Ask Lemmy

They couldn't do my job

The job they need to deliver. You can hire anyone if you have nothing to do. But if you have something to do, you need people who can do it in required quality & time.

When companies try to use the cheapest possible labor, it usually results in a decrease in productivity and quality, which causes them to lose business to competitors in a healthy, competitive market.

If a company can find cheaper labor that performs just as well, they'll do so and outperform the competition. If they can find a way to distort a market so competitive pressure has less impact, then they'll do that absent a sufficient threat of punishment.

There are places that do. Animal farms is one kind of place.

There is a cafe called Brownies and Downies that hire disabled people.

Trainees aren’t as good at the job as someone who is experienced

People with disabilities who can do the job without accommodations want full wages, the ones with accommodations need accommodations that can make the amount saved not worth it

Desperate people are no longer desperate after they get a job and can then apply for a better position somewhere else so the company has the same problem as hiring trainees

Companies do outsource a lot but generally the people who aren’t outsourced an impractical to outsource

As for a company that does hire the disabled, skillcraft employs the blind to make office supplies for the U.S. government. They don’t need to worry as much about being competitive because of a law passed that says that all office supplies must be purchased from a company that predominately hires the blind

You're just describing capitalism.

I think this was mostly answered in the other comments, so I'll mention another category of people: felons although perhaps they fall in to the desperate people category because many employers do simple background checks on people and purposefully avoid hiring felons, thus the job prospects of felons is limited.

Why don't companies hire them? I assume due to perception from that company's customers, current/potential employees who wouldn't want to work with felons, and associated risks (depending on the nature of the crime and the business of course).

I know of a company that specifically advertises that they hire felons and that they're absecind chance employer to help people get their life back together. As far as I understand it's mostly manual labor and factory type work and I assume they pay less than their competitors, so would have less operating costs. If this is the case, wouldn't more businesses want to do so?

It may not be overall beneficial. They may attract some customers as they advertise how they're helping people and by using their services, you're helping people get their life on track, but they may also lose some customers. For some positions, hiring can be difficult for any company and this may make filling those positions even more difficult/costly such that savings aren't worth it.

Generally if there's an easy way to make money/more profit, it would be prevalent, so there's probably down sides (thst are not necessarily apparent) that out weigh the benefits or people are not trying to maximize profit for some reason (possibly due to bias resulting in incorrect assessments).

Goodwill is known to heavily take advantage of the US law allowing sub minimum wage pay to disabled workers

https://www.disabled-world.com/editorials/minimumwage.php

Depends on what the company does. Moving feed bags from the left to the right? Might work in that constellation. Design and develop the next big thing? Unlikely.

Most fast food places and even a lot of chain casual dining restaurants subsist on 70%+ of staff being trainees due to a massive amount of turnover. Amazon and other large companies that have poor working conditions and low pay are taking advantage of desperate people to pay peanut wages.

This is actually a very common business practice wherever the onboarding process is fairly quick for the majority of the job's responsibilities or they are shared skills across jobs like construction and farming.

Nothing is stopping them and companies already do try to employ the most desperate and disabled workers that can still do the job because they’re easier to underpay and manipulate