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Silicon Valley Has Been Treating Workers 'Miserably' Since the 1970s, Economic Historian Says (recode.net)
Don't blame Uber for the problems of the gig economy -- they didn't start it, economic historian Louis Hyman says. Recode: "Uber is the waste product of the service economy," Hyman said on the latest episode of Recode Decode, a podcast. "It relies on a bunch of people who don't have an alternative." Hyman told Recode that the number of people who have to rely on temporary, freelance or other "alternative work arrangements" has been growing since the 1970s, when the era of bloated corporations gave way to businesses that optimized for short-term profits and began treating workers as disposable. "The alternative to driving for Uber is not a good job in a factory with a union wage or working in a stable office job, it's slinging coffee at a Starbucks where you may or may not get the hours you need," he said. "That is what people are shoring up. They're shoring up getting enough hours, trying to make ends meet. Oftentimes, people talk about the gig economy as 'supplementary income' ... It's not supplemental if you need it to pay for your kids' braces, or food, or rent." Hyman argued that this phenomenon could be traced back to the legions of undocumented migrant laborers who built early computers, before those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.
California is a communist welfare state that suffocates business with regulation, taxes, and worker rights.
California is a corporate welfare state that exploits workers to feed big business.
Industry loves an unending flow of people too inexperienced to know that they are being taken advantage of. It wants people age 25-35 that it can grind up, spit out, and roll right over. Instead of focusing on working smarter, our industry has become a mill into which we pour youngsters and out of which fall cynical outsiders.
Alternative Right.
You either learn how to gain the upper hand in negotiation, or you become some employer's bitch. It's that simple.
If you have an in-demand skill, I recommend you learn how to use the word "no" until the people you're negotiating with tack on enough zeros. As sad as it is, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and you definitely want to be the dog with a full belly.
If you don't have in-demand skills, you'd better get on it or you'll continue to get shit on.
I don't see an Uber or Lyft driver as having a miserable life. A coal miner breathing in toxic dust has a miserable life. Diamond mine workers in Africa have a miserable life. Chinese factories workers outside of the biggest areas have a miserable life. Uber drivers can always find a new job. There's no forced labor here, in spite of low wages and long hours.
I joined the industry in 1976, starting as a depot-level tech at Data General gate-banging CPU boards, disk controller boards, etc. that had been swapped out in the field. At that time, every single part of every computer (except the core stack on core memory cards) was made here in America. Everything from the castings for the disk drive frames, through the manufacture and chip-stuffing of every single PCB used, to the special lights used on some disks for positioning to the discrete components (resistors, caps, etc).....EVERYTHING was made here, and those businesses - and associated suppliers - employed millions of people.
Today, other than some special mil-spec companies, ZERO electronics are made here. THIS is what brought us to this point: that either you're an app-appy developer or a low-tier drone with no room to grow. Basically, we've squeezed the piss out of the entire industry's middle with most of the rewards going to the Squillionaires and the rest of us left fighting over - Yes! As Pelosi said - "the crumbs".
I'm glad I got the chance to ride the wave long enough, but the tide has been going out for decades.
The Grand Minds hsve long made the lion's share while crumbs go to the people who actually do the work. It is not exclusive to nor invented by Silicon Valley. Who knows the names of the team that put together the first Mazda? But we all know the name Edison.
Yes, you are right, we should have invested in hi-tech manufacturing so we could have a few companies here that run on razor thing margins, employ a scant few people at high salaries, and are rapidly replacing every step of the manufacturing process with automated machinery. We would be far better off, indeed.
Look, it doesn't matter what you are manufacturing or what part of the world you are in. Manual labor jobs are 20th century jobs, and its all going away.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I've never once seen a Union care if a worker quits. If anything the higher wages they bargain for benefit worker mobility. One of the key things that hurts worker mobility is that in the modern economy if you're an hourly worker your experience doesn't count for anything. When you quit you're starting over from scratch.
Right now we're seeing something never before: near full employment but wages are declining. Economists have mostly agreed this is caused by two things: Low wage jobs replacing high wages ones (factory jobs replaced with fast food & Walmart) and the end of collective bargaining reducing workers ability to negotiate better wages. Notice I didn't use the "U" word there. Neither do they. There's been a non-stop anti-Union propaganda campaign from the mega corporations (which, let's be real, own the mass media). So much so that you're not generally allowed to say anything as simple as "Wages are down because one guy on his own can't negotiate the same rates as half a million workers".
You don't have to take my word for it, just google what Walmart does everytime their employees try to Unionize. Or look at Disney, where the workers just got bumped to $15/hr because they organized. No Man is an Island. Collective bargaining works.
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"This week, State Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes called poverty California’s No. 1 priority during a forum of legislative leaders in Sacramento. Mayes, who represents parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, claimed the state’s poverty rate is higher than any state in the nation when considering factors such as cost-of-living."
We decided to fact-check whether the report Mayes cited really shows that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.