FWIS3

Some companies are claiming e.g. $15/hr on their job offers, while actually paying much less - often barely above minimum wage.

https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status ... 4522236929

Why? Because people relying on unemployment checks for bare survival literally can't turn them down. If they do, they'll lose unemployment benefits.

Shit like this is why so many of my generation (let alone Gen Z) are in favor of forthright socialism. Modern US capitalism is so thoroughly rotten, and so weighted in favor of the wealthy and business owners, that what is "legal" does not matter - the rich almost always get away with crimes, while ordinary people are punished just for existing.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote:In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

A big part of why FDR championed workers' rights so much, was that he *wasn't* a socialist, and feared that the justified anger of the working class could empower socialist movements (and Soviet fifth columns) in the US. Sadly this point seems to be lost on the mustache-twirlers we have in power these days.

Sadly, the corporations no longer believe the boogey man of socialism will gain any traction. After the fall of the USSR they accelerated the dismantling of unions, labor protections, and etc.
It's much harder to organize the service and information technology sectors. And they have made huge strides in dismantling union "fair representation" rules that allowed unions to collect dues from people who received union benefits but did not want to pay for union "political activity". The scary part is they, corporations, conservatives, and other shills, often convince one of the people being represented to file a lawsuit challenging union practices they benefit from. They literally convince one bitter asshole to shit all over their co-workers.

Thanks as always for the perspective, Fisher. Wow that's disgusting re the lawsuit method, and also just bleak as fuck.

And yeah, I've seen that re organizing. We've made some progress lately - Google having a union now is a huge deal for instance. But feel a lot of times like half the fight is the entrenched culture of elitism and "we're better than other workers". Our elitism as techies is one of the most potent weapons the managerial class has against us, and many of us still don't see it.