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Jetsons predicted this
I have bad eye sight…I read the screen behind her as “Japanese fried children” suddenly I knew I had misread that. Like there’s no way New York would stoop that low and be that cruel to children. I corrected myself before any other thought occurred actually. But it was momentarily disturbing.
this is simply cool and good
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Yeah, that’s how labor exploitation works
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This is going to be the response to “work from home”
Cashiers fought for WFH?
If you’re talking about other sectors, it’s been done before (off-shoring in the 2000s).
Yeah but he reminding us “that daddy can do it anytime to you”
U feel me?
Ah yes, it’s the minorities who are stealing jobs. Not the lack of regulations blocking corpos from outsourcing work.
And black jobs, too!
/s
Shhhh don’t say that part. We’re supposed to hate each other.
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What happens when you join the zoom id listed?
The host denies you access. I just tried, waited for 5 minutes before being denied access.
Does this mean I can give the cashier a 50 cent tip and I can get her number for laters?
Yeah it’s definitely dystopian that someone in the Philippines gets to earn a living 🙄
hope your job never gets offshored
you: “Yeah I lost my job, but hey, now someone in India gets to earn a living…can you help me prop up my cardboard box to keep the rain out? thanks.”
I agree it sucks that anyone would lose their job, but why is the default of people in the “west” having well paid, air conditioned jobs, and other people getting those jobs stealing from them.
The default is locals having the job.
Why should it remain that way?
Because the surplus from this change is going to the owner and not the workers.
It’s in NYC, I would not assume the owner is financially stable. Small businesses struggle because of two main costs, rent and labor
Since we’re discussing the default, I’d assume average NYC everything. If a restaurant can’t afford to pay minimum wage for the area, then I wouldn’t assume their business is a good use of space.
How is this my problem?
Nobody ask how my budget at home work when I negotiate my salary.
Financial viability of a shiti business is the “owners” problem.
They never include me when they accounting them profits tho ;)
I wonder why dear?
Jobs are not a finite resource. If there is a pool of people who want to work, someone will find stuff to pay them to do.
I seriously would love for my entire current set of job responsibilities to be automated. There are a couple of value-adding full-time jobs’ worth of work I could be doing for my employer that are just being left on the table right now.
Well this is just absolutely untrue. If there’s a pool of people who want to work then someone will just give them a job? what kind of magical unicorn world are you living in? So in your world unemployment rates just…don’t exist or are a fabrication? those people are just lazy?
If you got fired from your job and you couldn’t find another one, in your head, whose fault is that? yours? the mythical job provider who hasn’t blessed you with another?
If I ran a business and was provided the option of hiring you or someone in another country for peanuts, I’d tell you to kick grass.
But you want to work I hear you say! someone HAS to pay me to do something! nope, I’m not going to pay you, I’m going to pay this kid in India or his brother that just got off the plane half of what I would have to pay you.
Welcome to the real world.
it is not the way the world has to work just because it’s the way the world currently works
There will always be some level of unemployment (a percentage of people who want job a won’t have found one), but if automation made the unemployment rate permanently go up, all the people who used to hand knit socks who lost jobs to powered looms, all the people who used to drive plows with oxen who lost jobs to combines, all the blacksmiths who lost jobs to powered forges, and equivalent percentage of the population for subsequent generations forever would remain unemployed. And yet, somehow, subsequent generations have managed to mostly find jobs.
Capitalism’s spatial fix.
If my initial reaction is “that’s too bad”, does it make me greedy?
Like, I don’t think US workers are more deserving as human beings than anyone else… but a part of me knows hardcore globalization would hurt people geographically close to me… I’m like some national relativist or something?
I feel like I should want everyone to win regardless of where they were born. And $3/hr is huge vs. the $6/day min wage in parts of PH. Know friends’ friends are farming rice for six bucks a day.
Everything in the US is already expensive, that “great wage going to a Filipino/a” is at the expense of a person in their own hometown not having a job.
Too bad? Put the shoe on your other foot. If we in the US ban imported rice to protect our farmers, would you and friends feel comfortable in that time things take to adjust? The loss of income?
How far does $6/day go in the Philippines? I can tell you how far it goes in NYC.
I don’t know what to think because I want everyone to win, but it’s hard to deny I’m biased towards my countrymen here stateside.
Re-reading my comment, did it sound like I meant:
it’s too bad this job is being outsourced
or
psh, too bad, this is the reality of a global world!
I did mean the first one.
I should want everyone to win but I’m biased towards Americans in situations like this - and I don’t know if I can justify it, if I can universalize the maxim.
I understood you meant the first one. I’m also biased towards the people of my former home city.
There are several sources that collude to raise prices for the average New Yorker, rent and food amongst them. I’m not at all blaming the lady taking the job remotely, there is pain in financing & operating the business, for the employees in getting to and from, and getting paid close to what their work is actually worth.
The bitch is that none of this system is voluntary. Work or starve, how inhumane.
Things in america should be more expensive. We do not pay for the full cost of what all of our goods and services cost, mainly due to exploitative measures like in this post.
You can double down all you want but the real answer is that we just shouldn’t be able to buy nearly as much stuff as we do. We love being consumers anf watching the trash heap grow, while we take advantage of anyone smaller than us in any remote corner of the Earth.
At no point have I ever said our excessive consumerism is good, only that people shouldn’t be competing internationally for an in-person job.
Having been raised in NYC, I can tell you directly that the job market is a bit fierce, and I think offshoring basic service jobs is terrible for everyone involved, owner included.
I agree with your post but wanted to add that I think we are starting to realize the effects of cutting out relationships with people in our community.
I suppose thats just another aspect of offshoring that is problematic.
It’s a race to the bottom, which I’d call a systematic bug.
Who’s buying anything fun when nobody has a job? So yeah, I agree with what you’re saying too.
What you shluldve wanting is some Phillipino employer to pay the lady what shes worth, and the American business to hire an American
the problem is it circumvents minimum wage laws. They’re employing a person so they should be paying them the appropriate wages to do business in new york or the US. They’re also benefitting from payroll/income taxes but not paying into the programs.
Good point!
Are call centers the same way? And any company relying on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms?
Would be a lotta layoffs overseas if we restricted all foreign labor making less than local minimum wage. Is that a fair trade off? (Not being facetious, genuine question again)
Oh one thing that’s kinda messed up is when tech companies go through consultancies to hire workers in India, the consulting companies take HALF!! Wild!
Yes it is a fair tradeoff. Any time we make a law we’re raising the cost of goods and services here. If there’s no regulation or import taxes to balance prices with outside the jurisdiction, then the “race to the bottom” de facto negates the law in question.
So if we ban XYZ here, but allow untaxed imports from countries with XYZ, then we haven’t really banned it - we just moved it.
I would just unplug the camera and computer. Every day. Even if I wasn’t buying anything.
Fuck this business.
Be sure to wear gloves.
Why?
Because you don’t want to leave fingerprints behind when you unplug something on camera.
It’s not illegal to unplug something
Actually, it could be. That could be considered vandalism (you’re intentionally making unauthorized modifications to equipment to prevent it from working as expected) which is illegal.
But this is New York, so who knows if they would even enforce that.
They can just plug it back in. It’ll be ok.
Oh, I guess if you can just plug it back in, that just invalidates the downtime that was caused or data being lost.
Being able to undo vandalism doesn’t make it suddenly not vandalism.
No, at worst, it would be criminal mischief. Criminal mischief with $0 in property damage…
So people can just unplug cables at data centers because it’s “$0 property damage criminal mischief”?
Come on, their lawyers would (successfully) argue that they experienced loss of revenue for any amount of time their remote cashier system was not connected and operational…
Secret…agent man!
Hi
Oh sorry, I didn’t mean you, not-so-secret agent man
They use fingerprints for murder cases, not camera unplugging cases.
Also, this lady now has a job and you’re talking about ruining her job.
Man wtf is this shit jfc…
I want to upvote the first half of this and downvote the second half.
You’re significantly overestimating the police response to a non-vandalism.
Edit: In nyc, they don’t even finger print for an actual vandalism…
Because a person 8000 miles away can’t wipe down anything so the place has to be dirty
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Ya because they totally won’t cut corners to save a buck
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I’d presume they have a few cashiers from the Philippines but at least one person managing the store.
shouldn’t the federal minimum wage apply to everyone who is doing work in the US? This seems like fraud
$3 is loads more than the Philippines minimum wage. I think it’s $8-$10 per day.
Also, y’all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
I’ll ask my wife when she gets home, but I bet $3 is equivalent to $10-$12 in the US.
Okay. Imagine the purchasing power of someone who made the NYC minimum wage of $16/hr.
Maybe pay people for their time, not what the exchange rate “might” be.
If I’m paying NYC minimum wages, I’m getting someone from NYC, in NYC.
Sorry lady from the Phillipines. You’re out of a job because they put in this new “outsourcing must be at local wage rates” law.
Do you think anybody in NYC would cry over this?
I am not sure why anyone in NYC would care about
Sorry lady from the Phillipines. You’re out of a job because they put in this new “outsourcing must be at local wage rates” law.
Lol what is your angle here
Why are people from NYC more deserving of a job than her?
NYC more deserving
That ain’t how this works. If somebody is has some sort of special skill that is needed or there is a shortage, fine.
But using foreign labor to lower wages locally, is just a bad policy for the state and for the workers, only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Have you seen nearly Facebook America? They regularly vote against their own interests. Wouldn’t surprise me at all that the same people are the ones barely making ends meet, are advocating against unions, being pro corporate business, and laughing all the way to bankruptcy and homelessness day by day because it makes them feel superior to just one person.
only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
I know this isn’t what you meant. But you know de-localizing jobs would probably have the effect of lowering rents.
only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
And the people who are now employed, and their local community that they spend that money in.
Again why is someone in NYC more deserving of it than someone else?
Depends on the region, lowest is about 350 php or 6 usd per day. Most of the call centers are in the big cities however where wages are a bit higher and they well enough to be thought of as a decent job.
I mean, yeah probably. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s a race to the bottom for people living in higher cost-of-living places.
I really don’t care how much buying power they have over there. A fair days work here in the US should be paid in turn.
And flood the islands with US currency? Seems that would lead to massive inflation and hurt the people not working “in” the US.
So what your saying is they should be paid less because their currency is trash? That’s a logical fallacy.
Well, if you’re gonna advocate for people, you should care what their experience is.
No, you can always advocate for someone to get paid more regardless of your knowledge of conversion rates.
Also, y’all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
You misunderstand. We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity. There is no reason to use a teleconferenced cashier for a retail location other than minimizing employee pay, not just by paying the minimum required here but literally taking a local job and shipping it overseas so you can instead pay what would be a clear poverty wage here, while undoubtedly having record profits like all these companies end up with.
Everyone complains about small businesses being driven out, especially in NYC. Their two biggest costs are rent and labor, so of course they try to minimize both of them.
You know what’s cheaper than hiring a cashier and teleconferencing them from the Philippines?
The owner running the cash register. You know, like nearly every non-chain restaurant in the country.
Owner could be the chef, it you know, might not want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week
Then don’t open a restaurant if you can’t even afford the minimal staff to run it.
They found a way to make it work.
We aren’t unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that’s obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity
This makes it sound like your problem isn’t someone getting hurt; it’s someone doing well.
So, there actually is a reason to do this beyond pay, but clearly pay is the actual reason they do it.
A restaurant has a set amount of staff. What happens if a few are sick and they have trouble finding someone to fill in?
A remote agent like this could be from a larger organization being contracted out and you’d never have to worry about not having someone to be available.
Edit: 1 person could even be managing multiple stores where they queue the person to assist you as it detects you approaching. Less ideal would be ‘someone will be available in 45 seconds’ type queuing.
Or they just hire enough staff to run the business in the first place. Something that used to just be how you operated a business. If the business wants to gamble on regularly operating without enough employees to cover multiple sick calls then they need to deal with the results of that decision.
Pull from other locations to cover, or God forbid, a manager actually covers a shift, or just close the location for a day if they cannot cover it. You know, what every business that operates with employees deals with.
You’re making excuses and trying to find a justification for a fucking disgraceful, greedy choice by the owner of this business.
No I’m not, you’re just jumping to conclusions. I clearly said it’s obviously about the pay.
The actual idea has potential merit like it or not. It doesn’t have to be scummy. It could be a US based corporation that pays US employees the same or more than what they’d get paid to be there in person.
The employee as I said could be managing more than 1 store, thus be providing more valuable work, and thus earning even more than they’d be earning at the restaurant, or 711, or wherever.
And they could be doing it from the comfort of their home making for a happier employee.
It just turns out that the way this has been implemented has been terrible and exploitative.
Edit: it could even be numerous ipad based kiosks around a mall where you could talk to someone and ask questions about the mall, without having to find and go to the info booth that’s in a single spot (that could also have an actual person there for those that want that). There’d always be someone available since there’d be multiple people for multiple malls all trained on each mall.
how would you distinguish this from regular outsourcing
Outsourcing is the problem.
The owners take advantage of our commons, tear up our roads, and succeeded because of domestic infrastructure, only to refuse to pay full price for labor and allowing even those wages, in lieu of the taxes they bribe our government to enact loopholes to dodge, to “trickle down” domestically as their always bullshit yay market capitalism talking points lied?
It’s absolutely clownshoes that outsourcing labor/manufacturing is allowed, not because of domestic shortages for a skill, but to explicitly pay pennies on the dollar for the employees you need and screw the country you don’t want to pay taxes to despite record profits even harder.
It’s insane. But we let the owner class dictate whatever they want here, and our well bribed government will even sell it for them by calling it “something something freedom” while never mentioning social consequences, accountability, or responsibility. We aren’t so much a country as a piggy bank and cudgel for the global owner class.
Borders are violence
I agree, and I’m for dismantling them.
But capitalism has to go with them. Because as it is, the owner class already enjoys a borderlees world, while manipulating those borders against everyone else.
Borders exist solely to maintain and enhance the power of a nation state’s elite. If a people allow an elite class to rise without check, borders will always be inevitable.
Something something candlemaker’s petition
For those in WTF.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/candle-makers-petition.asp
That the neat thing, you don’t.
Here, for certain industries (might be all but I don’t have first hand accounts of that), the contractors must make sure that the companies/freelancers they employ pay their taxes, otherwise, they are on the hook for it.
Do the same. If a company outsource work, they should prove that they pay the same as they would in their region, and if it not, be hit hard by fines and/or jail time.
But one can only dream I guess
Should apply to that as well if they’re interacting with the US market. All the way through subcontractors to the end employee. No hiding behind contracting local companies.
i don’t like outsourcing either, but realistically the machine of capitalism isn’t going to allow you to be rid of it in its entirety
honestly i don’t even know if getting rid of multinational organisations is on the whole a good thing, and that’s the only way i can see of getting rid of outsourcing
Outsourcing entirely being gone isn’t realistic… But there’s a huge difference between moving an entire team of say developers to India and having a worker teleconference in to be a cashier. Anyone directly interacting with a customer or end user in any capacity should be paid the same as a local employee in the location they’re “working”.
A Telecashier is fucking stupid and ridiculous.
yesssssss, but i don’t know how you’d make a legal distinction between those two
then again i’m not a law talking guy so what do i know
Remember when we learned that Amazon’s “just put it in your cart to buy” algorithm was really just a bunch of people in India watching you shop on the store surveillance system? That was, like 3 months ago maybe??
but realistically the machine of capitalism isn’t going to allow you to be rid of it in its entirety
Who said anything about that? We’re just talking about putting tariffs on outsourced labor to correct for negative externalities.
We may not agree with it, but this is exactly the same thing as an overseas call center. They’re not physically located in the US and are not subject to any laws here.
This practice is rampant across industries and only getting worse. We must demand an end to it through legislation.
They aren’t doing work in the US though.
That is naive. I hope you don’t have any employees
I’m not a fan of this, it’s definitely not great, but I’ve tested the AI drive through lanes, not the worst possible future.
Sure, it might be convenient, but our society is not structured in a way that allows this to work. We need deep, deep social support or people will suffer greatly
I don’t think anyone ever said anything about it being convenient. I’m pretty sure I specifically said it was bad just not as bad as it could be.
