Low bids win in job 'slave market'

[Kire]

Low bids win in job 'slave market'

Alex Duval Smith
Sunday April 3, 2005
The Observer

Imagine an auction where the lowest bidder wins. This is happening in Germany where the online sale is as controversial as it is successful because the 'lots' are people looking for employment. On jobdumping.de, they undercut one another to win work.

Founder Fabian Löw, 31, has provoked a torrent of anger from unions and politicians claiming his website is a 'slave market' where people are hired for as little as €3 (£2) an hour. The site is legal because Germany has no statutory minimum wage. "This country has higher unemployment than at any time since the Second World War - 12.5 per cent. Every eighth man or woman I meet in the street is without work, and the authorities are failing to find them jobs," said Löw, whose Münster-based firm has four staff and, not surprisingly, relies on "a lot of outsourcing".

The concept is simple: jobseekers - from office workers to cleaners - state the minimum pay they will accept. On a different page, employers advertise jobs naming the most they will pay. Buyers and sellers remain anonymous until the auction is over, and there is a trial period of four weeks before contracts are signed. We have a dog trainer offering pet-counselling for €30 a lesson. We also have economics graduates looking for work,' he said. 'If your tumble-dryer breaks down, why ring a firm that charges €80 for a call-out when qualified people will do the job for less?

Löw says he has held 3,300 auctions since last October, leading to work for 1,300 people. He takes a percentage of the first month's wage. But a Liberal party spokesman, Dirk Niebel, called the site "a slave market that is unprofessional". This claim was denied by Löw, who now plans an English-language international site - "useful for students looking for work in other countries".

More: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1451111,00.html?gusrc=rss

[dcfirefighter]

1. That's economics for you.

The people offering to work for $3 an hour would obviously rather work than not work. The real shame is that $3 is all they can ask for.

Unemployment is what happens when you don't put the countryside to work, and you tax work so that German coalminers can enjoy the subsidies that keep them at work.

When you let people profit off the ownership of our common birthright, you get unemployment.

When you've got unemployment, you get low wages.

http://www.schalkenbach.org/library/george.henry/SingleTax.htm

[fasttense]

2. I'm surprised that China hasn't got in on it.

They are suffering a labor shortage.

[ElectricIron Sweeney]

3. Wages are set

by the price of keeping body and soul in the same place. And yet government have allowed organization for the purpose lower wages while impeding organizations for the purpose of raising wages.