You have way too much faith in the handful of corporations that have monopolized our economy and rigged the game for themselves.
The last time we saw any meaningful wage movement was during/immediately after the pandemic, when people could afford not to work because of government programs that propped them up. This forced private employers to increase wages and improve overall working conditions to attract workers to jobs they no longer had to do.
was this a good thing? Bad thing? Probably up for debate, but the system we have is that people are forced to work regardless of the wage because we have such a poor social safety net and, more importantly, because virtually everyone’s healthcare is dependent on having a job.
Imagine if employers could not longer hold you hostage with health benefits - they’d have no choice but to improve pay and other benefits or lose significant chunks of their workforce.
I don't know what was in your mind when you posted, so I might be way out in my interpretation. If so, sorry in advanced.
I think you have too much angst about corporations. And when you post about "a handful" I expect you're talking about the large ones.
First of all, about 46 % of American workers are employed by small business. And, I'd wager, for the most part, these employees, in general, make a lower overall income - wage, contributions to 401s, healthcare, life insurance etc, than do the contemporaries working for large corporations. The big guys, again for the most part, have more generous benefits and, in my experience, pay more.
I worked for a fortune 50 company for 20 years. Retired as a member of executive management. Every year we worked to numbers - budgets- bookings - sales - and there was no debate about performance. You either made your numbers or you didn't. If you did you could make it up the ladder, if not, well......
We had all the resources we needed to attract and retain people. The better the job you did, and things were quantifiable, the more money you would make in either salary or bonus or both. We had great matching 401 plan and when I worked there a defined benefit plan; great healthcare choices, great PTO, sick leave, flexible work hours and latitude to make decisions for individual employees. I had an employee who was not performing. I called him in to fire him at which time he told me he had terminal cancer and without the job he had no health insurance. The company and I would not put him in that situation. So we put him in a less stressful job, same pay and benefits, and gave him the opportunity to flex hours however he wanted. Small companies might not have that option.
I'm sure some large corporations are not that employee centered. But I can tell you that other executives with whom I interchanged all had the same opinion, that is, the greatest asset of a company is its employees. And one of the greatest challenges was finding and retaining good people.
Working in a large corporation is not for everybody. I understand that. But our elected leaders like to bash them and then turn right back around and ask for sponsorships/donations. Who do you think covers a lot of the costs of the democrat and republican conventions? Who contributes to charities? Corporations contributed $44 billion to us charities in 2024. For comparison, USAID's budget was about $35billion.
So we like to denigrate corporations and they're not for everybody, but they and the people who work for them are not the reincarnation of evil.