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Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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shouldn't the federal minimum wage apply to everyone who is doing work in the US? This seems like fraud
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.
Something something candlemaker’s petition
For those in WTF.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/candle-makers-petition.asp
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.
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.
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??
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
Who said anything about that? We're just talking about putting tariffs on outsourced labor to correct for negative externalities.
This practice is rampant across industries and only getting worse. We must demand an end to it through legislation.
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.
They aren't doing work in the US though.
That is naive. I hope you don't have any employees
$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.
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.
This makes it sound like your problem isn’t someone getting hurt; it’s someone doing well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.