First post in this subreddit, but I had an experience today that felt very enlightening that I wanted to share.
To start off with, I’m a teacher who is looking for a summer job. I applied to a job that was advertised as paying $17 an hour. Not great, but it would cover my bills at least. When I got to the interview, I wasn’t even interviewing with the company I’d be working for. Apparently employers are contracting hiring agencies to recruit people. Pretty standard stuff, but something the lady told me in the interview struck me as a bit odd.
The lady told me the job I was applying for paid $15 an hour instead of the advertised $17. I told her that I was expecting that wage when I applied (again, because it was ADVERTISED that way) and she told me that she couldn’t negotiate a higher wage on behalf of that company. The job was solid at $15 an hour doing back-breaking manual labor outside in the heat (I could get any job at a fast food place flipping burgers in the AC for that pay btw).
It struck me as odd because the hiring agency was the one determining whether I got the job or not, but I had zero opportunity to negotiate a higher wage before being hired. This agency hires for many companies from what I’ve been told and it comes off as shady. Not only are we having to fight for a higher baseline wage, but companies aren’t even allowing potential hires to negotiate their wages. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but if this is the norm going forward for hiring, then the workers are even more fucked than I originally thought.
None of this surprises me at all. I expected them to feed me the bullshit of hiring at a lower wage than advertised, but I didn’t expect to have zero chance of negotiating a higher wage. Anyone else experience something like this? Is this old news to everyone but me? Probably, but still. If things don’t change soon, we’re going to be even more screwed than I originally thought we would.
End rant.