A lot of cattle ranchers are being put out of business because the meat packing business is able to dictate price to the ranchers. There is demand for beef, but the meat packers are getting all the profits, not the ranchers. The ranchers do all the work and shoulder all the risks, only to be ripped off by the conglomerates. It’s not just the meat packing industry. Many industries drive their workers to strike by paying them low wages and doing things to make life hard for them. I worked briefly in a factory as a temp worker because their regular workers were on strike. They were yelling, “scab, scab, scab” as I drove through the picket lines. The assembly lines were set up so that they made us workers move at all kinds of awkward angles and to move too fast for their workers to be able to stay up with the work load. I was on Haldol at the time, so I was moving really slow. Some guys worked there for just one day and then quit. I held on for three days, until I got fired. I’d be willing to bet that factory owner ended up hiring immigrant labor that he could get away with paying substandard wages to. If they gave most of the illegals full citizenship the factory owners couldn’t get away with that. I don’t know how consumers are making out at the grocery store, but many of these low paying industries are really taking advantage right now.
Have you ever read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair? It tells about the meat packing industry in the US around the 1920s. It’s a very good book and talks about how the workers were used and then discarded by the industry.
I haven’t read it, but I think it is lurking somewhere in my room.
I used to do envelope stuffing for when I didn’t have any printing jobs.
Screw that. That and Risperdal do not mix. You had to move a hundred miles an hour never to see the end.
They didn’t care how many paper cuts you got.
My mom worked 19 years as a short order cook with minimal and sparse raises. She would even go in 20 minutes early unpaid to get things ready before they opened. I loved the attitude of my mom’s co-worker, this worker told customers right out that she was paid by the hour and not by the customer if orders were taking a little longer. My mom busted her arse for her employers and for nothing. Food industry workers really are abused unless they have the balls to put the casino going employer in their places.
I think the kind of work ethic your mom had was more common back in the day. I think a lot of it was that people didn’t believe or didn’t know there was something better. Now people are greedier. Personally, I’m in no position to blame anyone for not working because I haven’t worked that much myself. I’m not too worried about it. I am pretty sick. People get exhausted from having to be around me. One guy once told me, “I’m afraid if I get to close to you my head might explode.” Either that, or he would go to sleep. I have that effect on some people too. I think it is because I am withdrawn and unresponsive to social cues. That makes people sleepy.
I’m not witty. I can handle this forum but irl conversations I get frustrated really quickly if it moves too fast. Can’t keep up.
Yes. It is so much easier to communicate on this site because I am so tense around people.
Way, way easier. I can take my time to reply and my anxiety is close to zero when I am on the forum. It’s not the same as real life relationships but honestly I am super grateful for it.
Not a great industry to work in if you’re not the owner of the restaurant. Still not great if you’re the owner, but at least you have the prospect of a livable wage someday – the employees don’t.
Was that one of your reasons to leave that industry? I am sure you are a great cook but if it isn’t sustainable what is the bleeping point.
A prep cook managed to blow up the section of the kitchen I was standing in at that particular moment. That is why you always check the pilot light before turning on a gas appliance.
Jc!
That’s pretty wicked. And I am sure the fire suppression system was inoperable.
No, it worked just fine. They pulled me out of the wall I was embedded in after the suppression system was triggered so I wouldn’t suffocate. It made the spinal injury worse. I don’t remember that. There was flash and then I was in the hospital.
Regarding industry in general, the requirement of production in an economy to give value to money traps everyone in a situation where we have to produce as much stuff as we can even if the money we make barely gets us the stuff we need to survive. If we ask for more money then they say production costs will be too high and they will have to move production somewhere cheaper. Money definitely has to be rethought. Change is starting to happen with cryptocurrencies but I really think the basis of money shouldnt be the quantity of money relative to goods and services and capital.
Money and production seem to be key to me. Technology has made workers so productive that we can afford to give them more money for their work. We can easily produce the goods to match the extra money we print. The bad part is that in spite of the ample productivity we have big corporations still feel compelled to set up sweat shop labor in third world countries so they can pay their workers a subsistence wage.
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