I have seen this from both sides. Both as a manager whose company hired low paid workers, and as a low paid worker that was hired.
First low paid worker has no motivation to do anything more than what they are getting paid. It is not reasonable to expect them to want to learn more or be motivated to stay. That should be obvious.
From the managerial side, a low paid worker is a liability. You are giving someone who doesn’t have enough to survive on, intellectual property that they have motivation to sell or get a better job with as leverage. I am convinced that many low cost hires are just using jobs as education and producing terrible work.
I have worked in companies that have used offshore help and had terrible results. Many of them brought it back in house. In fact a popular management tactic seems to be the 3 provider switch. 1. Switch to an MSP. 2. Switch to offshore. 3. Switch back to in-house.
Why the 3 provider switch? They say it is to save money, provide better support but the truth is that good managers are what make the difference. A poor manager will hide behind the type of workforce, and a good manager finds ways to manage whatever the situation is.
I don’t blame any low paid worker for leaving. The churn on turnover is so costly to companies and they don’t seem to care. They would rather think that there are an unlimited supply of workers, when there are not. People will not work for companies and eventually they won’t have anyone to hire. This is what is happening with Amazon. Now you may say it doesn’t matter if its going to be automated, but people still need to run those systems and maintain them. You can’t have a successful long term company by treating workers badly.
The fact is that most companies fail is a sign of this. Companies that treat workers well like Costco have happy customers because they have happy workers. It is so simple. The future isn’t the salary rate, it is how workers are treated.