This was going to be a tale of two protests – since I went on two protests today. But two protests in one day is tiring, so I only have time to write about one of them, more tomorrow.
Clean Start for Cleaners
Today is international anti-poverty day (a concept I find a little weird – today we’ll have international anti-poverty day – tomorrow we’ll go back to ignoring international poverty). The Clean Start for Cleaners campaign organised rallies in Australia and New Zealand today, which is appropriate because to be a cleaner is to live in poverty.
All around the world Cleaners are mostly immigrant and indigenous women. Despite the fact that cleaning needs to be done everywhere, everday and it is completely devalued. The union rate for commercial cleaners is just 70 cents an hour above minimum wage. Cleaners work two or three jobs to get their hours up and have no security of employment. Subcontracting makes it so hard for cleaners to fight for better wages and conditions, because the employer can always hire someone else.
All these points were made at the rally, of course. Plus some interesting facts I didn’t know (90,000 workers got a pay increase when the minimum wage went up -60,000 of them were women – low-wages, poverty and capitalism are all feminist issues). The most powerful speakers were cleaners themselves. There is no service recognition for cleaners, so two women who had cleaned for forty years were still only getting $10.95 an hour. Another woman spoke angrily about always being blamed for being a burden on the tax-payer because she got government assistance – even though she worked over 40 hours a week – she is blamed rather than the employer who won’t pay a living wage.
One of the women also talked about being involved in previous cleaning struggles, and strikes. It must be so hard to have struggled and won, but seen the victory slowly eroded over the last twenty years. Particularly as you’d know that if anything was going to get better you need to fight that fight again.
Now I have some problems with the Clean Start campaign – most notably that no-one really understands what its principles are (and last I heard these principles haven’t actually been translated into the first language of many of the cleaners). But I was really glad to be at this rally, in support of the cleaners.
(Part of my good feeling towards this protest is because I left before Ruth Dyson – (minister of labour) spoke. I needed to get to the other protest, and if you’ve heard Ruth Dyson say once that she’d like to change things, but she can’t – you’ve heard it once too many times).
Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty
There is no service recognition for cleaners, so two women who had cleaned for forty years were still only getting $10.95 an hour. Another woman spoke angrily about always being blamed for being a burden on the tax-payer because she got government assistance – even though she worked over 40 hours a week – she is blamed rather than the employer who won’t pay a living wage.
Which brings up some interesting points. Remember that an employer is re-selling goods and services for a profit. If the employer can’t make a profit, then the employer goes out of business and nobody has a job. This is not an “oooh, poor employer” plea; it’s simply a principle of business. A business (whether it’s a corporate entity, a small business, or a self-employment situation) has to make a profit or it goes out of business, and the employees have to find a new business to work for to make a living, which also has to make a profit.
In order to make a profit, the employer has to charge no more than it’s customers are willing to pay, and pay out less than that in the goods and services it uses.
So I’m trying to figure out what is meant by the idea that cleaning is “devalued”. It is valued. It is valued at $10.95 an hour, apparently. What other measure of value should be used? And why should there be a service recognition for cleaners? Does someone who’s been cleaning for, say, 15 years do that much better a job than someone who’s done it for 10 years that an employer would profit by paying them more to keep them?
The cleaner who is upset that she is being viewed as being responsible for being a burden on the taxpayers because she makes a salary so low that she qualifies (and apparently makes use of) government assistance even though she works 40 hours a week seems to me to miss the point. It’s not the responsibility of the employer to pay her a wage that will keep her off the government dole. It’s the responsibility of the employer to make money. It’s her responsibility to support herself. If she can’t make enough money to support herself without government help, it is her responsibility, not her employer’s, to do something about that. Let her acquire skills through training/education (which I am perfectly willing to support via government subsidy) that will enable her to get a better job. Her problem is that she’s viewing her job as a career that owes her a living. It’s not. It’s a low-paying job that owes her nothing more than the market rate for the works she does. If she doesn’t like it, find another job.
Or, let her market her services as a cleaner directly. Classified ads in my local paper are cheap, and they are filled with people who are marketing precisely this skill. They charge market rates, and keep the employer’s profit for themselves.
Now, that’s not to say that cleaners shouldn’t organize. By all means, form a labor cartel that seeks to improve their lot. If it’s worth it to the employers to sign a contract with a union, then fine. That’s their choice.
RonF, you have to acknowledge that some of the “initial steps” you are discussing are not simple, easy, or in some cases even possible for the women you describe. Starting a business, even a cleaning business, requires capital (for transportation and supplies), client base (telephone costs; advertising costs), business knowhow (how to price; how to negotiate purchase contracts; where/how to buy supplies, etc).
In order to transition from employment at $10/hour to your own work at $20/hour (which probably only nets you $15/hour what with supply costs and no economy of scale) then you have to start off right away with 2/3 of the hours you were working. If you can’t afford to take an hour/day/week off then this isn’t possible to acheive.
So I think your protests are more than a bit unrealistic. (oddly enough I also agree with you that $10/hour is a fairly realistic wage for an unskilled worker. I don’t know how to solve the problem though.)
RonF, you have to acknowledge that some of the “initial steps” you are discussing are not simple, easy, or in some cases even possible for the women you describe. Starting a business, even a cleaning business, requires capital (for transportation and supplies), client base (telephone costs; advertising costs), business knowhow (how to price; how to negotiate purchase contracts; where/how to buy supplies, etc).
I agree it’s not simple. But people do it all the time. Pick up your own local paper and see how many small businesses and self-employed people offer just this service. Start calling a few, and see how many of them seem to speak English as their first language. Not too many. The fact that it is not simple does not mean that people who clean for a living, and not their employers (who in many cases started out as cleaners), are responsible for how much they make and what to do about it if it isn’t enough money for them to live on.
oops. Read, ” … are not responsible for how much they make and what to do about it …”
Ron, my father is a businessman, and a doctor. He’s a very, very successful businessman – the kind of doctor who employs a lot of other doctors, and buys clinics, and gets asked to speak at conventions about how to be a successful doctor.
My father is very smart and incredibly hardworking. And he’s had some advantages – people tend to take smart, hardworking white men seriously, plus he’s had the support of my very smart, incredibly hardworking mother over the decades. Those are advantages very few folks working cleaning houses have.
But let’s not ignore something else about my Dad: He’s a talented businessman (businessperson?). Building a successful business from nothing takes more than hard work, smarts, etc: It takes having a genuine talent for business. My Dad has it. Not everyone does, which is why plenty of businesses run by smart, hardworking people fail every year.
Saying that just anyone can be a successful business owner is as unrealistic as saying that just anyone can have a lucrative career as a musician or an artist. In real life, it doesn’t work that way. Talent is required.
Everyone working full time should be able to earn a decent living. That’s not too much to ask. And saying they should all just go into business for themselves is ludicrously unrealistic.
Everyone working full time should be able to earn a decent living.
The density and volume of bad economic thinking packed into this one sentence defies unpacking into less than a book. I’ll hit the most obvious point and save the rest for my economics textbook.
If I work full time as a software analyst, I will very likely earn an excellent living. If I work full time as a painter, I will very likely starve.
If I choose to forego my economically viable career path in exchange for one with inadequate compensation, whom do you propose should pay for my “decent living”? The other people who decided to work for Microsoft instead of following their muse?
Personally, I would find it a lot more fulfilling to pursue a career in art (for which I have no talent, but considerable love) and get a modest but livable check from the government every month than I would to resume my career in software. The supply of similarly motivated individuals is not, in my experience, limited. But as a crappy artist, my contribution to the economy is pretty much nil. It’ll be nil for a long time, if it ever goes above nil. My choice combined with your principle creates a structural need for subsidy.
But who’s going to provide the subsidy when, instead of busting your nuts at Microsoft, you can teach harmonica to preschoolers and make an adequate wage? What’s to stop us from all quitting our jobs at Microsoft and taking up the brush (or stock car racing, or writing, or gardening)? Well, reality; the supply of wannabe artists is unlimited, the supply of millionaire successful doctors with liberal outlooks and big tax payments is finite. In other societies which have adopted a variation of your principle as an operating rule, it quickly becomes necessary to limit occupational choice for reasons of economic productivity. I’m sorry, you don’t get to be an artist; we’ve got too many artists already. Here, learn how to write code, because our society needs some economic vitality in order to subsidize the other artists.
You’re willing to work as an artist for very little money, even starving, to pursue your vision? I’m sorry, we can’t allow that. Everyone working full time has to be able to earn a decent living, and since we can’t afford any more subsidies this year, you’ll have to defer your dream and do what WE tell you to do.
The ideology of “everyone earning a decent living” sounds so nice and warm and fuzzy. It’s the hidden, but utter, abrogation of personal freedom and choice that is a necessary concomitant that causes the trouble.
Ron,
Come on: Even you should realize this is a silly example. Here’s why:
1) Pick up your own local paper and do what you suggested. Count how many people are listed.
2) Compare that number to the total number of people who provide cleaning services in your area.
It’ll be, what? 10%? 5%? 1% Less?
How many ads do you think are in the Villege Voice, NY Times, NY Post, and other NY papers combined? How many people do you think work in NYC cleaning stuff up?
Reality check: You’re looking at the cream of the crop there. And not everyone is, or CAN BE, the cream of the crop. There will always be people who are comparatively unskilled and lack the capacity. for significant change The proverbial Nobel scientist who happens to start life as a floorsweeper is probably going to figure out how to get out of her life. But not everybody is.
It’s asking quite a lot, really. Why sould someone get paid more than they’re worth?
“It’s asking quite a lot, really. Why sould someone get paid more than they’re worth? ”
You’re implying that people aren’t worth the amount it takes to keep them comfortably alive?
“It’s asking quite a lot, really. Why sould someone get paid more than they’re worth? ”
Hmmm…..how is this “worth” determined? Before I got into the apprenticeship, I worked in childcare. I earned the minimum wage. I watched the children of working and lower-middle class people who earned three or four times what I was earning. The thing is, without my labor, most of those people would have been unable to earn their livings, unable to use their experience and education to “better themselves”—instead, they’d be doing some combination of the low-wage and/or off-the-books work/hustle/government assistance/private charity thing. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to go to a regular forty-hour a week job with benefits.
See, if every childcare worker decided to organize and sit at home for a week, our society would come to a screeching halt. Just one week. You may think that the labor of the childcare worker is only “worth” six or eight bucks an hour—but in the absence of that person, and thousands like her, millions of other people have to stay home also—-the very people you think are “worth” their higher wages. Now how much is the labor of a childcare worker worth?
Sure, if you ask me, I’ll readily tell you I’m worth what I’m paid, and that I worked hard to get where I am. I did work hard. But frankly, I worked hard as a childcare worker too—it just wasn’t valued. The people whose children I watched worked hard for their money, and most of them came from backgrounds similar to mine—I didn’t begrudge them for what they achieved, but I also recognized that part of their gains came on my back—just as part of my gains came on the back of other childcare workers. I was damn lucky—I got the opportunity to get into a better line of work, and I ran with it. But I could just as easily not been given the opportunity—what then? It speaks of privilege to assume that everyone is given equal opportunity—we aren’t. There but for the grace of God and all that.
Repeat after me—-Social. Contract. The one that says, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, if you get up in the morning (or evening, as the case may be) and do your part to contribute, you will never go without. We have the material resources to provide this, but don’t because of greed.
I don’t think people should starve: I support higher taxes and social services. And I don’t think the PERSON doing cleaning is worthless, any more than I think the artist on the street corner who is painting hideous (to me) stuff is worthless. I don’t especially like valuing people. When I talk about ‘worth” I mean “worth as an employee”, which is essentially “work product”.
And I think it’s fine and dandy to put a value on work or work product. So no: I don’t think someone cleaning houses is necessarily worth more than $20,000 per year.
Some of them are worth more. Some are probably worth less. Some people’s work is probably worth only minimum wage. And I don’t think the ugly art is worth anything at all to me.
There are a variety of jobs which seem, to me, to be a poor match between pay and actual worth. Most of the superhigh stuff (corporate) for example. And also some of the low-pay-but-pretty-hellish work, like daycare providers and some public school teachers.
OTOH, low pay for cleaners seems like more of a a fair match. Nobody especially wants to clean, but the truth is that most people CAN clean. If you think it’s worth more: How much should a cleaner be worth?
(Random info: Where I live, cleaning is mostly private and goes for $15-20/hour.)
Social. Contract. The one that says, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, if you get up in the morning (or evening, as the case may be) and do your part to contribute, you will never go without. We have the material resources to provide this, but don’t because of greed.
If we aren’t providing it, then it isn’t a Social Contract. It’s a Social Way Things La Lubu Would Like Them To Be, But Which Suspiciously Big Chunks of the Rest of Us Don’t Remember Signing Up For.
And “never go without” what, exactly? Food? Clothing? Designer clothing? Bejewelled clothing? A mud hut or a brick two-level?
An American who works at minimum wage in the United States for 40 hours a week – a level of leisure time not rivalled in human society since the Pleistocene – earns $10,300 per year, if s/he takes off two weeks for vacation. That’s roughly the economic productivity of Czechoslovakia. Yes, you are driving a crappy car if you even have one, and macaroni products feature in your diet – but you have food and shelter and the occasional doctor visit, and sufficient material resources to put you ahead of roughly 99% of all the humans who have ever lived.
See, if every childcare worker decided to organize and sit at home for a week, our society would come to a screeching halt.
To the limited degree that this is true, it is equally true of most every occupation that is important to the economy, which is most of them. Yes, child care workers are important. So are electrical linemen, teachers, and web developers. So what?
The work of a person is as valuable as someone else is willing to pay. That’s all there is to it. If that amount leads to material hardship such that our humanitarian feeling demands assistance be lent, then God bless us for it, and let the assistance be lent. But let’s not pretend that we’re suddenly incapable of assessing value just because a human being is involved in the process. Your work as an electrician is worth more to other people than my daughter’s preschool teacher’s work is. That doesn’t make her lazy or bad; it makes the market value of her labor less.
You can be as fervent for social justice as you wish, but the ability to valuate work is a functional requirement of all economies, not just capitalist ones.
this debate about the action of the market in cleaning services is a good example of why the market doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to. The problem is set out in the LHMU/SFWU publication “A Clean Start for the Property Services Industry” – its on their websites. It shows that the market for cleaners doesn’t work to value cleaners at their true worth. There is a race to the bottom as cleaning contractors compete with each other to get contracts at any price. That’s why the market is incapable of truly valuing the worth of a cleaner. The market imperfection also means that cleaning isn’t done properly with a consequent impact on the health of workers in those buildings.
Cleaners are organising to change the way the market operates. The whole property service industry needs to takes responsbility to ensure that cleaners have the time to do their job properly and to ensure that they can stay in the market and support their families.
Defending the integrity of a market when all the evidence shows that it just doesn’t work the way it is supposed to means there is too much reliance on ideology and too little reliance on an examination of what is actually happening on the ground.
Others have adequately commented on how to measure the worth of someone’s work, and what people are owed vs. what they’ve earned. However, there is this:
And saying they should all just go into business for themselves is ludicrously unrealistic.
Which is exactly why I didn’t say it. Unless someone cares to point out where I did?
Michael, what you’re describing is the market operating. In order to stay in business in a competitive marketplace (since it’s relatively easy to get into the cleaning business), contractors keep their costs as low as they possibly can. The market isn’t “supposed” to come out with a great wage for menial work; the market is supposed to maximize the supply of goods and services, and it generally does. At the market-clearing price, there are more people employing cleaning agencies than at any other price. It doesn’t make it much fun to be a cleaning person – but when that cleaning person turns around to spend his or her money, the same efficiencies are in play on the prices that he or she pays – if people haven’t said “ooh, those markets don’t work properly” and made everything in them more expensive.
Supply and demand. You’re looking only at the demand side of the market for child care and ignoring the supply side. Yes, it’s important. But anyone can do it, so its market value is low. A man dying of thirst in the desert may give you everything he owns for a jug of water, but that same jug of water isn’t worth much when the supply is abundant.
You seem to be trying to pass off a quantitative rule as a qualitative one. What is full time? What is a decent living? Do you mean a decent living for one person, or for one person some fixed number of dependents (say, two), or are you proposing a sliding scale in which a person with three dependents gets paid more than a person with no dependents doing the same work?
If we look at the issue with any historical perspective at all, it should be clear that your rule is already satisfied. There’s no question that a person today working full-time, as it was defined in the 19th century, can earn a decent living, as it was defined in the 19th century. In fact, just about anyone can earn a better living working fewer hours than was possible for an unskilled worker back then.
You obviously mean less by “full time” than 80 hours a week, and more by “decent” than non-leaky shelter and enough food to maintain a healthy weight. So what is the correct form of this rule, and why?
Not supporting the cleaners claim for more wages is not only immoral, it is bad economics.
1. Cleaners get insufficient pay to live at a standard consistent with our social conscience (if you have one, the majority do, some on this site don’t).
2. Arguing that the cleaner as a consumer gets the benefit of cheaper and more abundant goods elsewhere, due to efficient operation of the market, is one of the great mistakes of classical economics- the problem was addressed most famously by a certain Rhodes scholar named Robert Lee Hawke, at the time a world record holder in beer drinking and later (as a teetotaller) PM of Australia (have any of you market economists achieved as much?)
3. The key to the problem is that wages are a cost AND an income. Keeping them low- (and keep is the right word, with all the extensive legal and physical protection states must afford those who would otherwise be subject to coercion by the aggrieved workers) only serves to suppress demand for common consumer goods and therefore hold up the efficient production of those goods. The best historical examples come from comparisons between places like Australia and NZ. Under neo-classical wage theories (introduced by Labour Governments) NZ’s productivity fell and social problems soared, with all the attendant inefficiencies of crime, emmigration and super-exploitation (inefficient because it rewards companies that pay LESS than the market rate).
In comparison, Australia’s 1993 collective agreement based system, with a strong minimum standards, ensured productivity growth for a decade and increases in profits AND real wages.
Look to the history, not to your theories, and you’ll know far more.
Note $10.95 New Zealand is probably about $6 US. So it’s $12,000 a year not $20,000.
I knew this was going to happen. I didn’t want to publish this post, because I knew that as soon as I did a whole lot of well off white men would come along and denigrate the work and value of non-white women. I hated knowing that I was going to give people this opportunity.
Most people can learn to clean, but most people can learn to do a lot of jobs. It’s physicaly exhausting work, done at speed, and there is skill to learn.
Are you talking about corporate cleaning or home cleaning? When you say private do you mean it’s done by individuals or is subcontracted by a cleaning company. Are you talking about what people pay or what they are paid?
RonF – please remember that I am anti-capitalist – explaing that it has to work under capitalism doesn’t really matter to me.
I knew that as soon as I did a whole lot of well off white men would come along and denigrate the work and value of non-white women.
Huh?
Maia, my maternal great-grandparents were immigrants to the United States. I don’t specifically know if bis-bis-nona or nono (tres-nona?) ever worked as a cleaner, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They and their siblings and cousins did a lot of other things, from digging ditches to picking fruit to casual labor.
My paternal great-grandparents were mostly dirt farmers of a pretty low variety. A few did well but mostly they raised children and chickens, and the level of their paid labor was no higher than that of the more recent immigrant side of the old family tree.
Subject to the norms of human frailty and variation, all of these people worked hard, provided for their children, lived decent lives and died a little better off than they’d started out. Their labor had tremendous value: it put food on the table for their kids, contributed to the material culture around them, and gave them a functional role in society, along with and any number of intangible benefits. I am proud of them and what they accomplished. I would no more devalue and denigrate them than I would spit on crippled orphans.
But I will, when it’s appropriate, measure the economic value of their work product – and it was low. (Certainly, in parity terms, lower than the modern US or NZ minimum wage.) Honest work done by any person – woman of color or not – is of value and worth respect. But respect for a job well done and dollar valuation aren’t the same thing.
It seems odd that – hating money and capitalism as you do – you so totally equate the awarding of respect and regard with the allocation of cash income. If capitalist success is something you hate, then cleaning people who made a “living wage” would become contemptible in your view. (More than they already are, as part of the hated machine.) Why on earth would you advocate for things that make people you care about more contemptible?
I think Maia is questioning the ways in which labor is valued under Capitolism. Skilled or unskilled may be one of the rubrics we use to determine whether or not someone’s labor is “valuable” or “worth a lot” or whatever; however, just ‘cuz it’s established, doesn’t mean it’s correct.
I have a friend who lives in an anarchist co-op where the people’s contribution to the house is given in terms of hours rather than absolute dollar amounts. People who work at high power jobs pay the same number of hour’s wages as people who don’t.
The rubric they’ve decided to use is that it’s not skill or non-skill which should determine the worth of people’s labor. They say everyone’s time should be equally respected.
(If you could adjust that for time effort, that would probably be helpful. However, I remain unconvinced that skill or lack thereof is a good way to adjust for effort. Do I really work harder when I’m preparing a college class curiculum than a cleaning woman does scrubbing a bathroom? My intellectual engagement is higher, but I don’t have to deal with crushing boredom.)
“It seems odd that – hating money and capitalism as you do – you so totally equate the awarding of respect and regard with the allocation of cash income. If capitalist success is something you hate, then cleaning people who made a “living wage” would become contemptible in your view. (More than they already are, as part of the hated machine.) Why on earth would you advocate for things that make people you care about more contemptible? ”
My interpretation is that Maia’s saying that, under a capitalist system, the amount of money allotted for labor equates to respect and regard. She says that cleaning people deserve more respect and regard.
I think you’re condensing her personal opinions about a future world, her opinions about the way things exist in the here and now, and her acknowledgement of how the system of capitalism actually works.
Us too. I suspected as soon as I posted my response and read the responses of others, that at least one person (I thought it might be you) would engage in some idiotic ad hom and suggest that someone’s position was inaccurate because of their wealth. I confess I didn’t expect the veiled racism accusations (how is that even relevant at ALL?) but thanks for the surprise.
I agree with your first two points. But as I only clean recreationally, maybe I’m missing something about the third. Can you explain some of the skills which are required to clean as a profession, which most people don’t already possess?
Individuals, mostly. Though there may be some small cleaning “groups” of 3-4 employees. Much of it is under the table.
Here, at least, we live in a capatalist society. most 1st world economies are at least somewhat (if not very) capatalist. This is an…. interesting… view. Sort of like developing a view of how to improve womens’ lots but neglecting to mention that the process won’t work under patriarchy.
Combined with your earlier post I’m a bit confused. Are you looking for what are commonly called “real world” applications? These tend to require working within the system to change it? Or are you abstract theoretical land?
Sailorman,
Try to dial a bit back on the condescension. I speak as ersatz temporary substitute mod.
Maia mentions that she had problems with the campaign that this protest supports because the campaign has unclear principles. By this, I assume she means that it isn’t well organized to effectively support collective action. Maia’s been pretty clear on what she believes is the effective method for fighting economic oppression under capitalism: collective action.
The ability of labor to use collective action to directly (collective bargaining) and indirectly (through getting government regulation) improve bargaining position and wages is the aspect of the market that you, Robert, and Brandon Berg seem to be ignoring. That is what this protest was in support of. It isn’t pie in the sky when we die wishing that cleaners could be paid better, it is part of an active struggle to force employers and contractors to pay better wages.
“Us too. I suspected as soon as I posted my response and read the responses of others, that at least one person (I thought it might be you) would engage in some idiotic ad hom and suggest that someone’s position was inaccurate because of their wealth. I confess I didn’t expect the veiled racism accusations (how is that even relevant at ALL?) but thanks for the surprise.”
The connection seems perfectly obvious to me.
The Capitalist system, under which we all live, yadda yadda, values certain kinds of labor more than others. Said value is expressed monetarily, which would be one reason why we see phrasing like the example above: “Why should people be paid more than THEY’RE WORTH?”
(Not that I don’t appreciate the clarification of intent, but I think the fact that a semantic condense between what “people are worth” and what “people’s labor is worth” points to the fact that, at some level, our culture perceives these two things to be the same.)
Who tends to be able to have the kinds of positions that we value? Tends to be the economically and culturally priveleged. Who doesn’t? Tends to be the economically and culturally unpriveleged.
I don’t know what the ratio of women of color involved in cleaning work is nationally, but I do know that there are heavy stereotypes involved in them being hispanic or non-white immigrants.
I (and I assume Maia, though possibly not, of course, I don’t speak for her) start with an assumption that cleaning work is hard. It may not be skilled, but I (and perhaps Maia) reject the idea that skill must necessarily be the primary criteria for deciding whose work is valuable.
Whose position in the world is supported by the idea that skilled labor is de facto better than unskilled labor (unless that skilled labor is primarily seen as women’s work; for instance, teaching is less valued than law)?
Who overwhelmingly holds those positions?
Who’s left out of this picture?
Whose work is being marked as less valuable?
Take the same argument and apply it to fruit-picking. Arduous, unskilled labor. Would you argue that fruit-pickers do not deserve to be paid more than the pittances they are? Would you argue that they don’t deserve more than minimum wage?
If so, why? Why would you assume their work is any less valuable than your contribution to society?
And do you see why that’s at heart a racist assumption?
The Capitalist system, under which we all live, yadda yadda, values certain kinds of labor more than others.
No, it doesn’t.
The system itself does not assign values. People assign values. The capitalist system, under which we all live, allows people to set their own valuations on what they will pay for the labor of others. The capitalist system permits the more-or-less transparent passthrough of individual value choices – so that the valuation people place on things may change over time, leading to changes in wage rates for particular jobs without any change in the moral status of the people doing those jobs. That would not be possible if the system itself were imposing preferences.
Why would you assume their work is any less valuable than your contribution to society?
Because people who are free to pay whatever they think the work is worth have historically bid for my labor at rates higher than they have bid for the labor of the fruit picker, without being coerced or defrauded into doing so. I am not thus making an assumption – I am making an observation of an empirical reality.
Robert,
People don’t pay what your labor is worth, they pay the minimum amount that they can to get your (or equivalent) labor. We can only determine what your labor is worth by pushing that minimum amount until they are unwilling to pay any more.
Labor organizing and pushing for pro-labor regulation are ways of pushing up the floor of the price of labor to something closer to the worth of the labor.
If you’d still hire an office cleaner even if it cost $30 an hour, but you can get one for $6 and hour, the worth of the labor is $30/hr, but the price is $6/hr. Over abundance of workers available for a particular job pushes down the price of the labor, but it doesn’t push down the worth.
Charles –
Nah. There’s price, and that’s it.
How do you figure?
If we up the price, at some point you will choose to do without. The point just before that value is how much you value the thing being sold. Merely because my need to sell means I’ll sell way below that price doesn’t mean that value doesn’t exist. If you are employing people at minimum wage, and they unionize and demand twice that, if you look at your books and decide you’d be better off paying twice what you were paying than you would be losing your work force, which price is the price of labor? Which price is the value of labor to the employer?
“There’s price, and that’s it. ”
Which is why prices only ever fluctuate in direct proportion to inflation.
First: Sorry, Maia; that was a rude response, and an inappropriate one.
Charles: You are riffing off the fact that what X is willing to work for may be less than what Y is willing to pay him to do the work. That’s not uncommon in any area–negotiations happen all the time.
I’m not sure where you get the automatic assumption, though, that the result should be “X gets the maximum Y is willing to pay”. However, having said that and thought about your point, I don’t think that Y should pay the minimum either. (Robert, care to explain your position?)
It’s a good issue to have raised. Must think on it some more.
That’s a bit of a circular argument but I am well aware that the transition from poor>rich is extraordinarily hard, which I think is part of what you mean.
I have no idea about the ratios either. And I know nonwhites face discrimination, though are you saying it’s somehow worse for cleaners…?
I don’t think skill needs to necessarily be the primary criteria. But I think a discussion of work product value that excludes skill and required training is problematic.
Whose position? The skilled people. And the people who are working to become the skilled people. (and you noted, I hope, that teaching was one of my specific examples for underpaid people.)
People who go through fairly expensive and/or lengthy training. THAT is a lot of what makes skilled positions so highly paid. Of course, one can also go through on the job training. Artists can make lots of money with almost no training, if they’re good.
Not incidentally, many of those skilled positions don’t necessarily end up being moneybags. I would almost certainly be richer right now if I had started work at 18 and was now a carpenter with some decades of experience. (I did the workup once). I’ll eventually pass him, but not for a while. Make that carpenter a plumber, and I’ll probably ever catch up.
the unskilled folks. Who are, usually, also poor. I’m ont sure, however, the %age who aren’t white, as you seem to be implying.
Well, there’s some point at which is it no longer economically viable to grow fruit. I don’t know what that point is. I also confess I don’t know what they get paid.
But it is a tricky thing, this “deserve” issue. Especially if one elects to apply it to immigrant fruit pickers. How much would they be paid somewhere else? How much does a fruit picker get paid outside of the U.S.? If you want to talk about “living wage” do you consider the different
In this current world? I don’t know. Mostly because I’ve been told it is. And because I get paid more. And also because it my job happens to be scarcer and somewhat more difficult to do.
However, I’m not some idiot that thinks lawyering has anything other than the value assigned by society. As professions go, it’s probably one with some of the least intrinsic value. (maybe the negotiation and mediation stuff is “worth” something, but not much). You can’t eat it, you can’t wear it, you can’t sell it. It’s worthless unless we say it’s worth something.
Right now, we don’t place enormous priority on certain skill sets like, say, the ability to hunt game. But obviously we USED to. And we still do in many areas of the world. But we place value on lawyering. I don’t really know how to articulate why I think that’s both not exactly OK and yet normal enough to be OK.
No. I’ll say this: I can understand your point, and I see why you think that, and I think you are basing it on reasonable assumptions, and I don’t think you are insane. I just disagree.
People have been paying less for unskilled labor for a long, long, time. Much of that time a lot of the focus on unskilled labor was the lower classes, not other races. The definition of “skilled” has changed, but still: for a long, long, time. It’s classist (obviously, as there’s a pay differential.)
Picking grain and washing dishes have been low-status and low-pay jobs since there were people to do them. I’m not going to buy into a revised scheme in which considerering a scullery dishwasher’s work as “less valuable” than an innowner is all of a sudden racist.
Charles, I don’t deny that there’s an internal valuation done on the inside of someone’s skull. I just think that all the relevant information about that valuation gets encoded into the price via the market mechanisms, since all the people making the different valuations are also the people bidding for the labor and setting the market price.
If you are employing people at minimum wage, and they unionize and demand twice that, if you look at your books and decide you’d be better off paying twice what you were paying than you would be losing your work force, which price is the price of labor? Which price is the value of labor to the employer?
The price of the labor is what they get paid. There is no price which is the “value of labor” to me; I can’t put a single number on that value, and in any event that isn’t what I’d end up paying. So who cares what it is?
However, having said that and thought about your point, I don’t think that Y should pay the minimum either. (Robert, care to explain your position?)
What’s to explain? Why shouldn’t Y pay as little as she can (assuming equal quality, etc.)? Does anyone go to the car dealership and say “$17,500 is just not a fair price for this car – it’s worth way more than that. Here’s my check for $20,000.” ?
Robert, you’re not making sense. There’s no inherent value to a normal auction over a Dutch auction. It’s merely a question of who benefits most in the negotiations.
You seem to be claiming there’s an inherent superiority, and I’m asking you to explain that.
It is possible my boss would pay me $1000 more. It is possible I would do the same work for $1000 less. What basis do you have for deciding which option would occur on a global scale?
Sorry Sailorman, I’m not following you.
Robert,
As the price of labor is the price laborers get paid, it makes a great deal of sense for laborers to organize and force a higher price (up to the effective value of their labor). It also makes sense for laborers to try to do an end run around the direct negotiations by getting government regulation to force a minimum price (to prevent unorganized laborers from undercutting the negotiated price). One way to work towards getting those results is to make popular appeals to the injustice of the price that results from negotiations involving unregulated and unorganized labor.
There is nothing that assures that the magic of the unregulated market place will produce a labor price that will be viewed as just. The morality of wages is at a tangent to the market mechanisms that produce those labor prices. Social solidarity (both among the specific group of workers and among society in general) has a huge influence on what people will feel is a just wage.
Obviously, Y wants to pay the minimum (unless Y accepts that there is also a social obligation component to her actions, in which case, she may choose to pay the minimum she believes is reasonable), but that doesn’t mean that society as a whole should conspire to help her achieve that goal. This is particularly true since paying the minimum will frequently involve externalizing costs (e.g. the government has to provide welfare support to make up the difference between what Y pays X and what the larger society feels is required to meet X’s minimum legitimate needs). Whether it is better to externalize those costs or not is a difficult question (higher wages vs. higher earned income tax credit), but it is important to recognize them.
Hi Sailor,
Again, thank you for your thoughtfulness, and there’s a lot to respond to. I can’t spend a lot of time on the baord right now (I hope to later), but I did want to respond to this:
“It’s classist (obviously, as there’s a pay differential.) ”
You’re right, of course. It’s classist.
I think, because of the ways that class and race are entwined, that the assumption in question also functions within the framework of the society to support racism. (and conversely that racism functions to support the assumptions about whose work is important)… so I think the two are entangled on this issue.
But class is probably the more important thing to talk about here, especially since the discussion started by being about class. The connections to race are present, I believe, but perhaps less central.
Robert, let me explain differently:
There is usually a gray area in price assignment. That area reflects the reality that the maximum people will pay for a product (if forced to do so) is usually less than what the product would sell for. (I’m using “product” to include work product and wages.) It’s a bit like a confidence interval.
To use your car example: Someone goes onto a lot to buy a car of unknown price. Let’s assume for a moment they’re willing to pay a maximum of $14,500 to get the car. The car dealer would like to sell the car for as much as possible, but hey are willing to sell it for as little as $14,000.
There is $500 of overlap. I refer to this as the “gray area”, mostly because I can’t recall the exact term. The transaction will therefore happen–but at what price?
If you begin from the premise that something is overpriced/not available, and then you RAISE the price until the sale occurs, it will tend to select the highest price in the “gray area.” If the manufacturer starts at $15,000 lowers the price by units of $100, then in theory the buyer shoudl purchase the car when the price hits $14,500.
OTOH, if you begin from the premise that something is underpriced/widely available, and RAISE the price it will tend to select the lowest price in the “gray area.” If the buyer starts by offering $13,500 and then goes up from there, in theory the sales agent should acceot a $14,000 offer.
Where the actual price ends up is usually a function of the power and skill of the parties.
Now, the work analogy:
If you start from a condition where the workers are underpaid and widely available, you will never reach the maximum wage which the business is willing to pay. Obviously, so long as there are workers, the cost is stilli in the “gray area.” But the business can use continual price cuts to find the bottom of the gray area, and make the workers take as little as possible.
OTOH, if you start from a condition (strike) where the workers are NOT available, you will usually end up close to the maximum wage the business is willing to pay. The workers can use continuous strikes to find the top of the gray area and make the business pay as much as possible.
What I am asking you is this:
You are claiming that the low-pay condition is the only “valid” price.
Why?
I knew this was going to happen. I didn’t want to publish this post, because I knew that as soon as I did a whole lot of well off white men would come along and denigrate the work and value of non-white women. I hated knowing that I was going to give people this opportunity.
If you randomly hire a cleaning person in the Chicago area, there’s an excellent chance that a white woman will show up on your doorstep. She’ll probably speak Polish as her native language, although it might be English with a strong Irish brogue. I find your resort to what appears to me at least to be an implicit accusation of racism is baseless, offensive and diversionary.
Who overwhelmingly holds those positions?
As I look around my Network Operations Center, which is staffed by people who all are earning at least $40K US/year and some up to $100K US/year, I see Caucasians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Orientals, both male and female. Some native born, some immigrants. I’ve spent a significant period of my working life reporting either directly or one-step-up to a black male or a white female; sometimes both my supervisor and his/her supervisor were either female or black, including a Director and a Vice President. I generally have worked for Fortune 500 companies, and I’ve seen lots of this. So my answer to that question is, “people who took it upon themselves to learn a high-paying skill”. Many of them never went to college – they learned their present skills while they were working at lower-paying jobs, often on the night shift.
OK, Sailorman, I get you know.
Where the actual price ends up is usually a function of the power and skill of the parties.
Right.
You are claiming that the low-pay condition is the only “valid” price. Why?
Well, not really. I’m claiming that the low-pay condition is A valid price; you’re willing to work for that rate, I’m willing to pay you, hooray.