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> see in line
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> 2011/4/28 Rédacteur en chef <editorialstandards -at- gmail -dot- com>
>
> > On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:17 PM, voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> > > That's a rather broad brush. I neither work for a big company nor with
> > > enormous budgets. I am simply a "living wage" advocate, and believe
> that
> > > people should get paid for work that they do.
> >
> > "Living wage" means different things to different people.
> >
>
> Hence the quotes. I've had many a late-night conversation with freelancers
> in other parts of the world, where I discovered one could comfortably feed,
> clothe and house a family of 4 on $150.00 a week, and they were quite happy
> to work for those rates. I do not begrudge these people an income, even if
> it's from someone down the street from me. Nor do I begrudge the student
> or
> young person struggling to make a name/living for themselves.
>
> However, there are places on line that have a tendency to take advantage of
> the naive or the desperate, and that is something that I will speak out
> about when presented with an opportunity.
>
> >
> > To a kid still in school (in which I include "kids" in their
> > twenties) it means something very different from what it
> > means to a mid-forties family breadwinner. One still
> > has a feel for living in cramped shared quarters,
> > eating a lot of KD or ramen, and taking laundry home
> > for Mom to do. The other has to provide food, shelter,
> > clothing, transportation for self and dependents.
> >
> > Same assertion, substituting "person living in village in
> > fly-over country" and "person living in NY, NY, or San Diego.
> >
> > So basically, if you need something done, and can live
> > with what you get from inexperienced kids, you pay what
> > that market will bear, and people who have more baggage
> > and higher expectations in life won't apply.
> >
> > Nothing forces anybody to apply for a job that doesn't
> > pay what they think their time and skills and effort
> > are worth.
> >
> > As techwriters, we constantly deal with the fallout of
> > "it's just writing English (or other language). Anybody
> > can do that." We just - mostly - don't go for those jobs.
> >
> > If we find ourselves in a financial hard place, we do
> > take such jobs, because the basics are familiar (we know
> > what to do, without training) or because it'll look
> > better on a resume than flipping burgers for the same
> > pittance until the market improves.
> >
> > There's no way to mandate a "living wage" for everyone,
> > regardless of circumstances, training, relevance, etc.,
> > without legislation. Legislation of that nature brings
> > the bottom up by:
> >
> > - raising it out of reach of some people (*)
> > - pulling the top and middle lower, to "pay" for it
> >
> > ["Pay" means not just direct monetary extraction,
> > like taxes, but skills-and-experience devaluation
> > for those who thought they'd paid their dues. ]
> >
> > (*You can either mandate that anybody, regardless of
> > qualification must be accepted - in which case
> > employers stop employing or start piling the task
> > into the workload of existing employees - or you set
> > some official lower limits of skill/qualification,
> > below which people cannot be hired. Remember when
> > companies used to employ their own janitorial staff?
> > Regular jobs with benefits - low pay notwithstanding.
> > Now its all immigrants working as temps or as
> > "sub-contractors" for hustlers who sell the service
> > to your company, and your waste basket gets emptied
> > every couple of nights (because there aren't enough
> > [paid] hours in the night, or good people can't be
> > allowed to work longer than X hours before automatic
> > entitlements kick in), and your carpet gets
> > vacuumed perhaps monthly and it's your own
> > responsibility to dust your cube and wipe the coffee
> > stains.
> > A lot of that started in jurisdictions where the
> > minimum wage was raised and only very small companies
> > (Joe's office-cleaning service) were exempted, or
> > nobody was exempted and they jumped past the small
> > company paying low wages stage, directly to one-person
> > company "employing" sub-contractors in place of
> > employees. The model persists until inflation
> > catches up and the legislated minimum is no longer
> > a problem for any employer, and people go back to
> > actually hiring regular crew they can depend on. Then
> > the legislature feels some heat and jacks the minimum
> > or otherwise tweaks the rules again. And repeat.)
> >
>
> Not going to get into a political discussion with you, which is where this
> is heading.
>
> >
> >
> > > One more thing to keep in mind when asking for spec work in contests is
> > that
> > > (if you do some research into it) you as a client are going to be
> > > responsible for making sure your logo doesn't infringe on anyone else's
> > > trademark, nor is it ripped off from another artist (or clip art or
> > derived
> > > from stock photography violating their license agreement), which is
> what
> > > happens frequently on the cheap logo contest websites (according to
> > > information from specwatch.info site)
> >
> > Very good point, and one of the best arguments for hiring skilled,
> > experienced people if you can possibly afford to - and deciding
> > that it's better to afford them now than to have no choice but afford
> > the lawyers later.
> >
> > > Off the top of my head, GAG (Graphic Artists' Guild - to which I
> belong)
> > and
> > > AIGA are the big professional graphic artist organizations in the US.
> >
> > Just curious: what sort of entry standards do GAG and
> > AIGA have? Do they support "living wage" in the
> > graphic and design industry for anybody who wants
> > to hang a shingle, or only for members?
> >
>
> I'm not a member of AIGA (their entry fees are too high for where I am in
> my
> business right now), so I don't know exactly what they do, however, they
> also are not advocates of spec work.
>
> GAG publishes a pricing guidelines book for various freelance services
> based
> on current market rates, which is extremely useful. They also do some
> political action work regarding IP laws and small business reporting (the
> most recent being to get the filing of 1099 forms for every vendor to whom
> you give more than $600 in a year, citing an undue paperwork burden on
> freelancers). Going to their respective websites will inform you about what
> they do for their members.
>
>
> >
> > </kevin>
> > --
> > __o
> > _`\<,_
> > (*)/ (*)
> > Don't go away. We'll be right back. .
> >
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