Ending of Pandemic Era Benefits Didn't Lead To New Hiring - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Political issues and parties in the USA and Canada.

Moderator: PoFo North America Mods

Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#15194339
tomskunk wrote:@MistyTiger @Unthinking Majority

I found this fitting for both Misty and Unthinking. OBEY your MASTERS in the corporate world and KNEEL BEFORE THEM.


I just said if you don't like how your employer treats you, or the terms of your contract, then yes find a new job. Unless you're in prison there's no slavery in the US, you're free to work for whomever you wish, and quit whenever you wish, or start your own business and work for yourself, or sit at home and starve, whatever you prefer.

Slavery means you are forced against your will to work for someone for zero wages. Many employers are self-serving a-holes but they aren't slave holders.
#15194665
@Unthinking Majority @MistyTiger

Tell all of that to them! Non-union workers are rebelling too. I'm proud of these workers. They are fighting for something that really matters to people and humanity.

Chris Isidore of CNN wrote:Workers are saying enough is enough.

And many of them are either hitting the picket lines or quitting their jobs as a result.

The changing dynamics of the US labor market, which has put employees rather than employers in the driver's seat in a way not seen for decades, is allowing unions to flex their muscle.

Already on strike are 10,000 workers at John Deere (DE), who hit the picket lines early Thursday after rejecting a tentative deal which would have improved wages and benefits. They joined 1,400 strikers at Kellogg (K) who are upset with seven-day work weeks and a two-tier retirement system. Other unions are preparing for walkouts of their own.

The overwhelming majority of strikers and potential strikers are doing so for the first time in their careers. Many say they are driven not just by wages or benefits. They say they are striking, or planning to strike, in a bid to do their jobs the way they believe they should be done, and to gain basic improvements in the quality of their lives, such as time with their families, which they say they deserve.

One of the main issues running through many of these strikes, or looming strikes, is workers' anger.

"My nurses and health care professionals are angry," said Elizabeth Hawkins, the negotiator for a union of 32,000 nurses which could soon be striking 14 hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Southern California and Hawaii run by health care giant Kaiser Permanente.

Strikers picket outside the John Deere factory in Davenport, Iowa, on the first day of the strike Friday.


Chris Isidore of CNN wrote:
It is not just union members walking out.

A record 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August, the overwhelming majority of whom are not members of a union. While many of them left their previous job for a new one, nearly 800,000 jobseekers in September were unemployed because they quit their previous job without a new one lined up.

"Strikes are only one measure of unrest. It's also a general sense of frustration," said Todd Vachon, an assistant professor and director of labor education at Rutgers University.

The lowest monthly reading on record of workers quitting in this century occurred in August 2009, just after the end of the Great Recession, when 1.6 million workers quit.

But the current level is significantly above the norm. The 4.3 million who left their jobs in August was a 19% jump, or about 700,000 more people, than during the same month in 2019 ahead of the pandemic, and nearly 60% above the average since the government started tracking job quitters in 2000.

"The nonunion workers simply don't want to stay in or return to back-breaking or mind-numbing jobs," said Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration who wrote an essay comparing the record quit rate to a "general strike" which has been seen across wide ranges of industries and companies in some other countries but never in the United States.

Reich said the pandemic may have done more than shake up the supply and demand for labor in the US jobs market. It may have caused a reevaluation of the very nature and quality of work.

A similar thing happened after World War I and World War II, when workers made real gains because of the disruption caused by nation-changing events, Reich said.


"It may have taken a pandemic to open people's eyes," he said. "Many people are frazzled. A lot of workers are saying, 'I've had it!' They're fed up and don't want to take it anymore."



https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/16/econ ... index.html
#15194869
Unthinking Majority wrote:
People with no income will eventually need to work. 1 month isn't enough time, people likely have savings they're using.

If kids are back in school childcare won't be any bigger an issue than pre-pandemic.

Wages are determined by the market (besides minimum wages), so supply and demand determines wages largely.



Women are the largest cohort staying out of the job market. There's been a big spike in entrepreneurship, a lot of the young are trying to get better jobs, and a bunch of Boomers have just plain had it. A lot of them will go back, a lot of them won't. It's going to be a tight labor market for years.

In low vaccination states, uncertainty will keep making raising a kid an issue to a parent.

Thanks to government (mostly Republican) corruption, business has been beating up workers since the 80s. It's not just supply and demand. It's only come up as a thing now because of the extraordinary coincidence of the pandemic on top of Boomers retiring. Because of Boomer retirement, the job market was tightening before the pandemic.

This is where I like to insert a pithy prediction. I haven't got one this time. This is one helluva complicated mess.
#15194875
@late @Unthinking Majority

late wrote:This is where I like to insert a pithy prediction. I haven't got one this time. This is one helluva complicated mess.


The fact that Boomers are retiring is a big deal too in this equation. Moreover, the younger generations hadn't had an incentive to reproduce as much because it's hard for them to get paid decently to be able to financially support a family (and have time to raise a family), to get ahead, and to have acceptable work environments that the Boomer generation actually had. So, the younger generation didn't have near as many kids, which contributes to a tighter job market. In addition, the fact that workers were constantly treated like shit all the time for decades and then the pandemic comes along, workers were able to take better stock of the situation and are now reacting. Given that much of the labor force is not unionized, many of these workers can't go on strike.

Those workers that can go on strike and are part of a union, in many cases can get easily replaced. However, that dynamic has changed now and instead of going on strike, workers are rebelling and reacting to the employer tactic of replacing striking workers or workers who quit by replacing their employers and finding a job that will treat them right and pay them an acceptable wage so they can live and have a little bit of a life instead of working 5 jobs to pay bills and never having any time for yourself, family and spend any money you might have leftover after paying bills. This issue has been neglected for a long time and now is coming home to roost.

That being said, this isn't just a U.S. phenomenon, but also a global phenomenon now that the pandemic has struck. And the republican states that cut benefits back in June and July, those states haven't had any luck in getting any workers despite cutting benefits. Another fact is the failure to get people vaccinated against the pandemic. If people don't vaccinate, others won't participate in the job market because they don't want to bring COVID home to vulnerable family members or catch it themselves.

But this is part of the mentality of corporate America and many private businesses worldwide of not seeing workers as human beings and just things to be replaced which have contributed greatly to this problem as well. Workers at the end of the day are human beings, not replaceable spare parts to be thrown away. Workers are also not slaves either that you can abuse as Southern plantation slave masters did to their slaves back during the Plantation era. No worker wants to be a slave nor do they want to be treated like a slave.
#15194889
tomskunk wrote:
Workers are also not slaves either that you can abuse as Southern plantation slave masters did to their slaves back during the Plantation era. No worker wants to be a slave nor do they want to be treated like a slave.



There were people that were slave breakers. If you had a difficult slave, you could send them to a breaker. Quite a few died during the torture. Then there was a lot of rape. And worst of all, unlike the previous types of slavery, the slaves were slaves in perpetuity, all children were born into slavery.

I agree with much of what you've said, but that comparison is not simply inaccurate, it's grotesque.
#15194897
@late

late wrote:There were people that were slave breakers. If you had a difficult slave, you could send them to a breaker. Quite a few died during the torture. Then there was a lot of rape. And worst of all, unlike the previous types of slavery, the slaves were slaves in perpetuity, all children were born into slavery.

I agree with much of what you've said, but that comparison is not simply inaccurate, it's grotesque.


The analogy applies from my perspective even though it's not the EXACT same thing. It was meant to drive home a point. Either way, you look at it, workers are not treated well by employers. I remember stories told of how some workers were fired for simply using the bathroom (not for having to go to the bathroom excessively). I also read how some workers had to wear diapers rather than go to the bathroom in some meatpacking plants.

Is this acceptable treatment to you? Is this not grotesque to you? Moreover, are sweatshops that exist RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA TODAY not grotesque to you? Or is that A-OK with you? With the sort of treatment that workers get today from employers, you might as well return back to the plantation era and make them slaves while you are at it. The point is, the way that workers are treated today is a form of grotesque slavery in and of itself. They need to be treated like they are human just like slaves during the plantation era should have never been enslaved and be treated as free individuals who were also human.

From my perspective, it seems you are trying to give this grotesque form of slavery a free pass while condemning only the slavery that existed during the plantation era. Which makes me wonder why? What would be your motive for failing to condemn sweatshops and wage slavery that exists right here in America today as well as in other countries? Why do you give it a free pass while only condemning slavery during the plantation era? From my perspective, it seems you are trying to use plantation-era slavery as a means of preventing others from rightly condemning sweatshops and wage slavery and poor treatment of workers today as well as discussing these important issues.

This is done by making it seem as though it's like "Ohh well workers' conditions today aren't bad, they are just whiners. Look at how slaves were treated in the plantation era after all. They had it harder those slaves during the plantation era. Workers today do not experience any sort of form of slavery today. They are just whining after all. They have no legitimate complaints and just want to whine. Therefore, we are justified in ignoring these real issues today because look at how bad the slaves had it during the plantation era." There are serious fallacies in this sort of logic and reasoning. Workers today have legitimate gripes that need to be addressed and have gone unaddressed for a long time now. From my perspective, it doesn't seem like you are on the side of workers or understand what they are enduring today.
#15194899
tomskunk wrote:
@late



The analogy applies from my perspective even though it's not the EXACT same thing. It was meant to drive home a point. Either way, you look at it, workers are not treated well by employers. I remember stories told of how some workers were fired for simply using the bathroom (not for having to go to the bathroom excessively). I also read how some workers had to wear diapers rather than go to the bathroom in some meatpacking plants.

Is this acceptable treatment to you? Is this not grotesque to you? Moreover, are sweatshops that exist RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA TODAY not grotesque to you? Or is that A-OK with you? With the sort of treatment that workers get today from employers, you might as well return back to the plantation era and make them slaves while you are at it. The point is, the way that workers are treated today is a form of grotesque slavery in and of itself. They need to be treated like they are human just like slaves during the plantation era should have never been enslaved and be treated as free individuals who were also human.

From my perspective, it seems you are trying to give this grotesque form of slavery a free pass while condemning only the slavery that existed during the plantation era. Which makes me wonder why? What would be your motive for failing to condemn sweatshops and wage slavery that exists right here in America today as well as in other countries? Why do you give it a free pass while only condemning slavery during the plantation era? From my perspective, it seems you are trying to use plantation-era slavery as a means of preventing others from rightly condemning sweatshops and wage slavery and poor treatment of workers today as well as discussing these important issues.

This is done by making it seem as though it's like "Ohh well workers' conditions today aren't bad, they are just whiners. Look at how slaves were treated in the plantation era after all. They had it harder those slaves during the plantation era. Workers today do not experience any sort of form of slavery today. They are just whining after all. They have no legitimate complaints and just want to whine. Therefore, we are justified in ignoring these real issues today because look at how bad the slaves had it during the plantation era." There are serious fallacies in this sort of logic and reasoning. Workers today have legitimate gripes that need to be addressed and have gone unaddressed for a long time now. From my perspective, it doesn't seem like you are on the side of workers or understand what they are enduring today.



The English language has no shortage of words that would reasonably apply. Abusive, exploitative, etc...
#15195206
tomskunk wrote:
@late

Fair enough.



The history of capitalism in England was horrific. There was a lot going on that Dickens could not write about, most women engaged in prostitution just to get by. That includes most that had a job, the pay was so bad.

Here in America the army was used to do things like break strikes. Killing or maiming strikers was another tactic.

There's an old saying, companies that get unions deserve them.
Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Tell it to all the "it's all the same" […]

Muscovites always seem to get offended by the […]

Kiev fell apart, so they moved to Moscow , which […]

https://twitter.com/iamdenya_de/status/17700095631[…]