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b0bthebuilder35 · 9 months

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Too often, people believe homelessness is due to some type of character flaw. In reality, that’s not even close. The top causes being…

1. A lack of affordable housing

2. Unemployment

3. Poverty

4. Low wages

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bitchesgetriches · 2 months

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Romanticizing the Side Hustle: When 1 Job Isn’t Enough

But side hustles are more common than ever, and it’s hard to ignore the historical precedent this sets. In the 1960s, 70% of American families survived on the income of a single breadwinner. In 2012 by contrast, 60% of households were supported by two full-time incomes. That’s right: what many of our grandparents could achieve on one salary, we now, on average, need two to achieve. So it makes perfect sense that to get ahead, those households already supported by two full-time, salaried workers would find a side hustle—a third or even a fourth job—very, very appealing.

So let’s cut the shit. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a grueling and not entirely voluntary way of trading your precious spare time for money because you really, really need that money.

Keep reading.

If you found this helpful, consider joining our Patreon

#side hustle #gig economy #poverty #poverty wages #working poor #personal finance

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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For many cooks, waiters and bartenders, it is an annoying entrance fee to the food-service business: Before starting a new job, they pay around $15 to a company called ServSafe for an online class in food safety.

That course is basic, with lessons like “bathe daily” and “strawberries aren’t supposed to be white and fuzzy, that’s mold.” In four of the largest states, this kind of training is required by law, and it is taken by workers nationwide.

But in taking the class, the workers — largely unbeknown to them — are also helping to fund a nationwide lobbying campaign to keep their own wages from increasing.

The company they are paying, ServSafe, doubles as a fund-raising arm of the National Restaurant Association — the largest lobbying group for the food-service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses. The association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the subminimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters.

The federal minimum wage has risen just once since 1996, to $7.25 from $5.15, while the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 since 1991. Minimums are higher in many states, but still below what labor groups consider a living wage.

For years, the restaurant association and its affiliates have used ServSafe to create an arrangement with few parallels in Washington, where labor unwittingly helps to pay for management’s lobbying. First, in 2007, the restaurant owners took control of a training business. Then they helped lobby states to mandate the kind of training they already provided — producing a flood of paying customers.

More than 3.6 million workers have taken this training, providing about $25 million in revenue to the restaurant industry’s lobbying arm since 2010. That was more than the National Restaurant Association spent on lobbying in the same period, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

That $25 million represented about 2% of the National Restaurant Association’s total revenues over that same period, but more than half of the amount its members paid in dues. Most industry groups are much more reliant on big-dollar donors or membership support to meet their expenses. Most of the association’s revenues come from trade shows and other classes.

Tax-law experts say this arrangement, which has helped fuel a resurgence in the political influence of restaurants, appears legal.

But activists for raising minimum wages — and even some restaurant owners — say the arrangement is hidden from the workers it relies on.

“I’m sitting up here working hard, paying this money so that I can work this job, so I can provide for my family,” said Mysheka Ronquillo, 40, a line cook who works at a Carl’s Jr. hamburger restaurant and at a private school cafeteria in Westchester, Calif. “And I’m giving y’all money so y’all can go against me?”

Ms. Ronquillo is also a labor organizer in California. She said that she had taken the class every three years, as required, and that she never knew ServSafe funded the other side of that fight.

As workers have become more aware of how their payments to ServSafe are used, something of a backlash is developing. Looking ahead to coming battles over minimum wages in as many as nine states run by Democrats, including New York, Saru Jayaraman of the labor-advocacy group One Fair Wage said she was encouraging workers to avoid ServSafe.

“We’ll be telling them to use any possible alternatives,” Ms. Jayaraman said.

The kind of class that these workers pay for, called “food handler” training, is offered by ServSafe or its affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. But an online database maintained by the National Restaurant Association show the vast majority of its classes are taken in four large states where food-handler classes are mandatory for most workers: Texas, California, Illinois and Florida.

Other companies also offer this training. But restaurant industry veterans say that ServSafe is the dominant force in the market — to the point that some restaurant owners said they did not realize there were alternatives.

“ServSafe is very much the Kleenex” of the industry — a brand that defines the business, said Nick Eastwood, who runs a competitor called Always Food Safe. “We believe they’ve got at least 70%+ of the market. Maybe higher.”

The president of the National Restaurant Association, Michelle Korsmo, declined to be interviewed. In a written statement, she said the group had sought to protect both public health and the financial health of the industry.

“The association’s advocacy work keeps restaurants open; it keeps workers employed, it finds pathways for worker opportunity, and it keeps our communities healthy,” Ms. Korsmo wrote. Her group declined to say how much of the training market it captures.

As money flowed in from the National Restaurant Association’s training programs, its overall spending on politics and lobbying more than doubled from 2007 to 2021, tax filings show. The national association donated to Democrats, Republicans and conservative-leaning think tanks, and sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to state restaurant associations to beef up their lobbying.

During the Clinton and Obama administrations, the association was a major force in limiting employer-provided health care benefits. And though pressure from liberal groups has grown and workers’ wages have fallen for decades when adjusted for inflation, the group helped assemble enough bipartisan opposition to scuttle a bill in 2021 to raise the federal minimum wage for all workers to $15 per hour over five years.

The association had also won a series of battles over state-level wage minimums, though its fortunes reversed last year. Both the District of Columbia and Michigan moved to eliminate the “tip credit” system — where restaurants are allowed to pay waiters a salary below the minimum wage, on the expectation that tips from customers will make up the rest. That was the first time any state had eliminated the tip-credit system in more than 10 years.

Legally, the National Restaurant Association and its state-level affiliates are a species of nonprofit called a “business league,” with more freedom to lobby than a traditional charity.

Since the 1960s, their lobbying has focused heavily on the minimum wage — arguing that labor-intensive operations like restaurants, which employ more workers at or near the minimum wage than any other industry, could be put out of business by any significant increase in employee costs.

Fifteen years ago, they had just lost a battle in that fight.

Over the association’s objections, Congress had raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. Former board members said they were searching for a new source of revenue — without asking members to pay more in dues.

“That’s when the decision was contemplated, of buying the ServSafe program,” said Burton “Skip” Sack, a former chairman of the association’s board. “Because it was profitable.”

At the time, the ServSafe program was run by a charity affiliated with the restaurant association. The association bought the operation, transforming it into an indirect fund-raising vehicle.

After that, state restaurant associations in California, Texas and Illinois lobbied for changes in state law.

Previously, those states had required food-safety training for restaurant managers, which typically was paid for by restaurants themselves. After the association’s takeover of ServSafe, lobbying records show, the state affiliates pushed for a broader and less-common type of mandate, covering all food “handlers” like cooks, waiters, bartenders and those who bus tables.

The three state legislatures agreed, in lopsided votes.

In written statements, the state restaurant associations said they were not trying to raise money. Instead, they said they worked with other groups seeking to reduce food-borne disease.

“This law was happening with or without our participation in the process,” said the president of the California Restaurant Association, Jot Condie. California legislative records show his association was the sponsor of the bill that imposed the mandate.

ServSafe soon had waves of new customers, which in turn generated more money for the association and its lobbying efforts. Today, Florida, California, Texas, Illinois and Utah all have similar requirements. John Bluemke, a senior vice president for sales at ServSafe from 2002 to 2010, said there was little need to pursue mandates in smaller states: “Once you did the big states, who cares about Nebraska?”

“If you’ve got a million people going through that thing, do the math,” Mr. Bluemke said. The National Restaurant Association does not release figures about the cost of offering food-handler classes, but Mr. Bluemke said that — because they are generally offered online — the costs are low and the profits high.

“We always said the first course costs you a million dollars,” Mr. Bluemke said, for making the video. “And the rest are free.”

When managers take mandatory training, restaurant veterans say, the employer usually pays. But state websites say that restaurant employees should expect to pay for these classes themselves, and restaurant workers interviewed by The New York Times said that was their experience.

The restaurant association notes that some employers have covered the costs of getting certified and that employees are given lower rates in certain circumstances. So not all 3.6 million workers paid $15 each.

“The N.R.A. is different from most traditional trade associations in our business model,” Dawn Sweeney, the National Restaurant Association’s chief executive at the time, wrote to members in 2014 — reminding them of what a good deal they had.

Business leagues, which are tax-exempt, are generally allowed to run a for-profit business, as long as it advances the common interest of their broader trade. The National Restaurant Association contends that its business cleanly fits this standard.

“The rules the I.R.S. has passed are not always clear as to what is and is not allowed,” said Anna Massoglia, an investigations manager at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks the flow of money in politics. “This makes it easier for groups to exploit that lack of clarity. I’m not familiar with another group that has done it to this scale.”

The Internal Revenue Service declined to comment, citing taxpayer-privacy rules.

For restaurant workers, there is little clue that money paid to ServSafe supports lobbying — much less lobbying that tries to keep workers’ pay low. The only hint is a line on ServSafe’s website, saying it “reinvests proceeds from programs back into the industry.”

Even some members of the restaurant association — the beneficiaries of this arrangement — said they did not know how it worked.

Johnny Martinez, a Georgia restaurateur, said he supports a $15 minimum wage and pays at least that much in a state where it is still $7.25 per hour. And he describes his association membership as “the price of entry” for navigating the industry, “even though I disagree with them on a lot of things.”

But he expressed frustration upon discovering the connections between ServSafe and lobbying efforts, saying “it feels very wrong” to him.

“This is a certification that’s also wrapped up inside of a lobbyist,” Mr. Martinez said. “It is weird that the tests that they require the workers to pay for are being run by the same company that’s fighting to make sure those people don’t make more money.”

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mbrainspaz · 9 months

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I'm at my wits end. The boss has hired two rich high school boys to stop me from working overtime. I haven't trained the second one yet but it sounds like I'm going to end up doing it because he's worked two days and the 'manager' hasn't bothered to show him how to lead a horse yet. High school boy no.1 is killing me. Every day I give him a task list and he just doesn't do it. I get back from my mandated break and ask him if he did anything and he's just like :) "No." The audacity of a straight cis white boy! First I told the 'manager' and he said 'yeah, I've had the same problem.' He did nothing about it as far as I can tell. He has zero backbone when it comes to confronting anybody so that wasn't surprising. I had a Talk with the boy and he seemed remorseful but continued to do a shitty job. So I told the corporate boss. She said she'd handle it ("And you still absolutely may NOT work ANY overtime! PEASANT!""I'm sure high school boy will give the horses water and food on time despite habitually failing to do that!"). You know what she did? She showed up an hour late, told the kid to drink water, and left again. e_o AAaaah?!

So I'm like—'this is why I need to work overtime, because shit isn't getting done.' And she's like, 'No :)' 'he's just a kid.'

NO SHIT?! YOU HIRED HIM THOUGH. He's not doing the job we need done.

And NOBODY CARES!

the audacity.

Can you imagine if I'd tried that as a 19 year old 'girl' at my first big barn job? Hell, I made maybe one mistake in the whole summer and that manager grilled me within an inch of my life. I gave one horse not enough hay, one time. He treated me like shit for the rest of the summer. This kid—rich boy—we stopped asking him to do hay for the horses because he was so intentionally incompetent We were like 'please give them more hay'

and he was like 'no :)'

f*ck

I asked him to clean all of 6 paddocks today and gave him 2 hours to do it. This time last year I was cleaning all 20 a day by myself in 2 hours. I think he cleaned maybe 2. GUESS WHO GETS TO CLEAN THE OTHER 18 ALONE IN 115 DEGREE HEAT TOMORROW?! Because nobody else is going to f*cking do it apparently.

Honestly I should just not. I should just stop working too. What the hell are they gonna do about it? Fire me for being the only person who's shown up for my shift on time and gotten chores done reliably all summer? Fire the only person who communicates with every part of the team and the clients? The only one who actually cares if the business is doing ok? You know they would! It's so stupid and universally ironic you KNOW it would happen to me.

They've already disciplined me repeatedly for trying too hard and caring too much.

And like yeah no sh*t the kid doesn't want to do actual work. The truck his parents bought him is worth more than the cumulative earnings I've made in this industry in the last 5 years. He's just doing this job because his mommy made him. After high school they'll get him a white collar job where he gets to 'manage money' for 100+K and he'll gleefully brag about what a hard worker he is because he had a job shoveling shit once and 'actually those jobs aren't so bad and poor people complain too much because really they deserve to suffer if they can't hack the system' like he did.

ugh. My whole life I'm going to live at the whims of utterly incompetent people who are richer, dumber, and meaner than me. I called my rich uncle for advice the other day and he said "you know really workers are only really productive for 40-60% of the workday." I LAUGHED MANIACALLY while actively doing the work of at least 2 people.

"average business person works 40-60% of the day" factoid actualy just statistical error. average business person works 0 hours per day. Texan Peasant, who lives at work & works for 200% of every day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

#life of a texan peasant #ffs #worker's rights #bad management #rant #poverty wages #corporate american hellscape #incompetence #business business business #i hate everything

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wack-ashimself · 3 months

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There's a lot of stupid people saying cruel things because it maintains their life style.

Tho most are not happy, not treated right, not given everything they deserve. They are mean because they're afraid of the little they have being taken away by others similar to them when it's ALWAYS THE RICH STEALING. More is stolen by the government, corporations, and banks than ALL CIVILIAN THEFTS COMBINED. Every year. But you fear your neighbors or immigrants? HA*.

FEAR. Poverty is a show of force; do as we say, under the conditions we say, or we can and will allow your life to get so much significantly worse. Why do you think no one is hiring? And if they do, at shit wages and perks? TO FORCE YOU TO SETTLE BEING THEIR BITCH!

There's absolutely no carrots in our society; only bigger sticks. (let's use them to start a fire....)

*Haven't you been hearing of the child labor laws being broken ALL over the USA? Many of the kids were maimed or DIED. Guess what? Many were immigrants. So dying foreign kids is worth it to maintain your FUCKING TERRIBLE BARELY SURVIVING lifestyle? How god damn pathetic.

#carrot #stick #work #employer #job #employment #skeleton crew #poverty wages #poverty #homelessness #child labor #child abuse

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borderlinebelle · 6 months

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thank you to whomever tipped me anonymously on a few posts recently 🥹 i appreciate your generous human kindness and i see you. 🖤

#poverty princess #late stage capitalism #debtfreejourney #poverty wages #content creator #live streaming #thank you #mutuals #who are you though 🥹 I’d like to thank you directly but this will have to do

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whats-in-a-sentence · 1 month

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The delusion of 'outside agitators' was designed to comfort shareholders, writhing from an excoriating article by Annie Besant in the newspaper The Link, on Saturday 14 July 1888. She wrote:

Do you know that the women and girls whose labour made the 22½% dividend paid in February last are living, or dying, in Old Ford, Bromley, Tiger Bay, and other districts of East London, on wages varying from 4s to about 13s a week? That sometimes the wage goes even below 4s, and that a girl of sixteen years of age, a fortnight ago, was discharged with 2s 8d to represent the result of a week's toil? Do you know that it appears even from the miserable shuffles of your secretary, Mr Carkeet, that the 'average wage' of the 'adult female workers' in your employ is only 11s 2d per week? And consider, the fact that there is an 'average wage' of 11s 2d does not help women, who, like the twenty-nine-years-old wife of a dock labourer, the mother of five children, took home 5s 6d last Saturday week . . . How would you like, wife of a clerical shareholder in Bryant and May's, to keep house for a week on 11s 2d? How would you like to start for your week at half-past five a.m., and reach home again at seven p.m., having been on your feet nearly all the time, and after doing this for five days, with an additional half day on the Saturday, to take home 11s 2d as a reward? And if you did reach the average, but only got the 5s 6d, and had been at the work for fifteen years, might you not say, like my poor friend said to me the other day, 'I'm most tired of it'?

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

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u2fangirlie-blog · 7 months

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Job hunting blog Part 1

Indeed is whoring out my resume. Got an email from Tutoring dot com today with an offer to apply for part-time work tutoring online. I declined. Unfortunately, there weren't enough characters in the form to allow me to completely express my feelings about working gig jobs for poverty wages and my reasons for leaving higher education. Here's my response.

I'm just flouncing because Tutoring dot com has a poor reputation.

The humiliating thing is that after I told my parents that I submitted 3 job applications yesterday, my mom clapped and cheered for me like I'm a toddler who used the potty. I know she doesn't mean it that way.

I'm 49 years old. I have only ever had two real full-time jobs. Everything else was part-time or temp-to-hire. Currently, I hold an adjunct instructor position and a part-time writer tutor position. The school can't offer me full-time. No benefits. But if I earn more than the maximum monthly income for state Medicaid, I'll lose my insurance.

I refuse to live like this anymore.

#job search #poverty wages #higher education #community college #adjunct faculty #online tutoring #gig jobs #gig economy

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

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"$700 A YEAR WAGES RIDICULOUS---CONBOY," Toronto Star. October 9, 1942. Page 2. ---- Declares "People Can't Work for That Kind of Money" ---- "It seems to me a salary of $700 a year is ridiculous." Mayor Con- boy remarked yesterday.

Board of control had before it a recommendation for temporary appointment of a junior clerk in the accounting branch. finance department. at a salary of $700 a year. The applicant is 19 and has been rejected for military service.

"Let us set this over." said the mayor. "We'll have to do something about this kind of thing."

"The previous occupant of the post received only $624." said Secretary Norris.

"It's still ridiculous." said the mayor. "People can't work for that kind of money."

"We have heads of departments receiving far too much money and staying on far beyond the time when their usefulness has expired." Con. Duncan stated. "We also have other people receiving too much money and staying too long. It keeps other salaries down and holds other employees back from deserved advancement. "We need a survey of all departments to see who are the drones and who are not the drones. Some form of civil service commission is the answer. It is time we did something for the people who are really doing the work." The same question arose again when a letter was presented from the City Hall Employees' association regarding recent appointment of a stenographer at a salary of $1.450. The letter was not read.

"Have copies made for all members," the mayor instructed. "We will deal with all these things when the heads of departments bring in their report. They will have it ready very shortly."

#toronto #city council #municipal government #municipal workers #high cost of living #poverty wages #wage demand #wage increase #civil service commission #civil service reform #canada during world war 2 #union demands

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