TL:DR at the bottom
I work in order fulfillment at multimillion dollar company. Despite the obscene profit margins on our products, the owner is insistent on paying as little as possible, and not just for payroll, but also things like software licenses, computers, and even basic equipment needed for the facility to opperate. During our monthly staff meetings, employees keep bringing up the fact that despite being one of the largest companies in the state for our industry, we pay approximately 20% less than the industry average (depending on position). Management keeps saying things like “we're looking into it” or “the new industry standard data just came out and we need time to review it” (spoiler alert: the data shows their fucking us on pay).
Having worked for other companies before that have the same attitude, I know what's coming next. Their going to threaten to replace people with machines and software to keep wages depressed. Well… jokes on them because I automated a large portion of my department without telling them. In reality, we probably only need two or three people instead of the seven that we currently have. All we have to do now is pull orders from inventory, a task which is usually completed before lunch. Everything else… all the paperwork and inventory reports and all that other shit that we had to do manually before, has been automated to the point that my whole department quite literally has nothing to do for half the day. The best part… not only are we still hiring to fill positions in my department, but, due to us having so many extra hands, we are able to quadruple check orders before they go out, meaning the number of errors has gone way down. As a result, we've been getting extra praise and several people are in position to get promotions. I'm not even in charge of my department. I was just the only one with the skills necessary to make this happen.
And before anyone yells at me for going above and beyond, I would like to point out a few final things. First, the way I see it, if they don't want to pay a few people a high wage, then they can pay twice as many people a low wage and end up spending more in the process. Second, even though we're being underpaid, we actually do very little work now. Whereas before we were overworked and underpaid, now we're just underpaid, but in position to get significant raises to correct that as well. And finally, I made sure to put myself in the best possible position for future negotiations. There have been rumors that the team lead position in my department may be transitioning to a salaried position in the near future, and with my co-workers being rapidly promoted, the position may soon be mine. I plan to use this to negotiate for the highest wage I can get (something I've never really done before but am going to try here).
And should the company ever find out about what's been going on in our department, I can always threaten to take it away. You see, I did all the coding for the automation at home, unpaid, using my own computer, and even creating testing environments from scratch, not using any company assets or time. The code I've written belongs entirely to me and they have no claim to it. If they threaten to fire people, or attempt to pay us less, I'll just delete it. They can go back to having a department full of, by that point, new people with no idea how to do things without my code, which will increase errors and decrease efficiency, thereby forcing them to either pay overtime for their employees, or pay me a licensing fee for the rights to my script.
My whole team is in on it too. They all know what I did, and they love it. Things are much easier and way less stressful. We have free time to just relax and talk. We can even go help other departments if we get bored, which only makes it look like our department is working harder than any other, even when we're not. This is the first time I've ever done something like this and I have to say, it feels great. I'm not only helping myself, but also my entire team, all at the expense of a company that could have just spent less money in the long run to do right by their employees, but instead chose greed.
TL:DR
The company I work for is getting to the point of threatening automation to justify having low wages. Little do they know, I've already automated an entire department and they've been paying a whole team of us to do almost no work for a while now.