President Biden is giving a bit of simple advice to businesses unable to find workers: Offer people more money. Biden is betting it leads to middle-class security. But Republicans say his policies have let loose high inflation that will hurt the economy. https://t.co/hyFTW0A7Cb
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 22, 2021
… This recommendation, included in a White House memo about the state of the economy, gets at a fundamental tension in an economy that is returning to full health after the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses are coping with spiking prices for goods such as steel, plywood, plastics and asphalt. Yet workers, after enduring a year of job losses, business closures and social distancing, are no longer interested in accepting low wages.
Administration officials say the White House is not trying to target a specific wage level for workers. But officials say higher wages are a goal of President Joe Biden and a byproduct of his $1.9 trillion relief package and at least $3.5 trillion in additional spending being proposed for infrastructure and education.
Boosting wages gets at the central promise of the Biden presidency to improve the lives of everyday Americans and restore the country’s competitive edge in the world. Republicans say that Biden’s policies have already let loose a torrent of inflation that will hurt the economy. The outcome of these competing forces could decide the trajectory of the U.S. economy as well as the factors weighing on voters in next year’s elections.
White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said the goal is “to pull forward a robust, inclusive recovery that provides good employment opportunities to people who have been the heroes of this pandemic, folks who are in the bottom half, who went to work, often in unsafe conditions, or had to stay home to take care of their families and deal with school closures and childcare constraints.”…
What makes the current situation unique is that wage pressures generally build when the unemployment rate is low. But the rate is 6.1% and the country is 8.2 million jobs below its pre-pandemic levels, historically the kind of numbers that might lead workers to settle for lower earnings.
The difference this time is that the government spent a combined $6 trillion over the past year, including relief packages passed under President Donald Trump, to minimize the economic damage from the pandemic. Biden’s own relief package was geared toward helping to boost wages, with enhanced unemployment benefits, new monthly payments to parents, aid to restaurants and money for state and local governments to increase pay for essential workers…
Part of the dispute between Biden and Republicans is a more fundamental one on how economies grow. The administration has embraced a philosophy of investing in workers and providing them with benefits to make it easier for them to juggle life responsibilities and jobs.
By contrast, Republicans believe the key is to minimize taxes and other barriers for employers so that lower operating costs lead them to invest and hire. …
Since we took office, we’ve gone from an economy in crisis to one that is projected to grow faster than it has in nearly 40 years.
That’s progress. Let’s keep it going.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 22, 2021
Opinion: How does the Biden White House get results? By remaining disciplined.https://t.co/jv46wFOwzW
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 23, 2021
japa21
Good morning.
NotMax
Break out the party hats and horns! Maui the scene for a double header of celestial happenings this week.
Lahaina Noon today, total eclipse of a supermoon during the wee hours Wednesday morning.
debbie
Supply and demand. The market is speaking.
WereBear
Except, for FOUR DECADES, it hasn’t happened YET.
Quinerly
Good Morning!!!
Mind blown… Reading on line that rental cars are $500-$800 a day in Bozeman, Montana if you can get one.
Just thought I would throw that out. It’s going to be a wild summer.
Baud
@japa21:
Good morning.
John S.
Yeah, Republicans have a fundamental problem with any Democrat holding office. Which is why nearly all of them are sold on the “big lie”, and are absolutely terrified of a commission that exposes them as fascist traitors.
Spanky
Pshaw! The “dispute” that Republicans have with Biden is only that he exists at all. Just ask Mitch.
leeleeFL
@debbie: i think it’s screaming! I keep explaining the situation of many of my fellow servers etc returning to this industry, and they are not all surprised. I also let them know the extra unemployment isn’t the issue, and most of them are convinced, eventually.
It scares them somewhat, but they also get it. We shall see where this goes. I hope it leads to better days in the industry..
leeleeFL
@WereBear: Keep digging, that fucking pony is there, somewhere!
Baud
I guess in 2022 we’ll find out definitively whether working people really want to stand for themselves or not.
Kathleen
@John S.: Yeah
I snorckered (snorted and snickered) at the typical Mainslime Media assertion that Republicans have coherent good faith economic “alternative” other than “hurry up and die”.
satby
@debbie: The lack of affordable, safe care for children (and adults needing care) is speaking. People, mostly women, are still unable to return to the jobs or their previous hours spent working until there’s stability in what arrangements they can make for family members.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WereBear: And it doesn’t even make sense on the face of it. You don’t build a new factory or restaurant because you have extra capital. You build it because your customers have money to spend.
debbie
@satby:
Agreed, and the GQP’s dismissal of child care as infrastructure betrays their real intentions. Pro-family, indeed.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Extra capital is for Bitcoin.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Exactly! And yachts.
Kathleen
@satby: Precisely. Interesting that NYT isn’t asking The Good People Of The Heartland in Ohio diners about their feelings regarding employment.
debbie
@leeleeFL:
I know it’s not easy, but I hope they can stand tough.
A friend of a friend, a very successful restauranteur in the region, has been loud and whiny about people not flocking to him for jobs (this guy could definitely afford to pay more). I heard over the weekend that one of his better places will be closing. What an entitled snip he is.
Baud
@Kathleen:
Yeah, I can’t recall too many stories about Biden voters since the election.
jonas
Remaining disciplined? Well that’s no fun for the WH reporters!
John S.
@Kathleen: The media continues to struggle with the reality that the GQP is a personality cult. They do not have a coherent ideology on any topic — especially economics — other than doing what their Dear Leader wants.
Baud
Cheryl Rofer
The message discipline in the administration is amazing. When events call for comments from several Cabinet members, they are all precisely on point, although they speak with different words and different emphasis. It’s delightful to see people working as a team.
MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor: THANK YOU !!
satby
@debbie: Wages are always only part of the issue. My staff at the doctor’s office are paid ranging from the higher end prevailing wage to $2 more per hour, depending on experience (I’m on Glassdoor so I can monitor). But 1/2 the staff are working mothers who have cut their hours, sometimes drastically, because they can’t find childcare. Even the ones with relatives nearby; older people weren’t seeing their grandkids until vaccination and couldn’t in most cases adequately oversee online schooling. And I have kidcare set up in a breakroom, which sucks for all of us: the kids are restricted and bored and spending way too much time playing video games instead of schooling. I was teaching middle school math again last Friday. I only expect real improvement when kids can get vaccinated too.
Baud
The nice thing about the last few years is that, among thoughtful and decent people, it ends the debate as to who is principally responsible for the nation’s ills.
Starfish
@Quinerly: I thought I read an article about Hawaii going through this. A lot of rental car companies had sold their fleets so very few had cars. People were dealing with this by renting U-Hauls instead because they were cheaper than the $700/day Toyota.
satby
@Baud: Oh, my sweet summer child. Nope, it hasn’t done that at all. Mainly because that debate was never argued in good faith by one side. *edit: and I know you qualified that by “thoughtful and decent” but still nope.
Baud
@satby:
That’s why I qualified it as among decent and thoughtful people.
satby
@Baud: psyche
ok edit: and this is probably why Joe, Kamala, and Pete are politicians and we aren’t. They’re willing to drag thoughtful and decent though deluded by propaganda people over to the right side.
Baud
@satby:
Damn you, edit button. ::shakes fist::
germy
How much of this inflation is price gouging, though?
Six months ago, I remember seeing wildly inflated prices in my local stores for things like hand sanitizer. In some cases, they doubled the price.
Are some companies gouging now, to try to recover the money they lost over the past year?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: “But I need a majority.”
Hoodie
@Baud: and the thing that doesn’t get mentioned a lot, stock buybacks. Katie Porter’s recent grilling of the Abbvie guy lifted the curtain on that a bit. I was a bit taken aback by the magnitude of the buybacks. I imagine the Trump tax cut goosed that a lot, based on what I’ve heard from other corporate execs.
debbie
@germy:
Your question answers itself.
Spanky
@Baud:
Not sufficient. We need a majority.
(H/t to an ancient Democrat.)
Eta: Shakes fist at McIrvin.
Baud
@Spanky:
I didn’t realize Matt McIrvin was that old.
satby
@germy: prices across the board have gone up. The supply and manufacturing chains were greatly disrupted, tarriffs and trade disputes helped, shipping continues to be a nightmare.
Ok: edit again: when the pandemic eases and manufacturing stabilizes and rational trade policies are in place things should improve. edit #2: that includes bringing back some off-shored manufacturing capacity.
WereBear
There’s no struggle. They will never acknowledge it until crazed Right Wing Republican billionaires (but I repeat myself) stop signing those big paychecks.
Viva BrisVegas
Complete and utter bullshit. It’s the same bullshit conservatives around the world have been spouting for 40 years and the only things that have resulted are stagnant wage growth, soaring inequality and chronically lacklustre economies.
The reason western economies are performing so badly in the long term? Lack of consumer demand.
The cause of a lack of consumer demand? Conservative policies that have shifted wealth from the middle class and working class to the 1%.
Conservatives have been strangling their own economies since Reagan and Thatcher.
Anyway, there will be no inflation until consumer demand exceeds productive capacity and we are nowhere near that yet. They tried using the same inflation lie on Obama in 2009. For Republicans inflation is always just around the corner, yet somehow never seems to arrive.
Spanky
@Baud: Ask him about the painting in the attic.
Starfish
@satby: Are you in Ohio? On Twitter, I saw a lot of people there complaining about the lack of in-person school and the poor quality of take-home work.
Spring of 2020 was bad as far as schooling went where I am. This year was better than that, and they had most people back after spring break.
They are promising everything being normal in the fall, but that is slightly before the younger kids get vaccinated, so I am a little nervous about this.
Matt McIrvin
@Spanky: Of course these days a majority isn’t sufficient either.
Ken
I could swear I saw an analysis a couple of months ago pointing out that we were about to get some bad yet fundamentally meaningless inflation numbers, because they were all year-over-year measures and prices crashed last year, for reasons that some here may dimly recall.
raven
@NotMax: Special even on the mountain?
trnc
Without “message discipline” translating as some BS bumper sticker talking point with no basis in fact.
satby
@Starfish: no, Indiana. Where they brought the kids back and ran hybrid classes and randomly shut down classes suddenly as confirmed covid infections spread among families. People would drop the kids off at school, get to the office, and have to turn around and go get their kids because their class was shutting down for the quarantine period. It was insane. Glad this is their last week in school.
MomSense
The expanded UI has created conditions similar to collective bargaining. Workers have the ability to hold out and demand better wages. No wonder Republican controlled states are so determined to stop it.
Kathleen
@Baud: Have there been any Biden voter stories other than “I regret my vote for Biden”? I know those have to be out there.
germy
@trnc:
Yes, the former guy administration had enough message discipline that they could all repeat the same lies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My teacher DIL finishes the school year this week. She’s been online with kindergarteners all year. She did a meet & greet with them at school Friday and gave each one a gift bag with a free book and some other odds and ends. She thinks her class will do fine, but she’s fanatically devoted to her work and is super good at it.
I can’t resist telling a story. She invited my son to come and be a guest reader. She had him knock on the door of the room she has set up as school, and then said, “Boys and girls, someone is knocking. Who could it be?” They guessed Santa and my DIL’s dad among other people. So he read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. A few days later, a little girl in the class reminded my DIL to be sure to tell my son that he read very well.
germy
@MomSense:
As illustrated by Tom the Dancing Bug:
https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2021/05/21
Kathleen
@John S.: My opinion is media aren’t struggling with truthfully portraying Republicans as the sick, twisted and perverted sadists they are. Media know their job is to lie about them and they are doing what they’re paid to do. But that is just my opinion and I’m sure I’m over simplifying.
Hoodie
@Viva BrisVegas: I’d say the reality is more along the lines of the the “if you have a hammer . . .” Some of the ills that conservatives attacked in earlier days were real, but their solutions were misdirected and have morphed into plain old graft, which inevitably occurs when a particular political narrative becomes socially dominant. In our country, this has played out as tax cuts being the cure for every ill, when they’ve really just become a way to make rich people richer without them having to do anything to earn it. The fact that you can just park money in an index fund and passively make ridiculous amounts of money in a low inflation period gives away the game. The sea of low wage workers can’t afford to do that, especially if they want to eat. The irony is that those workers are absolutely essential, as the pandemic has brought out, and when you have more difficulty arbitraging them against even poorer people in other parts of the world, the bill comes due. The conservatives now want to walk out on the check.
Kathleen
@Baud: I hope you’re right Baud.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
@Kathleen:
I don’t think that you are oversimplifying
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
It really is ?
hueyplong
It’s nice to be aggravated about economics instead of insurrection.
GOP economic policy reminds me of an exchange between two of the crooked gamblers in Eight Men Out (John Sayles’ movie about baseball’s 1919 Black Sox scandal). They were talking about the bribes required to get Sox players to throw the World Series:
Crooked gambler: How much do you feed a dray horse?
Flunky: [shrugs]
Crooked gambler: Just enough that he knows he’s hungry.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Joe Falco
@satby:
The demand for child and elder care is constant, and people try to fill it. Back when I worked in local planning and zoning, I would get calls constantly from people asking about the regulations to start their own daycare business or personal care homes. Usually, the zoning itself would limit whatever property people had set their sights on, but other regulations may also dampen their enthusiasm.
I don’t know what the solution is on the city or county administration level, but if they would help those wanting to start these essential businesses, it would go a long way to support the rest of the economy.
Kathleen
@satby: One of the many salient but under reported stories was effect TFG’s tariff policies had on business. That occurred before Covid. It had to be chaotic for both large and small businesses but I don’t recall it being topic for the so called pro business network pixel puking Sunday shows.
Skepticat
@Spanky:
You’re spot on.
https://www.gocomics.com/stuartcarlson
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
❤️
hueyplong
@Kathleen: Many of Trump’s harmful actions distracted attention from his other harmful actions.
He really put the malignant in malignant narcissism.
RepubAnon
@WereBear: Yes, and it is clear why the Republican mantra is another big lie. Businesses don’t expand because operating expenses are lower. This merely leads them to pocket the added profits.
It’s more demand for their goods and services that motivate businesses to expand staff and invest in improvements. Why expand if your current staff and equipment can meet current and projected future demand?
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s so sweet!
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Great minds, rikyrah! LOL!
trnc
@Kathleen: Have there been “I regret my vote for Biden” stories? I would expect that on NPR after 4 years of love letters to DT, but I don’t listen that much anymore since I don’t have to drive in to work.
trnc
That made me feel better until I realized how much that demographic has appeared to shrink in the last 10 or so years.
Quinerly
@Starfish: I am on a lot of travel blogs/in a few FB travel Groups. Read some stuff about and Hawaii and CA with folks renting UHauls. Not sure I had heard that crazy rate quoted in Bozeman. I’m amazed how many people didn’t prepare for this. Folks just striking out and not understanding 3 hr waits to get in Grand Canyon, sold out shuttles in Zion, and “no room at the inn” at Yellowstone. Then there are the folks who did plan and are getting rental cars canceled at the airport or prices quoted going up 10 fold. It’s only going to get worse.
rikyrah
Alan T. MacLeod (@Amacleod99) tweeted at 2:26 PM on Sun, May 23, 2021:
Likely will lose me friends here, but I strongly believe that the Progressive Wing needs to chill the fuck out, at least publicly with this Administration. Incrementalism is the way our system works, and if this shit costs Dems the House and/or Senate in mid-terms, we’re fucked.
(https://twitter.com/Amacleod99/status/1396548148764438530?s=03)
Raven Onthill
Well. Support for the actual working class.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
Couldn’t agree more!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: @Kathleen: I think my DIL encourages them to tell one another how well they read or drew or did anything, and the little girl was just carrying the practice over.
lowtechcyclist
I’d like to see a description of the mechanism by which higher wages for working people will lead to inflation.
But when billionaires and big corporations have so much money, they’ve long since run out of places to invest it, I can tell you what that does: it effectively takes the money out of the economy, making the rest of us poorer.
If you tax them and put the money in the hands of people just getting by, then they can buy more stuff, and those rich people can invest in providing the additional goods and services the people are buying. That’s an economy that works out better for everyone.
This has been your morning Econ 000 lecture. ;^)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WereBear:
So long as the course is kept, Art Laffer will be proven right at some point, which is any time now.
Mike R
@Kathleen: Well they do, more money for us, and fuck you. thank you lawyers, guns and money website.
Kathleen
@hueyplong: I seriously doubt today’s political so called reporters are smart enough to grasp how businesses work. Other than understanding that they get paid well for repeating talking points their bosses relay to them.
Geminid
@trnc: The negative partisanship of the past ten years has definitely drawn some moderate conservatives towards the pole of bigotry. I know a couple of them. But many others seem to be repelled. Republican self-identification in Virginia* fell from 31% in December 2019 to 25% in February 2021, a near 20% drop.
*Wason Center polling of Virginia registered voters.
Joey Maloney
@NotMax: Thank you for reminding me that I would be in Hawaii right now except that Bibi Netanyahu, that evil prick, conspired with Hamas to cancel my vacation.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@lowtechcyclist:
Wealthy people and corporations with piles of retained earnings all have a single play – invest it in real estate because of favorable tax treatment, driving up rents. It’s sick – entrepeneurship is choked off because of maximum rent extraction, and the fixed nature of the investment means it produces nothing.
Starfish
@Quinerly: I think it is all the same problem though. Rental car companies sold their fleets because they could not keep a fleet while no one was renting. The demand came back, but they can’t necessarily replace the fleet with the microchip shortage. Those American car manufacturers are only making the big expensive vehicles, so they can make their money.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin: Adlai Stevenson, right?
Skepticat
And those words are cogent, respectful, rational, and intelligent from people who actually know what they’re talking about. Mirabile dictu!
Soprano2
No one here is convinced of this yet. The first words out of the mouth of anyone here I talk to about this (including my manager) are some version of “If only the government would quit giving people money to stay home and sit on their asses playing video games and stuffing their faces they’d go get a damn job”. Even when I tell them that an employer like Paul Mueller, who hires skilled welders, is offering a $1,500 hiring bonus for new employees. They just aren’t convinced. I keep telling them that in this area tens of thousands of highly-employable people are not going to suddenly come flooding into the job market when the unemployment supplement ends on June12th. I think it will help a little bit on the margins, but that’s it. Good Lord, the unemployment rate in my area was 3.7% in April – I’m not sure what employers believe is going to happen when the rate is that low!
I am curious – besides higher wages, what are employees in the bar/restaurant industry looking for? I know this sounds like a dumb question; I pay as much as I can, but we’re small so we can’t compete with what the big chains can offer, and we have a good manager who treats the employees well (different ones have told us this over the years, so I don’t think they’re making it up). I’ve told the servers/bartenders that they don’t have to put up with gross behavior from anyone, and I let them know that I mean it! We don’t tolerate bad behavior from the customers. I try to make the working atmosphere as good as I can.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: White rural and exurban R voters?
Kathleen
Duplicate
Kathleen
@trnc: I quit listening to them in 2015. Too many “I was so pissed I almost drove off the road” moments. But I’m positive the regretful Biden voter demo is ripe for the picking by fervid media minds somewhere.
@rikyrah: Boom Chokka Lokka.
Soprano2
My understanding is that part of this is due to them comparing it to the same month last year, when in some cases deflation was happening. Look at what happened to gas prices last year when demand cratered. So the inflation number is not really that accurate; it being higher is probably only temporary, but it gave Republicans their talking point.
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Good for her. DIL is a treasure .
Kathleen
@Mike R: The Rethug Philosophy writ large. Every time a starving child is fed Stephen Miller tears a wing off of an angel.
Soprano2
This, exactly. It’s mostly supply and demand, not price gouging. For example, my manager said that a case of gloves that cost us $50-60 a year ago is now over $200! That’s due to increased demand and disruption of the supply chain. People don’t realize how finely-tuned a lot of this stuff was. Hundreds of thousand of automobiles are just sitting in lots, waiting for computer chips in order to be sold. I think it’s probably going to take at least a year for all of this to work its way out.
Ken
Spread the rumor that the chips are being snapped up by bitcoin mining.
Failing that, spread the rumor that they aren’t available because Texas didn’t want to be connected to the national electricity grid (which has the advantage of being true, or at least arguably connected).
PST
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That is so true, and so fundamental, but the whole of one party and much of the other choose to pretend otherwise. The corollary, which is even more anathema to the donor class and their dependents, although they also know that it’s true, is that you don’t lose your desire to make money when taxes go up. You may bitch and moan, but if you have money to spare you try to earn a return even if you can’t keep it all. Good public policy recognizes that and tries to channel the flow in a productive direction, like out of cryptocurrency and into solar.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I’ve seen people complaining that unemployment is keeping amusement parks from finding staff. But I think the main problem is finding temporary summer kids because they were still scared of COVID. I don’t think those teenagers are collecting unemployment.
Soprano2
@Quinerly: I was talking to my husband this weekend about maybe doing a 3 or 4-day trip somewhere. It would have to be within driving distance, just because of this rental car problem. Plus, we’re trying to get my stepson to come here to see us later this year. I have no interest in paying $700 for a rental car!
Spanky
@Kathleen:
If only.
Soprano2
Yep, some people seem to believe anyone can just say they were laid off or lost a job due to Covid and they’ll automatically get money with no checking! I think another underreported factor in tourist areas is how much they depend on temporary visa workers (not sure of exactly which visa it is) to fill those seasonal jobs. I know that’s a problem in Branson, which doesn’t begin to have enough population to fill all the summer jobs they have to offer. I also believe the 4-year stifling of all kinds of immigration is having an effect, and would have had even without Covid.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I just love how they did no actual UI analysis before they all jumped on this bandwagon. States have information on UI, who is on it, who isn’t. They didn’t even look before promoting the lazy moochers thesis? What do these people get paid for?
Two weeks after they announced the lazy moocher explanation real information came out, and the real information seems to indicate the employment lag was no on the low end but on the middle income piece. No revision of the lazy moocher theory. It’s now “true”.
Kathleen
@Spanky: Ha!
Ksmiami
@germy: it’s just a lot of Re-opening demand and supply chain disruptions- it’s a short term issue- Republicans shouldn’t have a voice on economics since they’ve been catastrophically wrong for 40 plus years
Kathleen
Paging Doug! New York Slimes latest musical question – what do 14 Trump voters think of George Floyd (paraphrased and no links because I’m on phone) Twitter is ablaze.
hueyplong
@lowtechcyclist: That’s a much more elegant way of saying that a consumer economy requires consumers.
Ksmiami
@Ksmiami: also Fuuuuck Manchin
JML
@Soprano2: I’m not working in hospitality these days but outside of better wages and humane working conditions, I’m hearing that people want stable scheduling and affordable child care.
I have sympathy for you as someone who is consistently trying to do the right thing by your employees, but industry-wide I’m afraid you’re a bit of an outlier…
Nelle
Inflation is never a concern on soaring CEO salaries and benefits. The argument that the market demands it is only valid for those at the top.
WereBear
I think the scheme all along was to force low-wage Americans to accept even lower wages, and let the government feed them.
Quiltingfool
I live in the Lake of the Ozark area, very big on tourism. Lots of college students get summer jobs at the restaurants, resorts, etc. This year the businesses are having a hard time getting these workers, and it isn’t fear of Covid, it’s lack of available and/or affordable housing. People have moved here in droves – once they could wfh, they decided to stay in their lake homes – and they liked the lack of Covid restrictions. The housing market is insane, houses don’t stay on the market long, and rentals? Dear God, the rents are sky high. We have two rentals out in the boonies and I’ll bet we could easily get two to three hundred more a month – if we wanted to be greedy assholes.
My husband works at a boat lift company and sales have been higher then ever, during the Covid outbreak. They can’t keep up. They pay very well, provide health insurance, vacation, sick leave, uniforms and have a decent working environment but they can’t find reliable workers. Guys call in constantly, crews are short handed and my hubby spends his days listening to customers scream at him because their lift didn’t get installed. One night he almost broke down in tears because for the first time in years his scheduled lifts didn’t get installed because workers didn’t show up. (He hates to go back on his word).
To be honest, though, this was a problem pre-Covid. I don’t understand how people can get by working 3-4 days a week. In my youth, missing work meant you couldn’t pay your bills – you might not be thrilled working every day, but it sure beat living in a cardboard box!
I just don’t know anymore…
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Fixed.
NotMax
@<a href="https://balloon-juice.com/2021/05/24/monday-morning-open-thread-blasphemy/#comment-8179201"WereBear
That government cheese isn’t gonna eat itself, don’tcha know.
//
BruceFromOhio
Any day that starts with a photograph of Jen Psaki smiling is a good day.
The can’t-find-workers problem is multi-faceted, with many causes over a long period of time. The solutions will be multi-faceted, with many variations over a long period of time. And the GQP will stand in the way obstructing everything.
Baud called it – if 2022 favors the GQP even slightly, we’re done here.
mrmoshpotato
@hueyplong:
Yup. Four fucking years of waking up to “What atrocity will we find out about today?”
Kay
@Quiltingfool:
In some ways I think we violated the implied contract with workers when we told them for 30 years that the employer had no duty to them. Understandably, they then came around to feeling they have no duty to the employer. It has to be reciprocal. If they can be laid off or fired in a heartbeat – they’re offered no security or reliability, then they take the other side of that and offer no security or reliability to employers. “At will”. It applies to both sides. It just took a tighter labor market to show up on the employee side.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
But I want my free healthcare, free college and unicorn butler NOW!
Soprano2
This is a thing that just seems true to most people. They all think that of course it would be great if someone would pay them $300 a week to sit on their ass and do nothing, because that’s honestly what they think all the unemployed people are doing. (Everyone seems to know at least one person who has told them “I’m not going back to work until I have to because collecting all this unemployment is so great!”) They also seem to think that it lasts forever. It’s hard to convince them otherwise, and I honestly don’t think it has that much to do with anyone pushing the theory. Of course Republican state governments didn’t do any research, because this fits with what they and all their supporters believe. I know liberal Democrats who own businesses here who fervently believe this is the only reason they can’t find people to hire. They don’t seem to know that the unemployment rate here is 3.7%! It doesn’t enter their minds that it could also be because almost every business is trying to hire people all at the same time. I can’t wait until the new Amazon warehouse being built in a nearby town, and the new Costco warehouse that’s probably going to open in July or August start hiring people. I have no idea what the excuse for not being able to find enough workers is going to be once the pandemic unemployment ends on June 12th.
TomatoQueen
“The difference this time is that the government spent a combined $6 trillion over the past year, including relief packages passed under President Donald Trump, to minimize the economic damage from the pandemic. Biden’s …..” from a post way up above that is from something called apnews which I assume is not the AP. No, it’s not trivial. It’s part of the puke funnel structure, or some sub- or copy-editor wasn’t thinking. The sentence ought to be “…relief packages passed under former President Trump (or any variation that uses the adjective former), to minimize the economic damage…. President Biden’s….”
I slept poorly, bad allergy/sinus/headache, apparently it rained all night and Merlin’s outdoor supplies are now sodden. Minor editorial outrages shall set my teeth to aching today.
Soprano2
@Ksmiami: Evidently the chicken shortage is due to bad roosters! That is not a joke.
Soprano2
@JML: I can’t do anything about childcare, although I keep telling people who are pushing the lazy moocher theory that being able to find affordable, reliable childcare is a big part of the problem. We try to do stable scheduling as much as we can, but in this industry sometimes you have to try to call people in. Honestly, it doesn’t always attract the most stable, reliable people. We had one server who was fantastic, always came to work and was reliable. Then she got a boyfriend who paid all her bills; she moved in with him and started calling in frequently. My manager thinks she just didn’t need the money anymore, so she’d rather stay at home rather than come to work. We’re too small to be able to tolerate that for very long. She eventually got a daytime job at a big mental health provider here. I hope she does better for them than she did for us, because they won’t tolerate it as long as we did.
Spanky
@Soprano2:
What? Are we paying them $300 a week to loiter behind the henhouse with a pack of cigarettes and some dice?
Also, “Bad Roosters” will be my next band’s name.
Ken
@Kay: Possibly the changes in benefits has had a similar effect, or maybe it’s the same thing you’re arguing. Leaving a company used to impact your pension; you could even lose it entirely. Nowadays you don’t have a pension, you have a 401K that goes with you. Many other benefits are the same.
Assuming, that is, that the job even has benefits. If the package is $9.50 an hour with no health or disability insurance, no 401K, and no vacation or PTO, is it surprising that people leave when a $9.75 an hour job is available?
Soprano2
@Quiltingfool: I think this describes Branson, too. I feel for your husband, I really do – it’s frustrating when people won’t show up for work, and I also don’t understand how people can miss so much work and still pay their bills. I think some of it is thinking it’s easy to find a job, which of course is true right now. There has to be a balance in the job market between workers and employers. I remember reading articles in the paper about how Branson businesses were having a hard time finding workers before Covid, too. It’s as if everyone has forgotten that this was a problem before Covid.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It was all “belief”. They came into it thinking people won’t work with 300 unemployment bump and then they all jumped on the jobs number and said “see? They won’t”.
There was just no reason to guess. You have to register for unemployment. There are numbers.
gvg
@germy:
i am seeing weird seemingly random shortages in grocery stores of things I could get during the pandemic. I am also seeing hand sanitizer off brands and masks now in clearance (not the mainstream brands we preferred before). so, I think there are still supply chain issues plus buying is changing AGAIN as more people leave home.
Housing building supplies are much higher price. I hope it means homes being built and construction jobs but I can’t be sure. Odd fact furniture grade plywood is now cheaper than rough construction plywood or siding, which is not normal and I have never seen before.
The malls have lost even more stores and the stores left have fewer things for sale, empty shelves and clothing racks arranged widely spaced. That started before the pandemic but is much worse and more noticable now. It’s going to be a problem because I only buy replacement clothes online that I already worn and know it fits. I don’t think all online is a good option for most people. This also means some jobs are gone and aren’t coming back.
I wonder if learning how to help their kids online school made some parents ready to do it themselves for future better jobs. It didn’t work great for kids, but adults know they can do it.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Workers are also customers. The MBA side of the ledger can’t seem to get that through their collective heads.
I recall reading discussions during the last recession that Wall Street/corporations felt they didn’t need a strong US middle class to make money, but that emerging markets–Brazil, India–would pick up the slack. IIRC, recessions hit those markets soon after, and I’m not sure how that’s currently playing out.
Bottom line–they just don’t want to raise wages and benefits for US workers, and they will tie themselves in all sorts of knots in order to avoid giving them the resources they feel only they–the leaders–are entitled to.
Kay
@Ken:
Absolutely. Stepped raises, which all employers hate. But stepped raises are a powerful incentive to stay.
It’s just they can’t just take the benefit of no guarantees for 30 years and then be angry when it works against them. I think it’s especially true of younger people. They feel they don’t owe employers much because they were told their whole lives that employers don’t owe them anything. Okey doke. Them’s the rules. I can play too.
gvg
@Joe Falco: I have no desire to help home daycare evade regulation. I prefer monitoring and regulations. A real business, with employee benefits, insurance and licensing. I’d honestly rather school boards just started doing daycare at an early age.
Subsole
@Geminid: Interesting.
Certainly matches up with what I saw in the Dallas burbs.
Would be curious to see where it is now, after the media got bored with the 1/6 coup. How many went slinking back?
Soprano2
It’s even longer than that. My college job counselor told me to always remember the only person who has my best interests in mind is me, and that the employer will expect me to be loyal to them but won’t be loyal to me. That was in 1983! Ronald Reagan really did ruin a lot of things.
Jeffro
@Quinerly: we grabbed a large SUV for our western trip about a month ago and considered ourselves fortunate to be paying $120/day.
People in vacation areas are going to be “Airbnb”-ing their cars out online for big bucks and good for them
Subsole
@Kathleen: These are the folks who interview GOP operatives and apparatchiks, leave that info out, and try to pass them off as the voice of small town America.
They will make disaffected Dems if they can’t find any.
Kay
@Soprano2:
My daughter takes this approach. I’m an employer and also a fairly conventional person so it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t say anything because she’ll make fun of me but internally I’m fighting panic- “you will never work AGAIN if you LEAVE THERE!”
You never really get over financial insecurity. You’re terrified the rest of your life.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I just kind of wonder why nobody asks the restaurant owners what they did to help the folks they laid off in March of 2020. I think the answer in many if not most cases is “nothing”. Like, the servers and everyone else were told we no longer need you and so you’re not getting any shifts and we’re sorry but that’s the way it is. Good luck making ends meet.
So now it’s time to open back up and they expect those same people to come crawling back a year and change later as if the past year and a half didn’t happen and those people didn’t all try to find some other job, many of them did find something, and that something turned out to be better than restaurant work. The thing that boggles my mind about employers in the US is they expect employees to be loyal but that loyalty is a one way street in that if it’s convenient they can always just cut employees loose but when the need them back they expect them back and to be good loyal soldiers when they come back and not ask for a better deal but just the same shitty one they got last time.
Kelly
Weird shortage probably due to bollixed supply chains. I want a new drysuit for winter kayaking. Since it’s a winter thing usually I can save a few hundred bucks buying is the spring. My preferred brand, NRS, is currently backordered expected delivery Dec 10, 2021!
WhatsMyNym
If you’re making enough money in a steady job, you don’t need the extra hours in a 2nd (or 3rd) crappy job. From what I’ve been seeing are their plenty of good jobs out there.
Baby Boomers are retiring and better paying positions are becoming available. I’ve seen this even with the doctors I see and their support staff. I’ve gone through so many new doctors in the last few years it’s not a joke. They either retire or take a senior position elsewhere.
Ken
More blasphemy! The market is perfect so such things can’t happen. It must be due to some government interference with the otherwise-smooth inexorable gliding motion of the economic juggernaut.
Gravenstone
You left out the unspoken bits…
Geminid
@Subsole: Some Republican voters will come back. Some, though, are more permanently disaffected. One such is retired Army Colonel M.D. Russ, who wrote in Bearing Drift:
M.D. Russ, “Trump is the Republican President,” in Bearing Drift.
WhatsMyNym
@Kelly: Check https://www.nextadventure.net for closeouts, they’re going fast though!
Kathleen
@Gravenstone: Ha! Indeed I did!
Old School
@Quinerly:
So cars aren’t available due to the increased unemployment benefits? Thanks a lot, Biden.
sab
@WereBear: Wages you pay you workers are already tax deductible. So why is an additional tax break needed.
Kelly
@WhatsMyNym: Thanks, Next Adventure is a good outfit. The only NRS suits they have are smalls. I’m XL. The NRS neck gaskets fit me perfectly other manufacturers have been too tight.
Kay
@WhatsMyNym:
We have a lot of lawyer retirements too, locally. There’s a rural county east of here where the whole experienced group are retiring. I do some work there but it’s not my main area. I told a new solo lawyer to set up there and he is doing it. I like him and he asked so I gave him what I consider a hot tip because I talk to all of them and they’re all looking for an exit. It’s good advice. He’ll get as much work as he can handle in the next 5 years.
Wapiti
@WhatsMyNym: Baby Boomers are retiring and better paying positions are becoming available.
That’s a good point. My dentist’s office worked through covid with increased protection, but the receptionist and the senior dental hygienist retired. That opens up spots down the chain, because the dentist promotes from within the office as much as she can.
Joe Falco
@gvg:
I prefer daycare home operators are closely monitored as well. In Georgia, at least, they have to meet certain state requirements for what I can guess is for licensing in order to be operators.
In my opinion, it’s more or less a matter of governments needing to put the money into daycare and elder care services however it’s done. Whether it’s in the form of direct payments to publicly-operated facilities with a local government match of funds or greater assistance to private operators in the form of grants, tax breaks or some in-kind contribution, daycare needs to be supported by more than the handful of families that can afford it.
Zoning, for good or bad, is also a major deciding factor in where these facilities can be located as well. There are municipalities that limit the number of personal care homes that can be located in a subdivision, limit the number of children in a facility, determine the flexibility of zoning districts to allow for daycare facilities, the list goes on. And that doesn’t even cover the building regulations side. They may require that a daycare center have a circular drive for safer ingress and egress for instance.
Again, every locality is different so there’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s going to be tough work for advocates to find those solutions and win the support to put them into action.
catclub
what is NRS? I am drawing a blank
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@WereBear: stagflation is seti for church of milton friedman congregants.
artem1s
@debbie:
Supply and demand that was caused primarily by interruptions in key supply chains. NOT by increases in workers pay. THIS is the number one reason to pass the stimulus bill NOW rather than after the flow of cheap plastic crap from cheap plastic labor from overseas resumes.
Forcing millions to resume working for crap wages will do nothing for the inflation we’ve been experiencing in the last few months. If we have inflation it’s because the safety the vaccine and a stable WH has provided. Demand has risen faster than our ability to resume normal operations in the supply chains that aren’t dependent on countries still struggling with rising death rates.
The Dems can use this “artificial” inflation to make the argument that the US hasn’t been this well positioned to create good jobs in this country since WWII. Or we can go back to Raygun and W’s supply side economics and will be at the mercy of supply chain break down the next time there is a global pandemic or China finally decides to devalue the Yuan.
Kay
Anyone who is still dismissing this as some kind of remote threat is in denial. They could not make it more clear they plan to overturn election results. I don’t know if they’ll succeed but the Trump effort was just the first attempt. Next time they could control the process.
The Republicans in the House have now redefined “winning a Presidential election” to mean “winning a majority vote to certify in the House”. They’re all saying it. When they say the “votes were counted and Biden won” they don’t mean OUR votes. They mean the vote in the US House. Completely radical and new definition, completely adopted on the Right in a matter of weeks.
Kelly
@catclub: http://nrs.com/
Kay
Yup. The lies promote more liars, and the quality continues to decline. The Republican Party is basically a machine to attract and promote more and more low quality people.
The new prospective GA Sec of State will be three or four rungs below the Republican he’s replacing, just like Cheney’s opponent is worse than she is. It’s designed to get worse.
Soprano2
Chicken producers say they made a bad choice of roosters who aren’t as productive as the previous set of roosters. That’s all I know. LOL
Soprano2
People don’t believe me when I tell them the numbers show that there are fewer than 6,000 working age adults in this area who aren’t employed. This is something they could look up for themselves! They think it’s tens of thousands or more. It’s crazy! Then I ask them “of the people who apply, how many will be people you actually want to hire?” Everyone who applies for a job isn’t a good candidate for your particular workplace. They aren’t all interchangeable cogs.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kay:
Excellent point.
Soprano2
When I graduated from college in 1983 the unemployment rate was over 10%. The unemployment rate was high the whole time I was in high school and college; I felt fortunate that I had jobs for most of that time. After graduation I took the first job that I was offered that had full benefits and was a professional job; if I hadn’t, it might have been 6 months or more before I got another offer. So yeah, that colors how I look at employment. I can’t believe how cavalier so many people are about their jobs.
Soprano2
This is really unfair. All of my employees were on special unemployment, plus the $600/week pandemic unemployment. Some of them were making a lot more money than they’d ever made in their lifetimes! That’s why we didn’t do a PPP loan – our employees were better off drawing that unemployment. And yet, I had no trouble at all getting them to come back to work when we were able to open. You are tarring all restaurant/bar employers with a way-too-broad brush.
ETA: They were safer at home away from Covid, too. I swear, I really want to say F*** you.
Fair Economist
@Kelly: Some of the backorders are getting filled. We are putting in an induction stove, and after my husband dragged his feet on it for several months, all the stove we might have wanted were backordered for several months. But, a few days ago, the backorder on one dropped to several weeks and we ordered.
frosty
@Soprano2: Same story here. I graduated with a BS into Nixon’s recession and with an MS into Reagan’s. It took 9 months both times to get a job and both times I took whatever I could find. I’m pretty bitter about “career planning” advisors who’ve never been in this position. Plus all the kids I worked with who got to choose among job offers.
James E Powell
Has that ever happened in the history of the world?
Ken
I will be fascinated to learn how TFG is somehow involved. Some 2020 directive from the Department of Agriculture recommending the bad roosters, perhaps, which on further investigation will suspiciously correlate with purchases of short contracts in the egg futures market.
Quiltingfool
@Kay: I do agree with you – employees have been treated as expendable, easily replaced for too many years. I was a public school teacher for 26 years and we were made to feel that way – as an at-will employee for the first 5 years of employment (on pins and needles every year in April, praying you hadn’t pissed off a board member, no matter how good a teacher you were) and then with tenure, well, maybe they can’t fire you, but they can make your life shitty in hopes you leave.
In this situation (my husband’s company), the company has long taken care of their employees – helped them with legal troubles, offered interest-free loans, given paid leave for family emergencies, paid for doctor visits (outside insurance), two weeks paid time over Christmas in addition to earned vacation, allowed use of trucks and trailers for personal use. Well, I could go on, but this company is perhaps an anomaly. And yet, they have employment problems. I just don’t have any pat answer, I guess.
Kelly
@Fair Economist: A drysuit is a winter thing so I can wait.
Ken
I think the 2018 tax cuts were followed by a lot of corporate investment in stock buybacks, and then some new hiring to replace the executives who retired when their stock portfolios did so well.
Steve in the ATL
Thoughts from someone who makes his living negotiating pay raises and giving legal advice on employment issues:
That’s off the top of my head. If I didn’t have to generate work product, I’d put more thought into it, but you get the gist.
Soprano2
@frosty: It was amazing how different the job market was for my 5-year-younger sister. She had her choice of jobs both when she was in high school and when she graduated from college! It was the complete opposite of my experience.
Soprano2
What about if both Amazon and Costco are opening warehouses within 10 miles of you in the next 3-4 months? Because that’s the situation here right now!!! Sounds like we’re all screwed for the next year. I think it’s funny, no one mentions this when they talk about having trouble hiring people. I wonder if some employees are just waiting for these jobs.
Kay
@Quiltingfool:
It seems like your husband’s company is a good one. They could try a “skinny contract”. Akin to a labor union contract but narrower and direct with the employee. Give them some enforceable rights in return for no missed days outside of emergencies or planned time off. That’s what medical providers do for higher-skill positions. They contract with them. Lay the whole thing out. Guarantee of one year with this wage and no lay offs if they meet the employer conditions.
Soprano2
This is another thing I keep asking people. “How many of the people who are applying are the kind of people you want to hire?” Most of the time they’ll grudgingly acknowledge “not many”.
Kay
@Quiltingfool:
The contract may not be enforceable, even- without everyone hiring lawyers! which they should do :) but it would make it clear what’s expected on both sides and it wouldn’t have to be long or complicated.
They’d know your husband’s priority is “show up for installation” and in that company not doing so is a very bad thing. On that you could be “one and done” for a no-show.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Soprano2: I’m glad to hear your employees came out OK and it sounds like you treat them well and they’re coming back, but, like, not every business is that way. The ones that behaved like yours aren’t the ones complaining that they can’t find workers. And if those business’s workers came out OK it wasn’t because the owners did anything for the laid off workers, it’s because the government helped them out. But, they seem to be expecting the laid off workers to come running back after not doing anything for them.
Soprano2
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: But my point is, when the pandemic first hit, there really wasn’t much you could do for your employees if you were in the bar business. You were shut down, full stop, with zero revenue coming in. You seem to be under the impression that most places were shut down for a full year, which is true in only a very few places in the U.S. We re-opened at 25% capacity on June 1st of 2020 and have been open ever since. This is true of most places around here. I resent the implication that most small business people don’t care about their employees at all. Before they could get vaccinated I worried about them a lot! Now I’m encouraging all of them who haven’t gotten the shots yet to just get the shot dammit! I’m not going to fire anyone who hasn’t yet because how would I replace them? Most of the small business people I know have worried a lot about their employees for this whole time, and wish they could do more for them. If liberals want to know why sometimes they can’t get the support they think they should, this kind of knee-jerk reaction is part of the reason why. It sounds like you believe all employers are jerks who couldn’t care less about the welfare of their employees.
catclub
Do young workers get those things sooner in non-unionized workplaces?
The Thin Black Duke
@Soprano2: You’re an anomaly, my friend. Seriously.
Steve in the ATL
@catclub:
In many, yes, because they can. In a union shop, there is no flexibility unless the contract grants it. Which is highly unusual.
For example, a non-union employer can bump its starting wage to attract employees. Or increase (or begin offering) first-year paid vacation. Or rotate the OT schedule so no one gets burned out.
Can’t do any of that with a union. You have to bargain it first with them, and they won’t want new people to get any of that–they want it all to go to the senior people (which describes all union officers and bargaining committee members). But you don’t need this stuff to retain the senior people; you need it to attract new hires. Who don’t want to wait years for someone to leave or retire so they can get a better shift or higher pay rate.
As I have stated many times here, I am pro-union. Unions offer many benefits to workers, particularly in a steady economy. Change, however, is not something that works well in an organized environment. Booming economy, busting economy–both are very hard to manage with a union workforce.
Elizabelle
This has been a really interesting thread.
Kay’s “Skinny contracts.” Who knew?
And kudos to Soprano2, as the Thin Black Duke has mentioned. Very informative comments.
Kelly
I also support unions. However, as a teen I worked summers at a Teamsters represented vegetable cannery as one the 90% seasonal employees. One year there was bargaining and the full timers sold us seasonals on supporting a strike vote to get what we deserved. Strike vote passed overwhelmingly, no actual strike, contract reached within a week, 90% of the new money went to the 10% full timers.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: Yes, to all of this.
@Soprano2: And this too, because even though I’m willing to hire and train inexperienced folks, there has to be a base level of showing up, regularly and sober. Not a high bar, but hard for some.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: Man, I tried various dry suits and the neck gaskets gave me panic attacks; I just can’t stand having anything that tight around my neck! Oh well, in winter I mostly play on frozen water, not the liquid stuff.
Steve in the ATL
@Soprano2:
Another limitation with union contracts. CBAs almost entirely assume that workers are.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Soprano2: You are reading things into my comment far beyond what I intended or in fact said. I didn’t say anything that implied all small businesses or all restaurants are engaged in bad behavior or were terrible employers that didn’t care about their employees. I realize they were in a tough position. That said, however legit the reasons, being let go sucks and I can see why some people who were let go might seek out other careers rather than go back to the industry that laid them off.
Not every restaurant is having difficulty hiring enough help. Those that are, are really complaining about it though, and every journalist in America seems right there with a microphone to cover the bitching. All I’m saying is the former employees of those places may have a legit reason to not want to go back, but nobody is here to listen to them…rather than asking them why they’re not coming back to those jobs, the journalists of the nation seem content to let us all assume that those workers are just lazy. Nobody is presenting their side of the story as a legit perspective – it’s all “restaurants can’t find workers because unemployment benefits are too generous and those lazy folks would rather sit around all day doing nothing than work for a living.”
If you’re determined to misconstrue and be offended by my comments there’s nothing I can do about it. Please continue to be offended even though I meant no offense to all restauranteurs. I’m sure it has been an extremely trying year for the restaurant industry, so I can see why you might be a little touchy.
scott (the other one)
@Quinerly: Looks like I’m headed to Bozeman, to see if people’ll play me a very reasonable, oh, let’s say, $250 per day to rent my 2001 Saturn with only 121,382 miles…sometimes the air conditioning even almost works!
J R in WV
@catclub:
Don’t be silly, now. Non-union shops don’t have any of those things with any reliabilty — tick off the boss, work 3rd shift forever.
ETA: Wow, was it hard to get the block quotes the way I wanted them…3rd time’s the charm, tho.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Next Week!!! See we’ve never done any of this harshly enough! That’s it, we need to be harsher, lower the min wage to $3.50/hr. Then the wealthy can get really wealthy and everything will be fine and dandy. Slavery, that’s it, that’s the true answer, SLAVERY! Zero dollars forever!
All we have to do is allow the wealthy to make far more than they could ever spend and everything will be fine. (For the wealthy!) which makes everything that needs to be good, just fine.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Neoprene “Semidry” suit neck gaskets are more comfortable and keep most of the water out unless you really get sent thru the rinse cycle. I wear “semidry” paddle jacket over wetsuit. Works well if the air temp is over 50′
StringOnAStick
@Soprano2: We have a new friend here who is a paving supervisor (he’s super liberal, which has to be hell in a field full of MAGAT coworkers), and they can’t hire enough truck drivers. Some of their subcontractors have idle trucks that need to be working but there is no one to drive them. I don’t want to see declining hiring standards for people driving huge, heavy and car-crushing vehicles, plus I’m sure the companies that need to hire them don’t want the legal exposure of dropping standards and then getting sued when the bad driver hurts or kills someone through negligence.
I have had to deal with a lot of contractors lately, and every one of them brings up the “no one wants to work, unemployment pays better” crap; I expect it so I have counter arguments ready now, like the lack of truck drivers our friend is dealing with, or that when factories closed last spring, people found other work that they like better, there’s no day care/school available for child care, restaurant work is hard work for crappy pay, and everyone is trying to hire at once when unemployment is already pretty low; I need to add supply chains being a mess to the list. Of those, I have found that the most effective at getting them to think about it outside of RW hate radio framing is (1) restaurant work is often a crappy job (maybe because they know personally from being on either side of that transaction), and the experience of our friend in not being able to find truck drivers; the latter especially.
They are convinced that it’s all minimum wage workers sitting at home and making it take too long to get their drive through order at Chick fil A. I showed one contractor the 2 block high retaining wall I just built, and his response was “wow, do you want a job? No one wants to work anymore”. The truck driver argument definitely hit home with him.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Oh YES, you are so correct ~!!~
I would be so happy to work for free, all I want is a tiny shack with a leaky tin roof, and all the corn-meal mush I can eat. What delux living that would be~!!!~
And be required to vote a straight ticket Republican ballot, because that will be the only party eligible to run candidates, ever… That way no one has to think about awful terrible elections!
/s
Elizabelle
Is anyone working on a post about Bob Dylan’s birthday today? The big 80.
Could be a really good topic. Except for this very good morning into afternoon thread, the rest of BJ is kind of dead threads right now. Only so much one can say about ads and Gordon Sunderland …
Soprano2
@The Thin Black Duke: I know there are sucky employers – I’ve had them, and my husband worked for one for 20 years. I don’t think I’m as unusual as you might think, though – lost of small business people are close to their employees and care about them.
Ruckus
@Viva BrisVegas:
I call it eating their own bullshit but then my language skills have always included rather visual representations.
Soprano2
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: OK, sorry I misconstrued what you said. I guess it struck me wrong because I’ve worried a lot about my employees this whole time, and it sounded as if you thought all employers just didn’t give a shit about what happened to their workers because of Covid. You might not believe this, but in my experience quite a few small business owners really do care about what happens to their employees. Places like WalMart, not so much most of the time.
Man, you have no idea…….
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: That’s the kind I have. like you said, not great for a real turn in a spin cycle, but thanks to a detached eardrum I can’t do that kind of water anymore anyway. I’ve tried to have it reattached twice and it doesn’t stay.
Gravenstone
@J R in WV: I actually preferred third shift. No boss, almost no meetings, and shift premium baby! Worked it for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, I got dragged back to first when I changed roles into a position that included more regular customer interaction.
Ruckus
@hueyplong:
Of course his only courses of action have always been to distract attention from all his other harmful actions, because that’s all he knows, are actions that are harmful to not only him, but everyone else. His “fans” only see them as harmful to others, but the reality is that they are harmful to everyone. This is the major fault of conservatism is that it is, at the end of the day, harmful to everyone. We, like everyone else, often don’t see that their policies even hurt them, longtime because in the end they destroy everything. Conservatism is the concept that what was is better than what will be, so let’s always go backwards. Except life doesn’t work like that, especially now that technology allows us to learn more, do things like medicine better, but conservatives want life to only be better for them and their policies fight even that. It’s what happens when one walks around with their head located in a personal cavity, and can only see one thing and no one outside their limited vision.
Ruckus
I think that a majority of the problem is that conservatives have hate as a major policy concept. They always look for someone else to blame for everything – the world would be a far better place if we just didn’t have _________________.
They do not and don’t want to change their thinking that hate and greed are the staples of a great political party.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Soprano2: My wife is in health care which hasn’t been any picnic either. IMO we should have given both restaurants (and other hospitality and retail businesses) and their employees more of a lifeline via government support. I will say that most of the restaurants around here seem to have survived.
Mostly I’m tired of the GOP being able to create some element of commonly accepted “fact” like it’s generous unemployment benefits and laziness at fault because some businesses can’t find workers out of thin air. And then everyone just starts talking about it without talking to the other side of the equation to see if it’s really true. Basically what we’re dealing with is a transition period that’s going to be bumpy on the road back to full normality. We’re going to see supply bottlenecks on various fronts for a few months or more. Some of those may be short term labor shortages, or if the labor market gets tight enough there may be longer term labor shortages. The tightest labor market I’ve lived through was the mid to late 1990s but the restaurant industry still seemed plenty able to hire enough employees even though kids straight out of college were getting pretty decent sized signing bonuses in certain industries.
I also wonder, when it comes to server staff, if they’re not waiting a bit longer because they’re walking past restaurants and they’re still far from full up in a lot of cases. When you depend on tips for most of your pay you need a full house to make decent money and if people aren’t coming back in droves to dine inside yet, then the staff isn’t going to come back in droves because they’re not going to make any money serving 2-3 tables of an evening. I’ve walked by a few local places on weekend evenings lately and they’re not exactly packed with people.
J R in WV
My grandfather didn’t want unions in his business. He had a devious and evil plan to prevent them from making any headway — he paid experienced workers a good bit over union scale. Imagine that ruthless and evil technique~!~!~!~
No name
@TomatoQueen: I and my two kitties are sending every possible good thought your way. There is nothing harder to deal with when it comes to a beloved furball.
Craig
@Soprano2:
I’ve been lucky enough to be in an area where all the bars and restaurants I live at are able to be pretty stable, staff all get paid well, and most of the owners/managers work shifts. They sketch out the staffing, people have regular shifts, but leave it up to staff to make sure the shifts are covered. That flexibility is really important to the staff, cause they know if the dog suddenly has to go to the vet, or they want to go hiking for a few days, or need extra study time, or kid emergency that they can get their shifts covered. I’ve known people that have taken contract jobs for six months and got their shifts covered for it and the boss is cool with it because the respect goes both ways. It’s surprising that it works, but it does.
You’re Pub sounds like a place I’d enjoy.
Mike G
Republicans = Cheap Labor ideology.
If you work for a living, they are not your friend.