> It pays relatively well ($15 per hour for most contract workers).
How is that relatively well? Compared to McDonald's employees, probably. Compared to other actual technical jobs, like electrician, I can't imagine. Compared to Google devs, not at all.
Working 40 hours a week with no vacation that's about 31k. Being a contractor means no sick leave, vacation days, pension, insurance, etc.
The US is such an odd country.
When someone has few work skills - as noted in the article - do they more closely resemble a McDonald's employee or an electrician?
Yes, people with low/no skills and little/no experience tend to start in crap roles. Some people will not further their skills, abilities, or knowledge and stay there. Others - like Ms Wait in the article - will use it as a stepping stone to pay the bills as they grow and improve.
Wiping out low level jobs by paying "too much" (yes, entirely subjective) raises the bottom rung of the ladder but also puts it out of reach of others. There's no magic right number but there are dangers in having it too low or too high.
There's basically no chance of moving into a white collar role internally unless you get a degree but there's definitely room for advancement. Though you could probably advance faster by jumping ship.
Why do we "trust" them again?
This is covered in great detail in the article.
Apparently, those on-the-job training programs that Amazon offers actually tend to work at times. And of course this is just a single datapoint not indicative of anything, but it kinda shows that those programs might actually work to a degree. I don't doubt that their success rate is likely not even close to 100%, but if it worked even for a chunk of the people attempting it, it is still something.
You're using some common rhetoric to reframe this entirely as one of personal volition. Just be like Ms Wait and pull yourself up the ladder. This is a form of the just world delusion, and ignores all the complex ways poverty can be a trap, or how people working at this end of the labor market are basically one roll of the dice away from financial ruin due to illness, car accident, etc.
FWIW, these people seem to be people who otherwise have no skilled work experience.
To compare I’ve seen electrician apprenticeships paying less than that.
It's not odd once you understand our culture celebrates and almost worships exploitation of some form or the other. It may be exploitation of science and engineering leading to technological growth that we can all share, it may be exploitation of natural resources we've found for a bargain, it may be exploitation of human labor finding how the least amounts can be spent of necessary labor to maximize revenue.
The recent focus to me seems to be on targeting labor and optimizing those costs since the low hanging socially acceptable fruits are starting to give diminishing returns that can't meet some peoples' insatiable appetites for financial growth. This contract position is yet another story of yet another casuality in the cost optimization war by business against human labor expenses.
Ms Wait would have to break her back schlepping spools around a jobsite for a few years before she could get onto the actual electrician career track.
Before they took away the light at the end of the tunnel schlepping batteries around for Google was just as good.
Ms Wait would be paid >=$15 to do this.
General construction does not pay that much unless your licensed, bonded and running your own business or have a decade or more in with the union.
Now, 2 years later, they can get a job at any data center. They can work for Google, AWS, Azure, or any data center they wish. On the job training is the sweet bit.
I guess this is why no one want to come to US to work as contractors.
[0] In the US not working is a shitty way to live.
Crucial point is are the bad enough or worse than taking a deal.
I'd say we should shut up and work to create better deal for workers , instead of just telling people that "you do not know you are so exploited". To me it is no better than telling people "Just be lucky" or "Just be rich"