“The times are hard”

Asking for a raise should not feel feel like demanding the world, but employers routinely make it feel this way. The companies follow a very similar playbook when denying workers better compensations. No matter how rich a company is, it never has the money to pay the bottom 90% of workers enough.

When Austrian banks (in line with global standards) have record winning profits three years in the row, scoring 11 billion in 2026, the times are still too hard to pay the employees in the banking sector wages that at least keep up with inflation. This is despite the increased productivity of the workforce. The banks refuse to even pay a part of the taxes to help ease the tough economy which they helped create.

This naturalizing of the economy, making it seem like a law of nature that money flows into the deep pockets of the richest corporations and away from 90% of the population is the standard playbook when it comes to denying people even the most modest demands. We live in a world where the current generation is working twice as hard as the previous one, while earning less in real wages. That is despite the economy being more privatized and deregulated than ever.

Saubermacher is actually one of the best examples of it. This company is priviledged even by the standards of rich corporations. If Apple, Microsoft and Tesla dominate their respective markets, they still have to fear that one day people will stop buying phones, cars or computers altogether. So even if they eliminated direct competition, they still have to fear what’s called indirect competition. Saubermacher is one of those companies that has to fear neither. It dominates the waste market in Austria, while comfortably expanding abroad. It sits on long term contracts in a world that produces more and more waste. It has leverage and the bigger it gets, the easier it is to squeeze even more money from a relatively powerless Gemeinde.

The profits have never looked better, one year being better than the other. And while the CEOs pay rise may be in line with those in the rest of the world, the long time LKW-Fahrer will tell about worsening contracts, tougher and more stressful schedules and poorer job security. Every demand for a better wage is met with hostility and “times are hard”. That’s a total lie. Times are not hard. For companies like Saubermacher they are better than ever. It’s just that the better it gets for Saubermacher, the more power they have to deny their workers everything they ask for.

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