In
life, and especially in business, everything comes at a price. Comsumer
products and values are bought and sold, at an ever decreasing expense
to those in the market for such. Even the most idealistic among us, if
we are honest with ourselves and each other, would have to admit that
one of those values is loyalty, which isn't neccessarily bad.
Often
times though, we are short sited in considering the true cost of these
things, regarding the far larger impact of what is being bought and
sold. So just what is the real cost of these things which are so
casually bought and sold? What defines "value" to us, when we consider
price?
Most consumers recognize that a paying a lesser price does
not always make for a greater value. However, if we consider that labor
is invloved in every factor pertaining to product cost, (materials,
labor, and overhead) we should also realize that the cheapest price is
not the best price, because often in seeking the cheapest price, we are
undermining our own long term best interests.
A partial solution
(and probably very over simplified) to a lot of our socialogical
financial issues, and ever increasing divide between the classes, might
be the need for businesses to relearn the value in taking care of the
people that take care of the business. The cost of purchasing employee
loyalty should be considered a part of the cost of doing business as it
once was when it seemed that our businesses and societies were, in large
part, fairing much better.
I don't think most people would
probably mind paying a fair price if they were making a fair wage, but
being forced to buy the cheapest products in order to compensate for not
being paid a liveable wage, only means that a good portion of the cost
involved in providing these goods and services is at the expense of the
workforce involved in providing them, the most negotiable factor in the
equation.
Let's be honest, the decrease in financial
compensations and profit margins is born in larger percentage by those
making the lowest wages, and a decreasingly lower percentage as the
wages increase within the power structure of any organization.
Cyclically,
the cheaper the products, the lower the wages for the people that make
them possible, in order to compensate for the decreasing profit margin.
(Which again,benefits those at the top of the food chain, far more than
those at the bottom.) If a person's wage comes to be seen as too high
they get cut to make way for the next cheaper candidate comes along.
(Repeat) The
Consequently, the employee comes to be seen as
increasingly expendable and decreasing valuable, as companies
continually strive to drive prices down while keeping profit margins up,
in order to make them affordable the people making lower wages, who as a
result of their lower wages seek cheaper products, and so it goes...on
and on and on. The "loyal" long-term employee simply becomes the
overpaid employee.
This mentality also devalues the roles and
lives of those struggling to make ends meet, and the families they
support. Many people find a great sense of identity associated with
their work, and would include it as a part of their personal
accomplishment. However, one's role being devalued at the work place
then becomes a personal feeling of decreasing self-worth, as they become
less and less able to provide even basic needs for their dependants.
(Let's say health care for instance) Some reports in fact, state that
financial stress is the number one factor in divorce. I believe it.
We
are in the middle of this cycle it seems and I don't know quite how we
get out of it. Quite honestly, given big business' apparent lack of
effort toward ending this cycle, I don't think big business and those
who profit most from it, are at all concerned with this issue, or even
wants it to be resolved as they stand to benefit most in perpetuating
the situation.
One thing certainly seems clear though, the power
of dividing and conquering is being exploited, by businesses, to its
fullest measure among their employees, and they discourage unions and
unity, among workers to continue this cycle of profitability.
The
polarity of the business philosophy seems to have shifted, and business
no longer feels that the prosperity of the employee is mutually
relational to the prosperity of the business. Rather the prosperity of
the business now comes, to an increasing degree, at the expense of the
employee especially when the market fails to meet the expectation of
projected earnings .
As a culture, we have become accustomed to
calling our rather lavish and indulgent lifestyles "modest", but these
"modest" lifestyles, were initially in large part, made available to us
by this shift in business/labor philosophy.
We paid
extraordinarily low prices without regard to the real cost, and who was
absorbing that cost, because the culturally devestating impact of this
thinking was felt only by people far from our shores, out of sight and
out of mind.
There is the expression that no standard was ever
compromised that did not then become the norm and it seems, that now the
bill has come due at home for our having embraced this philosophy. We
are slowly coming to realize that we have bargained oursleves out of
liveable wages, for the jobs we have not already exported to cheaper
labor markets.
This problem is magnified with the attitude that
the more money dispursed to those lower on the food chain, comes at the
expense of those higher on the food chain, but this is simply untrue.
Now,
if it were simply a matter of keeping a struggling business alive it
might be a fair enough argument, but many, MANY, businesses this past
year reported record earnings and those earnings don't seem to be
finding their way into that "trickle down" that apparently still remains
a theory. Job availability remains low and those jobs that are
available don't pay enough to support the people who do them.
One
of the many advantages of having money, is that you can afford to wait
out those who have it in smaller degree, until eventually they become
hungry enough to smile and say thank you in the face of their
exploitation in order to simply maintain survival. It is a game of who
can wait the longest before their resources run out. Like pitting a bike
and a semi in a head on collision, the lesser weight will always come
out on the short end.
Eventually everyone has to get on with
living, and let's face it, living is neither free or easy these days, so
when the weekend's over we return to work.No matter how meeger that
wage may be, it's better than nothing, we tall ourselves.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I sure feel the effects of the problems.
d(-_-)b
