Re: What I don't get...
That argument only works if there is full employment. As long as there is more than one person applying for jobs, then the unsuccessful ones will have to lower their sights.
While nothing like the same situation, I spent a while unemployed after redundancy. After a while, when the far from generous benefits are ending, and your savings are dwindling you steadily lower your expectations - eventually taking a job at a level of pay you'd not have considered while you were still in employment. I'm no longer in that job ...
But that's the situation many employers take advantage of. As long as there are people with a need to put a roof over their family's head, and food on the table, there'll be people who'll work for s**t pay & conditions. They'll tend to move on as soon as they can find something, anything, not so s&&t - but as long as you can keep the onboarding costs (admin & training) low enough you can be quids in vs paying a rate (and conditions) that will make people stay. Absent any controls (e.g. minimum wage laws in the UK), then employers in any free market will seek to depress wages as much as they can.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
