That's a good point, my only experience with Target was when I delivered pizza to them during crunch weeks and they absolutely inflated staff with tons of temp workers (hence the frequent pizza parties). That was pre-pandemic though and if they've actually cut back on that practice and the wage increase isn't just them maximizing productivity by cycling out workers depending on busyness that's good.
The place where this practice is absolutely egregious is general service industry work and specifically "event" work. Like weddings, conferences, conventions etc. Pretty frequently people working those jobs will be paid well hourly (a percentage gratuity on food costs for the event shared evenly), but because the work is event based you can sometimes go weeks without having work, then suddenly get called up to make $30/hr for 2 days. This makes holding a necessary second job to keep your real income above poverty level harder because you're operating on a schedule that's usually written less than a day before you go in.
Yeah, biggest problem with higher hourly but less hours is the fact that most people are putting close to 50% of their income towards housing. Any reduction in that gross amount will inevitably cut into your disposable (if you even have any) income.
The real solution to this is an abolition of rents and a reduction in working hours, but maintaining precarity in the working class is a function of marketized housing. It's meant to prevent people from staying in one place long enough to form a community and connect with the workers around them. We're at a stage of capitalism where alienation is the primary product of the system and any attempt to resist that is beaten out of us because an end to alienation is by definition an end to the capitalist mode of production.
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That's a good point, my only experience with Target was when I delivered pizza to them during crunch weeks and they absolutely inflated staff with tons of temp workers (hence the frequent pizza parties). That was pre-pandemic though and if they've actually cut back on that practice and the wage increase isn't just them maximizing productivity by cycling out workers depending on busyness that's good.
The place where this practice is absolutely egregious is general service industry work and specifically "event" work. Like weddings, conferences, conventions etc. Pretty frequently people working those jobs will be paid well hourly (a percentage gratuity on food costs for the event shared evenly), but because the work is event based you can sometimes go weeks without having work, then suddenly get called up to make $30/hr for 2 days. This makes holding a necessary second job to keep your real income above poverty level harder because you're operating on a schedule that's usually written less than a day before you go in.
deleted by creator
Yeah, biggest problem with higher hourly but less hours is the fact that most people are putting close to 50% of their income towards housing. Any reduction in that gross amount will inevitably cut into your disposable (if you even have any) income.
The real solution to this is an abolition of rents and a reduction in working hours, but maintaining precarity in the working class is a function of marketized housing. It's meant to prevent people from staying in one place long enough to form a community and connect with the workers around them. We're at a stage of capitalism where alienation is the primary product of the system and any attempt to resist that is beaten out of us because an end to alienation is by definition an end to the capitalist mode of production.
deleted by creator
:cyber-lenin: