It's not a labor shortage – it's a wage and workers rights shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by novok » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

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…

Ordering automation is there with order-and-pickup apps like doordash and instacart, it's just they charge a fee that costs more than doing answering the phone typically, which is why restaurant owners tend not to like them.

Also those kind of seat yourself / serve yourself places exist, they're called fast food typically. Look at mcdonalds, chipotle or subway for example. That setup is actually very old, from the time before computers.

Places that serve alcohol like waiters although, because they are essentially alcohol salesmen that boost sales, and alcohol are big profit drivers for restaurants.

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

#162

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #152

Ericson2314 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we need buffet-style restaurants that serve nutritious perishable food without all the extra plating, waters, and other frivolities so people can bask in being served and pretend they are aristocracy. Everyone cooking is a massive inefficiency, and yet paying for conventional restaurants is also uneconomical. Eating shelf-stable food is cheaper than cooking for most people, but only until the bad health effects…

> Maybe we need buffet-style restaurants that serve nutritious perishable food without all the extra plating, waters, and other frivolities so people can bask in being served and pretend they are aristocracy. Aside from buffet-style, casual, fast-casual, fast-food, and street food outlets fit in the “prepared food without, or without as much of, the frivolity that simulates aristocracy”. It’s not exactly an underserv…

It's definitely a welcome development, but it still costs more than cooking your own meals and cleaning up by a whole lot, so something is amiss. (As I wrote before, I don't mean to say it is all the restaurant's fault, it could be rents are simply too high.)

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

#163

Post by warkdarrior » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

rland wrote: post #57

n8cpdx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the local restaurants have raised prices. I've overheard a few restaurant owners talking and it seems customers don't like even small price increases. They also indicate the price increases are necessary for supply costs even as they raise wages and can't fill positions. A lot of restaurants are just cutting menus/services to be able to stay on top of demand. This strikes me as hugely economically inefficient,…

To me, if 50% of restaurants close tomorrow, fine. There are people who dine out 3, 4, 5 times a week, who don't really know how to cook anything beyond microwaved meals... that's completely insane! And I think that's kind of what all of this hysteria is about. Because yeah, if the price of a burrito went up by $2-3, those people would have to learn how to cook some basic meals for themselves. Not so long ago, dining…

> There are people who dine out 3, 4, 5 times a week, who don't really know how to cook anything beyond microwaved meals... that's completely insane!

I am not sure we have to be judgemental about other people's cooking skills to decide that restaurant workers deserve better pay. Everyone has some expertise, and some people choose to not learn how to cook, and that is ok.

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

#164

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #119

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about being a business owner, is that you are the last one on the payroll (if you are a good owner). All the bills get paid (including wages), then you get what's left over. If you had a good week, then you get a nice stack of Benjamins. If you had a bad week; maybe not so much. In fact, you may even need to chip in, to keep the lights on. I have seen, many, many SMB owners start living "high on the hog," a…

You might say the business owners feel entitled to live off other peoples work.

Yeah, it's not really that simple.

A business owner is the last one on the payroll, so they get the extra, if things go well, but they also assume pretty substantial risk. If things go badly, the buck stops at their front door; possibly on an eviction notice.

I have also watched many of these same SMB owners, hit the skids, and they fall hard. Many wreck their credit for decades, destroy any retirement savings, and, worst of all, suffer terrible self-respect damage.

I'm not being snarky, there. That demolished self-confidence can be bad. I have known folks that have become suicidal, after losing a business.

Makes being smug, kinda hard. They may have been jerks, when they were doing well, but it's quite sobering, to see what happens, when things go pear-shaped. Doubly so, if they have a family.

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

#165

Post by novok » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #120

rapnie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

>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. I'm definitely okay with fiddling with a tablet if it meant…

The real future of this is everyone using an app on their phone that they are familiar with, like uber eats or doordash, with a few loaner tablets.

Although in the end the waiter might be necessary from a customer support and questions perspective tbh. I did an ordering app thing in a restaurant and we still talked to the 'bus boy' to ask questions in the end.

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

#166

Post by tlogan » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

I believe majority of businesses are just waiting for extended unemployment benefits to end and eviction moratorium to be lifted.

I think that unemployment benefits ends today. The eviction moratorium ends in Oct.

So we will see… if they still cannot hire they will try to increase wages + increase prices.

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

#167

Post by imglorp » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #125

imglorp wrote: post #78

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.

> 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. The numbers you're looking at are too small. The war on terror cost $8 trillion in 20 years.[0] That's $500 billion a year. Divide this by US population (330M) and you get $1,515. How much healthcare could you buy for that per year? And d…

... And the war on drugs. And the Senate Launch System. And the tanks we buy for direct to mothball. Etc.

We have plenty of resources but not the will to direct them.

https://posey.house.gov/wasteful-spending

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

#168

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #117

Ericson2314 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, then. We shouldn't assume a certain service or job is productive enough to exist because it used to be in the past. If barbershops need to go the way of horse liveries, that's OK.

> We shouldn't assume a certain service or job is productive enough to exist because it used to be in the past. If barbershops need to go the way of horse liveries, that's OK Automobiles replaced horses, did I miss the memo on something replacing hair growth?

Trimmers replaced scissors for simple cuts.

Horses and barns still exist as a luxury, and that could be the fate of fancy cuts too.

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

#169

Post by tafox » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

zthrowaway wrote: post #132

delusional wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might say the business owners feel entitled to live off other peoples work.

Nice framing. Or it’s to get paid for bearing all of the risk of starting and running the business, and being financially on the hook for when it fails and gets to deal with years of being sued.

Exactly. Just like the financial crisis.

All those big CEOs getting caught on the hook.

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

#170

Post by zozbot234 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #148

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b) have a business so close to the brink of shutting down that an additional $20-50 an hour will shutter you. This is the default state of businesses in competitive markets. If you could do with less then you could charge less, and one of your competitors will start doing that to take your customers, so you have to do the same. Of course, the alternative is to pay more and then raise prices. Which you might not be…

The dirty open secret about development is that in highly developed countries with low inequality, human labor is just horrendously expensive, and since dining out has costs dominated by human labor, even relatively wealthy people dine out rarely. Ask the Swiss or Danes. Cooks can have a living wage, but fancy meals are comparatively much more expensive than their equivalents in the US, given their lack access to und…

Dining out is also a very localized industry, so this hits highly-productive areas within countries even more. Of course, the other side of the coin is that highly-productive areas are also constrained by real estate costs, regardless of prevailing wages. More rural areas don't have that factor, so people can afford to dine out more and still pay their cooks quite well.