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Biden Denies Workers Are Turning Down Jobs to Collect Unemployment

There was a similar piece yesterday evening at one of my local news sources. It focused on the restaurant/hospitality industries locally, and the point was made that unemployment benefits are good enough not to motivate people to return to work.

A member of my household works for a winery with an upscale restaurant that has branches in other parts of my state. In between layoffs and furloughs and mandatory drug-testing and across job positions, they can't find anybody--not maintenance people, production line folks, vineyard workers, dishwashers, or servers. They're struggling to keep going and participated in a virtual community-wide job fair last week. Not one potential hire showed up, and I don't mean just for the winery--I mean, not one person showed up period to participate in the job fair. Not even one.
Have they tried raising the wages offered?
 
Oh, I believe it. People aren't traveling or eating out the way they used to, so the hospitality industry's hurting makes sense. But it's more than that, at least in my community. I don't wish to link, so I will paraphrase what a local Hilton manager was quoted in the source I referred to above. He talks about people who apply but fail to show up for interviews or are just no-call/no-show, and he says a big part of this is the enhanced federal unemployment benefits and claims that workers are able to stay home and draw in more money than from going to work.

What I found most interesting is his statement that this is creating a weird new culture for our society. I don't know whether this is true, but if so, I wonder what the consequences will be.
Over the weekend, I heard an interview with a restaurant owner voicing the same frustration about having interviews set up, getting his hopes up, but then the majority of the people end up being no shows to the interview.
 
You just need to understand what Joe is saying.

He's telling us that people aren't staying on unemployment because they make more that way than actually cooking fries. They are staying away from those jobs because the cheap bastard employers are refusing to pay $75k/yr for cooking fries.

Is that the argument? Are you sure? I think you’re making that up.
 
One chef gets it...
It was, for many unemployed restaurant workers, a scary and uncertain time, but also one that may have reordered priorities about what matters. For some, it was the first time in years they had spent dinnertime with family or exercised regularly, said Emma Neal, a bar manager at Beltran’s restaurants. She was off for two months, waiting to be called back, an unexpected hiatus she spent training her 8-week-old puppy and having quality time with her two older dogs. “It was the first time having nights off for some, so they aren’t in a rush to get back,” she said from behind the bar, her mask muffling her voice. She understands workers’ hesitancy to return: “There’s that straight uncertainty.”
Some restaurant workers pivoted to other industries, grabbing Amazon fulfillment center jobs and driving for grocery delivery. A year later, according to Beltran’s corporate executive chef, Phil Bryant, many of his former colleagues are asking themselves, “If I can make $17 per hour at an Amazon warehouse but only $14 per hour as a line cook, a notoriously hot, stressful, intense job, why would I do that?” And more importantly, he said, they are asking, “If this whole industry can deteriorate overnight and leave everyone unemployed, is this really stable enough to go back to?” (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)




An awful lot of people in an awful lot of industries found out just how insecure their jobs are. Between that and the atrocious pay they were getting, many decide to try something else. But Trumpists need their lies.

🤷
 
He's telling us that people aren't staying on unemployment because they make more that way than actually cooking fries. They are staying away from those jobs because the cheap bastard employers are refusing to pay $75k/yr for cooking fries.
Anyone making more than 31K a year loses by staying on unemployment benefits. Under 31K they break even or make more excluding days care and transportation costs.
 
Refreshing....a company using its head in order to get back to normal operations.

This is a market correction. The super capitalists are super angry about it because they don’t mind capping salaries as long as it’s working class that gets capped.

Yknow, cause they’re the “Beer and Blue jeans party” now.
 
You just need to understand what Joe is saying.

He's telling us that people aren't staying on unemployment because they make more that way than actually cooking fries. They are staying away from those jobs because the cheap bastard employers are refusing to pay $75k/yr for cooking fries.
Well I suppose they'll have to pay better wages then, yes?
 
Do you think the Democrats should increase unemployment benefits even further to see how many more businesses they can get to fail?

There's no evidence that the $300/week is substantially altering peoples' decisions to go back to work or not. It's just not that much money.

People want to work. They are just fed up with being overworked at a shitty job with shitty managers for subpar pay. Right wingers shit all over fast food workers, every day on this message board. "It doesn't require skill!" Go ****in try it. Try it for one week. Then tell me the pathetic paycheck at the end is worth it.
 
8.1 million job openings. Highest number ever.
 
No, because businesses can't compete with supplying a paycheck for no work.
I guess someone else will come along and make a business that can compete then.
 
I guess someone else will come along and make a business that can compete then.
Not for small business owners. Which greatly outnumber corporations and big business, who are more likely to absorb the cost.
 
Not for small business owners. Which greatly outnumber corporations and big business, who are more likely to absorb the cost.
Everything we do is to serve the Corporate State, it seems that "small business owners" only come out when labor rights are being considered.

If a business needs labor, they're going to have to offer compensation appropriate to draw labor in. If business needs A LOT of labor, then the power is on the side of the employee or potential employee to market their labor at the appropriate market values.
 
Your loaded question aside, I do not think increased unemployment benefits should be extended farther than they have been and there is not even a proposal on the table to do so. As is the case with most of the Right these days you are yammering for the sake of yammering.
It was stupid to do it the last time. They knew it but did it anyway. Now that everyone sees that, of course there's not another proposal. Instead we have this BS from Democrats about it being the fault of businesses that nobody wants to work.
 
$600 dollars a week is not enough to live on much less turn down a good job.
I know in my neighborhood when the young people got their stimulus check the parties went on late into the night. Plus nobody social distanced or wore a mask. Out of curiosity I asked what the celebration was and was told straight up it was a stimulus party. They even invited me over for beer and food.
 
Everything we do is to serve the Corporate State, it seems that "small business owners" only come out when labor rights are being considered.

If a business needs labor, they're going to have to offer compensation appropriate to draw labor in. If business needs A LOT of labor, then the power is on the side of the employee or potential employee to market their labor at the appropriate market values.

Again, there is no market labor when the government is providing money, free of labor. Free market labor applies to other competing businesses in which pulls from the labor pool. But not to worry. I do not for see the government providing unemployment forever, unless they want the economy to collapse.
 
Again, there is no market labor when the government is providing money, free of labor. Free market labor applies to other competing businesses in which pulls from the labor pool. But not to worry. I do not for see the government providing unemployment forever, unless they want the economy to collapse.
We have support systems, yes, so that we're not throwing folk out onto the street. If somehow a business can't manage to scrape enough together to offer more than bare minimum then they probably ain't gonna be around too much longer anyway.
 
It was stupid to do it the last time. They knew it but did it anyway. Now that everyone sees that, of course there's not another proposal. Instead we have this BS from Democrats about it being the fault of businesses that nobody wants to work.
Hindsight is 20/20. Covid Recovery passed on 3/6/2021, fully 2 months ago. Care to look at our total vaccinated numbers on that date, how about total hospitalizations, new cases, deaths? Want to take a look at those numbers.

Here I will help you out. All of them were worse than the last period before our largest surge of the virus and there was still massive anti-vaccine sentiment that has just now started to flesh itself out. The petulant adults of the RIGHT and the petulant children of all political stripes seem to finally be running out of anti-vaccine steam.

None of this was going to be easy and if there was ever a place where the Right's propensity for easy black and white answers does not belong ITS HERE.
 
We have support systems, yes, so that we're not throwing folk out onto the street. If somehow a business can't manage to scrape enough together to offer more than bare minimum then they probably ain't gonna be around too much longer anyway.

Jobs are available everywhere now, so throwing out in the streets is playing to semantics.
 
Jobs are available everywhere now, so throwing out in the streets is playing to semantics.
What jobs at what wages? The Right simply insists on making black and white assumptions and providing easy answers to complicated questions.
 
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