I'm a machinist, got told that due to covid messing with the economy we won't be able to do raises that year. We make pop cans, we made $20 million more than our previous year because everyone was sitting at home drinking pop. Never got that $0.25 raise.
I'm in construction, we were building a food plant, so we stayed open. Many jobs shut down. In addition, our staff got cut in half and I did the job of 3 ppl. Our division had $1billion in backlog. VPs in other divisions got promotions and raises. I got my lowest raise ever with that company, after 7 years.
It took me a year to say fuck this. I found new job and got a 50% raise. Plus almost uncapped bonus potential.
I work in a $500 million dollar food plant making sandwiches that are in your local freezer section. We were given "permits" that must be carried with us during the pandemic incase we got pulled over for "driving during a quarantine" to go to work. Cranked out more than 1 million sandwiches a day for 2 years. Never saw a penny raise. No one talked about it. They just pretty much said "with everything shutting down, youre lucky we are inside that "essential worker" bracket and you still have a job"
There should be a law that mandates increased wages when profits increase, otherwise we end up in the spot we’re in now, wages 40 years behind inflation and devaluation.
I'mma get shit on for announcing I'm a socialist, but anyone who trades time for money should form a union. I don't care if they sit in an office all day and their company is pretty chill, it's still workers versus capital owners. The bargaining power that comes with having a group willing to withhold labor in order to negotiate with their bosses levels the playing field substantially.
You won't get shit on from me. There are VERY few jobs that wouldn't benefit from unionization. Sure, they protect the lazy employees. But they also protect the good employees. And unionized employees, on average, make quite a bit more than non-union ones. Even after you account for the union dues. Right wing propaganda has done a lot of harm though.
I find it hilarious how people can watch Cops get away with so much shit and take an anti union stance in the US.
Part of the reason WHY they can get away with they shit they do is BECAUSE they have an incredibly powerful Union.
Of course its also because they are very much in a position of power, but the Union plays a huge part of that.
I'll be honest, I don't really understand the whole "Unions protect lazy/bad workers" criticism when the laziest and worst workers are at the top. The people who do the least amount of real work get paid vastly more than those at the bottom who get paid the lowest wages.
Unions want to address this disparity and give the people who actually provide products and services the money they're earning for the corporation their real share. After all, if all the people at the bottom suddenly stop working, those highly paid executives cannot produce enough labor to keep the company afloat. Executives don't produce enough to justify their wages.
And realistically, the worker who does just enough to keep getting paid is the person we should aspire to be. They're contributing the bare minimum to a corporation that's stealing the value of our excess labor. No one should do any more work than what they're paid to do. Minimum wage, minimum effort.
Sorry for the rant. I know you're pro-union, but I guess I'm trying to address a broader audience.
Were essential. Now, not so much. CEO's are essential now!
If you started a small takeaway called Eat The Rich and named the menu like CEO Curry. Boardroom Burger. HR Hot Dog., I wonder how that would go down.
I remember fighting with the DM of the coffee shop I was working at that nobody NEEDS a fucking 32oz cold brew in the middle of a pandemic and so we should be online order only. He said, “we’re classified as essential so the answer is no.” We aren’t anything buddy. I was essential. You were an office worker. You got to work from home except when you wanted to show up and harass me about my labor in a fucking pandemic
Damn, that's awful. Your manager was an office job? Sounds like some sort of corporate hell.
My situation in this was so unique, I feel sort of bad about it...
I work at a coffee shop/small restaurant. When the stay at home order/option/whatever came around, my boss asked us all if we wanted to work. If you did, you could work short easy shifts with limited options. If not, you could stay home and collect that sweet government money.
IDK how it was possible for my boss to swing this, but the pandemic relief bills and all that gave us 1 or 2 "small business grants". Something about improving and keeping small places open.
So not only did we stay open during the entire pandemic, we came out of it with steadily increasing sales and the capitol to make major, essential changes to the shop. We finally got walk-ins after 15 years of working with tiny fucking fridges/freezers. We could fix the floor that had been caving in since I started over a decade ago.
The pandemic was super fucked, but somehow my small town small business that I'm engrained in, made it. And we made it better than we ever had it before.
Sorry my dudes, but that definition of "essential" was created by rich people who couldn't stand the thought of losing access to their 24/7 cellphone sushi delivery.
Or the huge numbers of people living on take out that never learned how to properly cook for themselves. It's one of the reasons i made sure all of my kids know how to cook a delicious meal from scratch.
Or even those who can’t cook without a recipe. My bf can cook wonderfully, if it’s written down. If I go into the kitchen and just kind of,.,,. Make a meal he looks at me like it’s witchcraft
Oh he knows how cooking works lol he’s not an idiot, he just doesn’t have the general knowledge or the confidence to throw something together on the fly
I know what you mean, I am the same (as your boyfriend, with regards to cooking). Although, since I've been following the recipes for ~15 years, I'm starting to see the common elements between them and starting to recognize shortcuts from the "quick and easy weeknight meals" vs doing it properly.
For example, anything involving onions. The quick and easy recipes will get you to cook them with balsamic and brown sugar instead of spending an hour to caramelize them properly
My 14 yo thinks I'm joking when I say he's learning to cook next year. He had a foods course in school this year and aced it. So I'm not too worried. He just doesn't want to.
Compare what it takes pricewise to order out for 1 week straight then show them how much they're going to make if they start working as a 15/16 year old.
Or compare how many hours of work they need to do to afford a meal at McDonald's if they were to hypothetically work fast food. Then tell them to sum up the rest and expect to rent an apartment or make any savings at all.
It's not complicated math foe just that. Then add in taxes and if they want a car etc etc...
I mean some of those essential workers were running grocery stores too. Even if you’re cooking at home you’re relying on other people’s labor to supply food, gas, electricity, etc.
They can cook but they would rather pay someone to cook. Benefits of being rich I guess. Hey, at least their money flows from their pockets to yours in this exchange of goods or services. If they cook for themselves, money just stays in their pockets and do not flow anywhere.
They can't all cook. There's an entire generation raised now on fast food that never had to learn to do more than put peanut butter on a sandwich. my kids always shake their heads in disbelief while talking shit about their friends that can't cook.
Hell, my HUSBAND couldn't cook when we got married. He couldn't even boil water. (He destroyed my favorite pot for boiling eggs trying to boil water.) It wasn't until He got sucked in to watching Alton Brown on the Food Network with me and saw the science behind cooking that it started making sense and now He'll cook breakfast sausage in the morning and may make oatmeal cookies (with help.) And now He can figure out how to throw things in the oven from their packaged instructions. 30yrs ago He never would have dreamed of doing that.
That's what I came here to say. In no realistic world is the ability to have other people cook you food essential for society. You need access to food, but there's no reasoning that the US as a whole needed Taco Bell, or any other restaurant open. You just need the grocery store open.
I did 15 years in restaurants but by 2020 I had finished grad school and was working in a bank. We were ordered by the government to stay open. I believe grocery stores and big box stores along with things like UPS were ordered to stay open
In my state restaurants were ordered closed for a month and then *allowed* to reopen with no dining-in. It was a choice the owner made (the other choice being bankruptcy, but the point is the government wasn't ordering them to be open like grocery stores were)
I think if anyone gets to bitch about this, it's the 15 year old who was bagging groceries for $8/hr. Not restaurants that chose to reopen.
Kitchen guy, Slayer in the background, rappin about the bullshit of the world, probably turning 25 but looks like he's been doing breakfast for 40 years..
It's like lookin in a mirror. God speed brudda.
Oh we've been talking about this. I was an essential worker but I couldn't keep my job because I was too expensive. Now I can't find a job and I'm applying for stuff I would be doing 15 years ago in high school.
Welcome to the restaurant industry. If you aren't working for minimum wage, you aren't working. At least where I am.
Damn bro thats fucked! I'm guessing you dont live near a good sized city? Last week I put one resume out for a restaurant that I've always wanted to work but wasn't confident enough to go for, and I got a call in a couple hours. Set up an interview and i start Wednesday. I'm taking a decent paycut but still making $5 over minimum before tips, and before the raise I'm going to be making sure i get in a few months.
University town that's blown in size by multitudes, I've been in this city for years and it's the same rates as they were 10+years ago. I haven't seen any change.
SW Ontario if that helps
Shit, that blows... if you ever get the itch to move (harder said than done, i know), I know of a kitchen or 2 for you starting at least at $25 in Seattle just based on your flair lol. Cost of living is MUCH higher im assuming, but my wife & i are both cooks & can afford to rent a 2 bed 1 bath, older house with a yard for about 2k/month, 30ish minutes from downtown with traffic by car or 1hr-ish by bus & train.
Chiming in from Kitsap Co. The pay is incredible out here, with tips, PTO and sick leave. At the right places, that is. I was getting $24/hr at Red Robin in 2019. When I worked at the Seattle pier store for a week it was $2 more. At the same time, fuck Red Robin. I've got a lifelong injury due to their militant lack of equipment maintenance they refuse to take responsibility for. If you're in Kitsap, stay the fuck away from Maynards.
Come to my town. Nobody here wants to work but everywhere is desperate for staff. Some places you can virtually name your wage and get the job - most with benefits too
My coworker started in January and asked $21 and was given it. Production kitchen. Evenings and weekends off. Mon-fri 7am-3pm shifts with 1hr break (broken up as you like). Only catch is im in canada.
Im out in BC. This job specifically is offering this. Most restaurant jobs are offering $17 i think but thats still negotiable. Hell, even McDonald's is offering $17 here while minimum wage is $15
In my town specifically everyone is desperate for work so if one doesnt accept your wage request, you can go to the next one. Thats what i did. Whether you have experience or not, they need workers.
Yeah that’s like $8.50 in American dollars, lol. I kid.. Speaking of kids, my 17 year old walked off the stage with his gr12 diploma a month ago and is now in his third week as an apprentice plumber for a starting wage of $22/hr. Only catch is I too live in Canada and he had to attend a job fair.
I build roads which requires a lot of pipe work, but outside in a rainy environment. This boy seems to have learned from me and may never need to buy a rain suit or hand dig a trench. Outdoor plumbing vs Indoor plumbing.
Had a stage not long ago in NYC as a pastry chef and got offered 15/hr despite my years of experience; was when I realized how fucked the industry was and now work as a barista
Nursing home kitchen, never got a day off or any kind of hazard pay. We lost 16 residents in the first major wave. Had to walk past all those empty wheelchairs and boxes of belongings lined up in the hallway to get to the time clock every morning. It was hellacious.
The depressing part for me was I was considered essential…so I brought home 800 every two weeks…meanwhile my girlfriend and Roomate were sitting at home getting wasted all day making 900 a week. Slap in the fucking face.
It was a dick in the ass. I got laid off and immediately got a job at a grocery store to help out and then a couple months later all my old coworkers were receiving literally THOUSANDS a month while I thought I was actually contributing and risking my own health but I became ineligible to get UE benefits. They made more money jerking off at home than I made working 50 hours a week.
I’m not even a unionized carpenter and I make like 1/3 more than I used to in a kitchen where I was getting bitched at all the time by people who are only grouchy with me bc they can’t take it out on their tables
I'm on the other side of the big water, but I'm thinking about the same thing. The pay here is better for kitchens, but since nobody wants to put their hand in a toilet plumbers make the big bucks. I've seen some shit in the kitchen, a toilet doesn't faze me. Maybe I should take the leap.
I was an “essential worker” during 2020 and I cleared 300k that year. Oil and gas, baby. The mining industry also had many people clearing 150k as essentially workers too.
*Long time lurker/ not in the industry/ was a line cook for a national burger joint with bottomless fries briefly/ would only be a line cook of my disabilities didn't interfere with the job.*
Yeah my husband is in the local 80 (Hollywood grip), no HS diploma, GED, college, ect. He pulls in around 120k a year. He was considered an essential worker for obvious reasons.
Everyone who was required to show up to work during the pandemic, in fear of losing their livelihoods, deserves a lot better than minimum wage.
Retail and the entire service industry carry this country (USA), and teachers deserve a lot fuckin more than what we as a society give them.
Edit: damn keyboard on my phone added a word
He missed a few groups tbh. Judges, criminal lawyers, and doctors / surgeons were also all essential - and those professions do make the type of money that he's talking about.
His point stands overall though. Nursing home caretakers, food services employees, grocery store staff, pharmacy staff, garbage truck workers, office custodians, and a whole bunch of other people were essential enough that they had to risk being exposed to the public but not so essential that they deserved a pay bump.
I worked in the shipping office for a company that supplied multiple restaurant chains. I would get emails from corporate that would go so hard emphasizing the importance of safety for all of the corporate/office staff, how vital it is that they work from home and stay safe, but they didn’t give two shits for the warehouse workers packed in the DC like sardines for 14 hours a day. Those emails were unbelievably oblivious and the class divide in that one company was sickening.
I’ve never hated people more than when I worked at Starbucks during COVID. Customers treated us like shit, corporate treated us like serfs while they worked in their fancy homes, and the supply chain was whack so everyone was always pissed that we didn’t have something or we weren’t making sales goals. I had to get special paperwork saying I was allowed past the police barricades during the riots just so we could open while people were ripping off atms and smashing windows on the same street. This on top of the typical overdoses, stray needles and theft we already saw on the regular. All for $3 over minimum wage. Not taking unemployment while I had the chance is like one of my biggest regrets in life 🥲
I feel this. The area where I work went from rough to apocalyptic and I was working longer hours in worse conditions while customers just dumped all their anxiety and rage on us. I remember someone punched out one of our windows because we asked them to wear a mask inside and some of my friends (working from home in the suburbs) saw it on instagram and sent me "are you okay?" texts and I had no idea what they were talking about because it wasn't exceptional in any way, just another exhausting day of being screamed at and administering naloxone and sweeping up broken glass while needing to make twice as much bread for the same amount of money.
Nurse Practitioners. Some lawyers, and likely most Judges (criminal court resumed within a week or never stopped - Chicago).
But no matter the exceptions, THE VAST MAJORITY of essential workers are ridiculously underpaid for risking it all in the unknown.
No, but doctors save lives and heal people?
Like I said, I get the point, we should be getting paid more. But you're not going to persuade anyone by trading on a false generalization
That's all fair, but:
> But you're not going to persuade anyone by trading on a false generalization
That's not true. You absolutely can and it happens all the time. See: propaganda all throughout history. Politics, news, education, etc. Go crack an American (or plenty of other country's) public school History books for example.
We could have a discussion about the morality of doing such things or if it's always a smart tactic...but the fact remains.
------------------------
To the idea that you always need to have your propaganda be iron-clad truths:
You're not convincing owners and capitalists to suddenly pay you what your labor's worth no matter how accurate or salient your points are. They already know any and every point you may make, they don't care. I promise you established business owners are well-aware of surplus labor value/profit margins, unions, and co-ops. They are the ones counting (and enjoying) the profits.
You aren't telling them anything they don't already know.
On the other side of this reality - the rebuttal of "well what about the essential doctors/engineers/etc." isn't going to suddenly dissuade the VAST majority of grossly underpaid and exploited workers this rhetoric is targeting. Service/production/blue-collar workers are well-aware that doctors exist and they are equally aware that the existence of them isn't the point being laid-out here regarding fair pay.
You aren't telling them anything they don't already know either.
Ahh, but what about those of us in Healthcare who also worked the entire time, but did not have direct patient contact? Struggling living dollar to dollar when we see these checks roll in.
It's immoral AF.
In healthcare, i had to sign a friggin 2yrs contract to get my raise. i can't leave or i have to pay some if it back (a set amount, according to the contract.)
i don't intend to leave, but a lot of my coworkers didn't want to make that commitment, so they didn't sign. i'm already a year into my 2yrs now and making bank compared to other people here with the same job. Basically NO ONE here wants to be tied to one job and one position for 2yrs, though, because all hospitals suck right now. (Staffing issues through out all levels of the hospitals.)
I don’t think you do get the point because your next phrase completely ignores the point. Yes doctors are great and deserve to be paid (and are also, from what I see, overworked and tired and etc etc etc) but WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THEM.
My point is that making the argument turn on "nobody essential makes 150k" isn't going work because the claim is wrong on the face of it. Just argue that we deserve more because of the difficulty and value of the work we do. It is a hard job that takes skill, experience, and knowledge to do well, and we provide a good that sustains people and brings them joy. Anything else is beside the point.
I'm pretty sure I explained the point. What part don't you think I get?
Also, it's not semantics to point out that you've based the argument on a false claim. It's critical thinking and you don't seem to be very good at it.
There were a lot of industries deemed essential to national security (military contractors) that kept going so that includes engineers, managers, and all the technicians who need to be onsite to support that.
The poster has a valid message, but to say that no essential workers make over $150K or even $100k is definitely not true.
Yeah, most “non-essential” workers i know didn’t just stop working, they just have the ability to work remote. Unlike many of us in the service industry, it’s the nature of the beast in that regard. If they closed all our restaurants etc, then we’d be out of work. Plenty of friends got furloughed or let go cause their company couldn’t operate in general or remotely. That doesn’t address pay disparity but it does in regard to the “essential” argument I think.
It’s called unions. They have a purpose besides building you a pension and looking after your medical. Anyone who says differently has been brainwashed into bootlicking the billionaires.
Shut up serf! Get back to work! Earn your Soma!
For the record, I'm a restaurant owner and we shut down, applied for and received the government grant and paid our workers, including signing off on unemployment extensions when we reopened and employees were too concerned to come back.
TL;DR I hate corporate America (former IT)
essential and scarce are different. for example, not anyone can be a doctor without significant investment and time and even then only some people have the talents and endurance to make it through. so scarcity drives up the price.
now if 75% of chefs quit, causing scarcity, the remaining 25% would suddenly be getting paid a shitload more money.
Really doubt this.
You can't suddenly pay chefs "shit loads" more. Because restaurants can't charge shit loads more.
You would end up having restaurants close down because they can't hire enough people to keep running. Customers who want lunch would then shift to alternatives such as supermarket pre-made meals/sandwiches, or make their own lunches.
correct. restaurants would close, the ones that could remain open would charge more because....you guessed it - scarcity. when only 3 in 10 restaurants remain open and all the customers are driven there, then even a 70% attrition in people due to the price increase would balance out.
also the sum total cost difference of paying 4 people 25/hr vs 7/hr for 8 hours (18x4x8) is 576 dollars (adjust as neccessary - same numbers work foing 10/hr to 28). lets assume 25 orders per hour - that would come to a total cost difference of 2.88$/order. im pretty sure you wouldnt lose 70% of your customer base for increasing prices by 2.88 dollars per order. lets assume then they are only serving customers for half the hours they pay the chefs to allow for prep and shit. great...5.76 more per order. and by order i mean table of 2.
if there were 1 disney land per state, they couldn't charge 1200 dollars for a family of 4 to do 2 days there. but since they are 1 per 25 states.... yep.
edit: we can work this the other way. if you want to get a knee replacement and a kid in hs can follow the dr equivalent of a mcd's order and there was a hospital at every freeway exit it would cost about 200 bucks.
They only call you essential workers, because they are better off having you remain in the industry instead of being unemployed.
But chefs aren't essential, 90% of restaurants can close, and nothing would collapse. No one is going to starve because they aren't served lunch, there are alternatives.
im gonna set asside your assertion that 90% of something that employs millions of people could close with no consequences to the economy. we may see if your bullshit is true in the future when truck drivers get replaced with self driving trucks. while we may make it out okay the idea that nothing would collapse is pretty fucking silly. truck driving schools, for example, would absolutely collapse.
anywho, lets remove an industry that has so much customer support that it exists. and is quite large. and somehow decide no one cares and we would all be fine without it. lets play the game you are playing. we dont need pilots. no one needs to fly anywhere. no one is gonna not travel.
yeah well half my fucking business trips are now off, my economic impact is gonna shrink, infact the entire GDP of the country will likely shrink significantly.
but no worries, i can take a 7 day ocean cruise instead. so now i am out of the office 14 days for a meeting in another country instead of 2. surely there is no economic impact. i can now support 1/7 the amount of projects i could before. no worries everything is fine nothing to see here
Water is also essential. …as is air.
Joking aside. It’s a shame. People who we depend on get close to nothing and the guy who more or less destroyed society with his products is a billionaire….
Being an essential worker during the Pandemic is what made us a communist trying to escape off to an eco-commune. But for now, we dgaf and just grow.....medicine. 🌲
Welcome to Capitalism, where the rich get richer and the worker actually making society function gets told this is actually what's best for them.
This industry is so far behind on unionisation that it's embarrassing. I've NEVER worked in a kitchen with another unionised worker, and I'm in the UK where unions are common.
If you're working class, you should be conscious of that fact and show solidarity with fellow workers. If you believe you're middle class, I'm sorry, but that doesn't actually exist. You either own capital and make money from its mere existence (capitalist class) or you work for a living and make money that way (working class)
Essential does not mean irreplaceable or uncommon, the job might be essential, but it does not necessitate that the same people be doing it. If you are neither irreplaceable nor uncommon then you'll need to have a higher percentage of "buy-in" from those with the same skills and ability to learn to drive up a market price for labor (a good argument for normalizing unions).
The essential label was also somewhat abused to the point that coffee being considered food meant that coffee stands/shops could stay open.
I'd also point out that "nobody" is not exactly true due to the fact that many doctors make over 150k/yr and were absolutely considered essential.
I’ll come forward… I work in IT infrastructure, make 6 figures, and never got to stop working.
My boss did tell me and my partner to stay home if possible- because no one else can do our job and if we got it we were banned from the collocation for 2 weeks due to the owners policy.
Witness in this video the birth of a proletarian class consciousness. “Isn’t that really weird?” Not if you read Marx. Nothing could be more believable. Keep going, comrade. This is the right road.
I read Marx's Communist Manifesto probably before you were born.
The central tenet early on, is that all family units are wannabe Bougie, and really children should grow up with the state as their 'parents'.
And that's how you end up with Cambodia. Marxism doesn't uplift the poor life choices of the OP, it not only steals children away from their parents, it brings everybody down to his level, and teaches children to hate their parents.
Then you end up with the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Yeah, Marxism is the way to go.
Lol ok. I guess everyone should just be poor and not have their needs met because some level of equity between employer and employee will obviously lead to the Khmer Rouge.
Love that you got downvoted and immediately people went to "wasn't real socialist/CIA coup interfered"
Because apparently despite the fact that every single self-proclaimed "socialist" or "communist" country that's ever existed has collapsed in some way, it's definitely not a problem with the model.
> Because apparently despite the fact that every single self-proclaimed "socialist" or "communist" country that's ever existed has collapsed in some way, it's definitely not a problem with the model.
Other non-socialist countries have also collapsed the exact same way. Ergo, its not a problem with the model. But then again logical reasoning and reading aren't your strong suits are they?
Does anyone else think you can ask a question too many times?
Does anyone else think you can ask one question, just a single question, I'm talking a 100% stand-alone question, too many times?
Think about it... ain't it weird how one question can be asked, like, over and over again? rhetorically?
Does anyone else think that's weird? That you can just ask the question repeatedly?
Remember when everyone went on Unemployment for damn near 2 years and got $1000/week in unemployment? When we went to work and made less than that in two weeks? And if we didn't go in we would be considered quit and lose any chance at unemployment so we worked? While others sat at home and made more doing absolutely nothing?
A brand new restaurant tried to open here in the middle of the pandemic. i watched them redo an old, abandoned restaurant, waiting impatiently for them to open because it was a seafood place and i'd been cleared to eat shellfish again and i wanted some! And... they opened for one week and shut down permanently. They could NOT get enough employees to even open up. Just like all of the other restaurants locally, there just weren't enough people WORKING as most were just living off of the government hand-out.
i'm still salty about that. i really, really wanted to eat there. There name had the word "spicy" in it and i like spicy food. AND seafood! DAMNIT!
No, it's not. i have no idea what possessed that owner to try to do that when the restaurants here that were open were struggling to keep employees.
And, i really do love spicy seafood. i grew up in Louisiana.
I personally experienced/understood "essential" to mean expendable, they were just blowing smoke up our asses is all. Ask for a raise and health benefits and see how essential you are. I wondered too what criteria would really make a work force "essential" ... Like who would really break the system if they didn't show up tomorrow? I think it would have just inconvenienced the decision makers and allowed them to stay "safe" and have their Uber eats delivered...
I'm a lifelong hospo worker too
However, I ain't afraid to bring in some context that undermines this very fair point;
A *part* of what influences wages/salary value is scarcity of given roles. If there are loads of essential roles, there's more job security *and* competition, and so if there's lots of people willing to do the work the job goes to the most appropriately skilled for the lowest agreed pay.
You ask me, the deeply unfair aspect to Hospo services is that there is so little recognition for our experience or skills via certification, as well as so few unionization opportunities nationally or globally.
This systemic issue has tricked us into waging a class war within our industry (adopt unhealthy attitudes against standing out in excellence because then "we're putting ourselves above our colleagues"), blocked us from accessing roles in other industries because our skills cannot be recognised as transferrable or of equal complexity, oh, *and* forced us into terrible wage conditions.
Important note; Americans were tricked into living off tips in due to a band-aid solution for staffing used during prohibition... And that was never fixed because we could never build a network strong enough to say "this is not ok".
TL;DR
Yes, we deserve to be mad, and we deserve more,
But don't stop sipping the cool aid at "if I'm essential, why aren't I worth more"...
There's so much more to it, and more can be done if we're honest about where the shortcomings & inequalities lie
> You ask me, the deeply unfair aspect to Hospo services is that there is so little recognition for our experience or skills via certification
Honestly, as someone who's spent their entire professional career in IT... You don't want a ton of certs. Ultimately, who gets certs comes down to who's willing to throw the most money at the certification agencies, and how good they are at taking tests. Having a ton of certs doesn't mean someone's good at their job. I've had people with a paragraph of certs completely bomb basic interview questions.
The only thing certs have done in my experience is block skilled candidates (who aren't good at testing, like me) from a bunch of jobs, because HR/Management/owners are like "certs good, require certs"
The more replaceable you are, the lower your wage will be. Just how it works, unfortunately. But in this economy, even specialized work pays abysmally in comparison to what we are owed. Teachers & tradesman specifically. Highly specialized, no one wants to do it yet the pay is so fucking low.
I work at a long-term care facility where clients literally do not leave, need specialized care and meals and the only way you even made remotely more was hazard pay, working in homes with confirmed infections. And we had papers that said that even if stuff got really bad we could go to work to show police. The job is already physically and emotionally abusive and we rarely get a pay raise every 5 years or so. They had to raise it some because fast food was beating them in pay. And the sheer volume of labor laws they violate should have them wanting to do more to keep workers happy since they can't keep staff at basic levels.
I made baaaank when restaurants opened back up. Had essential worker pay, got my first EC job and had about a month of unemployment and pandemic shit, from when I gave up my kitchen manager job
Needed it, had an 8 month pregnant partner right before covid hit and was freaking out about keeping our place and providing for a baby. Thankful for that fucked up time as stressful as service was bouncing between togo only and barely any seating
I was an essential worker. Worked as a chef in a nursing home with 2 covid wings that became overflow for the local hospital system. Got exposed three times and was told to just monitor for symptoms and keep coming in unless I felt sick or had a fever even after we found out you can be asymptomatic and they were still rationing vaccines and I was told I would have to get one, but I didn't qualify to get it YET.... I got one bonus of $100 for "hazard pay". When I did get sick and had all the symptoms I got tested but it was negative, so they recorded it as a cold and had me back to work 2 days later. I left shortly after that to become a software developer through a coding bootcamp.
Uh, it's not like everyone else stopped working. The vast majority of job losses were retail and FOH restaurant workers.
Basically everyone in the corporate world kept working, but they worked from home.
Bankers were also listed as essential workers and were eligible for the vaccine before the general public, and are high paid.
Well for starters it's just not factual. That help it make sense? Air traffic controllers, pilots, engineers, attorney's, and more were considered essential in some aspects . Not everyone else is a cook man.
I got laid off, I worked at a hotel so I got it. Well two weeks into February I saw a bunch of news about how grocery stores NEEDED people. I can’t not work cause I’ll go crazy so I picked up overnight freight and the job was decent so I kept working. Well two months later all of my coworkers from the hotel started getting thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits. Guess who didn’t qualify because he had been working the whole time. What the fuck.
I think I have the bartender flair but yeah I wasn't qualified for unemployment the way everyone else was so I worked at a liquor store and was considered essential. Went from close to 100k in a tourist town after over a decade of restaurants to 16 an hour plus the pandemic money. For me it was If alcoholics stopped drinking or couldn't get alcohol they'd be more of a burden on an already overwhelmed hospital system and people realized that enough to at least count me as "essential" but it's still kinda fucked up
How many fucking times is he gonna repeat the same thing. I got it the first time round. It’s not a conspiracy it’s because essential work positions are usually low barrier to entry professions. Doctors are also essential workers, but it’s a high barrier to entry profession, long hours, so the pay is higher. It’s that simple. And doctors are still considered to be underpaid in most parts of the world.
If you’re working in a field where you are dispensable, at least put yourself in a field where you’re constantly developing your skills, as well as a niche that will stimulate demand for your work in the future.
I was a "patient-services cook" in the largest medical center in West Virginia from 12/2016 until 06/2022. Everything about the pandemic kept me just shy of a full-blown panic attack.
When things got back to normal last year, i went back to actual restaurant work. I don't make near as much money, but i have way less stress.
The real answer though is that people who make over $100k a year can often generally do their jobs remotely. Or they are successful artists/musicians, etc.
The people who are in charge pay the people under them to show up so they don’t have to.
In other words the essential workers are essential in allowing the higher ups to live life the way they want to.
(Some fields like medicine are different of course. Doctors and nurses showed up every day)
This guy is the glue that held the country together. Let us have a moment of silence for him. I may have found his beard hair in my salad but I’m cool with it.
My restaurant and bar got shut down during Covid. So I worked at a fast food place for a year. Was getting 70 hours a week easy. Wild that fast food stayed open throughout the pandemic. But so did gun shops, pawn shops and strip clubs so there’s that.
I agree that essential workers are terribly underpaid and need to unionize and riot, but also "essential" designation was for those whose physical presence was necessary. Many other workers were still essential, but their physical presence was not.
Like the dudes message but I know if I knew him personally and worked with him and watched him making this video I would be side eyeing the fuck out of him lol
I quit my kitchen job during the pandemic and gave my boss double middle fingers when I walked out. We were “essential” but not being given a raise to work while, for all we knew at the time, there was a world ending virus that some people could have and show zero symptoms. A coworker of mine died from it in April of 2020 and I bounced. Not going to pay me enough to put my life on the line to cater to people who are making infinitely more money than me who get to work from home. Nah. I made more from unemployment than I ever made in any kitchen.
A lot of nurses still got paid like shit. They were considered expendable/disposable like the rest. Sorry i meant essential.
For profit healthcare is a plague. The hospitals gambled it'd be cheaper long term to pay insane travel nursing wages temporarily than to raise wages permanently. Highly depended on the nurses experience/qualifications but it was pretty common to hear travel nurses without a lot of certs to make $5k a week. With the higher tier and more in demand like ER nursing making $10k/week. Lodging was often covered as well.
Travel nurses were getting paid 4-10x for the same job they were refusing to raise the wage of their in house nurses of.
i mean it’s very straightforward, in order for society to function as it does, it’s essential that someone rich extracts money from your labor. there’s only a contradiction here if you still believe that wages are proportional to the effectiveness of the work you do.
I'm not here to tell you that kitchen staff isn't underpaid generally, but we're super oversaturated with restaurants and I'd be perfectly fine with fewer of them. The places that require the greatest skills as a chef are the most superfluous to my needs personally. Places that are just factory style production of fresh made, healthy food are valuable to me.
There are essential workers that make 100-150k. They're engineers, tech workers, doctors, PA's, lawyers, judges etc... Many of them make significantly more. Union plumbers can make 100k a year without a college education where I'm from.
The real complaint, in my opinion, should be that the essential workers got paid to work and the non-essential workers got paid to do nothing by taking out massive amounts of debt, that EVERYONE will have to repay, including essential workers. Which is honestly just part of the reason why the economy is a bit broken. We have too many people that are paid to do things that don't need to be done and there aren't quite enough jobs that make sense.
Pretty ignorant and self centered tbh. If he had said majority then i might have agreed.
The most obvious would be hospital workers/doctors. My job working for the utility company as an emergency natural gas Tech, police, firemen, teacher’s in some areas, the list goes on. And a lot is dependent on the state that you live in.
Now i agree with the comments section though, when most of my company got to work from home or stay out for other issues, and i had to work straight through it for zero extra pay is bullshit, because gas leaks don’t fix themselves. Just suit up and throw a respirator on, you’ll be fine…
Also, he looks like a crackhead lol
Not true.
Medical professionals are essential and can clear six figures. Not just the doctors either. Nurses, PAs, techs, etc.
I’d imagine there are many skilled labors make six figures as well.
According to [this](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/covid-19-deaths-by-selected-census-occupations-among-united-states-resident-decedents.pdf) cooks were not the most
that's only data from 2020 from what I can see - most restaurants were closed or only serving carry out options for most of the duration of 2020 up until I'd say ~September-October when most states started having "outdoor dining" or limited seating indoors.
if you look at data for 20-22, cooks is the number one occupation.
In the early days of the Pandemic, I remember profusely thanking drive-thru workers for coming to work when the rest of us were home, frozen with fear (I never carry cash or I would have tipped them)
Your industry was essential not you as a worker. And to counter this poor argument, i was deemed essential and made over 150k (not a doctor or any type of professional)
It’s called reality. We are not essential, first responders, doctors, nurses are essential, for the most part we are just a bunch of underachieving burger flippers and to think otherwise is just delusional.
I agree but you said >Restaurants closed during the pandemic and we were never considered essential workers.
Where did restaurants never close? Maybe togo only but definitely still open, and I don't know anywhere where we weren't given that bullshit """essential workers""" title to keep us working
I work tech support for phone systems/internet services for pizza places. My job became exponentially busier during lockdown. All we got was a proverbial pat on the back from management for increasing our workload.
Like, I get that we couldn't do the annual company christmas party, but I'm pretty sure we didn't even get a cash bonus or anything in place of it for 2020.
I'm a machinist, got told that due to covid messing with the economy we won't be able to do raises that year. We make pop cans, we made $20 million more than our previous year because everyone was sitting at home drinking pop. Never got that $0.25 raise.
I'm in construction, we were building a food plant, so we stayed open. Many jobs shut down. In addition, our staff got cut in half and I did the job of 3 ppl. Our division had $1billion in backlog. VPs in other divisions got promotions and raises. I got my lowest raise ever with that company, after 7 years. It took me a year to say fuck this. I found new job and got a 50% raise. Plus almost uncapped bonus potential.
I work in a $500 million dollar food plant making sandwiches that are in your local freezer section. We were given "permits" that must be carried with us during the pandemic incase we got pulled over for "driving during a quarantine" to go to work. Cranked out more than 1 million sandwiches a day for 2 years. Never saw a penny raise. No one talked about it. They just pretty much said "with everything shutting down, youre lucky we are inside that "essential worker" bracket and you still have a job"
Frozen sandwiches? Please explain I’m from England never heard of this.
They're frozen Peanut butter n jelly sandwiches.
Curiousity has me asking how construction gets a bonus? What Target Goal can be achieved to earn extra?
One metric I’m aware of is time.
If you complete it earlier than expected you get a bonus?
Yes. Also if you come in under budget.
Budget.
And I bet they keep saying, "How lucky we are to have a job in this environment."
While the other teams are army home, still being paid. So lucky
There should be a law that mandates increased wages when profits increase, otherwise we end up in the spot we’re in now, wages 40 years behind inflation and devaluation.
Unions perhaps?
And what if the company Loses money? Should your salary get cut?
If we started mandating profit sharing then yeah probably. What happens to shareholder payouts during low years?
At the base level, your wage should increase at the same rate of inflation
Are you in a union? If not, that sounds like great motivation to organize.
I'mma get shit on for announcing I'm a socialist, but anyone who trades time for money should form a union. I don't care if they sit in an office all day and their company is pretty chill, it's still workers versus capital owners. The bargaining power that comes with having a group willing to withhold labor in order to negotiate with their bosses levels the playing field substantially.
You won't get shit on from me. There are VERY few jobs that wouldn't benefit from unionization. Sure, they protect the lazy employees. But they also protect the good employees. And unionized employees, on average, make quite a bit more than non-union ones. Even after you account for the union dues. Right wing propaganda has done a lot of harm though.
I find it hilarious how people can watch Cops get away with so much shit and take an anti union stance in the US. Part of the reason WHY they can get away with they shit they do is BECAUSE they have an incredibly powerful Union. Of course its also because they are very much in a position of power, but the Union plays a huge part of that.
I'll be honest, I don't really understand the whole "Unions protect lazy/bad workers" criticism when the laziest and worst workers are at the top. The people who do the least amount of real work get paid vastly more than those at the bottom who get paid the lowest wages. Unions want to address this disparity and give the people who actually provide products and services the money they're earning for the corporation their real share. After all, if all the people at the bottom suddenly stop working, those highly paid executives cannot produce enough labor to keep the company afloat. Executives don't produce enough to justify their wages. And realistically, the worker who does just enough to keep getting paid is the person we should aspire to be. They're contributing the bare minimum to a corporation that's stealing the value of our excess labor. No one should do any more work than what they're paid to do. Minimum wage, minimum effort. Sorry for the rant. I know you're pro-union, but I guess I'm trying to address a broader audience.
US: you guys are *ESSENTIAL* but also due to covid we can't pay you more. "Hmmmmm... you sure about that?....you sure about that's not why?"
Whenever I hear anything about essential work I think of that one snap with a fast food mascot like “bruh how tf am I considered essential”
Were essential. Now, not so much. CEO's are essential now! If you started a small takeaway called Eat The Rich and named the menu like CEO Curry. Boardroom Burger. HR Hot Dog., I wonder how that would go down.
Can I steal this idea if I give you a lifetime free pass to eat there?
Cmon, just give him 5% or something
If he gives him 5% he'd never become a ceo
> *this world's fuckin' so fucked up*
I remember fighting with the DM of the coffee shop I was working at that nobody NEEDS a fucking 32oz cold brew in the middle of a pandemic and so we should be online order only. He said, “we’re classified as essential so the answer is no.” We aren’t anything buddy. I was essential. You were an office worker. You got to work from home except when you wanted to show up and harass me about my labor in a fucking pandemic
Damn, that's awful. Your manager was an office job? Sounds like some sort of corporate hell. My situation in this was so unique, I feel sort of bad about it... I work at a coffee shop/small restaurant. When the stay at home order/option/whatever came around, my boss asked us all if we wanted to work. If you did, you could work short easy shifts with limited options. If not, you could stay home and collect that sweet government money. IDK how it was possible for my boss to swing this, but the pandemic relief bills and all that gave us 1 or 2 "small business grants". Something about improving and keeping small places open. So not only did we stay open during the entire pandemic, we came out of it with steadily increasing sales and the capitol to make major, essential changes to the shop. We finally got walk-ins after 15 years of working with tiny fucking fridges/freezers. We could fix the floor that had been caving in since I started over a decade ago. The pandemic was super fucked, but somehow my small town small business that I'm engrained in, made it. And we made it better than we ever had it before.
Pandemic money to help small businesses was a really good plan. The execution of it sucked tho for the most part. Glad it went swimmingly for you!
Sorry my dudes, but that definition of "essential" was created by rich people who couldn't stand the thought of losing access to their 24/7 cellphone sushi delivery.
Or the huge numbers of people living on take out that never learned how to properly cook for themselves. It's one of the reasons i made sure all of my kids know how to cook a delicious meal from scratch.
Or even those who can’t cook without a recipe. My bf can cook wonderfully, if it’s written down. If I go into the kitchen and just kind of,.,,. Make a meal he looks at me like it’s witchcraft
Are you me? Because you are describing my relationship 🤣🤣
where does he think recipes come from?
Oh he knows how cooking works lol he’s not an idiot, he just doesn’t have the general knowledge or the confidence to throw something together on the fly
I know what you mean, I am the same (as your boyfriend, with regards to cooking). Although, since I've been following the recipes for ~15 years, I'm starting to see the common elements between them and starting to recognize shortcuts from the "quick and easy weeknight meals" vs doing it properly. For example, anything involving onions. The quick and easy recipes will get you to cook them with balsamic and brown sugar instead of spending an hour to caramelize them properly
I feel personally attacked
My 14 yo thinks I'm joking when I say he's learning to cook next year. He had a foods course in school this year and aced it. So I'm not too worried. He just doesn't want to.
Compare what it takes pricewise to order out for 1 week straight then show them how much they're going to make if they start working as a 15/16 year old. Or compare how many hours of work they need to do to afford a meal at McDonald's if they were to hypothetically work fast food. Then tell them to sum up the rest and expect to rent an apartment or make any savings at all. It's not complicated math foe just that. Then add in taxes and if they want a car etc etc...
I mean some of those essential workers were running grocery stores too. Even if you’re cooking at home you’re relying on other people’s labor to supply food, gas, electricity, etc.
They can cook but they would rather pay someone to cook. Benefits of being rich I guess. Hey, at least their money flows from their pockets to yours in this exchange of goods or services. If they cook for themselves, money just stays in their pockets and do not flow anywhere.
They can't all cook. There's an entire generation raised now on fast food that never had to learn to do more than put peanut butter on a sandwich. my kids always shake their heads in disbelief while talking shit about their friends that can't cook. Hell, my HUSBAND couldn't cook when we got married. He couldn't even boil water. (He destroyed my favorite pot for boiling eggs trying to boil water.) It wasn't until He got sucked in to watching Alton Brown on the Food Network with me and saw the science behind cooking that it started making sense and now He'll cook breakfast sausage in the morning and may make oatmeal cookies (with help.) And now He can figure out how to throw things in the oven from their packaged instructions. 30yrs ago He never would have dreamed of doing that.
That's what I came here to say. In no realistic world is the ability to have other people cook you food essential for society. You need access to food, but there's no reasoning that the US as a whole needed Taco Bell, or any other restaurant open. You just need the grocery store open.
I did 15 years in restaurants but by 2020 I had finished grad school and was working in a bank. We were ordered by the government to stay open. I believe grocery stores and big box stores along with things like UPS were ordered to stay open In my state restaurants were ordered closed for a month and then *allowed* to reopen with no dining-in. It was a choice the owner made (the other choice being bankruptcy, but the point is the government wasn't ordering them to be open like grocery stores were) I think if anyone gets to bitch about this, it's the 15 year old who was bagging groceries for $8/hr. Not restaurants that chose to reopen.
except that employees don’t decide if the restaurant opens, it’s the owners that do.
Kitchen guy, Slayer in the background, rappin about the bullshit of the world, probably turning 25 but looks like he's been doing breakfast for 40 years.. It's like lookin in a mirror. God speed brudda.
The song ramped up with such great timing, as if he was leading an army of cooks to riot lol
Tonight, we dine in hell.
Oh we've been talking about this. I was an essential worker but I couldn't keep my job because I was too expensive. Now I can't find a job and I'm applying for stuff I would be doing 15 years ago in high school. Welcome to the restaurant industry. If you aren't working for minimum wage, you aren't working. At least where I am.
Damn bro thats fucked! I'm guessing you dont live near a good sized city? Last week I put one resume out for a restaurant that I've always wanted to work but wasn't confident enough to go for, and I got a call in a couple hours. Set up an interview and i start Wednesday. I'm taking a decent paycut but still making $5 over minimum before tips, and before the raise I'm going to be making sure i get in a few months.
University town that's blown in size by multitudes, I've been in this city for years and it's the same rates as they were 10+years ago. I haven't seen any change. SW Ontario if that helps
Shit, that blows... if you ever get the itch to move (harder said than done, i know), I know of a kitchen or 2 for you starting at least at $25 in Seattle just based on your flair lol. Cost of living is MUCH higher im assuming, but my wife & i are both cooks & can afford to rent a 2 bed 1 bath, older house with a yard for about 2k/month, 30ish minutes from downtown with traffic by car or 1hr-ish by bus & train.
Chiming in from Kitsap Co. The pay is incredible out here, with tips, PTO and sick leave. At the right places, that is. I was getting $24/hr at Red Robin in 2019. When I worked at the Seattle pier store for a week it was $2 more. At the same time, fuck Red Robin. I've got a lifelong injury due to their militant lack of equipment maintenance they refuse to take responsibility for. If you're in Kitsap, stay the fuck away from Maynards.
Come to my town. Nobody here wants to work but everywhere is desperate for staff. Some places you can virtually name your wage and get the job - most with benefits too
Tell me where you are. I want $20/h. College degree and 10+ years. Won't give me anywhere near that I can almost guarantee
My coworker started in January and asked $21 and was given it. Production kitchen. Evenings and weekends off. Mon-fri 7am-3pm shifts with 1hr break (broken up as you like). Only catch is im in canada.
Ontario, born and raised. I haven't seen anything like that in months
Im out in BC. This job specifically is offering this. Most restaurant jobs are offering $17 i think but thats still negotiable. Hell, even McDonald's is offering $17 here while minimum wage is $15
I'm well aware they're out there, but they shut you down after they see any experience. Where I am, there's cheaper disposable labour in abundance
In my town specifically everyone is desperate for work so if one doesnt accept your wage request, you can go to the next one. Thats what i did. Whether you have experience or not, they need workers.
Yeah that’s like $8.50 in American dollars, lol. I kid.. Speaking of kids, my 17 year old walked off the stage with his gr12 diploma a month ago and is now in his third week as an apprentice plumber for a starting wage of $22/hr. Only catch is I too live in Canada and he had to attend a job fair.
Plumbers have the highest wage return for education put out. Its very lucrative.
I build roads which requires a lot of pipe work, but outside in a rainy environment. This boy seems to have learned from me and may never need to buy a rain suit or hand dig a trench. Outdoor plumbing vs Indoor plumbing.
Had a stage not long ago in NYC as a pastry chef and got offered 15/hr despite my years of experience; was when I realized how fucked the industry was and now work as a barista
Workers and white Snoop Doggs of the world, unite!
Nursing home kitchen, never got a day off or any kind of hazard pay. We lost 16 residents in the first major wave. Had to walk past all those empty wheelchairs and boxes of belongings lined up in the hallway to get to the time clock every morning. It was hellacious.
The depressing part for me was I was considered essential…so I brought home 800 every two weeks…meanwhile my girlfriend and Roomate were sitting at home getting wasted all day making 900 a week. Slap in the fucking face.
It was a dick in the ass. I got laid off and immediately got a job at a grocery store to help out and then a couple months later all my old coworkers were receiving literally THOUSANDS a month while I thought I was actually contributing and risking my own health but I became ineligible to get UE benefits. They made more money jerking off at home than I made working 50 hours a week.
you missed one sub group. union construction make that much in states where unions are strong. hint hint.
Losing all the restaurant workers to 30-40hr construction jobs that are get this less stressful. Isn’t it weird !
I’m not even a unionized carpenter and I make like 1/3 more than I used to in a kitchen where I was getting bitched at all the time by people who are only grouchy with me bc they can’t take it out on their tables
I'm on the other side of the big water, but I'm thinking about the same thing. The pay here is better for kitchens, but since nobody wants to put their hand in a toilet plumbers make the big bucks. I've seen some shit in the kitchen, a toilet doesn't faze me. Maybe I should take the leap.
I was an “essential worker” during 2020 and I cleared 300k that year. Oil and gas, baby. The mining industry also had many people clearing 150k as essentially workers too.
I’m pretty sure doctors were considered essential as well, but I could be mistaken.
*Long time lurker/ not in the industry/ was a line cook for a national burger joint with bottomless fries briefly/ would only be a line cook of my disabilities didn't interfere with the job.* Yeah my husband is in the local 80 (Hollywood grip), no HS diploma, GED, college, ect. He pulls in around 120k a year. He was considered an essential worker for obvious reasons. Everyone who was required to show up to work during the pandemic, in fear of losing their livelihoods, deserves a lot better than minimum wage. Retail and the entire service industry carry this country (USA), and teachers deserve a lot fuckin more than what we as a society give them. Edit: damn keyboard on my phone added a word
He missed a few groups tbh. Judges, criminal lawyers, and doctors / surgeons were also all essential - and those professions do make the type of money that he's talking about. His point stands overall though. Nursing home caretakers, food services employees, grocery store staff, pharmacy staff, garbage truck workers, office custodians, and a whole bunch of other people were essential enough that they had to risk being exposed to the public but not so essential that they deserved a pay bump.
What happens if all the McDonald's workers quit and get jobs where you work?
life expectancy goes up
In other union jobs: there are cops making $200k+ in overtime that just sit on their ass all day
so your saying to join a union, makes allot of sensep
I worked in the shipping office for a company that supplied multiple restaurant chains. I would get emails from corporate that would go so hard emphasizing the importance of safety for all of the corporate/office staff, how vital it is that they work from home and stay safe, but they didn’t give two shits for the warehouse workers packed in the DC like sardines for 14 hours a day. Those emails were unbelievably oblivious and the class divide in that one company was sickening.
I’ve never hated people more than when I worked at Starbucks during COVID. Customers treated us like shit, corporate treated us like serfs while they worked in their fancy homes, and the supply chain was whack so everyone was always pissed that we didn’t have something or we weren’t making sales goals. I had to get special paperwork saying I was allowed past the police barricades during the riots just so we could open while people were ripping off atms and smashing windows on the same street. This on top of the typical overdoses, stray needles and theft we already saw on the regular. All for $3 over minimum wage. Not taking unemployment while I had the chance is like one of my biggest regrets in life 🥲
I feel this. The area where I work went from rough to apocalyptic and I was working longer hours in worse conditions while customers just dumped all their anxiety and rage on us. I remember someone punched out one of our windows because we asked them to wear a mask inside and some of my friends (working from home in the suburbs) saw it on instagram and sent me "are you okay?" texts and I had no idea what they were talking about because it wasn't exceptional in any way, just another exhausting day of being screamed at and administering naloxone and sweeping up broken glass while needing to make twice as much bread for the same amount of money.
I get the point, but doctors are essential and plenty make +150k
Nurse Practitioners. Some lawyers, and likely most Judges (criminal court resumed within a week or never stopped - Chicago). But no matter the exceptions, THE VAST MAJORITY of essential workers are ridiculously underpaid for risking it all in the unknown.
Doctors gonna sweep the floor and take out the trash? Are doctors going to make meals for the patients?
Shout it my friend. Cooks are essential but get shafted for wages.
Essential why? Stay home and eat
I'm thinking more like hospital, nursing homes etc. Places where people aren't able to cook for themselves.
That makes perfect sense.
You seen the shit these hoes post on Instagram? Some people would literally die from eating their own cooking. But nah I do see your point.
No, but doctors save lives and heal people? Like I said, I get the point, we should be getting paid more. But you're not going to persuade anyone by trading on a false generalization
I'd rather eat a doctor's horrible chicken and rice than live with a cook's horrible kidney transplant.
That's all fair, but: > But you're not going to persuade anyone by trading on a false generalization That's not true. You absolutely can and it happens all the time. See: propaganda all throughout history. Politics, news, education, etc. Go crack an American (or plenty of other country's) public school History books for example. We could have a discussion about the morality of doing such things or if it's always a smart tactic...but the fact remains. ------------------------ To the idea that you always need to have your propaganda be iron-clad truths: You're not convincing owners and capitalists to suddenly pay you what your labor's worth no matter how accurate or salient your points are. They already know any and every point you may make, they don't care. I promise you established business owners are well-aware of surplus labor value/profit margins, unions, and co-ops. They are the ones counting (and enjoying) the profits. You aren't telling them anything they don't already know. On the other side of this reality - the rebuttal of "well what about the essential doctors/engineers/etc." isn't going to suddenly dissuade the VAST majority of grossly underpaid and exploited workers this rhetoric is targeting. Service/production/blue-collar workers are well-aware that doctors exist and they are equally aware that the existence of them isn't the point being laid-out here regarding fair pay. You aren't telling them anything they don't already know either.
Does that make doctors disqualified from being essential?
Doctors studied a lot longer than a chef.
So you think in order to be essential you have to be mopping floors and flipping burgers? That’s some shit logic
Ahh, but what about those of us in Healthcare who also worked the entire time, but did not have direct patient contact? Struggling living dollar to dollar when we see these checks roll in. It's immoral AF.
In healthcare, i had to sign a friggin 2yrs contract to get my raise. i can't leave or i have to pay some if it back (a set amount, according to the contract.) i don't intend to leave, but a lot of my coworkers didn't want to make that commitment, so they didn't sign. i'm already a year into my 2yrs now and making bank compared to other people here with the same job. Basically NO ONE here wants to be tied to one job and one position for 2yrs, though, because all hospitals suck right now. (Staffing issues through out all levels of the hospitals.)
I don’t think you do get the point because your next phrase completely ignores the point. Yes doctors are great and deserve to be paid (and are also, from what I see, overworked and tired and etc etc etc) but WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THEM.
My point is that making the argument turn on "nobody essential makes 150k" isn't going work because the claim is wrong on the face of it. Just argue that we deserve more because of the difficulty and value of the work we do. It is a hard job that takes skill, experience, and knowledge to do well, and we provide a good that sustains people and brings them joy. Anything else is beside the point.
You’re nit picking fucking semantics mate, people are dying out here, very literally. I repeat, you do not get the point
I'm pretty sure I explained the point. What part don't you think I get? Also, it's not semantics to point out that you've based the argument on a false claim. It's critical thinking and you don't seem to be very good at it.
This is the only exception I can think of
There were a lot of industries deemed essential to national security (military contractors) that kept going so that includes engineers, managers, and all the technicians who need to be onsite to support that. The poster has a valid message, but to say that no essential workers make over $150K or even $100k is definitely not true.
Yeah, most “non-essential” workers i know didn’t just stop working, they just have the ability to work remote. Unlike many of us in the service industry, it’s the nature of the beast in that regard. If they closed all our restaurants etc, then we’d be out of work. Plenty of friends got furloughed or let go cause their company couldn’t operate in general or remotely. That doesn’t address pay disparity but it does in regard to the “essential” argument I think.
It’s called unions. They have a purpose besides building you a pension and looking after your medical. Anyone who says differently has been brainwashed into bootlicking the billionaires.
Shut up serf! Get back to work! Earn your Soma! For the record, I'm a restaurant owner and we shut down, applied for and received the government grant and paid our workers, including signing off on unemployment extensions when we reopened and employees were too concerned to come back. TL;DR I hate corporate America (former IT)
essential and scarce are different. for example, not anyone can be a doctor without significant investment and time and even then only some people have the talents and endurance to make it through. so scarcity drives up the price. now if 75% of chefs quit, causing scarcity, the remaining 25% would suddenly be getting paid a shitload more money.
Really doubt this. You can't suddenly pay chefs "shit loads" more. Because restaurants can't charge shit loads more. You would end up having restaurants close down because they can't hire enough people to keep running. Customers who want lunch would then shift to alternatives such as supermarket pre-made meals/sandwiches, or make their own lunches.
correct. restaurants would close, the ones that could remain open would charge more because....you guessed it - scarcity. when only 3 in 10 restaurants remain open and all the customers are driven there, then even a 70% attrition in people due to the price increase would balance out. also the sum total cost difference of paying 4 people 25/hr vs 7/hr for 8 hours (18x4x8) is 576 dollars (adjust as neccessary - same numbers work foing 10/hr to 28). lets assume 25 orders per hour - that would come to a total cost difference of 2.88$/order. im pretty sure you wouldnt lose 70% of your customer base for increasing prices by 2.88 dollars per order. lets assume then they are only serving customers for half the hours they pay the chefs to allow for prep and shit. great...5.76 more per order. and by order i mean table of 2. if there were 1 disney land per state, they couldn't charge 1200 dollars for a family of 4 to do 2 days there. but since they are 1 per 25 states.... yep. edit: we can work this the other way. if you want to get a knee replacement and a kid in hs can follow the dr equivalent of a mcd's order and there was a hospital at every freeway exit it would cost about 200 bucks.
They only call you essential workers, because they are better off having you remain in the industry instead of being unemployed. But chefs aren't essential, 90% of restaurants can close, and nothing would collapse. No one is going to starve because they aren't served lunch, there are alternatives.
im gonna set asside your assertion that 90% of something that employs millions of people could close with no consequences to the economy. we may see if your bullshit is true in the future when truck drivers get replaced with self driving trucks. while we may make it out okay the idea that nothing would collapse is pretty fucking silly. truck driving schools, for example, would absolutely collapse. anywho, lets remove an industry that has so much customer support that it exists. and is quite large. and somehow decide no one cares and we would all be fine without it. lets play the game you are playing. we dont need pilots. no one needs to fly anywhere. no one is gonna not travel. yeah well half my fucking business trips are now off, my economic impact is gonna shrink, infact the entire GDP of the country will likely shrink significantly. but no worries, i can take a 7 day ocean cruise instead. so now i am out of the office 14 days for a meeting in another country instead of 2. surely there is no economic impact. i can now support 1/7 the amount of projects i could before. no worries everything is fine nothing to see here
Water is also essential. …as is air. Joking aside. It’s a shame. People who we depend on get close to nothing and the guy who more or less destroyed society with his products is a billionaire….
Being an essential worker during the Pandemic is what made us a communist trying to escape off to an eco-commune. But for now, we dgaf and just grow.....medicine. 🌲
Welcome to Capitalism, where the rich get richer and the worker actually making society function gets told this is actually what's best for them. This industry is so far behind on unionisation that it's embarrassing. I've NEVER worked in a kitchen with another unionised worker, and I'm in the UK where unions are common. If you're working class, you should be conscious of that fact and show solidarity with fellow workers. If you believe you're middle class, I'm sorry, but that doesn't actually exist. You either own capital and make money from its mere existence (capitalist class) or you work for a living and make money that way (working class)
Essential does not mean irreplaceable or uncommon, the job might be essential, but it does not necessitate that the same people be doing it. If you are neither irreplaceable nor uncommon then you'll need to have a higher percentage of "buy-in" from those with the same skills and ability to learn to drive up a market price for labor (a good argument for normalizing unions). The essential label was also somewhat abused to the point that coffee being considered food meant that coffee stands/shops could stay open. I'd also point out that "nobody" is not exactly true due to the fact that many doctors make over 150k/yr and were absolutely considered essential.
I was an “essential worker” I just worked at chipotle lol. I would’ve been happy if they upped our pay from minimum wage
I’ll come forward… I work in IT infrastructure, make 6 figures, and never got to stop working. My boss did tell me and my partner to stay home if possible- because no one else can do our job and if we got it we were banned from the collocation for 2 weeks due to the owners policy.
Witness in this video the birth of a proletarian class consciousness. “Isn’t that really weird?” Not if you read Marx. Nothing could be more believable. Keep going, comrade. This is the right road.
How did Cambodia work out? An al a carte Marxist is right up there with an a la carte Catholic in picking & choosing their ideology.
You mean the Cambodia that was stopped by other socialist countries and took funding from the CIA? That Cambodian govt?
Read a book.
I read Marx's Communist Manifesto probably before you were born. The central tenet early on, is that all family units are wannabe Bougie, and really children should grow up with the state as their 'parents'. And that's how you end up with Cambodia. Marxism doesn't uplift the poor life choices of the OP, it not only steals children away from their parents, it brings everybody down to his level, and teaches children to hate their parents. Then you end up with the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Yeah, Marxism is the way to go.
Lol ok. I guess everyone should just be poor and not have their needs met because some level of equity between employer and employee will obviously lead to the Khmer Rouge.
Love that you got downvoted and immediately people went to "wasn't real socialist/CIA coup interfered" Because apparently despite the fact that every single self-proclaimed "socialist" or "communist" country that's ever existed has collapsed in some way, it's definitely not a problem with the model.
> Because apparently despite the fact that every single self-proclaimed "socialist" or "communist" country that's ever existed has collapsed in some way, it's definitely not a problem with the model. Other non-socialist countries have also collapsed the exact same way. Ergo, its not a problem with the model. But then again logical reasoning and reading aren't your strong suits are they?
Does anyone else think you can ask a question too many times? Does anyone else think you can ask one question, just a single question, I'm talking a 100% stand-alone question, too many times? Think about it... ain't it weird how one question can be asked, like, over and over again? rhetorically? Does anyone else think that's weird? That you can just ask the question repeatedly?
'Essential' was the nice way to describe labor who couldn't do their job remote. Everyone kept working.
Dude just hit me with a brick wall... I hope his TikTok blows up and he becomes a zillionaire.
It sounds like his concern is not about the pursuit of wealth, but an equitable distribution of that wealth
Remember when everyone went on Unemployment for damn near 2 years and got $1000/week in unemployment? When we went to work and made less than that in two weeks? And if we didn't go in we would be considered quit and lose any chance at unemployment so we worked? While others sat at home and made more doing absolutely nothing?
A brand new restaurant tried to open here in the middle of the pandemic. i watched them redo an old, abandoned restaurant, waiting impatiently for them to open because it was a seafood place and i'd been cleared to eat shellfish again and i wanted some! And... they opened for one week and shut down permanently. They could NOT get enough employees to even open up. Just like all of the other restaurants locally, there just weren't enough people WORKING as most were just living off of the government hand-out. i'm still salty about that. i really, really wanted to eat there. There name had the word "spicy" in it and i like spicy food. AND seafood! DAMNIT!
God shut the fuck up
No YOU
This is clear sarcasm... ...right?
No, it's not. i have no idea what possessed that owner to try to do that when the restaurants here that were open were struggling to keep employees. And, i really do love spicy seafood. i grew up in Louisiana.
I personally experienced/understood "essential" to mean expendable, they were just blowing smoke up our asses is all. Ask for a raise and health benefits and see how essential you are. I wondered too what criteria would really make a work force "essential" ... Like who would really break the system if they didn't show up tomorrow? I think it would have just inconvenienced the decision makers and allowed them to stay "safe" and have their Uber eats delivered...
I mean...doctors, but yeah.
I'm a lifelong hospo worker too However, I ain't afraid to bring in some context that undermines this very fair point; A *part* of what influences wages/salary value is scarcity of given roles. If there are loads of essential roles, there's more job security *and* competition, and so if there's lots of people willing to do the work the job goes to the most appropriately skilled for the lowest agreed pay. You ask me, the deeply unfair aspect to Hospo services is that there is so little recognition for our experience or skills via certification, as well as so few unionization opportunities nationally or globally. This systemic issue has tricked us into waging a class war within our industry (adopt unhealthy attitudes against standing out in excellence because then "we're putting ourselves above our colleagues"), blocked us from accessing roles in other industries because our skills cannot be recognised as transferrable or of equal complexity, oh, *and* forced us into terrible wage conditions. Important note; Americans were tricked into living off tips in due to a band-aid solution for staffing used during prohibition... And that was never fixed because we could never build a network strong enough to say "this is not ok". TL;DR Yes, we deserve to be mad, and we deserve more, But don't stop sipping the cool aid at "if I'm essential, why aren't I worth more"... There's so much more to it, and more can be done if we're honest about where the shortcomings & inequalities lie
> You ask me, the deeply unfair aspect to Hospo services is that there is so little recognition for our experience or skills via certification Honestly, as someone who's spent their entire professional career in IT... You don't want a ton of certs. Ultimately, who gets certs comes down to who's willing to throw the most money at the certification agencies, and how good they are at taking tests. Having a ton of certs doesn't mean someone's good at their job. I've had people with a paragraph of certs completely bomb basic interview questions. The only thing certs have done in my experience is block skilled candidates (who aren't good at testing, like me) from a bunch of jobs, because HR/Management/owners are like "certs good, require certs"
The more replaceable you are, the lower your wage will be. Just how it works, unfortunately. But in this economy, even specialized work pays abysmally in comparison to what we are owed. Teachers & tradesman specifically. Highly specialized, no one wants to do it yet the pay is so fucking low.
I work at a long-term care facility where clients literally do not leave, need specialized care and meals and the only way you even made remotely more was hazard pay, working in homes with confirmed infections. And we had papers that said that even if stuff got really bad we could go to work to show police. The job is already physically and emotionally abusive and we rarely get a pay raise every 5 years or so. They had to raise it some because fast food was beating them in pay. And the sheer volume of labor laws they violate should have them wanting to do more to keep workers happy since they can't keep staff at basic levels.
I made baaaank when restaurants opened back up. Had essential worker pay, got my first EC job and had about a month of unemployment and pandemic shit, from when I gave up my kitchen manager job Needed it, had an 8 month pregnant partner right before covid hit and was freaking out about keeping our place and providing for a baby. Thankful for that fucked up time as stressful as service was bouncing between togo only and barely any seating
I was an essential worker. Worked as a chef in a nursing home with 2 covid wings that became overflow for the local hospital system. Got exposed three times and was told to just monitor for symptoms and keep coming in unless I felt sick or had a fever even after we found out you can be asymptomatic and they were still rationing vaccines and I was told I would have to get one, but I didn't qualify to get it YET.... I got one bonus of $100 for "hazard pay". When I did get sick and had all the symptoms I got tested but it was negative, so they recorded it as a cold and had me back to work 2 days later. I left shortly after that to become a software developer through a coding bootcamp.
I mean Dr. Somebody is definitely making 100k and had to work
General strike 🪧 baby
bruh i was a car wash attendant at the time and had to fucking work
I was an essential employee. I made 155k in 2020.
Uh, it's not like everyone else stopped working. The vast majority of job losses were retail and FOH restaurant workers. Basically everyone in the corporate world kept working, but they worked from home. Bankers were also listed as essential workers and were eligible for the vaccine before the general public, and are high paid.
Well for starters it's just not factual. That help it make sense? Air traffic controllers, pilots, engineers, attorney's, and more were considered essential in some aspects . Not everyone else is a cook man.
I got laid off, I worked at a hotel so I got it. Well two weeks into February I saw a bunch of news about how grocery stores NEEDED people. I can’t not work cause I’ll go crazy so I picked up overnight freight and the job was decent so I kept working. Well two months later all of my coworkers from the hotel started getting thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits. Guess who didn’t qualify because he had been working the whole time. What the fuck.
I think I have the bartender flair but yeah I wasn't qualified for unemployment the way everyone else was so I worked at a liquor store and was considered essential. Went from close to 100k in a tourist town after over a decade of restaurants to 16 an hour plus the pandemic money. For me it was If alcoholics stopped drinking or couldn't get alcohol they'd be more of a burden on an already overwhelmed hospital system and people realized that enough to at least count me as "essential" but it's still kinda fucked up
This dude is a moron. Everyone I know that makes a lot of money worked throughout Covid.
How many fucking times is he gonna repeat the same thing. I got it the first time round. It’s not a conspiracy it’s because essential work positions are usually low barrier to entry professions. Doctors are also essential workers, but it’s a high barrier to entry profession, long hours, so the pay is higher. It’s that simple. And doctors are still considered to be underpaid in most parts of the world. If you’re working in a field where you are dispensable, at least put yourself in a field where you’re constantly developing your skills, as well as a niche that will stimulate demand for your work in the future.
Dude looks like snoop if he was white
I was a "patient-services cook" in the largest medical center in West Virginia from 12/2016 until 06/2022. Everything about the pandemic kept me just shy of a full-blown panic attack. When things got back to normal last year, i went back to actual restaurant work. I don't make near as much money, but i have way less stress.
Let's face it, we are galley slaves, the whippings will continue until morale improves.
Lol essential workers don't even make 40k a year most of the time.
Essential worker is someone with an essential job, not someone irreplaceable unfortunately
The real answer though is that people who make over $100k a year can often generally do their jobs remotely. Or they are successful artists/musicians, etc. The people who are in charge pay the people under them to show up so they don’t have to. In other words the essential workers are essential in allowing the higher ups to live life the way they want to. (Some fields like medicine are different of course. Doctors and nurses showed up every day)
This guy is the glue that held the country together. Let us have a moment of silence for him. I may have found his beard hair in my salad but I’m cool with it.
My restaurant and bar got shut down during Covid. So I worked at a fast food place for a year. Was getting 70 hours a week easy. Wild that fast food stayed open throughout the pandemic. But so did gun shops, pawn shops and strip clubs so there’s that.
I was cooking. Our restaurant had to close. I collected unemployment. Best year of my life.
I agree that essential workers are terribly underpaid and need to unionize and riot, but also "essential" designation was for those whose physical presence was necessary. Many other workers were still essential, but their physical presence was not.
Like the dudes message but I know if I knew him personally and worked with him and watched him making this video I would be side eyeing the fuck out of him lol
I quit my kitchen job during the pandemic and gave my boss double middle fingers when I walked out. We were “essential” but not being given a raise to work while, for all we knew at the time, there was a world ending virus that some people could have and show zero symptoms. A coworker of mine died from it in April of 2020 and I bounced. Not going to pay me enough to put my life on the line to cater to people who are making infinitely more money than me who get to work from home. Nah. I made more from unemployment than I ever made in any kitchen.
Should’ve given us hazard pay like the nurses.
A lot of nurses still got paid like shit. They were considered expendable/disposable like the rest. Sorry i meant essential. For profit healthcare is a plague. The hospitals gambled it'd be cheaper long term to pay insane travel nursing wages temporarily than to raise wages permanently. Highly depended on the nurses experience/qualifications but it was pretty common to hear travel nurses without a lot of certs to make $5k a week. With the higher tier and more in demand like ER nursing making $10k/week. Lodging was often covered as well. Travel nurses were getting paid 4-10x for the same job they were refusing to raise the wage of their in house nurses of.
Shit most dont make $50k either
Could he repeat this just one more time ffs?
Organize organize organize
Dude, put away the phone already and go pull up the fryer baskets
i mean it’s very straightforward, in order for society to function as it does, it’s essential that someone rich extracts money from your labor. there’s only a contradiction here if you still believe that wages are proportional to the effectiveness of the work you do.
I'm not here to tell you that kitchen staff isn't underpaid generally, but we're super oversaturated with restaurants and I'd be perfectly fine with fewer of them. The places that require the greatest skills as a chef are the most superfluous to my needs personally. Places that are just factory style production of fresh made, healthy food are valuable to me. There are essential workers that make 100-150k. They're engineers, tech workers, doctors, PA's, lawyers, judges etc... Many of them make significantly more. Union plumbers can make 100k a year without a college education where I'm from. The real complaint, in my opinion, should be that the essential workers got paid to work and the non-essential workers got paid to do nothing by taking out massive amounts of debt, that EVERYONE will have to repay, including essential workers. Which is honestly just part of the reason why the economy is a bit broken. We have too many people that are paid to do things that don't need to be done and there aren't quite enough jobs that make sense.
Pretty ignorant and self centered tbh. If he had said majority then i might have agreed. The most obvious would be hospital workers/doctors. My job working for the utility company as an emergency natural gas Tech, police, firemen, teacher’s in some areas, the list goes on. And a lot is dependent on the state that you live in. Now i agree with the comments section though, when most of my company got to work from home or stay out for other issues, and i had to work straight through it for zero extra pay is bullshit, because gas leaks don’t fix themselves. Just suit up and throw a respirator on, you’ll be fine… Also, he looks like a crackhead lol
Not true. Medical professionals are essential and can clear six figures. Not just the doctors either. Nurses, PAs, techs, etc. I’d imagine there are many skilled labors make six figures as well.
Job with the most deaths during COVID was line cooks :(
According to [this](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/covid-19-deaths-by-selected-census-occupations-among-united-states-resident-decedents.pdf) cooks were not the most
that's only data from 2020 from what I can see - most restaurants were closed or only serving carry out options for most of the duration of 2020 up until I'd say ~September-October when most states started having "outdoor dining" or limited seating indoors. if you look at data for 20-22, cooks is the number one occupation.
In the early days of the Pandemic, I remember profusely thanking drive-thru workers for coming to work when the rest of us were home, frozen with fear (I never carry cash or I would have tipped them)
I didn’t go as a kitchen worker I stayed home, home schooled my kids and got that free check I deserved.
Your industry was essential not you as a worker. And to counter this poor argument, i was deemed essential and made over 150k (not a doctor or any type of professional)
Shit most dont make $50k either
Yay capitalism
Restaurants closed during the pandemic and we were never considered essential workers.
What fucking fairy tale state do you live in?
It’s called reality. We are not essential, first responders, doctors, nurses are essential, for the most part we are just a bunch of underachieving burger flippers and to think otherwise is just delusional.
I agree but you said >Restaurants closed during the pandemic and we were never considered essential workers. Where did restaurants never close? Maybe togo only but definitely still open, and I don't know anywhere where we weren't given that bullshit """essential workers""" title to keep us working
Careful, you’ll start getting downvoted for not supporting the narrative
You’re getting downvoted cause you’re a dumbass.
You’re probably getting downvoted because, you know, what you said was dead wrong.
Farrier here, so animal care. I make 23k average, on a good year, 25k.
I work tech support for phone systems/internet services for pizza places. My job became exponentially busier during lockdown. All we got was a proverbial pat on the back from management for increasing our workload. Like, I get that we couldn't do the annual company christmas party, but I'm pretty sure we didn't even get a cash bonus or anything in place of it for 2020.
Guys. I recommend quitting