A lot of these labour shortages will unwind when the eviction moratoriums and COVID-era Federal unemployment payments expire.
I guess businesses just need to hold out until then.
Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
51–60 of 83 posts
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't work that way: >She noted many private companies that hire prison workers will not employ them after they are released and will not hire job applicants with criminal records. She added that these programs perpetuate mass incarceration.
"She" is one person making an throw away comment. Hardly proof that "It doesn't work that way".
California recently had to new pass a law allowing prisoners to keep working in the same industry they were working in while incarcerated[0]. Before that, they legally weren't allowed to continue working in the same industry after they were released.
And even that law doesn't actually give them the right to continue to work, it just gives a subset of them the right to petition to continue to be allowed to work -- it's a very limited band-aide that doesn't actually solve the underlying problem. And this stuff is happening at a state level, it's not enough to point at a few isolated companies to claim that they're they problem. I just think it's really hard to argue that our current prison labor system is working well.
We can't realistically talk about training prisoners unless we take criminal records out of hiring processes and get rid of laws that bar prisoners from finding work once they're out of prison.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
To call "preservation of slave labor through prison" a "primary purpose" of the 13th amendment is just insane. Sentencing people to hard labor for certain crimes had been done for thousands of years by that point. The prison carve out was a reflection of the fact that the states passing the amendment were interested in getting rid of commercial slavery as it existed in the south, not throwing a wrench into their own…
Wasn't commercial slavery also status quo? Something being status quo is not good reason for it to remain so. The government version of "slavery for me but not for thee"
My point was that prison labor was uncontroversial and they weren't trying to screw with it whereas they were willing to go to war over slavery.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe UBI will drill into business leaders heads that they need to either: a) Make a better workplace that people don't hate coming to. b) Make the wages compensate enough for the terrible environment they have created. With a UBI, managers would no longer be under the illusion that "They will eventually come crawling back when they run out of money."
I think that will happen in some cases, but we need to be prepared for the reality that wages can't increase everywhere. Lots of restaurants and grocery stores will go out of business before they can double wages. You may think that's a good thing, but you can't just say "Those rich businesses will just cough up more money". That won't always be the case.
> Lots of restaurants and grocery stores will go out of business before they can double wages
Or they can increase prices to match their increased salary expenditures and stay in business.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dumping a bunch of a links with no accompanying analysis/commentary makes for a low quality comment.
Read the links. Wage growth has barely moved when adjusted for inflation and this year is hardly different.
Why is the popular solution to this problem to increase wages? Shouldn't it be to stop inflating? Inflation is obviously damaging to the livelihood of individuals for the benefit of the State.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#56No labor shortage. It's a wage shortage. I'm certain if the pay went up, there would be applicants.
"No housing shortage. It's a rent shortage. I'm certain if the rent went up, there would be more rentals. "
No, the point isn't that the housing shortage isn't real, it's that whether it's a labor shortage or a wage shortage is in the eye of the beholder.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has slavery not been abolished in Northern America? If not, shouldn't slavery be a pretty hot political issue? Wikipedia says things like the death penalty still exists in half of US states, but I don't know the numbers for states using captive workers.
> If not, shouldn't slavery be a pretty hot political issue? :) You'd think, right? It's not exactly a niche issue, there are plenty of people talking about it. But once you get fully into the mainstream, the issue seems to just fall off completely. There's a real apathy in America about how our prison system works, and not just apathy on the Right, mainstream Democrats talk about modern-day slavery in prison way les…
There's plenty of political will for prison reform, even on "the right" (I consider myself a conservative, God forbid) and the state of US prisons is embarrassing
But the Democrats' solution is to defund local PDs, which will leave a vacuum that can be filled by Federal agents that are more loyal to Washington than local cops
Naturally, this "defund the police" message takes the air out of serious criminal justice reform.
If "the Left," was serious about reforming our prisons, step one would be legalizing marijuana and everybody knows it.
Schumer keeps saying they're going to do it this session but instead the Democrats are pushing through huge spending bills and arguing over which unarmed rioter proves the Reichstag Fire, er, I mean, 1/6 "Insurrection," justifies their rhetoric and attempts to federalize elections
So yeah, actually, despite my argumentative tone I think I agree with everything you said and this is just additional context
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe UBI will drill into business leaders heads that they need to either: a) Make a better workplace that people don't hate coming to. b) Make the wages compensate enough for the terrible environment they have created. With a UBI, managers would no longer be under the illusion that "They will eventually come crawling back when they run out of money."
I think that will happen in some cases, but we need to be prepared for the reality that wages can't increase everywhere. Lots of restaurants and grocery stores will go out of business before they can double wages. You may think that's a good thing, but you can't just say "Those rich businesses will just cough up more money". That won't always be the case.
Notice I mentioned two options. The other option is they can just be a friendlier place to work. Most people don't care about compensation beyond their basic needs. They want a secure, safe, and happy place to work that pays a living wage. With UBI, places like that will do MUCH better because people won't have to work for bad employers to make a living wage.
Often the major predictor of an employee leaving/staying isn't the compensation, but the management.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the links. Wage growth has barely moved when adjusted for inflation and this year is hardly different.
Why is the popular solution to this problem to increase wages? Shouldn't it be to stop inflating? Inflation is obviously damaging to the livelihood of individuals for the benefit of the State.
Inflation is mainly bad for the rich. About half of Americans have essentially no savings. For them, increased wages and inflation is a massive win.
Re: Companies address labor shortages by pursuing current or former prisoners
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the links. Wage growth has barely moved when adjusted for inflation and this year is hardly different.
It's not exactly clear how that statement relates to my prior comment, but I'll presume you're making the argument that "well if workers actually had any power wages would be going up". My response to that would be: maybe that shows that businesses don't has as much free cash for wage increases as you thought? Otherwise I don't see why businesses would rather miss out on business than pay their employees more. For in…
> If they could afford it, why wouldn't they raise wages to $15, or even $20 an hour?
Because they can afford not to.
You're taking a view of the free market that's a little over-simplified from how it actually works. Most industries have areas where they hit happy mediums, where they don't actually race completely to the bottom. Wages can be a part of that. It requires something to shake up the market to force businesses to start competing and lowering profit margins, which arguably is exactly what's happening right now.
Some businesses are paying employees more, and they're not seeing the same labor shortages. But I think a sizable chunk of businesses are mad about the idea that wages work this way, and their ideology is that the government should make sure that low-income workers always stay in a position where low-wage jobs seem attractive.
A big thing to recognize with economic theory in the real world is that profit margins don't always trend to zero, at least not in the immediate short term. If businesses did all increase their profits to $20 in your scenario, they'd collectively all have the same hiring problems and lower profit margins. So that kind of thing won't happen until an event (a pandemic, increased government aid, better worker mobility, a shift in culture, new companies entering the market) forces businesses to get competitive with each other over a limited resource.
> Maybe the answer is that due to covid (recession, lockdowns), business is down so they can't justify paying each employee $15, because that's close to the value that they provide?
I think that's unlikely, multiple industries (Amazon included) saw profits rise during Covid, not shrink.
And in any case, the market is a big part of determining what value employees provide. If you can't afford to hire employees for $15 an hour, and that's what the market is demanding, then the problem isn't that the employees are overvalued, the problem is that your business isn't sustainable and you can't afford to pay market rates.
That's a big part of how the free market works: there are a ton of business ideas I could pursue if I had access to free labor, but unfortunately in a free market you have to pay market value for things (workers included).
There are lots of ways to think about an economy and market incentives, but surely a pure Capitalist reading of this situation is that if your business can't make money paying market rates for its workers and supplies, then your business doesn't deserve to exist. I'm not sure why I should be sympathetic from any perspective, Capitalist or otherwise, if a business complains that the only way it can afford to operate is if its workers are made to live in poverty and forced under threat of poverty to take low-paying jobs. That doesn't sound like a free market to me.