1243
Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines)
(discuss.tchncs.de)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
1243 points (99.4% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9721 readers
766 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
$3 is loads more than the Philippines minimum wage. I think it's $8-$10 per day.
Also, y'all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
I'll ask my wife when she gets home, but I bet $3 is equivalent to $10-$12 in the US.
You misunderstand. We aren't unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that's obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity. There is no reason to use a teleconferenced cashier for a retail location other than minimizing employee pay, not just by paying the minimum required here but literally taking a local job and shipping it overseas so you can instead pay what would be a clear poverty wage here, while undoubtedly having record profits like all these companies end up with.
This makes it sound like your problem isn’t someone getting hurt; it’s someone doing well.
Everyone complains about small businesses being driven out, especially in NYC. Their two biggest costs are rent and labor, so of course they try to minimize both of them.
You know what's cheaper than hiring a cashier and teleconferencing them from the Philippines?
The owner running the cash register. You know, like nearly every non-chain restaurant in the country.
Owner could be the chef, it you know, might not want to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week
Then don't open a restaurant if you can't even afford the minimal staff to run it.
They found a way to make it work.
So, there actually is a reason to do this beyond pay, but clearly pay is the actual reason they do it.
A restaurant has a set amount of staff. What happens if a few are sick and they have trouble finding someone to fill in?
A remote agent like this could be from a larger organization being contracted out and you'd never have to worry about not having someone to be available.
Edit: 1 person could even be managing multiple stores where they queue the person to assist you as it detects you approaching. Less ideal would be 'someone will be available in 45 seconds' type queuing.
Or they just hire enough staff to run the business in the first place. Something that used to just be how you operated a business. If the business wants to gamble on regularly operating without enough employees to cover multiple sick calls then they need to deal with the results of that decision.
Pull from other locations to cover, or God forbid, a manager actually covers a shift, or just close the location for a day if they cannot cover it. You know, what every business that operates with employees deals with.
You're making excuses and trying to find a justification for a fucking disgraceful, greedy choice by the owner of this business.
No I'm not, you're just jumping to conclusions. I clearly said it's obviously about the pay.
The actual idea has potential merit like it or not. It doesn't have to be scummy. It could be a US based corporation that pays US employees the same or more than what they'd get paid to be there in person.
The employee as I said could be managing more than 1 store, thus be providing more valuable work, and thus earning even more than they'd be earning at the restaurant, or 711, or wherever.
And they could be doing it from the comfort of their home making for a happier employee.
It just turns out that the way this has been implemented has been terrible and exploitative.
Edit: it could even be numerous ipad based kiosks around a mall where you could talk to someone and ask questions about the mall, without having to find and go to the info booth that's in a single spot (that could also have an actual person there for those that want that). There'd always be someone available since there'd be multiple people for multiple malls all trained on each mall.
I mean, yeah probably. That's not the point. The point is that it's a race to the bottom for people living in higher cost-of-living places.
I really don't care how much buying power they have over there. A fair days work here in the US should be paid in turn.
And flood the islands with US currency? Seems that would lead to massive inflation and hurt the people not working "in" the US.
So what your saying is they should be paid less because their currency is trash? That's a logical fallacy.
Well, if you’re gonna advocate for people, you should care what their experience is.
No, you can always advocate for someone to get paid more regardless of your knowledge of conversion rates.
Okay. Imagine the purchasing power of someone who made the NYC minimum wage of $16/hr.
Maybe pay people for their time, not what the exchange rate "might" be.
If I’m paying NYC minimum wages, I’m getting someone from NYC, in NYC.
Sorry lady from the Phillipines. You’re out of a job because they put in this new “outsourcing must be at local wage rates” law.
Do you think anybody in NYC would cry over this?
I am not sure why anyone in NYC would care about
Lol what is your angle here
Why are people from NYC more deserving of a job than her?
That ain't how this works. If somebody is has some sort of special skill that is needed or there is a shortage, fine.
But using foreign labor to lower wages locally, is just a bad policy for the state and for the workers, only people benefiting is the rent seeker.
Why would anyone who works for money shill for the benefit of the rent seeker?
Have you seen nearly Facebook America? They regularly vote against their own interests. Wouldn't surprise me at all that the same people are the ones barely making ends meet, are advocating against unions, being pro corporate business, and laughing all the way to bankruptcy and homelessness day by day because it makes them feel superior to just one person.
Temporarily humbled millionaires do be like that.
I know this isn't what you meant. But you know de-localizing jobs would probably have the effect of lowering rents.
And the people who are now employed, and their local community that they spend that money in.
Again why is someone in NYC more deserving of it than someone else?
Naive take... Rent seeker always maximizes profit.
NYC resident pays taxes and consumes in NYC.
Why are you advocating of transferring money out of the community? Why would anyone advocate for lower wages in their community?
This common sense stuff. Your whole weird play on "deserving" is a clown take. Disingenuous at best. This has nothing to do with deserving and everything to do with labor economic and labour policy which should be set for the benefit of tax paying public.
So again why would NYC or American taxpayer care about an Asian worker competing purely on price? What benefit do they get?
You know rent seeker don't give two fucks about her lol
Yes that is their goal. But they are in competition with eachother, and when there aren't any people willing to pay absurd prices that have and will come down.
Okay?
I am not a nationalist.
Benefit of locals, while not benefiting others.
Don't know, don't care.
Is the free market in the room with us right now?
Do you like having paved roads and schools?
I agree this is not a free market, but there is still competition.
My community could function on less tax money, less developed countries need it more.
Must be nice to be part of the right community. The rest of the country has severely delepdated infrastructure and non existanant social services.
Good for u tho
That's because of mismanagement not lack of money
That is correct. Too many middle men in government procurement leeching.
Depends on the region, lowest is about 350 php or 6 usd per day. Most of the call centers are in the big cities however where wages are a bit higher and they well enough to be thought of as a decent job.