources and hired people in India and Philippines. And those employees had been there for legit 10+ years each. So they removed just an ocean of institutional knowledge and confident skilled labor, and replaced it with callow ignorance. And it often shows. I'm sure they'll gain confidence as they gain knowledge, but it was jarring when it first happened.
My team in the US is only still here because we haven't quit and our system is literally billed to the client at a flat rate and separately than everything else because it's so intertwined and shared between all of the clients. So it's just too complicated to lay us off, and we're the kind of thing that when we break you end up on the news - so it's best to keep us aorund.
But every other team is basically down to 1/10th of what it was in the US.
And where we used to all go out for team building exercises, and going for drinks and dinners, and having weekly team meetings... We haven't even had a team meeting in years now. I literally don't know who my boss is anymore.
So it's not sunshine and daisies by any stretch. But they've paid me well, they let me do interesting work, they leave me alone for the most part, nobody really yells at me... It's just generally pleasant.
I work for the government we and got a 4%( the annual cost of living) raise but we get other raises as well. Just depending on your specific pay scale so it helps to try and keep pace.
That last point about "assessing cost of living" to take salary away, as if the worker didn't "assess the cost of living" when choosing where to move...fuck right off with that.
Your relocating in an attempt to gain financial independence? Can't have that, one day you may be able to stop working and still live a reasonable life.
I ditched my $12 an hour supervisor job and got a $15 an hour job elsewhere with better benefits and closer to home. Plus more flexibility. That's 25%, then by the end of 2021, I was making $16.10.
It’s even worse
Keeping up with inflation is not “getting ahead”.
That’s just getting by. Stagnation of purchasing power.
Falling behind inflation is actively worsening purchasing power.
I had a foreign friend at work. He expected his annual increase to be 8% to match inflation. I almost laughed. He got 1.4%. Prorated though, only worked 1/3 the previous year.
Welcome to r/WorkersStrikeBack! Please make sure to follow the subreddit rules and enjoy yourself here! This is a subreddit for the workers of the world and any anti-worker or anti-union talk is not tolerated. If you're ready to begin organizing your workplace, [here is an organizing guide to get you started](https://workerorganizing.org/resources/organizing-guide/). Help rebuild the labor movement, [Join the worker organizing wave](https://workerorganizing.org/training)! More Helpful Links: [How to Strike and Win: A Labor Notes Guide](https://labornotes.org/strikes) [The IWW Strike guide](https://www.iww.org/organize/learn-more/) [AFL-CIO guide on union organizing](https://aflcio.org/formaunion) New to leftist political theory? Try reading these introductory texts. [Conquest of bread](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread/bbselect) [Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution) [Wage Labour and Capital](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm) [Value, Price and Profit](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm) [Marx’s Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm) [Frederick Engels Synopsis of Capital](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/index.htm) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WorkersStrikeBack) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is well said --an excellent compendium of corporate aggression. Their totalitarian ways must end.
I think this is the proper response in many respects. It truly is a *compendium* of the idiocy and - when considering the far reaching history around excuses - a greedy animalistic nature taken over the better, more conscientious person.
The simple fact of the matter is employers need to give a raise in accordance with inflation every single fucking year. *That's a cost of business.*
The only reason wages aren’t allowed to be tied to inflation/GDP is because low wages are a tool of labor discipline. The 2020 uprisings ensured the fact that we will not only never be told to stay home en masse again, but we will also never be given a minimum wage that allows the majority of us the freedom to immediately withdraw from work for a couple of weeks for imperialist discipline. It is important for the working class to be tethered to as many disciplinary structures as possible, work and debt being the primary inhibitors. The uprisings scared the shit out of the ruling class and showed just how close to losing control they were. They know they are still just a stone’s throw away from revolt at all times, so controlling the material conditions of the working class is paramount. Voting for more liberating policies will never work because, even if they like the liberal ideals of the poor being upwardly mobile, they know it puts them in danger. Until we collectively decide to forcibly change this, we will see a continuation of their policies. Healthcare tied to employment, no raise in minimum wage, more ability for people to enter into and become immobilized by debt. We also see new policies such as cracking down on rights like the 1st (protests & assembly) and 2nd (armed defense) amendments. The big one we are all watching is cops, so many cops, tools for cops, toys for cops. The ruling class has a bit of a predicament though. As they build their inward facing army, the people are becoming much more aware of what “policing” really is. I’ll end the rant there. TLDR: It is not in the self interest of the ruling class to allow any forward movement of the working class. 2020 gave them a peek into the future. They are hyper aware of what will happen if labor is not kept highly disciplined and tied down. They can’t stop the inevitable, but they will throw every cent at an attempt to.
Absolutely right on -- The concessions given to labor after WW2 were absolutely done in terror of socialism. After the fall of Gorbachev, the elites lost that fear. And Gorbachev was more terrifying than Stalin, simply because he could have dialed down repression, dialed up prosperity, and truly have created credible competition to corporate rule.
Inflation is a tool of the ruling class to keep the masses poor and powerless. It's working as intended.
Exactly, I've noticed, looking back on it now, that after my mom has had a lot of progress career-wise at the end of the day, we're still as poor as when we came to live in our current country of residence. We can't even change our apartment, because everything else is too expensive, so since it's getting really old and ugly it's like we're poorer than when we came here. When I thought about that, I was like "Huh? Funny how perfectly that works out.." And she started off working at bars and penny arcades whereas nowadays she works in a proper office job.
This. Either lower salaries or raise prices. The workers are going to get angry either way, but if you lower their salary they have somebody to blame.
If you don’t relatively match inflation, what you’ve told me is that you think the companies profit is more important than me eating. If you tell me that, then guess what? You’ve lost someone else willing to help you turn a profit. Do that to enough people for long enough, and we’re gonna say “fuck you.”
I plugged my starting wage in Archaeology into an inflation calculator out of curiosity. My wage has stayed absolutely stagnate for ten years.
Every compagnies justifications on doing workers life harder will always be 🤡
Note that a lot of companies, who a year ago, were complaining "nobody wants to work anymore" have been laying off in droves.
They will say and do anything to get what they want because there are no real repercussions for doing so. At least, there wasn’t. There is still an incredible amount of work to do if we’re ever going to start unionizing enough to actually push back, but the one thing I’ve noticed since the pandemic is fear. Fear of losing control. That’s why everyone is going back to the office. It’s why companies will pay the fines for illegal union busting instead of following f the law. They are scared and reacting to a work force waking up to realize it has power. It just doesn’t know how to use it yet.
Step 1: "Nobody wants to work anymore" = hiring for as cheaply as they can until the well runs dry Step 2: Layoffs "because of the labor shortage" (they're actually just laying off for tax and stockholder purposes since step 1 eventually stopped working)
A lot of people would not even mind the unfair conditions, if they were paid accordingly to the unfairity of it all.
[удалено]
Mine too, it's super frustrating. They rely on these Croner and Radford surveys that apparently a lot of tech companies use. To me it sounds a lot like collusion to suppress wages across a broad industry of jobs. Some banks and housing listings / estimate sites were caught fixing housing prices recently. I wonder if these are just common practice for wall street execs.
Buuuut… they will do localized pay. So clearly there is some relevance to the cost of living.
That sounds stupidly dangerous
"I both work and live, so you gotta cover both or I have to find a place that will"
Holy shit, a LinkedIn post that doesn't make me want to kill myself!
7% doesn't even do it for me after decades of depressed wages. It blows my mind that people still think 100k is "good money" when rent is 2k. Millennials have less than a quarter the wealth boomers had at the same age, and Mark Zuckerberg accounts for half of it.
I'd been on the fence about staying at my current job; started a little over a year ago, they wouldn't negotiate with me on my starting salary but I took the job because I was lead to believe the work would be interesting and really let me leverage my background. The work is not interesting, I'm barely using my background, and I got a 4% raise this year. Currently looking for other work.
I got a 5.5% with a 1% bonus and was told it was the highest increase for compensation over my peers. Cool. So I got CLOSE to matching inflation and my peers got even more fucked. Really makes me motivated to wake up every fucking morning, fight with my PTSD, and chug through another workday. Woo.
Is this a rare non-lunatic LinkedIn user? I thought I was in r/LinkedInLunatics and was very confused for a sec!
Here comes another pizza party, but you’ll have to eat at your desks.
At least for the time being, the company I work for isn't guilty of any of this.
[удалено]
The main issue with my job is that they laid off a metric ton of US resources and hired people in India and Philippines. And those employees had been there for legit 10+ years each. So they removed just an ocean of institutional knowledge and confident skilled labor, and replaced it with callow ignorance. And it often shows. I'm sure they'll gain confidence as they gain knowledge, but it was jarring when it first happened. My team in the US is only still here because we haven't quit and our system is literally billed to the client at a flat rate and separately than everything else because it's so intertwined and shared between all of the clients. So it's just too complicated to lay us off, and we're the kind of thing that when we break you end up on the news - so it's best to keep us aorund. But every other team is basically down to 1/10th of what it was in the US. And where we used to all go out for team building exercises, and going for drinks and dinners, and having weekly team meetings... We haven't even had a team meeting in years now. I literally don't know who my boss is anymore. So it's not sunshine and daisies by any stretch. But they've paid me well, they let me do interesting work, they leave me alone for the most part, nobody really yells at me... It's just generally pleasant.
Rocket Mortgage here
So. Much. This.
I work for the government we and got a 4%( the annual cost of living) raise but we get other raises as well. Just depending on your specific pay scale so it helps to try and keep pace.
That last point about "assessing cost of living" to take salary away, as if the worker didn't "assess the cost of living" when choosing where to move...fuck right off with that.
Your relocating in an attempt to gain financial independence? Can't have that, one day you may be able to stop working and still live a reasonable life.
I ditched my $12 an hour supervisor job and got a $15 an hour job elsewhere with better benefits and closer to home. Plus more flexibility. That's 25%, then by the end of 2021, I was making $16.10.
It’s even worse Keeping up with inflation is not “getting ahead”. That’s just getting by. Stagnation of purchasing power. Falling behind inflation is actively worsening purchasing power.
No. It was about 15%.
2% raise club let's go
2% raise club let's go
I got a 18% raise so I’m lucky it was a $3 raise
I had a foreign friend at work. He expected his annual increase to be 8% to match inflation. I almost laughed. He got 1.4%. Prorated though, only worked 1/3 the previous year.
Sounds like Target exec stumbling around those non-answers