Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines)
Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines)
Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines)
shouldn't the federal minimum wage apply to everyone who is doing work in the US? This seems like fraud
how would you distinguish this from regular outsourcing
Outsourcing is the problem.
The owners take advantage of our commons, tear up our roads, and succeeded because of domestic infrastructure, only to refuse to pay full price for labor and allowing even those wages, in lieu of the taxes they bribe our government to enact loopholes to dodge, to "trickle down" domestically as their always bullshit yay market capitalism talking points lied?
It's absolutely clownshoes that outsourcing labor/manufacturing is allowed, not because of domestic shortages for a skill, but to explicitly pay pennies on the dollar for the employees you need and screw the country you don't want to pay taxes to despite record profits even harder.
It's insane. But we let the owner class dictate whatever they want here, and our well bribed government will even sell it for them by calling it "something something freedom" while never mentioning social consequences, accountability, or responsibility. We aren't so much a country as a piggy bank and cudgel for the global owner class.
That the neat thing, you don't.
Here, for certain industries (might be all but I don't have first hand accounts of that), the contractors must make sure that the companies/freelancers they employ pay their taxes, otherwise, they are on the hook for it.
Do the same. If a company outsource work, they should prove that they pay the same as they would in their region, and if it not, be hit hard by fines and/or jail time.
But one can only dream I guess
Should apply to that as well if they're interacting with the US market. All the way through subcontractors to the end employee. No hiding behind contracting local companies.
This practice is rampant across industries and only getting worse. We must demand an end to it through legislation.
We may not agree with it, but this is exactly the same thing as an overseas call center. They're not physically located in the US and are not subject to any laws here.
They aren't doing work in the US though.
That is naive. I hope you don't have any employees
$3 is loads more than the Philippines minimum wage. I think it's $8-$10 per day.
Also, y'all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
I'll ask my wife when she gets home, but I bet $3 is equivalent to $10-$12 in the US.
Also, y'all are thinking of what $3 buys in the US. The purchasing power is far different. $3 buys a lot over there.
You misunderstand. We aren't unaware or ignoring the purchasing power difference, that's obvious, everyone knows currency differs. The issue is and always has been the outsourcing to increase profit in general, regardless of country or purchasing disparity. There is no reason to use a teleconferenced cashier for a retail location other than minimizing employee pay, not just by paying the minimum required here but literally taking a local job and shipping it overseas so you can instead pay what would be a clear poverty wage here, while undoubtedly having record profits like all these companies end up with.
I mean, yeah probably. That's not the point. The point is that it's a race to the bottom for people living in higher cost-of-living places.
I really don't care how much buying power they have over there. A fair days work here in the US should be paid in turn.
Okay. Imagine the purchasing power of someone who made the NYC minimum wage of $16/hr.
Maybe pay people for their time, not what the exchange rate "might" be.
Depends on the region, lowest is about 350 php or 6 usd per day. Most of the call centers are in the big cities however where wages are a bit higher and they well enough to be thought of as a decent job.
I would just unplug the camera and computer. Every day. Even if I wasn't buying anything.
Fuck this business.
Be sure to wear gloves.
Why?
I'd presume they have a few cashiers from the Philippines but at least one person managing the store.
Boo for OP who didn't name and shame
https://nypost.com/2024/04/09/us-news/nyc-restaurants-use-zoom-cashiers-from-philippines/
adding that she splits tips with her manager and kitchen staff at the restaurant.
They don't even let her keep her entire tips. The whole situation is fucked. Somebody mentioned in the article also brought up a great point...
“Today, this is a Filipino woman behind a screen, controlling a POS system — but it’s not crazy to believe that probably in the next six to twelve months, this could be an AI avatar doing all the same things,” he said.
What a shitty future we have.
From the article, Sansan Chicken, Sansan Ramen, and Yaso Kitchen, all in NY. (Since nobody has said it yet)
Well yeah. When you eat at a restaurant, and tip, generally you’re not intending to tip the solely the cashier.
Before chanting along with the hate chant just think for a second. When’s the last time you tipped a cashier, with the intention of the tip going to the cashier and none of the rest of the staff?
Zoom ID and pass are in the image tho 😄
Was about to say the same. Up vote instead.
this should be straight up illegal.
It's not only legal it's effectively encouraged. Capitalism is a race to the bottom, regardless of consequences.
When the supreme Court has their finger in the scale it makes everything feel fuckin hopeless
The person in the Philippines gets a good job out of this
People should just not go there. But it's america and they probably have 1dollar chicken nuggets or something.
I would probably just turn around if I saw and understood what I was looking at. Definitely wouldn't go back a second time.
At that point why even have a cashier? Just put a POS and have people swype to enter like a subway.
Because then you can't show the world that you're a piece of shit who enjoys exploiting cheap labor.
Sounds like they've already got a POS, just higher up on the org chart.
$3 is good pay over there, buys way more than our $3. Bet people are scrambling for those jobs. Good money when the daily min wage is $8-$10.
For example, my wife's ex took her family and friends to the fanciest restaurant they could find. $120 (including tip) for 16 people.
Americans are the ones exploited here. McDonalds is pumping money out of the country and taking our jobs.
The POS is too busy running the company
Sometimes it’s nice if someone gets a job, and sometimes people like to talk to a person while they’re paying.
I would rather use a POS terminal than try to talk to someone over zoom with no headphones. If it's not a human in person who can just say "hmmm the computer is broken here's your sandwich" then it's worse.
Good thing they build a wall so these mean immigrants are not stealing jobs.
immigrants are not stealing jobs.
I know you are being cheeky.. But you are using their lingo. It is strategic as it skips the the perp ie the rent seeker looking to underpay for labour.
You know how fake teevee always got NYC migrant bussing story?
But we never hear about migrants being bussed into the heartland to work in meat packing or some other hard work.
Who is paying to bus them anyway?
Asking for a friend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
Oops! All Plantations now!
Guess it wasn't much of a land for the free. Unless people start pushing back, I gotta question if it's the home of the brave, either.
Can't wait to hear how Trump says Philippines
This shit has got to be outlawed. Companies are doing this across the board. Literally skirting labor laws, outsourcing jobs that should be going to us citizens, all to just continue pouring more money into the tops pockets. When will we have all had enough?
It's a simple enough solution in this case. They are performing the work of employees, so for all intents and purposes, they are employees. They are directly interacting with US customers at a physical location within the US. Their place of work is that physical location, even if they are not physically present. They need authorization to work in the US, and the minimum wage laws applicable to that location applies to these workers.
All that is missing is the lawsuit under existing labor laws, which they will probably lose.
Good luck finding a judge taking such a position
Judiciary is just a rubber stamp for the corporate needs. Last 40 years of court rulings speak for themselves.
Courts ain't saving slaves
Sounds like something the Department of Labour could legislate... Or could have.
But the supreme court just ruled that this falls under the courts jurisdiction and there's a snowflakes chance in hell that a case pushed high and far enough will result in those ghouls will rule in favour of labour interests.
So what can the citizens do to get traction on this?
Not with this fucking compromised supreme court. Nothing was capitalized on purpose.
I would not shop here. If I saw this, I would turn around and walk out. Go somewhere that they value work.
BuT nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe
BuT nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe
:D
Obligatory -
Everyone in the US takes advantage of cheap overseas labor. It’s just usually not directly in your face.
It's usually impossible not to, because we have no visibility into the supply chain or there's no other options. In this case, it's impossible to ignore.
This feels cyberpunk. Some netrunner will hack the system and give free meals away because fuck the corpos, right?
I don't think you need a netrunner to plug a mouse into the pc behind the monitor and hit "Leave" on the (I assume) Zoom call.
Even easier, unplug the ethernet cable.
Whoa, slow down there, Einstein, I don't understand your hacker jargon!
Or turn off the monitor and bounce lol. If you don't have employees to fix things, systems are hilariously easy to break.
plug a mouse into the pc behind the monitor and hit "Leave" on the (I assume) Zoom call.
“If someone’s consistently lucky, it ain’t luck”
Fuck corpo shit
Are there movements in the US or globally to force all business into worker coops? Unions are good but I think this is their ultimate limitation, that employers can just offshore their jobs
Argentina has somewhat of a history of workers seizing their factories. I think it would be extremely hard in the U.S. due to the well-funded police. Generally, I guess the movement would be "anarcho-syndicalism."
Edit: misremembered worker factory takeovers in the past as occurring in Venezuela instead of Argentina.
Thanks. I didn't know about Venezuela's history at all. But I meant not more on a policy level to mandate that all companies must be owned equally by employees instead of shareholders
They'll send in the national guard
Got some sources on that? I was born and raised there and all I can find is the government seizing factories, not the workers
Edit: some sources of my own
Thanks! First time hearing of this.
Forcing isn’t good.
By that hyper-simplistic "logic" people shouldn't be forced into prison if they murder someone.
Clearly some kinds of forcing in some situations are "good", and if some are good but other not, that means the real discussion is all about "when is forcing right and when is it not?" something that childlike "logic" of yours doesn't even begin to address.
Forcing is absolutely good. We force companies to do all kinds of things, in terms of corporate governance (publicly traded companies must have their finances audited, for example), ownership (banks used to be prevented from buying stock so that they would not avoid calling in bad debt), and how they do business (collusion between big tech to keep salaries down for example).
Yeah because private Enterprise will be guided by the invisible hand to do the right thing
Having no actual person guarding your business is a recipe for theft. If this catches on it will be so much easier to steal from places. I'm ok with this
You shouldnt ever try to protect the cash register at your place of work. They give 0 fucks about you and will have a job posting up before your body is cold.
Fact but it does not negate that physically present employees deters some crime.
High traffic grocery stores who put in self check outs are staffing several guards now and put in some clown fences and gates...
But hey guy who put in self check and guy fired cashiers both got bonus...
Guy hiring security and putting fences also got bonus. These clowns will pay anyone any amount of money as long they don't pay the worker for the actual job.
I remember working in a store and a guy walked through the scanner at the door and it went off, the other employee looked at me and was like "that guy stole something, hey?" And I was just like "yep" and we went back to whatever we were doing lol
Can confirm, if they give any appearance of being human, even for years on end, it's a lie, they are complete psychopaths and will throw you into the fire not even to save themselves, just to feel slightly less insecure.
Retail jobs will tell you this too as they want as little liability as possible.
Plus the registers only usually have a couple hundred bucks max at one time.
Having no actual person guarding your business is a recipe for theft.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs
gestures broadly at the entire us pharmaceutical industry
The recommended course of action in a robbery is to follow instructions and hand over anything they ask for. If they grab product and walk out of the store, don't try to stop them. This is actually less of an insurance liability than having an actual person there.
Yes but in general people are less likely to steal if there is a person standing in front of them watching. I'm not even talking about robbery just people stealing a candy bar or whatever. If it's just sitting out with no one around people will take it.
Stealing and robbery are different
A 17 year old kid paid minimum wage who gives zero fucks about the company isn't a huge deterrent either. As long as you don't put them in risk steal from corpos all the time
Unplug the display & camera, get meals for free?
... and walk into the back to make your own food?
Way better than yelling at them about no onions on my sandwich
Don't yell at the cashier, he didn't do anything wrong.
I'd be tempted to do it just for the chaos factor.
Japanese Fried Chicken? JFC
Looks like this is "Japang". Terrible reviews online and described as actually a "ghost kitchen".
Ghost kitchens for those who don’t know are basically “restaurants” for online takeout orders. They don’t do in person service.
It’s more they use spray existing kitchens to do so.
The Denny’s around here is a ghost for like 3 different places
Why not just have a kiosk at this point
The monthly subscription to the kiosk software still costs more I bet.
Right, Corpomerica will corpomerica
They do have a kiosk. Just one that’s supervised by someone in the Philippines
Working as a graphic designer in the US since the early 2000's, every employer I ever worked for eventually used Fiverr to pay someone overseas a fraction of what they paid me to do the same work. This doesn't seem meaningfully different.
Not saying this is okay, just that it's not even remotely (no pun intended) a new problem.
This whole thing is a to send a message to begin with as with AI, actually more so.
Most of the "AI job losses" are this sort of offshoring actually... Joke is on the wage slaves.
This is pure Astronaut meme with “wait, AI is just 3rd world wage slaves?”
Ah yes, it's the minorities who are stealing jobs. Not the lack of regulations blocking corpos from outsourcing work.
And black jobs, too!
/s
Shhhh don't say that part. We're supposed to hate each other.
I’m honestly surprised the corps haven’t done this to all of their drive-thrus.
I mean every time I go through a drive through I'm asked if I'm going to use the app to order by one person (or ai but I know about 20 years ago Wendy's tried to put all drive through orders through a remote facility too) and when I say Nope another person actually gets on and takes the order...so they are in many aspects. Hell you can't order in person from some of the rest stop fast food spots in Florida.
No, that is just a pre-recorded message. I once went through a mcdonald's drive thru that had just closed. They asked me for my order and after I gave it, I realized no one was in the restaurant. I pulled around and they asked me again every time I stopped at the order point, but there was no cars in the lot.
Theyre stealing our jobs without even being here! /s
Maybe someone will catch on to who the actual enemy is here...
Lol. Not the hicks. Theyll see foreigner and get pissy
What happens when you join the zoom id listed?
The host denies you access. I just tried, waited for 5 minutes before being denied access.
Okay but like... how are they gonna count out my change?
In Japan, you order from a vending machine, pay the machine, get a slip of paper, and hand it to the cook.
I think that system is fantastic.
We have this in the US to. Even McDonalds does them!
I also love the amount vending machines Japan has. I'd love to have machine for tea or late night ramen around every corner.
For giving you change: https://www.yourposstuff.com/T-Flex-Coin-Dispenser-p/tflexsc.htm
For counting your change, probably something like this https://www.innovorder.com/en/automated-cash-recycling-system
Those are awesome for the 7.2 minutes in a row they work without some intervention.
Source: McDonald's drive-[through].
In the Netherlands you have self checkout with cash. No cashier involved.
Cashless payment, or those machine that will count the money, sorta like vending machine.
Ok what the actual fuck?
They call it free market
I'm almost certain this has been tried before multiple times and always ended badly. I see no reason to think it would be different now.
No one wants to see the people who are being exploited.
“Please don’t destroy my job to satisfy your desire to virtue signal”
— the person who now has a job as a cashier
I just wouldn't go to that restaurant. Plenty of other places to go.
Critical thinking spotted!
Whoever clicked the link drop the name of that shithole so NYC shitposters know to avoid.
Uh huh......avoid......
tightens brick
Thankfully even without the name it’ll be pretty obvious if you stumble across it.
This is going to be the response to "work from home"
Cashiers fought for WFH?
If you're talking about other sectors, it's been done before (off-shoring in the 2000s).
Yeah but he reminding us "that daddy can do it anytime to you"
U feel me?
Is this real? Is there any proof of this actually being a thing?
So … they do ask for tips, right?
Always dear... otherwise owner's children will starve ;)
The tips go to the owner.
Tips are split and go to the whole team
Not knowing the law in the US I guess it is fully legal. Given that there is no union or chain responsibility in the supply chain or similar to GDPR in EU you guys are fucked until someone abuse the system one way or another.
On the other hand it shows work from home is feasible even with these kind of things.
I HATE THE ANTICHRIST
Does this mean I can give the cashier a 50 cent tip and I can get her number for laters?
Jetsons predicted this
I hope it's just supplemental. Like have one cashier and when it's busy have one remote in to help for a period of time (card only payments) then log out. Could have a 3rd party company manage a group of online employees to rotate between places worldwide.
Still don't think I'm cool with it but seems inevitable unless AI just replaces all of them quicker than expected
This is a particularly suited post for this magazine and the image just completes it
I have bad eye sight...I read the screen behind her as "Japanese fried children" suddenly I knew I had misread that. Like there's no way New York would stoop that low and be that cruel to children. I corrected myself before any other thought occurred actually. But it was momentarily disturbing.
If a remote worker can actually do the job at a high enough level, then the writing is on the wall.
Globalization will eventually take over those roles and laws that try to prop up a local worker will end up like Oregon's old law that says you can't pump your own gas.
The only way to 'win' is to equip the local guy with skills that absolutely cannot be done remotely, or educate him to do things at a level unmatched by the remote worker coming from another culture.
If my initial reaction is “that’s too bad”, does it make me greedy?
Like, I don’t think US workers are more deserving as human beings than anyone else… but a part of me knows hardcore globalization would hurt people geographically close to me… I’m like some national relativist or something?
I feel like I should want everyone to win regardless of where they were born. And $3/hr is huge vs. the $6/day min wage in parts of PH. Know friends’ friends are farming rice for six bucks a day.
the problem is it circumvents minimum wage laws. They're employing a person so they should be paying them the appropriate wages to do business in new york or the US. They're also benefitting from payroll/income taxes but not paying into the programs.
Good point!
Are call centers the same way? And any company relying on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms?
Would be a lotta layoffs overseas if we restricted all foreign labor making less than local minimum wage. Is that a fair trade off? (Not being facetious, genuine question again)
Oh one thing that’s kinda messed up is when tech companies go through consultancies to hire workers in India, the consulting companies take HALF!! Wild!
Everything in the US is already expensive, that "great wage going to a Filipino/a" is at the expense of a person in their own hometown not having a job.
Too bad? Put the shoe on your other foot. If we in the US ban imported rice to protect our farmers, would you and friends feel comfortable in that time things take to adjust? The loss of income?
How far does $6/day go in the Philippines? I can tell you how far it goes in NYC.
I don’t know what to think because I want everyone to win, but it’s hard to deny I’m biased towards my countrymen here stateside.
Re-reading my comment, did it sound like I meant:
it’s too bad this job is being outsourced
or
psh, too bad, this is the reality of a global world!
I did mean the first one.
I should want everyone to win but I’m biased towards Americans in situations like this - and I don’t know if I can justify it, if I can universalize the maxim.
Things in america should be more expensive. We do not pay for the full cost of what all of our goods and services cost, mainly due to exploitative measures like in this post.
You can double down all you want but the real answer is that we just shouldn't be able to buy nearly as much stuff as we do. We love being consumers anf watching the trash heap grow, while we take advantage of anyone smaller than us in any remote corner of the Earth.
What you shluldve wanting is some Phillipino employer to pay the lady what shes worth, and the American business to hire an American
I'm not a fan of this, it's definitely not great, but I've tested the AI drive through lanes, not the worst possible future.
Sure, it might be convenient, but our society is not structured in a way that allows this to work. We need deep, deep social support or people will suffer greatly
I don't think anyone ever said anything about it being convenient. I'm pretty sure I specifically said it was bad just not as bad as it could be.
this is simply cool and good
Yeah it’s definitely dystopian that someone in the Philippines gets to earn a living 🙄
hope your job never gets offshored
you: "Yeah I lost my job, but hey, now someone in India gets to earn a living...can you help me prop up my cardboard box to keep the rain out? thanks."
Jobs are not a finite resource. If there is a pool of people who want to work, someone will find stuff to pay them to do.
I seriously would love for my entire current set of job responsibilities to be automated. There are a couple of value-adding full-time jobs' worth of work I could be doing for my employer that are just being left on the table right now.
I agree it sucks that anyone would lose their job, but why is the default of people in the "west" having well paid, air conditioned jobs, and other people getting those jobs stealing from them.
Capitalism's spatial fix.