This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Is it ethical for employers to pay workers at the market rate even if it constitutes wage slavery and lets them barely survive?”

If you’re getting paid the market rate for a position you’re filling, that’s the highest level of ethics you should expect from an employer.

I worked for a government-related agency (part of the government Stewardship program of pseudo-outsourcing) for almost five years and was paid 40% below the market rate. I was stuck with that for reasons that will take this answer in an entirely different and unrelated direction. Suffice it to say that my options were radically reduced due to another arm of government choosing malfeasance to manipulate politically based optics in their favour at my expense.

At any rate, I found myself in this environment in a less-than-challenging role, which worked for me for a time as I had suffered a severe degree of trauma and needed mental space to learn how to cope with a new reality.

When I began working in this operation, management was so pleased with my performance and capability that they wrote an entirely new job description and offered me a full-time position within my first three weeks as a temp. Since my engagement before this one involved physically hauling 16 metric tons daily (at 52 years old) at an hourly rate less than one-quarter of what I had been used to as a professional, I jumped at an opportunity to function in a leadership capacity.

As much as I was surprised to enjoy the role and the people I worked alongside, I was shocked to discover that my rate was below the least-paid staff who reported to me. I was told I had to prove myself when I expressed my dissatisfaction. I responded that I already had, or they would not have created a new position for me. That changed nothing for the better for me, and I continued working there because I was more concerned with struggling through an ugly state of mind at the time and in no shape to be successful in professional interviews. I had already been bombing the ones I managed to get during that period.

During the first company Christmas event hosted by that employer, I had an opportunity to meet the Finance VP. I first witnessed him in his speech, declaring everyone was family. I was later introduced to him by an exceptionally proud supervisor and manager. The VP’s initially positive reaction indicated he had heard abundant good news about my performance.

He smiled and asked me a question. I managed six words before he turned around like I didn’t exist and walked away in another direction. I thought his behaviour was rude, which ended my thoughts on the matter as I continued to enjoy the event. As it turned out, that was my first indication of a sustained round of abuse I was to endure from him.

For the next five years, he played a game of “You look familiar, but I don’t know your name” with me. He enlisted his HR executive in his game as they behaved like they didn’t know me each time they visited the facility, averaging about twice yearly. His HR sidekick seemed to enjoy the game as she furrowed her brow each time she was introduced to the staff when she showed up on average once per year.

Throughout that period, I found myself constantly mitigating the incompetence of the leadership in the facility and saving thousands of dollars in lost productivity per week. I remember being given a production design assignment the manager couldn’t resolve, causing him great stress. The number of errors generated by his inability to deploy an effective production system seemed to stress him to the breaking point, and he thought I would make an appropriate scapegoat.

He offloaded responsibility for his job onto me under threat of losing my job if I couldn’t resolve his problem for him. It was pretty laughable in retrospect because I already had plenty of experience designing more complex production flows within a technical environment, so the system I devised resulted in a complete turnaround and a successful production flow that everyone appreciated, as stress levels among production staff also significantly dropped.

The short of this is that although I routinely exceeded expectations far beyond the role I was paid to fulfill, beyond management-level functions, and well into director-level functions, I could not find myself being paid the market rate for the job I had on paper. I was being paid 40% less than the market rate. I remember quoting that figure to a different HR personnel, and her response was an expression of surprise: “How did you know that?” I was more shocked by her question than I think she was about my knowledge of the market. It’s pretty easy to find out what the market pays for roles. However, the standing directive from company leadership was that discussing salaries was strongly frowned upon.

This environment had all the hallmarks of a highly incompetent and corrupt environment, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of examples I can provide. Do keep in mind, after all of this, that this environment represents government by proxy and the degree of corruption displayed was criminal. My constitutional rights were violated, and I had no recourse beyond the court system in which I could not afford to participate. I did, however, file a suit against them, so that’s on record if I can finally afford to take them to court.

After eventually receiving an agreement that I would have my income adjusted to near market rates, I experienced a gradual moving of the goalposts where my expectations degraded from an agreement they made to a realization they had negotiated in bad faith. My attitude degraded over time, and I stopped offering extra-curricular solutions to issues I had worked on during my off-work hours. I stopped stepping forward to volunteer for tasks above the role I was hired for, and the response was an attitude that I was being derelict in my job.

They eventually decided to terminate my position by claiming they were going in a different direction. This is an “at will” environment, and they were within their legal rights to terminate me at their discretion. I was entitled to six months of severance and received only four.

Workers have no protections in the modern workplace without the strength of union membership and the resources it provides.

Ethics is a matter of individual character; the shame is that ethics are not a universally held standard of conduct. The primary reason for people quitting their jobs is due to abusive environments. That means that most work environments are unethical, which aligns with my experience as an independent professional who has been stiffed by many people who hired my services to extoll their satisfaction with what they received and then denied me my compensation.

A LOT of employers and people who hire other people to work for them are entitled assholes who will screw over anyone they can get away with. It might be the case that I just had shitty luck, but it was far and above more than half of the people I encountered who lacked ethics.

This is only one reason that when people like Donald Trump or Elon Musk brag about stiffing their contractors, I see red. None of those people would want to brag about such horrid behaviour around me because, after a lifetime of enduring it, I doubt I could restrain myself. I would rather avoid a prison sentence for losing my shit over some psychopath’s gloating over how they screwed someone over.

If you’re looking for ethical behaviour from your employers, good luck because if you do find an ethical employer, hang onto them like they’re a prized treasure. They’re just as rare.

Getting paid at a market rate is at least better than getting paid less than the market rate and being expected to perform at higher levels of responsibility than those who get paid more to supervise your work. They don’t set the market rate, while most employers deliberately seek young and inexperienced people because they don’t want to pay the market rate.

A LOT of jobs I see posted indicate an upper limit of experience precisely because older workers know when they’re being ripped off or manipulated by an unethical employer.