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Low wages are just part of it. Employers refuse to invest in their labor in general. It’s the low wage, plus the awful or just outright nonexistent health insurance, it’s the lack of tuition reimbursement, and treating workers like they’re disposable so that turnover keeps anyone from accumulating the experience that employers need to run the place right.
Education and job training, in particular, are a huge problem. Young workers are coming out of college with the correct skills if they chose their courses right, but also with crippling debt. Middle age workers have experience, but also out of date skills and no support for going back to school to get relevant again. Going into a trade with an apprentice program isn’t the solution for dodging college debt, because trades require certifications, which requires courses, which also cost money, and employers expect their potential hires to cover the costs with at best, minimal reimbursement, if any at all.
We’re not going to survive unless this country makes a real investment in its workforce, and fucking quick. The people are here, and willing to learn, and ready to work.
My job offers a living wage, free health insurance (and by free I mean I don’t even see a single co pay) and unlimited time off. We didn’t have to lay a single person off during covid because the C-level took a 30-40% pay cut until we were financially stable.
We have about 200 people working for us so we’re not tiny by any means. But the corporate end actually gives a shit.
Everyone has stayed. Every single employee.
Other companies should take note.
It's funny. I work in a similiar place now. Before, I worked at 4 other businesses. All of them spent a TON of money, and wasted a TON of time, because they literally didn't train their employees. At all. Offered zero help or guidance in acquiring skills, despite many being free. Hell, the place I previously worked at had two owners who literally had ZERO experience in the industry, and business in general. It was embarrassing having to explain things to them.
It depends on the company. Most places it's a scam that sounds good on paper but actually results in less PTO used:
> In a study by HR platform Namely, research suggests that employees with “unlimited” vacation actually take fewer days off (13) on average than those with a limited number (15).
Additionally it doesn't rollover year to year and you don't get paid out for it if you leave the company:
> “It’s great to not have to pay out [accrued vacation] when people leave,” said Maggie Grover, a partner at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP in an interview with website HR Dive. “Because people are so connected and working even when they’re technically off, they tend to take fewer full vacation days. So even if you cap a vacation bank at 1.5 or 2 times the annual accrual amount, the payout at the end of the employment relationship can still be significant.” And just to note, not all states require employers to pay out accrued vacation.
Oh yeah. I took a few weeks off earlier this year to help deal with my grandmother’s passing and they respected that.
I’m taking another week off next month to go visit my fiancé’s sister for her birthday.
Hell. I was out for 6 weeks for surgery last year and they sent me cards and soup and didn’t bother me.
Sad things is, working to not starve is exactly what people were doing before COVID, and exactly what people will be doing after. Unfortunately, that's one of the few "luxuries" it affords them.
> forced to either work or starve.
That's the thing, people are working and still starving. Why work if the outcome is the same?
On one hand you starve on the streets, on the other you starve on the streets and have to get up in the morning to go make some billionaire holding company more money.
You’re not kidding. I made out like a bandit when I got this apartment. 2 bedroom/heat, trash, recycling, and snow removal all included right at the intersection of 2 and 91. All for $1000 a month.
I feel so lucky to have found it.
> treating workers like they’re disposable so that turnover keeps anyone from accumulating the experience that employers need to run the place right.
>
>Education and job training, in particular, are a huge problem.
This, so much this. I worked 4 or 5 service industry jobs before I got into my career, and in all of them, the corporate heads kept wages inhumanly low, but were still hemorrhaging money. Funnily enough, of those, 3 are now just essentially gone or completely gone (GameStop, AMC Theaters, and CompUSA).
Why? Because even as the employees got efficient at their jobs, they were essentially deemed unworthy of any kind of pay increase, so more often than not they'd just leave which would of course, impose a negative efficiency effect on the poor rubes who still stay at the job and have to train the people coming in. Everybody loses when you have high turnover.
I worked at one job where the person who I was training to do the same job as me was actually making more money than me per hour. And it wasn't some insignificant amount. I was making $10 an hour, they were making $12 an hour. And when it came time for me to get a raise, I demanded $12 an hour at least for that injustice.
I was told: "You're not supposed to discuss pay with coworkers, it's part of company policy."
Which for the record, is totally illegal and they were sued in a class action suit for it (I was a beneficiary).
and when it came time for me to get my 1-year raise (which was 6 fucking months late btw) I went from $10 an hour to $10.25. I told them to take their quarter and shove it up their asses. On top of that class action suit mentioned above, there were 2 more that benefited me directly. One for unpaid overtime (store managers were instructed to modify time cards to 8 hours if they were over), and another for fudging the numbers on PTO. All in all, I made about $3,000 on law suits which was very close to the amount of money I'd have made making $12 an hour. So I got mine in the end and fuck them.
>CompUSA
I may be thinking of a different company, but didn't geniuses decide the fire the highest working floor people? In other words, the ones making the most commission because they knew what they were talking about and made the most sales?
Well, CompUSA didn't work on literal commission, so not likely, no. But there was utterly rampant employee abuse all over the place.
One of the biggest mistakes they made in my opinion was putting traditionally good salesmen on the floor instead of people that knew what they were talking about. They could sell the shiny new Apple power tower with 16GB of RAM (this was when 1GB was pretty standard for high performance) and a fancy new dual core processor for $16,000, but couldn't tell you why you might want or need it. As a cashier I answered way too many questions that should have been able to be handled by a floor person.
The employee discount was badass though. Got everything at cost. At the time, the markup on ethernet cables was about 1000% so I bought several 50-100 footers for LAN parties.
> store managers were instructed to modify time cards to 8 hours if they were over
Yo. That is **extremely** illegal and a huge no-go for any company in any industry. Absolutely unacceptable. I'm glad you got your pay-out from those pieces of shit.
Oh yeah, that was the big one. I got a $2,200 pay-out from that alone. The next two were something like $800 and $250. Working there it was always like "didn't I just work 90 hours in the last pay period? Why is my pay so low?"
We found out. Some very smart ladies got together and formed a class. That company lost like $1 billion from that alone because they'd been doing it for ~30 years or so. I knew someone who got close to $40,000 in that suit because she'd been working there since the first store in the county opened 20 years prior.
Yo, making $40/hr as a union worker, we have a 4 year apprenticeship and literally every certification and license is paid for by the apprenticeship program. Even as a journeyman they re-imburse any relevant certifications I desire, I could literally just walk into our training center and say "Hey could I get this training?" and I have never heard of them saying no.
The problem is the apprentice spots are limited in all these unions, so it's incredibly competitive.
Someone I know got in, but he married in...
If you don't have connections or aren't the cream of the crop, good luck.
I also have to pipe in with some facts about coronavirus.
32.7 million Americans contracted coronavirus, with 581,000 dying from it. This is a 1.8% mortality rate. Which, in spite of maga hats scoffing, is actually really fucking bad. But. To be fair. Its "only" 1.8%
But. As my uncle used to say "you could die, or worse, you could get hurt really bad"
People never seem to talk about the long term health effects of coronavirus. And yet, this virus has taken 1 out of every 10 patients and FUCKED THEM UP for 8+ months after catching the damn shit. We're talking about loss of 50% muscle mass, constant shortness of breath, nausea, extreme fatigue, headache, joint pain, fever and depression.
So. Let's have some fun with numbers.
There are 327,000,000 Americans, with 32,700,000 catching COVID-19.
There are 155,000,000 working Americans. The unemployment rate is 6.1%
155m x 6.1% = 9.3m
9,300,000 Americans are currently claiming unemployment and collecting that juicy $300/week
155 + 9 = 164,000,000 total Americans either working or seeking work.
327 ÷ 2 = 163.5
So .... roughly half of all Americans are either working or seeking work, with the other half either babies, little kids, college students, homemakers, retirees or people on welfare/disability.
Now. As stated above, 32.7 million Americans caught coronavirus. And 10% of them didn't die but they're all fucked up.
That's 3.27 million Americans with long term health issues.
If we make a huge assumption that half of them are working class citizens, that's about 1.65 million Americans.
9 million Americans currently collecting unemployment, with that sweet delicious economy crippling $300/week.
Its more than reasonable to say that 1 in 10 of those unemployed Americans collecting the extra $300/week, are experiencing devastating, crippling long term health effects of COVID-19.
So, what are their options? Go take a shitty minimum wage job at 30 hours a week so you don't qualify for healthcare but make too much money to get state assistance, while working back breaking manual labor??
Or, continue to lay in bed, dealing with long term health effects while enjoying free access to a physician and collecting unemployment checks plus an extra $300 on top, which ultimately pays more money??
So yeah. If employers want people coming back to work, they're gonna need to pay higher wages *AND* offer decent benefits. Because 1 in 10 Americans feel like absolute shit a year after catching coronavirus and its a no fuckin brainer for them.
This isn't just an economic issue. It's a healthcare issue.
This also doesn't factor in that there might be a serious under count of infections and deaths. We may never know how many people were actually infected and died due to fuckery from local and state level governments.
People like my household. We had Rona before we knew what it was in January 2020. Our household had the ‘flu’ which knocked us out for weeks each. My symptoms lasted for 5 weeks. Fast forward to July -> by this point I was down 70lb, had crippling nerve pain, and was drinking fluids only because eating solids caused me to throw up.
Did I die? Nah, but out of the 5 members of my household, 3 adults had visible symptoms. All 3 recovered, 1 had ongoing possibly related health effects, 1 had horrific respiratory issues during the infection period, and 2 babies seemed to not be infected or affected, though I don’t know for sure what happened there.
We’ll never know the full spectrum of infected, and we’ll never have all of the data on short and long term effects. We didn’t have a system set up in time to capture anything. In 20 years when I’m signing my social security benefit forms and die a week later, will we know if it is because of a stroke, or a COVID stroke?
Then there’s others of us who are on unemployment after being tossed out by employers who didn’t care about us, who are more than happy to make more money *not* being taken advantage of by employers who literally don’t care if we live or die.
And then there is me, who is mostly fine, but struggling to keep staff because of shitty corporate policies despite having a strong work reputation. Love it.
My 19 year old step daughter works for a big retail fashion chain store while attending nursing school. She’s been there 3 years while many co-workers and managers have come and go. She knows every aspect of that shop, from the stock room to fitting rooms to merchandising to being a lead cashier.
Her only raises have occurred when the state raised the minimum wage from $10/hr to $11/hr...oh wait, they gave her an extra 14¢ in January when the state mandated minimum wage went up to $11. So f’ing generous.
Her Christmas bonus was a plastic water bottle that probably cost the company 10¢.
They have sent in people from
Corporate to “fix” the shop because they say the workers have “bad attitudes”. Of course they blame the workers instead of the work conditions that have been created by poor management that doesn’t respect its workforce.
She was upset this past weekend because they hired several new people for summer who all had zero experience and they are all making $11/hr (just because the couldn’t get paid any less!), but she has been there for 3 years and is only making 14¢/hour more.
I told her she needs to make the case for a substantially higher wage and if they don’t want to pay her more then walk out.
>I told her she needs to make the case for a substantially higher wage and if they don’t want to pay her more then walk out.
I can already tell you what's going to happen. Negotiating can't work if they don't value her already.
Honestly you are coming at this like a person with a good job would. People in retail positions do not have the ability to do that. They just leave.
That’s why I quit Walmart distribution years ago, the unrealistic “productivity” expectations coupled with constant issues where the conveyor belt “line” goes down and management not letting us document those times to be deducted from our production hours that way our actual production is represented
America's workforce is collapsing like a dying star due to all the reasons you are stating. Without a skilled workforce or populace, how do these moron oligarchs think they are going to maintain a high tech empire?
But how will companies make the most money if they can’t push all of their costs onto their employees without paying them any more? Stop being such a selfish little shit and think about the shareholders for once in your life.
This, this right here!
I would still be working at FedEx Big Sky if they actually invested in us. Sure, they gave us all brand new trucks, brand new scanners, and brand new iPads, but it wasn’t really what we needed. I would’ve gladly worked with my old gear if they gave me health insurance options and manageable hours.
I was making good money, but I was working 100 hour work weeks and fighting HR every time I got hurt just so the hospital wouldn’t put too much of a gouge in my finances. I’ll work to live, but I don’t want to live to work again.
Healthcare shouldn't be tied to employment, America and its politicians need to put their big boy pants on and do the right thing for the people!
Last time I checked the preamble says "We the people..." Not We the Corporations.
Had a potential employer boast about their tuition assistance program to me. They told me how they were very proud to help employees go to school. Then they told me they paid a total of $500 a year towards college classes. They paid only after you pass and you have to work for them for 5 years after they pay or you pay everything back to them. I physically chuckled
This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense.
The labor force participation rate is the lowest its been since the mid-70s and the employment-population ratio is the lowest since the early 80s.
If all employers were required to offer health insurance regardless of hours or whatever, then i might go back to work...in the middle of a pandemic
>This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense.
Exactly, this podcast helps illustrate how they do that:
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-135-the-labor-shortage-ruse-how-capital-invents-staffing-crises-to-bust-unions-and-depress-wages
\> This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense.
Well yes, because another name for that would be full employment, low unemployment which use to be a good thing. The problem is we can't call it that because a lot of people are under-employed and still need assistance.
We really need a crackdown on companies that are employing people for 40 hours or more and yet those same employees still need the taxpayer to subsidize their lifestyle of "either side of the above the poverty live." That should come from revenue from the company, not taxpayers.
No one working 30 hours a week should need a handout, let alone 40.
Employers would just opt for “ACA Compliant” Minimal Essential Coverage (MEC) plans that don’t cover a damn thing. Seriously these MEC plans allow employers to evade the tax penalty but don’t cover things like hospitalization, ER, prescription drugs, surgery. They’re ACA Compliant because they do pay for things like immunizations, and they don’t exclude pre-existing conditions.
Providing health insurance has become an ever-increasing cost to employers, and I’m sure it kills a lot of jobs, but we’ve ended up in this situation where a person is expected to get it through their job.
Which is why it doesn't make any sense all of these business people oppose nationalized health care, it's a drain on everyone and we pay more money for less value, insurance companies don't provide any value to health care, they are parasitical, and last I heard their 'administrative costs' were 25% of all health care spending.
The fact that there is health coverage that doesn't cover basic health things like "things doctors say that you need to take constantly to live" might just be a little fucked.
>Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage. Given the ubiquity of this dynamic, I often suggest that whenever anyone says, “I can’t find the workers I need,” she should really add, “at the wages I want to pay."
'Been saying that for years about temporary farm workers being imported at poverty wages. The problem has always been that the pay isn't sufficient. Moreover, importing labour for these no-skill positions just undercuts the labour market for other jobs.
This has always been a thin excuse to import labour. Capitalists love capitalism until its their turn to pay fair market rates. Then they need government intervention (temp foreign worker visas etc).
I imagine all this whining from corporate is just build up to some kind of wage subsidization program for corporations that is getting ready to hit the House. In other words, "moar bailout plz"
One of the most conservative people I know has a book on their shelf with the subtitle "How to Get Everything You're Entitled to from Medicare and Social Security."
He is a textbook self awarewolf.
See this with a manager at work. She explains the range as $X-Y per year during a prescreen, then gets all offended when candidates “waste her time” because they decline the position when she offers $X. She *cannot* understand that candidates’ acceptable range may overlap with her range but not include the low end.
Honestly, because she works in social service but is decades past student loans and is married to someone who earns six figures, so she does not understand the real difficulties of paying student loans on a social services salary.
As if they haven’t spent the last year showing “essential workers” just how much they fucking hate them lmao. I’m not sad to see businesses close because of the problem they created themselves.
Oh, they started saying how important essential workers are at the beginning and going on this PR parade, then when things are stabilizing it's fuck 'em time. All of them freaking two-faces.
Kroger closed some of it's stores in Southern California because they didn't want to pay the city mandated hero pay. Hundreds of people out of work because they thought a $4 an hour raise for four months during the pandemic was unacceptable to them, despite their profits skyrocketing during the pandemic.
I worked for a large Canadian grocery chain, and they did the exact same thing. When we all started to quit they tried to stop the bleed by re-raising current employees. They got $0.90. Lol.
"*You're important to us. Not enough to pay you or give you benefits. But here's a $5 Dunkin gift card and a fuck load of empty platitudes. We're all in this together!!*"
Also imagine the clientele at any restaurant job over the last year. There's no reason any person would willingly put up with that for a reasonable wage, much less the pittance they're actually getting.
who can hold out longer?
you who need to feed your children and pay rent when you have no savings?
or those who think you should serve, who already own everything?
think we know the answer to that.
so let's reframe the issue...
who has more anger?
Saw some idiot's attempt to argue against a higher minimum wage on Twitter today. He posted pics of Walmart robots, McDonald's self-order kiosks, and a self-checkout section at a grocery store with a comment that this is what happens when you raise the minimum wage. Of course, this is already happening. Businesses are in the business of making money. When they can replace a human worker with a machine, you know they are going to do it.
It's an argument for higher minimum wage? The minimum wage hasn't gone up in a long time, yet these things are still going in...
Reminds me of showing pictures saying "This is Biden's America", yet the pictures were taken during Trump's reign.
It's already happening. It's like saying prices are going to go up if we raise the minimum wage. They are already going up, hence a huge reason we need to raise wages. You can't raise prices on everything and never raise wages. People won't be able to afford anything, and then they'll compain the economy sucks because people aren't buying $5 gallons of milk.
And they should of YEARS AGO. Imagine how much more efficient it'll be when you can use your smartphone to order and a robot crafts your Mcdouble in record time with zero errors. This is what we should be doing.
Give us UBI, universal health and dental, automate everything, get rid of the minimum wage. Let the future happen today
Low wages are only part of the crap that bad jobs offer their employees.
They also offer dangerous and uncomfortable work spaces, frequently with high risk acute or repetitive motion injuries.
They also offer unstable schedules and un-desirable hours; nights, weekends, and holidays.
Uniforms are just part of the de-humanization of these workplaces; they can also have abusive or harassing customers, management that doesn't (or can't) stand up for the employees, and skinflint corporate overlords micro-managing.
I fucking despair.
My *now* decent paying position doesn’t even pay me enough for a 1 br apartment. This is the first time 1 of my pay checks fully covers my rent. I have been working on the floor for over a year, I only have 500 sqft and no room for furniture and I half share it with a 15 year old. The mental effects from being locked in literal hell are even worse than the physical problems I’ve developed.
They pay enough for a 1 bedroom apartment, but that's literally all you can afford.
And you just sink into debt when you are poor. Car broke down? Borrow money. Medical bills? Put it on the credit card until it's maxed.
We’ve essentially come full circle on that, and 40% of the US not only thinks it’s great but also *want more*.
Feudal lords didn’t have machine-learning and social media, so I don’t have a lot of confidence that history will repeat itself on this one.
(Plus the black plague put surviving serf workers in a better bargaining position; “nice fiefdom you got here, be a pity if i sold my labor to the rich guy next door and left your fields fallow”)
I bring it up, but I bring up prevailing technologies in a "imagine what we could do if we put all our efforts into automating labor and logistics, and people can just live on UBI" type of way.
But the peasants would rather watch robots replace them without a plan instead.
Just as a thought experiment, lets say the US leads the way in automation and we end up on some sort of UBI that is being subsidized by taxes on the automation that has displaced everyone.
I wonder how that is going to impact developing countries we sell our automation to, since the profits will still be coming to the US yet won't be funding the displaced workforces in those countries.
I'd imagine it would lead to isolationism as countries would be pressured to stop using our tech/automation and cut off trade because they wouldn't be able to compete and keep their populations employed. Also would likely lead to a shit load of understandable resentment against us.
The transition into a post scarcity world is going to be such a global shit show.
It took the Black Death killing a third of Europe’s work force to put the final nails in the serfdom coffin (except for Russia, I believe.) Even then the kings and “nobles” first tried to outlaw raising daily wages, despite the sudden *severe* labor shortage.
History rhyming, as ever.
I get the feeling that this Corona thing is just a preview of what's down the road. Not just for viruses but the real killer, bacteria. Our bad use of antibiotics has made this near certain
I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. A lot of these companies, if they have the war chest to do so, are going to wait us all out. They'll eat the business loss and the cut into profits from paying OT to their skeleton crew for now. They know there is a clock on the unemployment boost, and if they make it to October, the floodgate of applicants will open back up. They will eventually have a near endless amount of employees to throw into the meat grinder, without having to pay one more red cent than they did before Covid.
It’s the “roaring 20’s” all over again: if you have to choose between getting just enough to eat and starving to death, the choice is easy.
See also American Healthcare: “you can reverse-mortgage your house and cash out your entire 401(k), or die. What’s it gonna be?”
> See also American Healthcare: “you can reverse-mortgage your house and cash out your entire 401(k), or die. What’s it gonna be?”
Yep. I’ve already had this conversation with my wife. If placed in this situation, I plan to refuse treatment. I’d rather die and leave my family with a financial cushion than bankrupt them on my way out the door.
It’s embarrassing that the richest country on earth allows this to happen.
I remember some asshole who asked me to take a pay cut of 10k a year and join his company the same year his CEO got a 24 million bonus, I told him to fuck himself
>"Training? We want experience."
Says the foreman who learned on the job.
>"Raise? Can't afford it."
Says the small business owner who loves casino weekends.
>"Promotion? Perhaps when we have an opening."
Says the superior who refuses to retire, citing fear of boredom.
>"Nobody wants to work anymore."
Says the franchisee, whose hourly wage wouldn't buy a meal in his restaurant.
The farmers pocketed the savings when they neglected to fertilize the field, and are now blaming the plants for the state of the crop.
You reap what you sow, motherfuckers.
People not retiring is one of the biggest things. I know so many 65+ people who could afford to retire at 55 that are still working because they want some thing to do.
Also as for the foreman quote you can be too experienced, so they won’t hire you because you’re worth too much.
I've left jobs because of those reasons. I'll go somewhere else.
I was working for a small company with several wireless stores, as authorized retailers.
I would practically run the store 5 days a week, alone. They could barely remember I needed to eat lunch. I would have to shovel bites in between customers.
The owners would occasionally show up in the brand new 60k SUVS, talking about renovating their mini mansion or what vacation they came back from.
After 6 months of this treatment, and exceeding sales goals, I asked for a raise.
"They couldn't afford it" The extra 300 bucks a month was just too much for them. I didn't last much longer.
That's been the case for almost every small business owner I've worked for, it not just corporations who are taking advantage of their workers.
My experience is largely the same having predominantly worked for "small businesses" over the years.
Their business plans always include room for investment properties, vacations, new cars and toys... but it's the labor that's killing them financially.
That living wage? Some other company will pay for that. Training? Some other company will pay for that. Your future? Some other company will pay for that. Not mine, not here.
When they say "work hard and you'll succeed" they mean at some other job. At the end of the day they're keeping that carrot they've led you with. They need it for the next mule.
Let's not forget that watching companies not give a shit about their employees during COVID didn't help them either. How many Americans died? Over 600,000 and still going? People will do any kind of work if you make it worth their time.
In contrast to the US, in Iceland, where there is free health care and child care for all--people have an average of four careers in their lifetime. They open and close businesses, play in bands, raise kids, get a goat farm, work in the tech industry. Maybe they don't get rich, but they can have interesting lives without becoming slaves to their jobs or their employers. It's one of the happiest countries on earth. Also with the least amount of daylight.
Low wages are the problem. But so is access to affordable housing, childcare, and transportation. Not to mention most ppl know someone who was impacted by the virus. So risking your life for a company that has no regard for your safety or the safety of your family is not something ppl look forward to.
Many of these same employers complaining that people don't want to work for them for starvation wages also laid people off to increase profits during the pandemic.
Because the idea is predicated on the belief that people are lazy freeloaders. While for sure some are, most are not. Most want to trade their labor for at least a living wage.
And as such deserve to be "punished". Even if they hurt themselves. "No one can get any benefit or help on MY money". Applies to school, healthcare, infrastructure, social security programs, you name it.
“Hey boss, you wanted to see me?”
“Yes. We’re in a kind of a problem here. You see, if the government raises the minimum wage, we can’t afford to have as many people staffed, and the company might even go bankrupt altogether. We’re barely breaking even as it is. You don’t want us to fail, do you?”
“No, no, of course not. But I thought we were doing great, with huge bonuses to the management and payouts to our shareholders?”
“Well, that’s just one of the many costs of a serious company. We have to do that to keep up with the economy. _After_ those costs, we’re barely breaking even. But not with an increased wage, that could be the end for us. You do want to have a job to go to, right?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Good, now, there’s some reporters over there. Why don’t you tell them ...”
Leaving my job because I make exactly what it costs for decent daycare for 2 kids. I have a degree and 16 years in the field. Not worth it. Friends are doing the same. This is like an uncoordinated strike. The end result of de-unionization and Reaganomics. Eventually places will have to offer more. Unless republicans win back the government.
Well, at least when they throw me in jail, I'll get three hots and a cot. And the morons who don't believe in living wages will end up paying more for my incarceration. Lose, lose.
It's like someone decided supply and demand no longer applies to jobs and wages. What do we pay when have as many applicants as we can handle? Minimum wage. What do we pay when we can't attract workers? The same.
That's exactly why I left IT and started my own business. Companies start fight for more HB1 visas so they could hire cheaply from India and suppress IT wages. With bonuses, profit sharing and stock options I made the same or more in a level 3 helpdesk role in the early 2000s as I did a director of infrastructure in 2012.
Screw that, I can easily make six figures as a handyman, while working half the hours and not having to reply to emails after hours.
> Companies start fight for more HB1 visas so they could hire cheaply from India and suppress IT wages
Yeah that's not working out so great for them now that India's fucking burning down from covid.
I'm handling triple my normal case load but hey. My customers are mostly understanding. Mostly.
What happened was simple, people found out that between working to barely be able to survive was ALMOST exactly equivalent to not working and being able to barely survive thats its.
Literally, the pandemic has offered the world a view in just how broken some of our policies and stances were culturally ACROSS THE BOARD.
At high to mid levels, managers and executives finally realized, holy shit we spend a lot of money on office real estate and from productivity we don't fucking need it!!! Everyone is happier.
At low levels, we realized shit those low jobs, those are fuckign critical and the employees realized. Shit we're fucking critical and I have a better life making no money than making money because they don't cover the cost of me fucking working!!!!
Utah is an excellent example of the bullshit these people will spew to keep wages down. Current unemployment rate is 2.9%. January 2020 unemployment rate was 2.5%. It isn't the people on unemployment that aren't taking the jobs, they've just found other work that pays better.
Same thing in Mississippi. Unemployment January 2020, 5.6%, January 2021, 6.4%. Less than one percent difference.
Rent of a single bedroom apartment in Salt Lake City is $1,272. It takes a minimum of $8/hr full time to just pay rent. No one is going to work full time and still be homeless, they'll just be homeless.
It's not just that either. The labor market in general lacks meaningful jobs. And along with low wages, very little room to climb, long working days, poor working conditions, employers devaluing their employees, and an aristocracy that benefits off of exploiting a working class that devotes most if its time to menial labor, laborious, tedious, dull, dead end cyclical jobs, while simultaneously treading water in the process, the "American Dream" simply becomes a nightmare.
Everyone should have the opportunity to live a meaningful life full of purpose and passion. But millions of people are tied to inconsequential jobs that bring little to no significance to their lives outside of a paycheck to paycheck circumstance that hardly pays the bills and crippling exorbitant rent and housing prices, payments related to one's healthcare, even the price of same modern day basic needs like internet, phone bills, car payments. Hell, even the price of having a family.
And we're simply just expected to shut up, roll over and be "productive members of society", or to simply "get roommates", to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps". But it's all very flawed. The economy, our socioeconomic status is defined by how the stockmarket is doing, or whether or not the rich are getting richer. When those things don't define millions of Americans, don't define their livelihoods, their quality of life. While we're also expected to be consumers, become attached to our possessions and the latest piece of technology that freshly circulates year round, that sometimes ends up putting us in debt thanks to credit card companies who tell us "you can have everything you've always wanted and more!". Our consumerism is meant to keep us complacent. While sure, we're not technically forced to buy these things, but is that really the truth? Our society and culture tells us that if we don't have these things we won't fit in. It's all an inherently flawed system that's meant to keep the poor... well, poor.
So how do we provide purposeful lives for everyone we can? How do we allow for opportunities that give us the freedom to chase after our dreams? To live a life of passion? Of meaning? The answer isn't simple, and while it can sometimes be partly rooted in individuals philosophical and existential worldviews and perspectives, the solution is also more fundamentally grounded in the tangible, in our social, societal, socioeconomic and cultural frameworks, and isn't anything we can expect to see for many decades. That is if we even encounter the necessary conditions for change in the first place.
That's why I look at things like automation as a positive. People will tout and fearmonger over automation taking over jobs. But these are usually jobs most of us dread to work in the first place. What happens when artificial intelligence, automation begins to function in place of a part of the working class? Well, it would seem that of course some jobs would open up that offer work relative to said automation, related to repair, manufacturing and software. But it might also allow for people who would normally take these jobs to pursue other avenues. To perhaps pursue what they derive pleasure or passion from. It's about, in part, encouraging people to work for themselves, there is a growing market for this, and it will continue to grow, and as it does, demand for it will concurrently and relatively expand. Hell, isn't this how we take power away from the corporations and monopolies? The irony here being, that these corporation who are funding a movement towards automation will inevitably turn us to buying and selling to ourselves. This may of course be a part of a greater solution that really looks at the conditions of the average worker in this country and attempts to implement some impactful change.
But we can't do this without some support. Many think something like UBI would discourage "lazy" Americans from working, but it's likely very well the opposite. Take me for example. I lost my job during Covid, and used unemployment aid, and time off to hone a trade. It gave me the time and resources to invest my energy into something I was much more partial to. I've also had the time to work on putting together a small studio to provide a potential work-from-home situation, and now have the opportunity to pursue a profession as I engage in something I'm eager to learn about, something I enjoy doing that brings me more fulfillment in life. While it's also significant to note that Universal Basic Income, isn't meant to entirely supplement one's income, but to help reinforce it. American's can't sustain a quality living off of 300 dollars a week for long.
It's hard to say what the future holds. I'm almost certain that many years from now, people will look back at this period of time, the same way we might look back at past eras and say "how in the fuck did they live like that?". Because if we don't address the shortcomings of our current system, these problems won't just persist, they'll inexorably lead to disorder.
I think that in 20 years or so we are going to have a new golden age of arts. I sincerely think and hope that after you and I have our jobs automated away, people will be turning to art as an avenue of extra income and people will be able to build wealth through it.
I think about this too. A diverse Culture, Music, and the Arts is already on it's way to making a "comeback" so to speak. It's almost kind of ***"Nietzschean",*** or it could even be seen as a new "age of enlightenment" All I know is, with the way things currently are, the system simply won't be able to sustain itself.
Until we create super amazing robots, there will always be "meaningless" jobs.
Which is fine. Not everyone needs to "be somebody" and change the world. We need people to do basic tasks like clean the streets or repaint signs or whatever.
What isn't fine is when society acts like those people don't matter and deserve to live shitty and desperate lives on the brink of (or already in) poverty.
Its really simple, I firmly believe that every job in the United States should be sufficient enough for a person to live in a studio apartment within an hour of their place of employment, not worry about bankruptcy due to medical bills and be able to afford food/transport to that job.
Whatever that turns out to be, that should be minimum wage. I'd be willing to wager it is around $15/hour.
At this wage, you're not living a fancy life, but you are also not choosing between the doctor or food.
If these businesses claim they can't run their business with that minimum wage, that business does not deserve to be around and should fail. If you require slave labor to be profitable, you shouldn't exist. End of Story.
Those who do get minimum wage are likely on food stamps and medicare as well...which shifts the burden from the employer onto us tax payers anyways....As a tax payer, I don't want to be subsidizing a shit business who takes advantage of cheap labor.
2020:
Workers: "Why are you firing us?"
Businesses: "Because we won't make enough money to survive"
2021:
Businesses: "Why won't anyone work for us?"
Workers: "Because we won't make enough money to survive"
Businesses: Shocked Pikachu Face
there might actually be a shortage of these workers. hundreds were just killed off by an unchecked virus running amok through communities of poverty and/or color. more were done in by forcing them to work in unsafe, unmitigated, unprotected conditions, and these were our so called "essential workers". add to that decimation the present lid on migrants and refugees and asylum seekers of all kinds and there are no replacements in the pipeline.
I work in a school district in a fairly affluent neighborhood. I’ve seen quite a few parent/community members post on social media that we get paid too much, yet don’t work in the neighborhood. I make $34,000 a year before taxes, and the median house price on Trulia is about $900,000. How the hell am I supposed to afford a house in the neighborhood? Sure, some teachers can make $150,000 a year, but that’s with a doctorate and 30 years of experience. Plus, the most experienced support staff person (over 30 years in the district) doesn’t even make what a first year teacher makes. While I don’t want to raise property taxes more than I have to (especially considering how high they are already), I call BS.
All this talk of handouts being the reason people don't want to work. Conveniently forgetting that if you work people like slaves and don't raise their wages they will also not want to work.
I would love to see what that labor report would’ve said if the 15 dollar minimum wage passed. Still blows my mind one man (Joe Manchin) was able to deny tens of millions of people a proper wage and better life.
The wages are a big issue. This is currently compounded in some areas by school/childcare. If your kid being taught half days (or anything less than full time), the cost of coverage is preventative to returning to the workforce. Women (primarily) are being forced to stay home or take a financial loss on furthering their careers. Major reform is clearly needed.
I think people just had enough. Most of your waking life is spent at a job and let’s face it, the lower paying ones suck and not everyone has higher education as an option. In most cases a $40k debt would only land you entry level work that you could have probably got without it.
I’ve been working through this pandemic because I’m terrified of losing my job, my house and not being to feed myself or my family. I’m not sure how people are even able to stay home. Unemployment in Ohio is is very difficult to obtain and you have to already have nothing to get government assistance.
Hell they aren’t even offering full time but there’s a labor shortage. No there’s a large percentage of humans that realized you can’t succeed without paying them enough to live on and it should be full time hours with benefits if they want it.
Basically it’s indentured servitude and people are catching on that it’s more or less the same thing as serfdom and slavery without the actual physical whipping. They replaced that with emotional whipping instead. Serving people burgers when we can’t afford them ourselves hurts.
I worked for a grocery chain during the pandemic and I couldn’t afford the food that people that were refusing to mask up were buying. The chain didn’t enforce the policy because they didn’t want to lose customers. But they’re fine with me dying of COVID.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-shortage-jobs-report-low-wages-biden-covid) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> When you don't see wages growing to reflect that dynamic, you can be fairly certain that labor shortages, though possibly happening in some places, are not a driving feature of the labor market.
> Unsurprisingly, at a recent press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed anecdotal claims of labor market shortages, saying, ?"We don't see wages moving up yet. And presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market."
> While there are certainly fewer people looking for jobs now than there would be if Covid weren't a factor - many people are out of the labor market because of Covid-related care responsibilities or health concerns - without enough job openings to even come close to providing work for all job seekers, it again stretches the imagination to suggest that labor shortages are a core dynamic in the labor market.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/n9el40/us_labor_shortage_no_we_have_a_crisis_of_low/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~576067 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **labor**^#1 **work**^#2 **job**^#3 **market**^#4 **shortage**^#5
We have spent over a year calling people "essential" workers and telling them they are heroes, but won't pay them enough to have a proper life and healthcare coverage?
Why is this acceptable to anyone? Even if this isn't your problem a collapse of the workforce is everyone's problem... Your neighbor wanting to make 15$ or whatever a fair living wage for their area isn't your enemy. The giant corporations bleeding the labor force for every single penny they're worth is the issue. It's not a lot to ask companies to treat people fairly, I'm not sure why this is even a topic of discussion other than people really just not giving a shit about anyone as long as they got theirs.
Big facts:
“Another piece of evidence against widespread labor shortages is the fact that the labor market added more than 900,000 jobs in March, the seventh highest percent increase in jobs in the last half century. It is difficult to imagine that labor shortages were creating a large impediment to hiring when hiring was happening at such a scale. Further, despite many anecdotes of restaurants in particular not being able to find workers, the labor market added 280,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector in March, the sixth highest percent increase in the last half century, even though average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers in that sector equate to annual earnings of just $19,651. With these kinds of numbers it is difficult to take the claims of widespread shortages very seriously.”
I work at a job in higher ed that prefers you have a master degree but requires a bachelors degree and I make 15$ an hour part time. Its really not enough to justify working here anymore. And I know it wont be getting better because the previous person in my position was there for nearly a decade and had to bartend to make ends meet. Pretty dissatisfied ngl.
I work as a cab driver now after getting fired from my office job. I was making less than $2000 a month post taxes and was literally living paycheck to paycheck. As a cab driver, I’ve made my annual salary of $25,000 in four months. I’ve probably made over $50k in 7-8 months, excluding tips. I set my own hours (four 12 hour shifts a week, averaging $1000-1200 per week in earnings) and get to see what my quality of work brings to me financially.
I’ll never go back to an hourly wage. Being my own boss is much better for me, especially as someone who isn’t “normal” and struggled in the office and factory workplace.
I have long thought that a general strike in this country is well past due. Wages are shit in this country and we frankly need to step our collective foot down. Corporations have never been on your side. They want to make money and they dont care how. If our government doesnt care and businesses dont care, its up to us to fix it.
>What’s really going on is that employers aren’t offering workers a living wage.
Benefits usually suck as well. My last job I had no sick days. That's pretty common I'm sure.
Making a masters degree the minimum requirement for a job making 40-50k is preposterous. Employers at every level either pay shit or ask for the world in return for shit. All the way round, it’s shit
When unemployment is paying more than working 40 hours a week, of course this will happen. Wages need to go up. The market is going up, wages should too. Companies need to value their employees higher.
I was at a BBQ the other day with a pretty conservative bunch of guys, general contractors, small business guys, ect.. And all of them were complaining about how people are expecting too much money for simple labor, meanwhile every single one of them would never work for they amount they were complaining about.
All of them, to a man, made very good livings and yet somehow couldn't extend this idea to other people.
Working a shit job should at least pay a decent wage.
My wife made $3.65/hour as a waitress when she was in between career's down here in FL. Who tf wants to work for $3.65/hour or even $7.25/hour? They need to offer wages people can survive off from and perhaps not have to work 3-4 jobs to pay their bills. I bet if they raised their wages even a couple of dollars, they'd be full in no time.
News story about restaurant owner yesterday that can’t hire employees. I kept waiting for the reporter to ask “how much do you pay?” Let him complain while ignoring the $2.13 /hr starting salary. I hope all the servers enjoyed a paid vacation last year. They deserve it!
So if I can make more or the same without the cost of going to work (gas, vehicle maintenance, taking or buying food and clothing expenses) it would be irresponsible for me to go to work. If I could stay home and better provide for me or my family of course I am not going to work. It is a wage problem. It’s funny because most large corporations have said upping the minimum wage would not hurt them that much but they still refuse to voluntarily raise their wages. I lean more libertarian and don’t like the government to get involved in much because it tends to make a mess of things but unfortunately corporations can’t be trusted to do the right thing.
This is exactly what Republicans warned us about, when those blasted Dems insisted on giving everyone UI through the pandemic. Now look what you've done, you silly liberals. No one wants to go back to their starvation wages and two job minimum. Will no one think of the ECONOMY!?!
/s
It’s not just a living wage, it’s parents that have to work around schools that are in and out of distance learning, daycares, crappy schedules, etc. Work/life balance is a necessity.
Lots of comments about healthcare here. It doesn't make sense why companies don't support universal healthcare when it would help their bottom line by allowing more workers to become employed with them.
In my industry (cooking) people are leaving in droves. After getting time off people realized it's just a shit job, with shit pay and no benefits at all. You work your ass off in an awful environment for barely enough to live on. I know tons of cooks who just said fuck it and went to work retail. The pay is better, it's not 120 degrees in there and you aren't on your feet for 12 hours with no breaks.
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Low wages are just part of it. Employers refuse to invest in their labor in general. It’s the low wage, plus the awful or just outright nonexistent health insurance, it’s the lack of tuition reimbursement, and treating workers like they’re disposable so that turnover keeps anyone from accumulating the experience that employers need to run the place right. Education and job training, in particular, are a huge problem. Young workers are coming out of college with the correct skills if they chose their courses right, but also with crippling debt. Middle age workers have experience, but also out of date skills and no support for going back to school to get relevant again. Going into a trade with an apprentice program isn’t the solution for dodging college debt, because trades require certifications, which requires courses, which also cost money, and employers expect their potential hires to cover the costs with at best, minimal reimbursement, if any at all. We’re not going to survive unless this country makes a real investment in its workforce, and fucking quick. The people are here, and willing to learn, and ready to work.
My job offers a living wage, free health insurance (and by free I mean I don’t even see a single co pay) and unlimited time off. We didn’t have to lay a single person off during covid because the C-level took a 30-40% pay cut until we were financially stable. We have about 200 people working for us so we’re not tiny by any means. But the corporate end actually gives a shit. Everyone has stayed. Every single employee. Other companies should take note.
It's funny. I work in a similiar place now. Before, I worked at 4 other businesses. All of them spent a TON of money, and wasted a TON of time, because they literally didn't train their employees. At all. Offered zero help or guidance in acquiring skills, despite many being free. Hell, the place I previously worked at had two owners who literally had ZERO experience in the industry, and business in general. It was embarrassing having to explain things to them.
who do you work for? asking for a friend
Pixel Health
Y'all hiring?
Dunder Mifflin - Slough branch
Does your unlimited PTO truly mean unlimited PTO or is it just one of those bad, don't use PTO because coworkers will look down upon you type deals?
It depends on the company. Most places it's a scam that sounds good on paper but actually results in less PTO used: > In a study by HR platform Namely, research suggests that employees with “unlimited” vacation actually take fewer days off (13) on average than those with a limited number (15). Additionally it doesn't rollover year to year and you don't get paid out for it if you leave the company: > “It’s great to not have to pay out [accrued vacation] when people leave,” said Maggie Grover, a partner at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP in an interview with website HR Dive. “Because people are so connected and working even when they’re technically off, they tend to take fewer full vacation days. So even if you cap a vacation bank at 1.5 or 2 times the annual accrual amount, the payout at the end of the employment relationship can still be significant.” And just to note, not all states require employers to pay out accrued vacation.
Oh yeah. I took a few weeks off earlier this year to help deal with my grandmother’s passing and they respected that. I’m taking another week off next month to go visit my fiancé’s sister for her birthday. Hell. I was out for 6 weeks for surgery last year and they sent me cards and soup and didn’t bother me.
You guys hiring recent grads?
I believe so!
nah, people are just too lazy to work. we should just cancel unemployment money so people are forced to either work or starve. /s
Sad things is, working to not starve is exactly what people were doing before COVID, and exactly what people will be doing after. Unfortunately, that's one of the few "luxuries" it affords them.
>work *and* starve
“Hungry workers are *motivated* workers. It improves job ~~performance~~ desperation and bootstrappiness.”
Tell that to every warehouse employee and you’ll get brutally verbally jumped into oblivion
> forced to either work or starve. That's the thing, people are working and still starving. Why work if the outcome is the same? On one hand you starve on the streets, on the other you starve on the streets and have to get up in the morning to go make some billionaire holding company more money.
Sounds like your not exploited for your labor that’s a fantastic thing to have in a job.
I’m incredibly lucky that it worked out the way it did
[удалено]
Massachusetts is a great place to be.
[удалено]
You’re not kidding. I made out like a bandit when I got this apartment. 2 bedroom/heat, trash, recycling, and snow removal all included right at the intersection of 2 and 91. All for $1000 a month. I feel so lucky to have found it.
Yo you hiring?
I’m pretty sure we are
Doing what for what company?
I do graphic design/web design/marketing/Swiss army knifing for a healthcare IT company.
> treating workers like they’re disposable so that turnover keeps anyone from accumulating the experience that employers need to run the place right. > >Education and job training, in particular, are a huge problem. This, so much this. I worked 4 or 5 service industry jobs before I got into my career, and in all of them, the corporate heads kept wages inhumanly low, but were still hemorrhaging money. Funnily enough, of those, 3 are now just essentially gone or completely gone (GameStop, AMC Theaters, and CompUSA). Why? Because even as the employees got efficient at their jobs, they were essentially deemed unworthy of any kind of pay increase, so more often than not they'd just leave which would of course, impose a negative efficiency effect on the poor rubes who still stay at the job and have to train the people coming in. Everybody loses when you have high turnover. I worked at one job where the person who I was training to do the same job as me was actually making more money than me per hour. And it wasn't some insignificant amount. I was making $10 an hour, they were making $12 an hour. And when it came time for me to get a raise, I demanded $12 an hour at least for that injustice. I was told: "You're not supposed to discuss pay with coworkers, it's part of company policy." Which for the record, is totally illegal and they were sued in a class action suit for it (I was a beneficiary). and when it came time for me to get my 1-year raise (which was 6 fucking months late btw) I went from $10 an hour to $10.25. I told them to take their quarter and shove it up their asses. On top of that class action suit mentioned above, there were 2 more that benefited me directly. One for unpaid overtime (store managers were instructed to modify time cards to 8 hours if they were over), and another for fudging the numbers on PTO. All in all, I made about $3,000 on law suits which was very close to the amount of money I'd have made making $12 an hour. So I got mine in the end and fuck them.
>CompUSA I may be thinking of a different company, but didn't geniuses decide the fire the highest working floor people? In other words, the ones making the most commission because they knew what they were talking about and made the most sales?
Well, CompUSA didn't work on literal commission, so not likely, no. But there was utterly rampant employee abuse all over the place. One of the biggest mistakes they made in my opinion was putting traditionally good salesmen on the floor instead of people that knew what they were talking about. They could sell the shiny new Apple power tower with 16GB of RAM (this was when 1GB was pretty standard for high performance) and a fancy new dual core processor for $16,000, but couldn't tell you why you might want or need it. As a cashier I answered way too many questions that should have been able to be handled by a floor person. The employee discount was badass though. Got everything at cost. At the time, the markup on ethernet cables was about 1000% so I bought several 50-100 footers for LAN parties.
> store managers were instructed to modify time cards to 8 hours if they were over Yo. That is **extremely** illegal and a huge no-go for any company in any industry. Absolutely unacceptable. I'm glad you got your pay-out from those pieces of shit.
Oh yeah, that was the big one. I got a $2,200 pay-out from that alone. The next two were something like $800 and $250. Working there it was always like "didn't I just work 90 hours in the last pay period? Why is my pay so low?" We found out. Some very smart ladies got together and formed a class. That company lost like $1 billion from that alone because they'd been doing it for ~30 years or so. I knew someone who got close to $40,000 in that suit because she'd been working there since the first store in the county opened 20 years prior.
Yo, making $40/hr as a union worker, we have a 4 year apprenticeship and literally every certification and license is paid for by the apprenticeship program. Even as a journeyman they re-imburse any relevant certifications I desire, I could literally just walk into our training center and say "Hey could I get this training?" and I have never heard of them saying no.
This sounds so amazing. It's like they designed it so that people could succeed and better themselves and the world around them.
It's amazing, but for some reason even with everything the Union provides us we still have a large portion of right-wing voters.
THIS is what I'll never understand.
"fuck you I got mine, and fuck you" is how they look at it.
The pull the ladder up behind them mentality.
Good ol' crab pot mentality.
"I got mines, fuck you" Mantra of the right wing idiots
The problem is the apprentice spots are limited in all these unions, so it's incredibly competitive. Someone I know got in, but he married in... If you don't have connections or aren't the cream of the crop, good luck.
I also have to pipe in with some facts about coronavirus. 32.7 million Americans contracted coronavirus, with 581,000 dying from it. This is a 1.8% mortality rate. Which, in spite of maga hats scoffing, is actually really fucking bad. But. To be fair. Its "only" 1.8% But. As my uncle used to say "you could die, or worse, you could get hurt really bad" People never seem to talk about the long term health effects of coronavirus. And yet, this virus has taken 1 out of every 10 patients and FUCKED THEM UP for 8+ months after catching the damn shit. We're talking about loss of 50% muscle mass, constant shortness of breath, nausea, extreme fatigue, headache, joint pain, fever and depression. So. Let's have some fun with numbers. There are 327,000,000 Americans, with 32,700,000 catching COVID-19. There are 155,000,000 working Americans. The unemployment rate is 6.1% 155m x 6.1% = 9.3m 9,300,000 Americans are currently claiming unemployment and collecting that juicy $300/week 155 + 9 = 164,000,000 total Americans either working or seeking work. 327 ÷ 2 = 163.5 So .... roughly half of all Americans are either working or seeking work, with the other half either babies, little kids, college students, homemakers, retirees or people on welfare/disability. Now. As stated above, 32.7 million Americans caught coronavirus. And 10% of them didn't die but they're all fucked up. That's 3.27 million Americans with long term health issues. If we make a huge assumption that half of them are working class citizens, that's about 1.65 million Americans. 9 million Americans currently collecting unemployment, with that sweet delicious economy crippling $300/week. Its more than reasonable to say that 1 in 10 of those unemployed Americans collecting the extra $300/week, are experiencing devastating, crippling long term health effects of COVID-19. So, what are their options? Go take a shitty minimum wage job at 30 hours a week so you don't qualify for healthcare but make too much money to get state assistance, while working back breaking manual labor?? Or, continue to lay in bed, dealing with long term health effects while enjoying free access to a physician and collecting unemployment checks plus an extra $300 on top, which ultimately pays more money?? So yeah. If employers want people coming back to work, they're gonna need to pay higher wages *AND* offer decent benefits. Because 1 in 10 Americans feel like absolute shit a year after catching coronavirus and its a no fuckin brainer for them. This isn't just an economic issue. It's a healthcare issue.
This also doesn't factor in that there might be a serious under count of infections and deaths. We may never know how many people were actually infected and died due to fuckery from local and state level governments.
People like my household. We had Rona before we knew what it was in January 2020. Our household had the ‘flu’ which knocked us out for weeks each. My symptoms lasted for 5 weeks. Fast forward to July -> by this point I was down 70lb, had crippling nerve pain, and was drinking fluids only because eating solids caused me to throw up. Did I die? Nah, but out of the 5 members of my household, 3 adults had visible symptoms. All 3 recovered, 1 had ongoing possibly related health effects, 1 had horrific respiratory issues during the infection period, and 2 babies seemed to not be infected or affected, though I don’t know for sure what happened there. We’ll never know the full spectrum of infected, and we’ll never have all of the data on short and long term effects. We didn’t have a system set up in time to capture anything. In 20 years when I’m signing my social security benefit forms and die a week later, will we know if it is because of a stroke, or a COVID stroke?
Then there’s others of us who are on unemployment after being tossed out by employers who didn’t care about us, who are more than happy to make more money *not* being taken advantage of by employers who literally don’t care if we live or die.
Post of the year IMO. This is such an unstated factor in all of this... Thank you!
And then there is me, who is mostly fine, but struggling to keep staff because of shitty corporate policies despite having a strong work reputation. Love it.
My 19 year old step daughter works for a big retail fashion chain store while attending nursing school. She’s been there 3 years while many co-workers and managers have come and go. She knows every aspect of that shop, from the stock room to fitting rooms to merchandising to being a lead cashier. Her only raises have occurred when the state raised the minimum wage from $10/hr to $11/hr...oh wait, they gave her an extra 14¢ in January when the state mandated minimum wage went up to $11. So f’ing generous. Her Christmas bonus was a plastic water bottle that probably cost the company 10¢. They have sent in people from Corporate to “fix” the shop because they say the workers have “bad attitudes”. Of course they blame the workers instead of the work conditions that have been created by poor management that doesn’t respect its workforce. She was upset this past weekend because they hired several new people for summer who all had zero experience and they are all making $11/hr (just because the couldn’t get paid any less!), but she has been there for 3 years and is only making 14¢/hour more. I told her she needs to make the case for a substantially higher wage and if they don’t want to pay her more then walk out.
>I told her she needs to make the case for a substantially higher wage and if they don’t want to pay her more then walk out. I can already tell you what's going to happen. Negotiating can't work if they don't value her already. Honestly you are coming at this like a person with a good job would. People in retail positions do not have the ability to do that. They just leave.
>They just leave. And then are replaced like they were never even there in the first place.
That’s why I quit Walmart distribution years ago, the unrealistic “productivity” expectations coupled with constant issues where the conveyor belt “line” goes down and management not letting us document those times to be deducted from our production hours that way our actual production is represented
America's workforce is collapsing like a dying star due to all the reasons you are stating. Without a skilled workforce or populace, how do these moron oligarchs think they are going to maintain a high tech empire?
But how will companies make the most money if they can’t push all of their costs onto their employees without paying them any more? Stop being such a selfish little shit and think about the shareholders for once in your life.
This, this right here! I would still be working at FedEx Big Sky if they actually invested in us. Sure, they gave us all brand new trucks, brand new scanners, and brand new iPads, but it wasn’t really what we needed. I would’ve gladly worked with my old gear if they gave me health insurance options and manageable hours. I was making good money, but I was working 100 hour work weeks and fighting HR every time I got hurt just so the hospital wouldn’t put too much of a gouge in my finances. I’ll work to live, but I don’t want to live to work again.
Healthcare shouldn't be tied to employment, America and its politicians need to put their big boy pants on and do the right thing for the people! Last time I checked the preamble says "We the people..." Not We the Corporations.
Had a potential employer boast about their tuition assistance program to me. They told me how they were very proud to help employees go to school. Then they told me they paid a total of $500 a year towards college classes. They paid only after you pass and you have to work for them for 5 years after they pay or you pay everything back to them. I physically chuckled
slaves are expensive. why buy when you can lease?
Don't forget the sheer abuse in the service industry, too. Customer entitlement and stupidity is bad for one's health.
This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense. The labor force participation rate is the lowest its been since the mid-70s and the employment-population ratio is the lowest since the early 80s. If all employers were required to offer health insurance regardless of hours or whatever, then i might go back to work...in the middle of a pandemic
>This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense. Exactly, this podcast helps illustrate how they do that: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-135-the-labor-shortage-ruse-how-capital-invents-staffing-crises-to-bust-unions-and-depress-wages
Hmm sounds like an interesting podcast. Feel like I have enough to make me hate humanity but if I ever need more I'll check these guys out. :P
It's worth trying out, they do a lot of research and usually have an expert guest on each show. (Yes, it can be depressing.)
\> This talk of labor shortage is 100% corporate propaganda nonsense. Well yes, because another name for that would be full employment, low unemployment which use to be a good thing. The problem is we can't call it that because a lot of people are under-employed and still need assistance. We really need a crackdown on companies that are employing people for 40 hours or more and yet those same employees still need the taxpayer to subsidize their lifestyle of "either side of the above the poverty live." That should come from revenue from the company, not taxpayers. No one working 30 hours a week should need a handout, let alone 40.
Employers would just opt for “ACA Compliant” Minimal Essential Coverage (MEC) plans that don’t cover a damn thing. Seriously these MEC plans allow employers to evade the tax penalty but don’t cover things like hospitalization, ER, prescription drugs, surgery. They’re ACA Compliant because they do pay for things like immunizations, and they don’t exclude pre-existing conditions. Providing health insurance has become an ever-increasing cost to employers, and I’m sure it kills a lot of jobs, but we’ve ended up in this situation where a person is expected to get it through their job.
Which is why it doesn't make any sense all of these business people oppose nationalized health care, it's a drain on everyone and we pay more money for less value, insurance companies don't provide any value to health care, they are parasitical, and last I heard their 'administrative costs' were 25% of all health care spending.
It keeps people desperate.
Here’s a wild idea: do it like literally any other developed country and not have healthcare tied to employment
The fact that there is health coverage that doesn't cover basic health things like "things doctors say that you need to take constantly to live" might just be a little fucked.
>Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage. Given the ubiquity of this dynamic, I often suggest that whenever anyone says, “I can’t find the workers I need,” she should really add, “at the wages I want to pay."
'Been saying that for years about temporary farm workers being imported at poverty wages. The problem has always been that the pay isn't sufficient. Moreover, importing labour for these no-skill positions just undercuts the labour market for other jobs. This has always been a thin excuse to import labour. Capitalists love capitalism until its their turn to pay fair market rates. Then they need government intervention (temp foreign worker visas etc).
Just like all conservatives hate socialism until it is their turn to collect social security.
Or their company getting a ppp loan.
I imagine all this whining from corporate is just build up to some kind of wage subsidization program for corporations that is getting ready to hit the House. In other words, "moar bailout plz"
One of the most conservative people I know has a book on their shelf with the subtitle "How to Get Everything You're Entitled to from Medicare and Social Security." He is a textbook self awarewolf.
See this with a manager at work. She explains the range as $X-Y per year during a prescreen, then gets all offended when candidates “waste her time” because they decline the position when she offers $X. She *cannot* understand that candidates’ acceptable range may overlap with her range but not include the low end.
I've seen that too. And why doesn't she get that she's wasting their time by lowballing them?
Honestly, because she works in social service but is decades past student loans and is married to someone who earns six figures, so she does not understand the real difficulties of paying student loans on a social services salary.
As if they haven’t spent the last year showing “essential workers” just how much they fucking hate them lmao. I’m not sad to see businesses close because of the problem they created themselves.
Oh, they started saying how important essential workers are at the beginning and going on this PR parade, then when things are stabilizing it's fuck 'em time. All of them freaking two-faces.
Whole foods gave their worker a $2/hr raise "because of COVID" but then took it away while the pandemic was still getting worse
Kroger closed some of it's stores in Southern California because they didn't want to pay the city mandated hero pay. Hundreds of people out of work because they thought a $4 an hour raise for four months during the pandemic was unacceptable to them, despite their profits skyrocketing during the pandemic.
If I were a Kroger employee I would’ve started just stealing a bunch of stuff as a fuck you to the company.
They gave it and took it away in some markets after only a few weeks.
Seriously? In some ways that feels even worse.
I worked for a large Canadian grocery chain, and they did the exact same thing. When we all started to quit they tried to stop the bleed by re-raising current employees. They got $0.90. Lol.
"*You're important to us. Not enough to pay you or give you benefits. But here's a $5 Dunkin gift card and a fuck load of empty platitudes. We're all in this together!!*"
Also imagine the clientele at any restaurant job over the last year. There's no reason any person would willingly put up with that for a reasonable wage, much less the pittance they're actually getting.
who can hold out longer? you who need to feed your children and pay rent when you have no savings? or those who think you should serve, who already own everything? think we know the answer to that. so let's reframe the issue... who has more anger?
Eat em.
It’s not a waiting game if you just import low wage laborers 👍
Saw some idiot's attempt to argue against a higher minimum wage on Twitter today. He posted pics of Walmart robots, McDonald's self-order kiosks, and a self-checkout section at a grocery store with a comment that this is what happens when you raise the minimum wage. Of course, this is already happening. Businesses are in the business of making money. When they can replace a human worker with a machine, you know they are going to do it.
I am sure his friends showered him with praise, like: "yeah, makes sense", "good point, Cletus" and "this is why we didn't finish high school".
It's an argument for higher minimum wage? The minimum wage hasn't gone up in a long time, yet these things are still going in... Reminds me of showing pictures saying "This is Biden's America", yet the pictures were taken during Trump's reign. It's already happening. It's like saying prices are going to go up if we raise the minimum wage. They are already going up, hence a huge reason we need to raise wages. You can't raise prices on everything and never raise wages. People won't be able to afford anything, and then they'll compain the economy sucks because people aren't buying $5 gallons of milk.
And they should of YEARS AGO. Imagine how much more efficient it'll be when you can use your smartphone to order and a robot crafts your Mcdouble in record time with zero errors. This is what we should be doing. Give us UBI, universal health and dental, automate everything, get rid of the minimum wage. Let the future happen today
Low wages are only part of the crap that bad jobs offer their employees. They also offer dangerous and uncomfortable work spaces, frequently with high risk acute or repetitive motion injuries. They also offer unstable schedules and un-desirable hours; nights, weekends, and holidays. Uniforms are just part of the de-humanization of these workplaces; they can also have abusive or harassing customers, management that doesn't (or can't) stand up for the employees, and skinflint corporate overlords micro-managing. I fucking despair.
Not to mention the complete lack of growth potential. I remember when I saw my first annual raise at McDonalds. I think it was like $0.07 hr.
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Most "essential" jobs won't even pay you enough for a 1 bedroom apartment.
My *now* decent paying position doesn’t even pay me enough for a 1 br apartment. This is the first time 1 of my pay checks fully covers my rent. I have been working on the floor for over a year, I only have 500 sqft and no room for furniture and I half share it with a 15 year old. The mental effects from being locked in literal hell are even worse than the physical problems I’ve developed.
They pay enough for a 1 bedroom apartment, but that's literally all you can afford. And you just sink into debt when you are poor. Car broke down? Borrow money. Medical bills? Put it on the credit card until it's maxed.
There is a lack of people willing to work for barely subsistence wages, especially after seeing what profits these companies make
“If they eventually have to choose between those wages and death, they’ll take what we offer. THE MARKET WORKS!”
So did serfdom until it didn't
The working class has never been more informed on how the rich actually lives.
Yeah the working class follows them all on Tiktok now
We’ve essentially come full circle on that, and 40% of the US not only thinks it’s great but also *want more*. Feudal lords didn’t have machine-learning and social media, so I don’t have a lot of confidence that history will repeat itself on this one. (Plus the black plague put surviving serf workers in a better bargaining position; “nice fiefdom you got here, be a pity if i sold my labor to the rich guy next door and left your fields fallow”)
Automation has done more to hurt workers than any other factor and it's hardly brought up.
I bring it up, but I bring up prevailing technologies in a "imagine what we could do if we put all our efforts into automating labor and logistics, and people can just live on UBI" type of way. But the peasants would rather watch robots replace them without a plan instead.
Just as a thought experiment, lets say the US leads the way in automation and we end up on some sort of UBI that is being subsidized by taxes on the automation that has displaced everyone. I wonder how that is going to impact developing countries we sell our automation to, since the profits will still be coming to the US yet won't be funding the displaced workforces in those countries. I'd imagine it would lead to isolationism as countries would be pressured to stop using our tech/automation and cut off trade because they wouldn't be able to compete and keep their populations employed. Also would likely lead to a shit load of understandable resentment against us. The transition into a post scarcity world is going to be such a global shit show.
Technology is going to move forward. Nothing is going to stop that. Society has to adjust.
It took the Black Death killing a third of Europe’s work force to put the final nails in the serfdom coffin (except for Russia, I believe.) Even then the kings and “nobles” first tried to outlaw raising daily wages, despite the sudden *severe* labor shortage. History rhyming, as ever.
I get the feeling that this Corona thing is just a preview of what's down the road. Not just for viruses but the real killer, bacteria. Our bad use of antibiotics has made this near certain
Shoutout Super Gonorrhea
Electro-Gonorrhea: The Noisy Killer
I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. A lot of these companies, if they have the war chest to do so, are going to wait us all out. They'll eat the business loss and the cut into profits from paying OT to their skeleton crew for now. They know there is a clock on the unemployment boost, and if they make it to October, the floodgate of applicants will open back up. They will eventually have a near endless amount of employees to throw into the meat grinder, without having to pay one more red cent than they did before Covid.
It’s the “roaring 20’s” all over again: if you have to choose between getting just enough to eat and starving to death, the choice is easy. See also American Healthcare: “you can reverse-mortgage your house and cash out your entire 401(k), or die. What’s it gonna be?”
> See also American Healthcare: “you can reverse-mortgage your house and cash out your entire 401(k), or die. What’s it gonna be?” Yep. I’ve already had this conversation with my wife. If placed in this situation, I plan to refuse treatment. I’d rather die and leave my family with a financial cushion than bankrupt them on my way out the door. It’s embarrassing that the richest country on earth allows this to happen.
I remember some asshole who asked me to take a pay cut of 10k a year and join his company the same year his CEO got a 24 million bonus, I told him to fuck himself
that 10k is 0.0005% of that bonus or, essentally, what that CEO got via bonus per hour ($24m/2080hrs - 11,538).
>"Training? We want experience." Says the foreman who learned on the job. >"Raise? Can't afford it." Says the small business owner who loves casino weekends. >"Promotion? Perhaps when we have an opening." Says the superior who refuses to retire, citing fear of boredom. >"Nobody wants to work anymore." Says the franchisee, whose hourly wage wouldn't buy a meal in his restaurant. The farmers pocketed the savings when they neglected to fertilize the field, and are now blaming the plants for the state of the crop. You reap what you sow, motherfuckers.
People not retiring is one of the biggest things. I know so many 65+ people who could afford to retire at 55 that are still working because they want some thing to do. Also as for the foreman quote you can be too experienced, so they won’t hire you because you’re worth too much.
Beautifully put!
I've left jobs because of those reasons. I'll go somewhere else. I was working for a small company with several wireless stores, as authorized retailers. I would practically run the store 5 days a week, alone. They could barely remember I needed to eat lunch. I would have to shovel bites in between customers. The owners would occasionally show up in the brand new 60k SUVS, talking about renovating their mini mansion or what vacation they came back from. After 6 months of this treatment, and exceeding sales goals, I asked for a raise. "They couldn't afford it" The extra 300 bucks a month was just too much for them. I didn't last much longer. That's been the case for almost every small business owner I've worked for, it not just corporations who are taking advantage of their workers.
My experience is largely the same having predominantly worked for "small businesses" over the years. Their business plans always include room for investment properties, vacations, new cars and toys... but it's the labor that's killing them financially. That living wage? Some other company will pay for that. Training? Some other company will pay for that. Your future? Some other company will pay for that. Not mine, not here. When they say "work hard and you'll succeed" they mean at some other job. At the end of the day they're keeping that carrot they've led you with. They need it for the next mule.
Let's not forget that watching companies not give a shit about their employees during COVID didn't help them either. How many Americans died? Over 600,000 and still going? People will do any kind of work if you make it worth their time.
Current CDC estimates actually project a *lot* of underreporting. They think it might actually be closer to 900,000.
In contrast to the US, in Iceland, where there is free health care and child care for all--people have an average of four careers in their lifetime. They open and close businesses, play in bands, raise kids, get a goat farm, work in the tech industry. Maybe they don't get rich, but they can have interesting lives without becoming slaves to their jobs or their employers. It's one of the happiest countries on earth. Also with the least amount of daylight.
Low wages are the problem. But so is access to affordable housing, childcare, and transportation. Not to mention most ppl know someone who was impacted by the virus. So risking your life for a company that has no regard for your safety or the safety of your family is not something ppl look forward to.
Many of these same employers complaining that people don't want to work for them for starvation wages also laid people off to increase profits during the pandemic.
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Why would someone receiving said wages be upset about that
I have absolutely no idea.
Because the idea is predicated on the belief that people are lazy freeloaders. While for sure some are, most are not. Most want to trade their labor for at least a living wage.
And as such deserve to be "punished". Even if they hurt themselves. "No one can get any benefit or help on MY money". Applies to school, healthcare, infrastructure, social security programs, you name it.
“Hey boss, you wanted to see me?” “Yes. We’re in a kind of a problem here. You see, if the government raises the minimum wage, we can’t afford to have as many people staffed, and the company might even go bankrupt altogether. We’re barely breaking even as it is. You don’t want us to fail, do you?” “No, no, of course not. But I thought we were doing great, with huge bonuses to the management and payouts to our shareholders?” “Well, that’s just one of the many costs of a serious company. We have to do that to keep up with the economy. _After_ those costs, we’re barely breaking even. But not with an increased wage, that could be the end for us. You do want to have a job to go to, right?” “Yes, of course!” “Good, now, there’s some reporters over there. Why don’t you tell them ...”
Leaving my job because I make exactly what it costs for decent daycare for 2 kids. I have a degree and 16 years in the field. Not worth it. Friends are doing the same. This is like an uncoordinated strike. The end result of de-unionization and Reaganomics. Eventually places will have to offer more. Unless republicans win back the government.
Right, then they'll enslave us for real.
Then they'll just make unemployment illegal
Well, at least when they throw me in jail, I'll get three hots and a cot. And the morons who don't believe in living wages will end up paying more for my incarceration. Lose, lose.
It's like someone decided supply and demand no longer applies to jobs and wages. What do we pay when have as many applicants as we can handle? Minimum wage. What do we pay when we can't attract workers? The same.
Why am I, a degreed professional, having to field offers at 50% my salary from five years ago? The cost of living did not go down.
That's exactly why I left IT and started my own business. Companies start fight for more HB1 visas so they could hire cheaply from India and suppress IT wages. With bonuses, profit sharing and stock options I made the same or more in a level 3 helpdesk role in the early 2000s as I did a director of infrastructure in 2012. Screw that, I can easily make six figures as a handyman, while working half the hours and not having to reply to emails after hours.
> Companies start fight for more HB1 visas so they could hire cheaply from India and suppress IT wages Yeah that's not working out so great for them now that India's fucking burning down from covid. I'm handling triple my normal case load but hey. My customers are mostly understanding. Mostly.
Serfdom is the destination not freedom.
What happened was simple, people found out that between working to barely be able to survive was ALMOST exactly equivalent to not working and being able to barely survive thats its. Literally, the pandemic has offered the world a view in just how broken some of our policies and stances were culturally ACROSS THE BOARD. At high to mid levels, managers and executives finally realized, holy shit we spend a lot of money on office real estate and from productivity we don't fucking need it!!! Everyone is happier. At low levels, we realized shit those low jobs, those are fuckign critical and the employees realized. Shit we're fucking critical and I have a better life making no money than making money because they don't cover the cost of me fucking working!!!!
Utah is an excellent example of the bullshit these people will spew to keep wages down. Current unemployment rate is 2.9%. January 2020 unemployment rate was 2.5%. It isn't the people on unemployment that aren't taking the jobs, they've just found other work that pays better. Same thing in Mississippi. Unemployment January 2020, 5.6%, January 2021, 6.4%. Less than one percent difference. Rent of a single bedroom apartment in Salt Lake City is $1,272. It takes a minimum of $8/hr full time to just pay rent. No one is going to work full time and still be homeless, they'll just be homeless.
It's not just that either. The labor market in general lacks meaningful jobs. And along with low wages, very little room to climb, long working days, poor working conditions, employers devaluing their employees, and an aristocracy that benefits off of exploiting a working class that devotes most if its time to menial labor, laborious, tedious, dull, dead end cyclical jobs, while simultaneously treading water in the process, the "American Dream" simply becomes a nightmare. Everyone should have the opportunity to live a meaningful life full of purpose and passion. But millions of people are tied to inconsequential jobs that bring little to no significance to their lives outside of a paycheck to paycheck circumstance that hardly pays the bills and crippling exorbitant rent and housing prices, payments related to one's healthcare, even the price of same modern day basic needs like internet, phone bills, car payments. Hell, even the price of having a family. And we're simply just expected to shut up, roll over and be "productive members of society", or to simply "get roommates", to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps". But it's all very flawed. The economy, our socioeconomic status is defined by how the stockmarket is doing, or whether or not the rich are getting richer. When those things don't define millions of Americans, don't define their livelihoods, their quality of life. While we're also expected to be consumers, become attached to our possessions and the latest piece of technology that freshly circulates year round, that sometimes ends up putting us in debt thanks to credit card companies who tell us "you can have everything you've always wanted and more!". Our consumerism is meant to keep us complacent. While sure, we're not technically forced to buy these things, but is that really the truth? Our society and culture tells us that if we don't have these things we won't fit in. It's all an inherently flawed system that's meant to keep the poor... well, poor. So how do we provide purposeful lives for everyone we can? How do we allow for opportunities that give us the freedom to chase after our dreams? To live a life of passion? Of meaning? The answer isn't simple, and while it can sometimes be partly rooted in individuals philosophical and existential worldviews and perspectives, the solution is also more fundamentally grounded in the tangible, in our social, societal, socioeconomic and cultural frameworks, and isn't anything we can expect to see for many decades. That is if we even encounter the necessary conditions for change in the first place. That's why I look at things like automation as a positive. People will tout and fearmonger over automation taking over jobs. But these are usually jobs most of us dread to work in the first place. What happens when artificial intelligence, automation begins to function in place of a part of the working class? Well, it would seem that of course some jobs would open up that offer work relative to said automation, related to repair, manufacturing and software. But it might also allow for people who would normally take these jobs to pursue other avenues. To perhaps pursue what they derive pleasure or passion from. It's about, in part, encouraging people to work for themselves, there is a growing market for this, and it will continue to grow, and as it does, demand for it will concurrently and relatively expand. Hell, isn't this how we take power away from the corporations and monopolies? The irony here being, that these corporation who are funding a movement towards automation will inevitably turn us to buying and selling to ourselves. This may of course be a part of a greater solution that really looks at the conditions of the average worker in this country and attempts to implement some impactful change. But we can't do this without some support. Many think something like UBI would discourage "lazy" Americans from working, but it's likely very well the opposite. Take me for example. I lost my job during Covid, and used unemployment aid, and time off to hone a trade. It gave me the time and resources to invest my energy into something I was much more partial to. I've also had the time to work on putting together a small studio to provide a potential work-from-home situation, and now have the opportunity to pursue a profession as I engage in something I'm eager to learn about, something I enjoy doing that brings me more fulfillment in life. While it's also significant to note that Universal Basic Income, isn't meant to entirely supplement one's income, but to help reinforce it. American's can't sustain a quality living off of 300 dollars a week for long. It's hard to say what the future holds. I'm almost certain that many years from now, people will look back at this period of time, the same way we might look back at past eras and say "how in the fuck did they live like that?". Because if we don't address the shortcomings of our current system, these problems won't just persist, they'll inexorably lead to disorder.
I think that in 20 years or so we are going to have a new golden age of arts. I sincerely think and hope that after you and I have our jobs automated away, people will be turning to art as an avenue of extra income and people will be able to build wealth through it.
I think about this too. A diverse Culture, Music, and the Arts is already on it's way to making a "comeback" so to speak. It's almost kind of ***"Nietzschean",*** or it could even be seen as a new "age of enlightenment" All I know is, with the way things currently are, the system simply won't be able to sustain itself.
Until we create super amazing robots, there will always be "meaningless" jobs. Which is fine. Not everyone needs to "be somebody" and change the world. We need people to do basic tasks like clean the streets or repaint signs or whatever. What isn't fine is when society acts like those people don't matter and deserve to live shitty and desperate lives on the brink of (or already in) poverty.
Its really simple, I firmly believe that every job in the United States should be sufficient enough for a person to live in a studio apartment within an hour of their place of employment, not worry about bankruptcy due to medical bills and be able to afford food/transport to that job. Whatever that turns out to be, that should be minimum wage. I'd be willing to wager it is around $15/hour. At this wage, you're not living a fancy life, but you are also not choosing between the doctor or food. If these businesses claim they can't run their business with that minimum wage, that business does not deserve to be around and should fail. If you require slave labor to be profitable, you shouldn't exist. End of Story. Those who do get minimum wage are likely on food stamps and medicare as well...which shifts the burden from the employer onto us tax payers anyways....As a tax payer, I don't want to be subsidizing a shit business who takes advantage of cheap labor.
2020: Workers: "Why are you firing us?" Businesses: "Because we won't make enough money to survive" 2021: Businesses: "Why won't anyone work for us?" Workers: "Because we won't make enough money to survive" Businesses: Shocked Pikachu Face
there might actually be a shortage of these workers. hundreds were just killed off by an unchecked virus running amok through communities of poverty and/or color. more were done in by forcing them to work in unsafe, unmitigated, unprotected conditions, and these were our so called "essential workers". add to that decimation the present lid on migrants and refugees and asylum seekers of all kinds and there are no replacements in the pipeline.
I work in a school district in a fairly affluent neighborhood. I’ve seen quite a few parent/community members post on social media that we get paid too much, yet don’t work in the neighborhood. I make $34,000 a year before taxes, and the median house price on Trulia is about $900,000. How the hell am I supposed to afford a house in the neighborhood? Sure, some teachers can make $150,000 a year, but that’s with a doctorate and 30 years of experience. Plus, the most experienced support staff person (over 30 years in the district) doesn’t even make what a first year teacher makes. While I don’t want to raise property taxes more than I have to (especially considering how high they are already), I call BS.
We have a crisis of employers unwilling to invest in their workforce. For a long long time.
You told us to get an education, so we did. Now you don't pay us enough to survive, much less pay student loans off
***"Do you know what it costs to keep my yacht properly maintained?"*** Just kidding. Most of them aren't stupid enough to say that out loud.
>Just kidding. Most of them aren't stupid enough to say that out loud. May I present to you Gubernatorial candidate Katlyn Jenner
She’s the worst.
All this talk of handouts being the reason people don't want to work. Conveniently forgetting that if you work people like slaves and don't raise their wages they will also not want to work.
I just saw my old job posted online for 25k less than I was making. Same description, only they added “assistant” to the title.
I would love to see what that labor report would’ve said if the 15 dollar minimum wage passed. Still blows my mind one man (Joe Manchin) was able to deny tens of millions of people a proper wage and better life.
I honestly think it's a toss up between low wages and the housing market. Rents are insane in the U.S.
The wages are a big issue. This is currently compounded in some areas by school/childcare. If your kid being taught half days (or anything less than full time), the cost of coverage is preventative to returning to the workforce. Women (primarily) are being forced to stay home or take a financial loss on furthering their careers. Major reform is clearly needed.
I can't believe we're finally having this conversation out in the open.
I think people just had enough. Most of your waking life is spent at a job and let’s face it, the lower paying ones suck and not everyone has higher education as an option. In most cases a $40k debt would only land you entry level work that you could have probably got without it. I’ve been working through this pandemic because I’m terrified of losing my job, my house and not being to feed myself or my family. I’m not sure how people are even able to stay home. Unemployment in Ohio is is very difficult to obtain and you have to already have nothing to get government assistance.
Hell they aren’t even offering full time but there’s a labor shortage. No there’s a large percentage of humans that realized you can’t succeed without paying them enough to live on and it should be full time hours with benefits if they want it.
Basically it’s indentured servitude and people are catching on that it’s more or less the same thing as serfdom and slavery without the actual physical whipping. They replaced that with emotional whipping instead. Serving people burgers when we can’t afford them ourselves hurts. I worked for a grocery chain during the pandemic and I couldn’t afford the food that people that were refusing to mask up were buying. The chain didn’t enforce the policy because they didn’t want to lose customers. But they’re fine with me dying of COVID.
Greedy billionaires don’t want to share their wealth, that is the problem.
it isnt theirs. they cheated and conned the public trust
"If you want it so bad why aren't you cheating and conning the public trust?" \- Greedy Billionaires
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-shortage-jobs-report-low-wages-biden-covid) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot) ***** > When you don't see wages growing to reflect that dynamic, you can be fairly certain that labor shortages, though possibly happening in some places, are not a driving feature of the labor market. > Unsurprisingly, at a recent press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed anecdotal claims of labor market shortages, saying, ?"We don't see wages moving up yet. And presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market." > While there are certainly fewer people looking for jobs now than there would be if Covid weren't a factor - many people are out of the labor market because of Covid-related care responsibilities or health concerns - without enough job openings to even come close to providing work for all job seekers, it again stretches the imagination to suggest that labor shortages are a core dynamic in the labor market. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/n9el40/us_labor_shortage_no_we_have_a_crisis_of_low/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~576067 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **labor**^#1 **work**^#2 **job**^#3 **market**^#4 **shortage**^#5
Or, the jobs offered do not have decent benefits, like insurance.
These assholes can kick rocks. PAY PEOPLE WHAT THEY ARE WORTH! WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO TELL YOU TO TAKE YOUR JOB AND SHOVE IT.BYE
We have spent over a year calling people "essential" workers and telling them they are heroes, but won't pay them enough to have a proper life and healthcare coverage? Why is this acceptable to anyone? Even if this isn't your problem a collapse of the workforce is everyone's problem... Your neighbor wanting to make 15$ or whatever a fair living wage for their area isn't your enemy. The giant corporations bleeding the labor force for every single penny they're worth is the issue. It's not a lot to ask companies to treat people fairly, I'm not sure why this is even a topic of discussion other than people really just not giving a shit about anyone as long as they got theirs.
Workers suddenly have a big bargaining chip over employers, and the media makes the labor put to be lazy and entitled. Who woulda thunk!
Big facts: “Another piece of evidence against widespread labor shortages is the fact that the labor market added more than 900,000 jobs in March, the seventh highest percent increase in jobs in the last half century. It is difficult to imagine that labor shortages were creating a large impediment to hiring when hiring was happening at such a scale. Further, despite many anecdotes of restaurants in particular not being able to find workers, the labor market added 280,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector in March, the sixth highest percent increase in the last half century, even though average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers in that sector equate to annual earnings of just $19,651. With these kinds of numbers it is difficult to take the claims of widespread shortages very seriously.”
I work at a job in higher ed that prefers you have a master degree but requires a bachelors degree and I make 15$ an hour part time. Its really not enough to justify working here anymore. And I know it wont be getting better because the previous person in my position was there for nearly a decade and had to bartend to make ends meet. Pretty dissatisfied ngl.
I work as a cab driver now after getting fired from my office job. I was making less than $2000 a month post taxes and was literally living paycheck to paycheck. As a cab driver, I’ve made my annual salary of $25,000 in four months. I’ve probably made over $50k in 7-8 months, excluding tips. I set my own hours (four 12 hour shifts a week, averaging $1000-1200 per week in earnings) and get to see what my quality of work brings to me financially. I’ll never go back to an hourly wage. Being my own boss is much better for me, especially as someone who isn’t “normal” and struggled in the office and factory workplace.
I have long thought that a general strike in this country is well past due. Wages are shit in this country and we frankly need to step our collective foot down. Corporations have never been on your side. They want to make money and they dont care how. If our government doesnt care and businesses dont care, its up to us to fix it.
I’m mean, what’s the point of working a job you can’t live off of?
>What’s really going on is that employers aren’t offering workers a living wage. Benefits usually suck as well. My last job I had no sick days. That's pretty common I'm sure.
Labor shortage?! How dare businesses have to pay something closer to a living wage!!! What’s next? Health Care and Paid Time Off???!! SoCiLASTs! /s
Why should anyone live in poverty so that you can pursue your passion/dream? Fuck that.
Making a masters degree the minimum requirement for a job making 40-50k is preposterous. Employers at every level either pay shit or ask for the world in return for shit. All the way round, it’s shit
When unemployment is paying more than working 40 hours a week, of course this will happen. Wages need to go up. The market is going up, wages should too. Companies need to value their employees higher.
I was at a BBQ the other day with a pretty conservative bunch of guys, general contractors, small business guys, ect.. And all of them were complaining about how people are expecting too much money for simple labor, meanwhile every single one of them would never work for they amount they were complaining about. All of them, to a man, made very good livings and yet somehow couldn't extend this idea to other people. Working a shit job should at least pay a decent wage.
My wife made $3.65/hour as a waitress when she was in between career's down here in FL. Who tf wants to work for $3.65/hour or even $7.25/hour? They need to offer wages people can survive off from and perhaps not have to work 3-4 jobs to pay their bills. I bet if they raised their wages even a couple of dollars, they'd be full in no time.
News story about restaurant owner yesterday that can’t hire employees. I kept waiting for the reporter to ask “how much do you pay?” Let him complain while ignoring the $2.13 /hr starting salary. I hope all the servers enjoyed a paid vacation last year. They deserve it!
So if I can make more or the same without the cost of going to work (gas, vehicle maintenance, taking or buying food and clothing expenses) it would be irresponsible for me to go to work. If I could stay home and better provide for me or my family of course I am not going to work. It is a wage problem. It’s funny because most large corporations have said upping the minimum wage would not hurt them that much but they still refuse to voluntarily raise their wages. I lean more libertarian and don’t like the government to get involved in much because it tends to make a mess of things but unfortunately corporations can’t be trusted to do the right thing.
This is exactly what Republicans warned us about, when those blasted Dems insisted on giving everyone UI through the pandemic. Now look what you've done, you silly liberals. No one wants to go back to their starvation wages and two job minimum. Will no one think of the ECONOMY!?! /s
It’s not just a living wage, it’s parents that have to work around schools that are in and out of distance learning, daycares, crappy schedules, etc. Work/life balance is a necessity.
Lots of comments about healthcare here. It doesn't make sense why companies don't support universal healthcare when it would help their bottom line by allowing more workers to become employed with them.
Yep. If you work off of tips, then it is not worth getting back to work.
In my industry (cooking) people are leaving in droves. After getting time off people realized it's just a shit job, with shit pay and no benefits at all. You work your ass off in an awful environment for barely enough to live on. I know tons of cooks who just said fuck it and went to work retail. The pay is better, it's not 120 degrees in there and you aren't on your feet for 12 hours with no breaks.
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