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It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

thehill.com

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Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#71

Post by rapnie »

n8cpdx wrote: post #4

It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation. At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now. A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have be…

> At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready

Automation, automation, digital transformation, sure we can do it all. But in many cases it makes things suck a bit more, and life crappier overall.

If I go to a restaurant a real person taking the order is part of the ambiance and expected service. You pay for it (maybe not in USA though).

At the last place I visited some guy dropped a tablet on the table. It said 'Next-gen Restaurant Experience' at the back. We got to fiddle a long time to type our 6-person order in. Crappy. Last time I visit there.

> retail/grocery -> see what Amazon is doing

They facilitate rat-race shopping. No more small social chat at the PoS with employees that know you. Just in and out, and back to work.

We this kind of automation every time we lose small social interactions that are important in a healthy society, imho.

Sorry, end rant/

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#72

Post by maxlybbert »

atrus wrote: post #12

Painfully obvious too. My little local Mexcian place will be closing down because of a lack of cooks. Talking to the owner, he was complaining about government benefits, and how they all want $20 an hour. I don't understand it, that you'd either a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or b) have a business so close to the brink…

> I don't understand it, that you'd either

>

> a) be willing to drive your business into the ground serving a limited menu because you won't hire a couple cooks at $20 an hour, or

>

> b) have a business so close to the brink of shutting down that an additional $20-50 an hour will shutter you.

Restaurants run on notoriously thin margins ( https://upserve.com/restaurant-insider/profit-margins/ ). There's a reason restaurants often fail even in good economic times: even small miscalculations or mistakes can put a good restaurant out of business.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#73

Post by Animats »

goodells wrote: post #5
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #2

It's amazing how business seems to understand the free market when it's selling to customers, but can't seem figure out the free market when it comes to hiring labor.

They likely do understand, but are just waiting for the extra federal unemployment benefits to end. The smart choice (from an employer's standpoint) would be to make it past September 6th without significantly increasing wages, then evaluate. If they give workers a higher wage now and it turns out to be unnecessary once the extra unemployment ends, it'll be pretty much impossible to take that back without replacing t…

And for evictions to restart.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#74

Post by Ericson2314 »

FredPret wrote: post #44
pope_meat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner class has gotten really used to having the upper hand in the negotiations, they're not coping well at all. And to that I say: welcome to the club.

The small biz owners here described here aren’t the Masters-of-the-Universe “owner class” types. They don’t even really own businesses, they own lower management jobs.

Sure. And slave overseers are not plantation owners.

We have this bipartisan love affair with small business, and the fact is many of them are unproductive institutions abusing tons of poor immigrants to stay afloat. They also provide ideological cover for the more labor-intensive actual big corps. It's about time the rose-collard glasses came off.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#75

Post by toomuchtodo »

rvense wrote: post #60
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with a bundle of Great Clips a friend manages for a franchisee. Can’t find staff, doesn’t believe staff are worth what the current effective minimum wage is. “Have you tried offering more?” “That’s too much for cosmetology work.” Getting slapped by the invisible hand of the market.

> “That’s too much for cosmetology work.” So it's not even an economic argument, "If I pay that I'll go out of business"? It's just a moral one, "They don't deserve that amount of money"? I can't say I'm surprised, TBH.

Yep, exactly.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#76

Post by prepend »

wazoox wrote: post #41
n8cpdx wrote: post #4

It's surprising businesses haven't turned to automation. At the very least, most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready, and using robots to prepare more of the food. they can do lattes with art all by themselves now. A lot of these businesses just can't survive if they meet the wage demands of people who have be…

> most of a restaurant's and a coffee shop's labor can be replaced with automated ordering, having the customer collect food themselves when it's ready... Which means "extracting free work from the customers", which is basically Marxism 101, "how to extract value from live work". My answer in such a place is to go straight out. I NEVER use the "automatic cashes", thank you very much. > ... using robots to prepare mor…

Robots are better at menial, repetitive tasks. No matter what you pay a cashier, they will never be better than an ATM.

Free humans to do menial work. I think it’s pointless to try to improve wages for these low end jobs.

Similarly with fruit picking. It pays poorly and is hard and dangerous. The solution isn’t to improve wages, but to automate. Humans shouldn’t be forced to do meaningless jobs.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#77

Post by Buttons840 »

beervirus wrote: post #7

Or maybe it’s a government-benefits surplus. That’s the only thing that’s actually changed.

The last year has been very different, that causes an actual change in people. We can't attach numbers to it though, so it gets less attention.

There has always been a balance between monitary compensation and other compensation, like being treated well, or having fewer work hours, etc. Everyone weighs these differently, but a small shift in the average weights can have a large impact. Perhaps on average people are valuing good working conditions more. Or have decided they'd rather do without some luxuries in exchange for avoiding certain types of jobs.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#78

Post by imglorp »

This is also about healthcare, which is trickle-up economics. If workers and employers alike are not concerned about paying thousands a year for premiums, that would be a double benefit that would appear as jobs.

If the US can spend billions on fossil subsidies and trillions on military and foreign wars, it should be a no brainer to stimulate domestic the economy with universal healthcare.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#79

Post by lordnacho »

rvense wrote: post #60
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with a bundle of Great Clips a friend manages for a franchisee. Can’t find staff, doesn’t believe staff are worth what the current effective minimum wage is. “Have you tried offering more?” “That’s too much for cosmetology work.” Getting slapped by the invisible hand of the market.

> “That’s too much for cosmetology work.” So it's not even an economic argument, "If I pay that I'll go out of business"? It's just a moral one, "They don't deserve that amount of money"? I can't say I'm surprised, TBH.

The economic argument in this case would be sticky prices in reverse.

But a reluctance to change prices at an existing business does not mean we won't get changed prices.

Re: It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage

#80

Post by tayo42 »

ljm wrote: post #66
holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barber shop I went to for years used to charge $35 for a haircut pre-pandemic, which with a ~$10 tip ($45) already felt real high. Now a haircut is $50 and I no longer go, opting instead to cut my own hair w help from my girlfriend. Maybe people don’t want $50 haircuts.

In that case you'd be justified in not paying the tip, surely? The effective price beforehand was $45, since you weren't really tippin, just subsidising the employer. They just bumped the price by 5 bucks and dispensed with the pricing trickery by paying proper wages.

The United States really needs to kill tipping culture off
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