We get defensive Astroturf:

[pecunium]

In response to this post Underpaid "freelance" work, from six months ago I got (today) someone trying to slip in the last word (which tells me it was probably found in google somehow).

It was, of course, anonymous, and so remains screened. The gist of it was, "dude... we can hire Indians to work for pennies, why should we pay you a living wage?"

I am so not surprised.

Comments

[5251962.livejournal.com]

Uuugh. Few months back there was a bunch of this on Craigslist, here locally- people hiring contractors to do serious work, offering like, nothing for it. You see it all the time with art and writing, as well, but there were a number of really understandably angry responses to those ads.

One of the companies I contract to (Without saying much about what I do) did this, in a sense. The pound used to be just over twice the dollar when I started with this company. Well when it sank like a stone, people started bailing fast. So, rather than offer some kinda recompense for those of us who remained loyal- our higher ups simply hired on people with no experience, trained them, and they happily work for lower pay. (Because 1. they don't know any better, and 2. OMG, work at home, legit! YAY!)
Thing is, because the turnover is so high, they flooded us, in addition to not bumping up anything, sooooo, the little bit of money we made dropped even further because there were more on spreading it around.
I went from making about 23 and hour to 8 an hour, in the span of four months, but couldn't quit because we needed the money. It sucked.
it's starting to rise again and I actually have other stuff going on, but GOD I hate hearing, "Well someone else will work for less!"

Sure they will, and those of us who are loyal get screwed, and then we get to see the slipshod kinda crap work the ones who do work for less do.