I've never been the same since it clicked in me that welfare payments are used in a huge part to subsidise the businesses that refuse to pay more than minimum wage. So when the news trumpets that "$COMPANY has made record profits this year", all I hear is a story about how much profit that company has made while also receiving an indirect government bailout.
It does seem like a company shouldn't be able to take/distribute profit until it's repaid all the federal and state programs that the employees rely on.
what's screwed up is at 2010 a month it also disqualifies you from Medicaid in states that have low income eligibility. It's not uncommon that if you aren't getting benefits to self cap your hours at 20-25 hours a week because any more and you lose federal aid, so its cheaper for them to actually work /less/. All stemming from the companies inability to let their workers work.
Yep, these effects are called welfare traps. It's why benefits shouldn't have hard thresholds, but instead taper off gradually as income increases.
Although in the case of health care, it should obviously be universal in the same way that every other developed country implements it.
I mean, the better solution is for everyone to get benefits with no taper. That way there's never any trap and no one has to worry about covering essentials.
Give everyone... ghasp, socialism!
So this has been the case for over twenty years now with people "discovering" this well known and well documented practice of keeping employees below full time to keep them from giving benefits every couple of years. Hell it was exactly like this when my sister was working there as a teenager.
I mean this is kind of what is wrong with America honestly, memories of a gold fish and one of the reasons why no progress ever gets made.
Tying benefits to employers is idiotic. Even if you want to tie benefits to work requirements, this system fucks the millions of people with multiple part-time jobs.
it's accomplishing exactly what it's designed to
Yup. I worked at Target circa 2010 and it was the same. I was scheduled 38 hours a week, and you would get written up if you were late clocking out.
Back in 1960, the minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the cost of the average US home was $11,000.00.
When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, 'middle class' was defined as one job paying for a house, a car, and enough money to send the kids to college. In those days $1 million was considered a vast fortune. After five GOP Presidential terms, middle class was two incomes to support a family of four, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
my parents had thier first house in the 80s for 120k, so it fits. it drastically went up in the 90s if they bought it.
That is quite a sum in the 80s. My grand parents bought a 2 bdrm condo for about $20k. It took them a while to save up like $10k and they still had a loan. The loan was also at something like 13% rate.
This is how you radicalize a generation btw.
This has been going on for 20 years. Still waiting for that radicalized generation
More than that. But yeah, clearly they've figured out a formula to keep people poor and apathetic. So many people don't vote because they don't want to get involved in politics. Too bad, cause politics is involved in you - and it's fucking you over.
Where I work you can only work temporarily for 2 years before they automatically get a permanent contract (it's UK law basically). I got a colleague come to me for support yesterday saying he's been told his contract won't be renewed beyond 1year+11months and they're going to advertise to hire another person into the role (presumably for another 1 yr + 11 m).
They do this at our Post Office.
The Union says you must get a raise after 12 months of continuous employment.
Well wouldn't you know it. They only write contracts for 50 weeks employment and 0 PTO. They phrase this contract as if it's how they "gift" you 2 weeks of vacation. My coworkers didn't understand it until we got to week 49...
That sounds like it might be a place with somewhat robust worker’s protections, at least on paper. Are there mechanisms to prevent employers gaming the system like that?
I've been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business. Fortunately, it meant that not a single one of my dollars went into their greedy, overstuffed pockets.
I’ve been boycotting WalMart for 25 years, but regrettably this has not put them out of business.
Something for "free market" cargo-cultists to remember, when they try to pretend that boycotts are a substitute for effective government regulation.
Exactly! Individual consumer action is close to meaningless, but regulations are broad and sweeping
But if you live in the USA your taxes go to subsidize the wages of their employees through Medicaid and SNAP. We need to do more than boycott but most of us are too tired and broke to do even that much. Good job on doing what you can
luckily walmart is allergic to our high tax counties, so there are non in a 50+mil radius, although the alternative is kinda bad too, just bougie markets popping up, ther prices are usually high.
Many places won't rent to someone that cannot prove monthly income greater than 3x the rent.
Walmart plans for extraordinarily high turnover. If the median worker is there longer than a year, they are overpaying for labor. If less than a year, they'll bring on new workers at higher rates than their experienced workers. Why give the experienced people higher pay when they've proven they will stay on at less?
Walmart is one of the scummiest employers on the planet, and they have an outsized influence on the rest of the labor market.
sounds like the required benefits are limiting peoples income and companies are just finding way around it. I still don't know why Americans think medical should be tied to employment. Why not remove these required benefits from the employer and find another solution.
Luckily there are multiple functioning health care systems around the world to take inspiration from.
This is not a new thing. There's a documentary from 2005 called "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" that goes into detail about similar actions they were taking back then.
I'm sure it's gotten progressively worse these last 20 years since
All of my life I been lied to
Just found out my boss makes 500 times what I do
And still wants to cut my hours back
To 39 and three quarters 'cause 40 gets you a health plan
And I got a feelin' I'm a need it
Losin' feelin' in my knees and my lower back
And I'm going back, trapped like a lower class clown
Hold a rat down, so we kill each other over cheddar
Keep us hungry so we never organize for nothing better
Just make it through the day, make it through the week
-- You Say Millionaire Like It's a Good Thing, Guante
What we as a society can do is create fertile conditions for unionizing to stop stuff like this.
What we can also do is incentivize worker co-ops.
Tips help the owner not the employee.
Why are there even brackets and thresholds for benefits? It should be a linear scale. 1 hour of work = 1/40th, 29h = 29/40, 30h = 30/40th etc.
Because fuck the poor!
Also we have a similar, but nowhere near a bad so called benefit cliff in the uk
Or perhaps the "benefits" should be from government and not employer.
nO 1 wAnTs 2 wOrK nE mOaR!!!1!11!
Otherwise known as corporate welfare.
When I worked as a restocker at a grocery store, they planned the majority of us for 3 hours a day (we were mostly minors so we didn't know better), from 17:00 till 20:00. Because, at 3.5 hours, you were entitled to a 30 minute break, and even tho it was an unpaid break they still didn't want you to take it. Did you get a lot more stuff then normal and so you had to work overtime? Tough shit, you still ain't getting that break even tho it's now 21:00
Sometimes they would even cut some people their hours back if they felt that they weren't working hard enough (again, we were minors, some of us making 4 bucks an hour, they were that petty). Fuck this system
Seems the answer would be to end exemptions like this for companies with gross revenues or profits over certain figures that people smarter than me can figure out.
Stop tying health benefits to employment. Universal healthcare solves about 90% of this problem.
or nationalize them and make the workers own the corp
Shareholder profits over people. Got to find Grandpa's golf outings in retirement... 🫠 I can only imagine them attempting to get healthcare
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