Jim Hightower has an article at ScheerPost on the so-called labor shortage in the US economy and the airy-fairy theorizing now coming from America’s
most wealthy about how to solve the problem.
I live in Montana. Another state with a multi-millionaire governor (Greg Gianforte) who is planning to terminate the $300/week of extra unemployment benefits granted by the federal government in its most recent relief package.
This is how callous capitalists force underpaid workers to return to low wage, high risk jobs. It’s a form of wage slavery similar to the death grip that old-fashion “company towns” once held over coal miners and railway workers.
It’s called CLASS WARFARE. The haves against the have-nots. It’s the American way.
As Heidi Shierholz writes at the Economic Policy Institute, there is actually little evidence that the economy is currently experiencing a labor shortage. While citing a number of different factors at work, she explains:
…the footprint of a bona fide labor shortage is rising wages. Employers who truly face shortages of suitable, interested workers will respond by bidding up wages to attract those workers, and employers whose workers are being poached will raise wages to retain their workers…
But, of course, capitalists like Gianforte don’t think to raise wages for the working class. Instead, they think of ways to control workers, strip them of the few benefits that have come their way (after a pandemic!), and empower the owners who refuse to pay their workers a living wage.
Personally, I would love to see statewide labor strikes in every state where rich governors have instituted such predatory anti-worker, pro-capitalist shenanigans rather than doing the obvious — institute a $15 minimum wage.
Hightower’s piece hits the nail on the head with a good resource for more information at the end. It’s entitle “There’s No ‘Labor Shortage.’ There’s a Wage Shortage.”
Here is it:
To find workers, there’s a free-enterprise solution right at employers’ fingertips: raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
At a recent congressional hearing on America’s so-called “labor shortage,” megabanker Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, offered this insight: “People actually have a lot of money, and they don’t particularly feel like going back to work.”
Dimon is a billionaire who may be unaware that most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Since COVID-19 hit, millions have lost their jobs, savings, and even homes. Relief measures have helped, but ordinary people are not exactly lollygagging around the house, counting their cash.
Instead of listening to the uber-rich class ignorance of Dimon (who pocketed $35 million in pay last year), Congress ought to be listening to actual workers explain why they’re not rushing back to the jobs being offered by restaurant chains and such.
These workers would point out that there’s no labor shortage — there’s a wage shortage.
More fundamentally, there’s a fairness shortage.
It was not lost on restaurant workers, for example, that while millions of them were jobless last year, their corporate CEOs were grabbing millions, buying yachts, and living large. Yet more than half of laid-off restaurant workers couldn’t even get unemployment benefits because their wages had been too low to qualify.
Then there’s the high risk of COVID exposure for restaurant employees, an appalling level of sexual harassment in their workplace, and demeaning treatment from abusive bosses and customers.
No surprise, then, that more than half of employees said in a recent survey that they’re not going back to those jobs. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.
So rather than demanding that government officials force workers to return to the old exploitative system, corporate giants should try the free-enterprise solution right at their fingertips: Raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
In short, create a place where people want to work! For a straightforward view from workers themselves, go to OneFairWage.site.
