this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
86 points (100.0% liked)

U.S. News

2432 readers
63 users here now

News about and pertaining to the United States and its people.

Please read what's functionally the mission statement before posting for the first time. We have a narrower definition of news than you might be accustomed to.


Guidelines for submissions:

For World News, see the News community.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

"I am extremely disturbed that workers in some of the world's most profitable companies – in one of the richest countries on earth – are struggling to afford to eat or pay their rent,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

“Multi-billion dollar companies should be setting the standard for working conditions and wages, not violating the human rights of their workers by failing to pay them a decent wage,” De Schutter said.

top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's a feature, not a bug. Keep people impoverished so they're willing to accept whatever horrifying, exploitative conditions necessary to keep a job.

Capitalism is the problem.

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

I was going to say - it's working as designed.

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If they did that wouldn't some other company just take over because their offer is more convenient for the end user? It only works by changing the rules of the game as far as I can tell, in modesty.

[–] 0x815@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

@Elise

These are good points and possibly true, but we need to be careful. I haven't formed an opinion on this particular matter with these three companies, but across the econony in many countries -at least in the US and Europe- we often see that the rules are fine, they are just not applied. (The bank failures in the US earlier this year are a good example: bank regulations might be good enough also for the US, but the Silicon Valley Bank and others were exempted from the rules ... But as I said, I don't know whether there is a similar pattern here.)

The best thing would be if end users would stop buying at such companies, however, no matter what the rules are. I fully agree.

[–] Swim@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

would someone please consider the shareholders...

[–] marco@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

Same with Uber.

[–] LoamImprovement@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

But how else can they enrich their c-suites except at the expense of literally everyone else involved?

Won't somebody think of the CEOs?