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Employers race to the bottom

hurler32

Everyday im seeing young people in particular who are getting work on ..on temporary contracts , wages are minimum wage, no rights of sick leave not to mention proper holidays or pension. Everything is statutory ie bare minimum.
So the rich Employers, Owners etc get even richer and richer whilst many of the youth or not so young live from hand to mouth each month scavenging in Lidl for specials to survive ...its probably worse outside the Dublin belt where employers can basically pay what they want and treat their staff(Serfs) like sh1t...
Is this the Ireland we want for our sons and daughters?..I understand some smaller operations are operating on tight budgets but theres plenty of companies making huge profits but want to pay their staff minimum minimum whilst the rich get richer...

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Ush1

TallGlass wrote: »

I believe some people have good jobs in IT, but I have yet to find one. That big pool of people out there makes it easy to drop people like a stone.

As long as you're not entry level there is a massive amount of jobs out there at the moment in IT.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Gaillimh1976 wrote: »

The living wage is a farce.

If a law was passed tomorrow that increased the Min Wage to the Living Wage, the only way most SMEs could afford to pay this would be by increasing their prices, therefore the living wage would have to increase again to meet these new prices, which would drive further price increases, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat................

That’s a fairly simplistic view. In a global economy that’s not certain.

The problem is economics isn’t exactly a science. If it were we would be able to know exactly what wage would cause unemployment or inflation and what wouldn’t.

4068ac1elhodqr

Gaillimh1976 wrote: »

The living wage is a farce.

If a law was passed tomorrow that increased the Min Wage to the Living Wage, the only way most SMEs could afford to pay this would be by increasing their prices, therefore the living wage would have to increase again to meet these new prices, which would drive further price increases, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat................

The growing middle class of China has taken hundred of millions out from poverty, that can't be a bad thing?

True the biggest risk to UBI, is (hyper)inflation.
But anti-inflation toolsets do exist to conter this.

Perhaps the 1% that own something like 50% of the world's riches and resources can offer some more to the other 99% of mere mortals.

TallGlass

Drake Freezing Skull wrote: »

Perhaps the 1% that own something like 50% of the world's riches and resources can offer some more to the other 99% of mere mortals.

Hoarding money to appear on rich lists, fúcking sad if you ask me. Then creating businesses so that you can dodge paying your fair share.

wakka12

Sadly that has been the way with every job Ive had

No contract, chasing employer for my wages each week/month, never just ****ing give it, always have to ask, theyre always too busy, its just ****. Im a bit of a pushover and hate confrontation, but its just so scummy to try and avoid giving your workers the minimum wage they deserve for an honest weeks work.Dont ****ing emply people if you cant afford them or dont want to pay them. Thankfully have two nice jobs right now(working two for a variety of skills/experience), the pay is still pretty bad though but not unexpected as an intern, Im just happy Im living at home still so dont have to pay rent.
My heart goes out to young interns working **** job (and probably much mroe than 40 hours a week) to live ina ****ty little overpriced house share in a **** part of dublin with no leftover money to enjoy any nice leisure activites or food or any luxuries what so ever

El Tarangu

hurler32 wrote: »

...those men have been replaced by Romanian,Albanian or illegal North Africans who are sleeping four or five to a room on floorboards hoping to send home a few quid out of their minimum wage to their barefoot family on a hillside in Albania...

This is fantasy

hurler32 wrote: »

Panda bins be a good example, zero Irish staff and I've heard reports of them taking stuff out of bins to eat ...

As is this.

Rents are a gone mad in Dublin with the current shortage of rental properties; other than that, Ireland's economy is doing quite well, and it's workers are paid more and taxed less than in neighbouring countries.

lardzeppelin

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS....
There's loads, but is there the foresight of the individual to be 'work relevant'...
When I was a tot, all we wanted to be was astronauts and train drivers (and I've never known either), what we got instead were blue collar and white collar jobs, and some of the toffs went into banking and legal, very few entrepreneurs in the 70s, unless you were taking over a handful of fishing boats or the old man's garage...
Things were made in Britain, in massive factories which had a unionized work force (closed shop), and your shop steward was your father, brother and best friend rolled into one, because unioins achieved more than they lost 'in there time of relevance'...
Fast forward 40 years to a completely different workscape, mini and micro business, sole traders, foreign businesses with overseas working sensibilities and practices... The job market has changed beyond all recognition from when my father talked of 'a job for life', and even from when I would walk in and out of a job interview inside a half hour with a start date and time to my name...
What is key now is 'work relevance', are you employable, will you be prepared to meet the needs of the work market, or do you think the world owes you that dot com millionaire job... The world owes you nothing, you owe it to yourself to be employable, and society too if you have a modicum of pride and self worth...
I trained to be a mechanic, worked my way up through the ranks only to be made unemployed at the age of 53, no work for spanner jockeys, even bloody good ones in 2012, I trained up, and went back to school, got my qualifications to become a care and support worker in the disability sector....ive never been busier or earned more (and that's on a zero hour contract) ...
There's paying work if you put yourself out for it, employers are not the be all and end all of employment woes, the problem is often much closer to home...

4068ac1elhodqr

El Tarangu wrote: »

Rents are a gone mad in Dublin with the current shortage of rental properties; other than that, Ireland's economy is doing quite well, and it's workers are paid more and taxed less than in neighbouring countries.

Even if salaries are slightly higher than neighbours e.g. UK, is the quality of life index really any better if a much much larger % net spend goes directly on accomodation.

Bear in mind there they have a fully free health service, probably better public services, transport, infrastructure and such. Other EU states have better child-care, work rights, more holidays etc.

Turtwig

TheDoc wrote: »

Just the very obvious result of a more global economy, open economy and markets driven by underlying technology advancements.

There will be people that will reference old union movements or slogans, but this is the world we live in now, and it was obviously turning this way since I was in secondary school, when I chose my career in IT and knew what that path would provide.

Your competing with a global labour force, not a domestic one. The old trope of Ireland being attractive for its educated workforce, and speaking fluent English largely exposed for the semi-falacy that it was. Plenty of information now from the likes of Google, Facebook and other big foreign companies who have setup here, showing predominately work forces built up of non domestic labour.

Our workforce is going to need to get more mobile, more agile and basically catch up a bit.

Can still see from people my age, or a bit younger, this sense of entitlement from what they believe should have been the case. That they can't afford to live in Dublin, or they cant get work they want that should be paying X.

I'd argue though on the flipside, it's never been a more employee driven marketplace than now in a lot of sectors. I know for myself in IT, there is an abundance of jobs out there, and if I decided to move tomorrow, I'd have a pick of where to go, with companies trying to impress me. Not like say ten years ago where I'd be sweating for an interview and having to impress the **** out of some interview panel, as it was the only job I'd seen in my field for months.

While the race to the bottom might well be happening in some areas and sectors, in others I don't think its ever been better. In some sectors there is no real excuse for not being able to get work in a company that will value you and look after you.

Think in these talks its always worth pinpointing if we are talking generally or talking about a certain job type, role or sector.

Like the OP even makes reference to what I'm talking about in terms of a sense of entitlement or expectation based on legacy stuff. "Scraping by to survive on Lidl specials". For many it's some assumption that people shopping there or poverty striken, in financial crisis or tight ****s with their money.

For others, its a realisation that we were being ripped off before they came into the market.

While it's all well and good in the lighthouse sector. The problem is there just aren't enough darn lighthouses to employ everyone. Nor is there a need for more to be built.

Wages and living may - I want to emphasize may- become a significant problem in the future with increasing automaton and efficiency. The issue is how society plans for it.

lordlame

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Basically this is a long winded “I’m alright jack”.

The tide will turn in IT as well as it always does, often going against the other business cycles.

The tide WILL turn eventually

The sense of entitlement from people in the IT work force is comical

realdanbreen

Liam Clean Wench wrote: »

Totally agree. Hard won workers' rights seem to be getting lost at an alarming rate. Contracts, unpaid internships, zero hour agreements, not to mention the increasing practise of employees regularly working far more than their contracted hours have really seen the world of work slip backwards.

The notion of a 9-5 job is sneered at by a lot of people nowadays, but at least it gave people a proper work/life balance, security and rights.

Meanwhile the fatcat union hierarchy get fatter not to mention the union bosses that retired in mid their mid 50's on mega pensions and settlements.

Mrs OBumble

hurler32 wrote: »

Look at building sites in Dublin, gone are the days of Dublin, Wicklow,etc men earning a decent wage rearing a family in what was a traditional working class Housing estate or village...those men have been replaced by Romanian,Albanian or illegal North Africans who are sleeping four or five to a room on floorboards hoping to send home a few quid out of their minimum wage to their barefoot family on a hillside in Albania...

Similar to what Irish workers were happy to do in England in earlier days.

rachaelf750

mikemac2 wrote: »

In 1999 (yeah I’m old) I was earning the princely sum of 2.50 punts an hour as a kitchen porter

Kitchen porter is an awful job and you’d wreck your body doing it. I threatened to quit and got a raise to 3 punts per hour. What’s this, under 3.50 euro per hour or so

Mary Harney bless her introduced the national minimum wage and was attacked by every employer lobby group. My wage shot up and till this day I won’t hear a bad word against her. One of the finest politicians the Dail had in the last twenty years

You can thank her for that too.

JMNolan

lordlame wrote: »

The tide WILL turn eventually

The sense of entitlement from people in the IT work force is comical

We are fucking great though :pac:

c68zapdsm5i1ru

awec wrote: »

THey're busy making sure civil servants don't have to work 37 hours a week.

I'm surprised that a moderator would attempt to turn this thread into another civil servant bashing one.

jimgoose

lordlame wrote: »

The sense of entitlement from people in the IT work force is comical

6a00d83451b52369e2019b03296647970d-550wi

TheDoc

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Basically this is a long winded “I’m alright jack”.

The tide will turn in IT as well as it always does, often going against the other business cycles.

Well that's why I'm saying it helps to define what areas people are talking about.

In my circles there is a broad range of careers and proffesions. From my group of lads we have solicitors and banking execs, an acturist, primary school teachers, me the sole IT dude, builders and a host of other stuff.

Everyone on the up doing well, so its a range of groups all looking pretty good from the limited view I've got. So what are we talking about here?

The only scope I don't have directly is retail. Is that what we are talking about? And if so, its the same issues present from 15 years ago, or 18 years ago, when I worked in retail myself.

So hence why I say it's good to know what we are talking about. Is it genuine new trends or issues, or the stuff that's being complained about for about 20 years.

TheDoc

Turtwig wrote: »

While it's all well and good in the lighthouse sector. The problem is there just aren't enough darn lighthouses to employ everyone. Nor is there a need for more to be built.

Wages and living may - I want to emphasize may- become a significant problem in the future with increasing automaton and efficiency. The issue is how society plans for it.

Real and genuine concerns when it comes to automation, but I think the scaremongering can be a bit much.

"A machine is going to take my job".

Where maybe the reality is that yeah while a machine may take the job you were doing, you'll get a different job, or a new job, or trained or skilled into something else.

A core of my role is Business Process, and business process automation.

I've never automated a process whereby an endgoal or target was to remove an actual employee or salary cost, but automating. All the stuff I do in automation and workflow design and implementation, and process improvement, is to remove monotonous overhead and downtime from staff, so they can basically do more important things with their time, and its normal stuff they are more interested in or requires their knowledge and skillsets.

Of course that's specific and centric to me and my world, but "automation" sometimes gets miscast as basically a machine coming to replace someone at a conveyor belt in a factory, when thats not the reality in most cases.

TheDoc

lordlame wrote: »

The tide WILL turn eventually

The sense of entitlement from people in the IT work force is comical

Say what now?

draiochtanois

This post has been deleted.

weisses

draiochtanois wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

And those killing the machines

#sarahconnor#SIPTU

Ash.J.Williams

hurler32 wrote: »

Look at building sites in Dublin, gone are the days of Dublin, Wicklow,etc men earning a decent wage rearing a family in what was a traditional working class Housing estate or village...those men have been replaced by Romanian,Albanian or illegal North Africans who are sleeping four or five to a room on floorboards hoping to send home a few quid out of their minimum wage to their barefoot family on a hillside in Albania...meanwhile the Dublin Building companys owners are picking out 182 Landcruisers for their bosses....

I'M confused, in the 80's irish lads who are sleeping four or five to a room on floorboards hoping to send home a few quid out of their minimum wage to their barefoot family on a hillside in Wicklow were great lads.

CrankyHaus

TheDoc wrote: »

Real and genuine concerns when it comes to automation, but I think the scaremongering can be a bit much.

"A machine is going to take my job".

Where maybe the reality is that yeah while a machine may take the job you were doing, you'll get a different job, or a new job, or trained or skilled into something else.

A core of my role is Business Process, and business process automation.

I've never automated a process whereby an endgoal or target was to remove an actual employee or salary cost, but automating. All the stuff I do in automation and workflow design and implementation, and process improvement, is to remove monotonous overhead and downtime from staff, so they can basically do more important things with their time, and its normal stuff they are more interested in or requires their knowledge and skillsets.

Of course that's specific and centric to me and my world, but "automation" sometimes gets miscast as basically a machine coming to replace someone at a conveyor belt in a factory, when thats not the reality in most cases.

This is a good point. Media love to chase clicks and readers with scaremongering about automation.

However historically technology that performed human's jobs increased worker profitability (and income) while creating other jobs.

A good example is Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath. Okie farmers get kicked off dustbowl land and are replaced by one man on a tractor. Seeking farm work in California they endure great poverty. In reality many of the Okies who emigrated to California and elsewhere eventually ended up employed in nascent industries and doing far better than they ever would have done farming back in Oklahoma.

Automation poses new challenges certainly but they are far from insurmountable and much of the claims of what automation can do now or in the very near future are based on Silicon Valley hype.

markodaly

Liam Clean Wench wrote: »

Totally agree. Hard won workers' rights seem to be getting lost at an alarming rate. Contracts, unpaid internships, zero hour agreements, not to mention the increasing practise of employees regularly working far more than their contracted hours have really seen the world of work slip backwards.

The notion of a 9-5 job is sneered at by a lot of people nowadays, but at least it gave people a proper work/life balance, security and rights.

Zero hour agreements are more or less illegal now and at their peak did not even employ .5% of the workforce.

The people peddling this stuff is selling fear. They are taking a leaf out of Trumps populist playbook.

weldoninhio

JMNolan wrote: »

You'd have to wonder what the trade union movement is up to these days? Seems to have died out to be honest.

Screwing with the transport infrastructure of the country. See CIE, Iarnrod Eireann, Dublin Bus etc.

markodaly

seamus wrote: »

These multinationals bring their US employment ethics with them - i.e. treat your employees as slaves -

What horse **** is this?

I have worked all my life for a mix of Irish companies and American Multinationals and the multinationals give far better benefits, pensions, health insurance, wages and so on.

Large Irish companies are mediocre at best in comparison.

The large American multinationals are the best employers in the state bar none (perhaps the ESB being the only exception to this rule)

As usual Seamus, you don't know what you are talking about.

markodaly

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Basically this is a long winded “I’m alright jack”.

The tide will turn in IT as well as it always does, often going against the other business cycles.

I think its the case of people making bad life choices especially in their 3rd level education.

Do you want to get ahead and earn a good living, then maybe ditch that arts or gender studies degree and study something useful and practical where it can make you much more employable.

Stupid Arts students are a dime a dozen but an IT professional with a few years of SAP or DevOps under their belt, a different thing entirely.

markodaly

lordlame wrote: »

The tide WILL turn eventually

The sense of entitlement from people in the IT work force is comical

Here are some lemons.

Enjoy!

lordlame

markodaly wrote: »

Here are some lemons.

Enjoy!

I’ve 15 years experience in IT - no lemons needed here but thanks

[Deleted User]

There is definitely something happening but its hard to quantify.

People are missing the subtly of it as well, let's say in company x there was never a culture of staying on or if someone had to it was rare or rewarded in some way but somehow over the years the younger people coming in are more union averse or associate unions with their parents generation or even worse have never really heard of unions, they are also more flexible and don't see the work as job for life they are going to be moving around.

They work late, in fact, think it normal, thus it becomes normalised for everyone they are not particularly bothered they only investing a few years in that job and they will be moving on and upwards and in few years they are in a senior position and believer unions are for the plebs.

They often have a road to Damascus conversion about staying on or late in work whey they have children though.

When people had a job for life they identified with the company more and were more invested in the conditions of employment because they were going to be there a long time flexibility does not incentivise anyone to care enough about the conditions of employment.