
The 4 AM Army  - w1ntermute
http://nation.time.com/2013/06/27/the-4-am-army/print/
======
grimtrigger
I very briefly worked a job like this when I was in college. I would work the
concession stands at a huge football stadium with around 1,000 temporary
workers on a given game day.

The wage and hours were terrible, but it was the absolute dehumanization that
stuck with me. No body knew your name or particularly cared. You would walk in
during the morning, flash your badge and get assigned to a particular stand.
Every day it was brand new people who you've never met before with a brand new
manager. There was obviously no room to move up, because you never had a
chance to build a track record with anyone. There was also just plain
disrespect on the part of the company towards its workers. We would spend 2-3
hours after the game just waiting for permission to go home. I can't imagine
spending much of my life in a job like that, it was just horrible. But clearly
there were enough people who had to do it, because there were many 40 year
olds I worked with.

People who've never worked these jobs tend to read this article and assume
that these articles have a hidden agenda: raising the minimum wage or some
kind of socialist initiative. I read it differently, as a reminder of the
depressing underside of the US economy.

~~~
chunkyslink
> raising the minimum wage or some kind of socialist initiative

What would be wrong with that anyway?

~~~
asperous
Money doesn't come from nothing, there are side effects of raising the minimum
wage. Besides the fact that a small percentage of US work force are actually
paid minimum, most more or less than it.

~~~
wavefunction
We can reduce CEO compensation then. There's your money from something.

~~~
yummyfajitas
CEO pay is generally an insignificant fraction of labor costs. Suppose we
split the pay of Walmart's CEO (about $20M) between Walmart's 2M employees.
That's $10/year per employee.

~~~
wavefunction
Sure, if you apply it in such a simplistic manner. Why would you give $10 to
the guys making 6 figures as well? Whatever, Walmart encourages its employees
to apply for food-stamps and other transfer payments so their economics are
already all f'd up.

~~~
yummyfajitas
How much do you believe the average low skill walmart could receive if we
redistributed the CEO's pay? $20/year? $40/year?

------
rayiner
Look carefully, because this is the future of America. This is the plight of
the average worker in a world where labor is increasingly replaced by
automation capital owned by a select few, gutting the bargaining power of
ordinary people in the employment market.

~~~
wwwarhawk
Yeah, let's just stop automating things. /sarcasm

~~~
knowaveragejoe
His reference to "automation" here of course does not necessarily mean
automation of labor(i.e. assembly line automation), but instead the fact that
companies with lots of cash to throw around can gut their workforce and hire
in temp agencies. Hence "automation capital". They are "automating" in the
sense that a churning workforce consisting of temps can be paid less overall.
There will never be a shortage of people to fill those jobs and there is no
need to cover expensive benefits.

~~~
eru
> There will never be a shortage of people to fill those jobs [...]

This is wrong. E.g. Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder had to import workers
from first Italy and Greece, later from Turkey.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
So... it doesn't matter where they're coming from. The same is true here.

------
eliben
An interesting case study in modern journalism. This article has an
interesting story to tell, but the author seems unaware of it, so he tries
really hard to use every trick in the book to extract hyperbolic statements
suitable for headlines.

Authors should realize that a good article stands on its own merits, and
tabloid-driven drama just lowers its value.

------
yk
One interesting aspect of the plight of the temp workers is, that this is very
exactly the kind of market Marx did analyse. The temp agencies distribute
highly standardized work assignments to the temp workers, who have no choice.
(If they would qualify for McDonalds minimum wage jobs, they would probably
prefer them.) In this kind of environment the agencies can only compete on
price, since the specific assignment is determined by the customer of the
agency, and this means they need to cut their costs. ( Notice the mention of
22 workers in a 17 seat bus, this represents a 29% increase in efficiency of
transportation.) And this leads to the situation where the least decent
employer sets the working conditions, since he can out compete the other
market participants.

------
Udo
Maybe this market is ready for disruption. What if a new kind of temp agency
came in, a company that treated workers like real employees with training,
benefits, and dignity? Would it really cost that much more to run? How about
after factoring in all the costs that current temp agencies like to offload on
society at large, such as health care and basic infrastructure? Could WalMart
afford to keep propping up slave agencies if more sustainable resources were
available?

~~~
orlandob
The trend has been the opposite in this market. As labor supply increases (to
infinity), wages decreases (to zero).

~~~
xradionut
Maybe the labor supply/population needs to decrease in the future?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)

As the baby boomers move through the pipeline, you'll see the labor supply
drop.

Also, structural issues:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-meyer-on-the-
labor-f...](http://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-meyer-on-the-labor-force-
participation-rate-2013-5)

------
skore
> _The people here are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a passing
> contractor. They load the trucks and stock the shelves for some of the
> U.S.’s largest ­companies—Walmart, Nike, PepsiCo’s Frito-­Lay division_

> _This system insulates companies from workers’-­compensation claims,
> unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers
> are legal immigrants. Meanwhile, the temps suffer high injury rates, and
> ­many of them endure hours of unpaid waiting and face fees that depress
> their pay below the minimum wage. Many get by renting rooms in run-down
> houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes and surviving on food banks and
> taxpayer-funded health care._

\-----

The willful ignorance for the social implications of this kind of corporate
behavior leave me speechless. This is quite literally sucking everything
around you dry, poisoning the river and then making a fuss when somebody
threatens regulations.

The same corporations who complain (mostly through sock puppets) about "the
nanny state" getting in their way, who lobby for laws that leave them with
fewer and fewer restrictions, who set everything in motion to pay less and
less taxes - they are the entities actually taxing the social systems the
hardest.

What they have found is a way to convert the good will of the social system
into profit. All while pushing the agenda of austerity and tough love for the
people in our society who need our help the most. They give their workers the
bare minimum and let the government fill the increasing amount of gaps.
Meanwhile, governments see their costs of the social system rise while their
tax revenue goes down.

This is profiteering from collateral damage.

And if you do threaten to regulate, they will just move to another country
like the vultures that they are.

~~~
sbarre
I think you're forgetting someone's role in this, and that would be all of us.

If enough of the population was against this type of behaviour, it woud be
made illegal (and already-illegal behaviours would be cracked-down upon) but
it's not.

Corporations have a legal obligation to provide as much value as possible for
as little money as possible, and if the laws let them do this in an inhumane
way, then that's the law's fault (and by extension the fault of the society
that enacted those laws).

~~~
jiggy2011
_Corporations have a legal obligation to provide as much value as possible for
as little money as possible._

This really isn't true, it is market forces that incentivise this behavior;
not laws.

~~~
dragonwriter
No, it really is true; it is a legal obligation of the corporation to its
shareholders that is enforced through legal action -- both corporations as
such and their specific duties to shareholders are products of laws, not
market forces unmediated by law.

~~~
jiggy2011
They have obligations to their shareholders in so far as they are not allowed
to attempt to defraud or surreptitiously act against them them in some way.
They have to be honest.

They have no obligation to minimize costs. A company director cannot be taken
to court for not using the cheapest labour source available, the shareholders
would have to vote them out in which case they just lose their job.

There are plenty of publicly traded companies that do not cost minimize in all
areas.

~~~
sbarre
I think you're splitting hairs here, and you understand what the intent of my
statement was, but I'll take your point about my choice of words.

I agree there are certainly exceptions, but _most_ corporations put profit
above all else, and if they don't, then as you say, the executives or the
board will be fired and replaced with people who will.

"Legal obligation" may have been inaccurate wording, perhaps "structurally
obligated" or "internally compelled" then?

In the end, it's the same outcome..

------
beachstartup
> Walmart, Nike, PepsiCo’s Frito-­Lay division—but they are not paid by them;
> instead they work for temp ­agencies

large companies hire (generally second-rate) computer programmers the same
way. except instead of temps they're called 'contractors'.

~~~
gadders
Er, no.

Contractors are generally more skilled at the resident staff.

~~~
beachstartup
you're thinking of consultants, i'm thinking of contractors.

~~~
gadders
Nope, I'm thinking of contractors - self-employed developers, business
analysts, project managers that are hired for a fixed length of time.

They generally are more highly skilled as they need to be productive in new
environments in a short period of time.

~~~
potatolicious
You're both right. There is no hard line between a contractor and a consultant
- and you have highly-paid, highly-skilled people who are called either, or
both.

This is part of how bad actors in our industry get away with the shenanigans
they do. Companies that provide third-rate warm-body programmers at starvation
wages call themselves consultancies, call their wage-slaves consultants, and
try to blend in with the rest who are benign or good actors in the system.

Sometimes you bring in talent via contract because you don't have the ability
internally, or you don't have enough of a need to justify a full-time hire.
Other times you bring them in because they're cheap, abusive, but give you
arms-length deniability.

~~~
gadders
You, sir, are the voice of reason.

------
azernik
These aren't the only companies finding loopholes to get around labor law (and
it does seem like, for the long-term temp workers in this article, that's what
it's about). In journalism, the preferred legal fiction is to call your
employees "contractors", so that you don't have to give them time off or
benefits, pay into workplace compensation, or deal with payroll tax.

------
matt__ring
This is very upsetting. I live in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood & pass
by what I suspect is a similar temp agency, while on my way to the gym in the
morning. Now I feel even worse for the people in line at its door...

------
speeder
Heh, the power of words are interesting.

People will happily say that those people (like the illegals working as temps
and cannot complain or get deported) are free.

And that slavery is always evil.

Yet, when you try to look at situations without using your pre-judgement of
words, it become something else entirely.

For example, in Brazil, the laws for commerce workers was that the commerce
owners needed to house the workers on their own home, give them food, take
good care of them, and abusing them was illegal.

Also, it was common for commerce workers get tips, and the law allowed them to
keep those (and the commerce owners frequently gave them more too).

Some cities reached a point, where most of the city business were ran by ex-
workers, that earned enough to start their own.

This all, were slavery.

When slavery was abolished, all that people were dumped into the streets, and
the money they already got from their employers now became wage, slighly
higher, but not enough to cover the stuff they lost.

Who is truly, a slave? The one that works in crap conditions because if he
don't he will get deported, or the one that although he could not quit (unless
he was abused, the law allowed it in those cases) he had anything he might
need because the law said so?

It is easy to label a word as evil, or good, but words are used to label and
describe things, you should not use words to label other words.

I would describe the situations that those people face as evil, having almost
no money, and forced to work, because although they can quit, the only result
from that will be starvation.

I also think that student debt is evil, I am one, of countless people, that
struggles to make ends meet without even having a family, people that when the
debt is paid, will be far behind non-indebted peers, I think it is funny that
during the high-point of my career in money terms, I earned more than some
family chefs that I know, and ended with LESS money, purely because good part
of my money was in studies expenses (paying student debt and other university
related costs).

Free, is a friend of mine, that refused to go to university, searched for a
low paying but permanent job as manual worker at night, and slowly built his
career, debt free, while he still has a blue collar job, he has a motorbike,
surplus money, enough money to start a family, and his job is stable. It pains
other people that went with school with him, that they got into college, and
are now forced to work in "well paying" jobs but with no chance of career
improvement or stability to pay their debts, while the "dumb" guy that decided
to ignore college and take his time to choose his first job, is the one well
off.

Slavery == evil? I don't think so... it is a word, that describe many things,
some of those evil, some not. College == success? I don't think so... it is a
word, that describe a institution, the context, the process, and many other
things, define what happens to you.

Now why I am writing all that? I have no idea. I just felt like writing this
after reading the article.

EDIT: I hate how HN wrecks formatting.

~~~
csomar
_For example, in Brazil, the laws for commerce workers was that the commerce
owners needed to house the workers on their own home, give them food, take
good care of them, and abusing them was illegal._

 _Slavery == evil? I don 't think so..._

Cool. I'll offer you food, shelter, healthcare and you'll work for me. I
certainly won't abuse you but you can't decide where to live, what to work and
how to live.

This kind of jobs are probably not quite good, but comparing them to slavery
doesn't make sense. Slavery is probably the worst thing that happened to
humanity.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
> Slavery is probably the worst thing that happened to humanity.

I saw an opinion (really can't remember the source now) that slavery was a
major improvement at the time when people who won a war used to simply
eradicate conquered populations completely. With invention of slavery, strong
and otherwise useful individuals had a chance to survive a bit longer.

There is no one worst things that happened to humanity. I'm sure there are
plenty of contenders if one looks hard enough.

~~~
csomar
I'll prefer being killed to becoming a slave for the rest of my life. I
actually wonder why slaves didn't revolt at the time when guns didn't exist.

------
michaelburk
I was pleasantly surprised to see this wasn't another article about why we
should wake up early.

------
Stranger2013
"I’ve always dreamed of having a little house, a really small little house"
the thing is that it's not economically possible for everyone to have those.

~~~
onli
What? Why? Economically possible would mean that our society is not productive
enough, that it doesn't have the capacity, to produce small little houses for
everyone who wishes one. I doubt that is true in any modern economical system.

~~~
ubernostrum
Economics is subject to the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

~~~
homeomorphic
Tell me, what in economics plays the role of identical particles?

~~~
randallsquared
Relative economic position of actors? Not sure if that's what ubernostrum was
referring to.

