• LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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      6 months ago

      Do labor shortages even exist? Usually when I hear this claim with respect to the US economy it’s complete bullshit.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        No, there is no such thing as a labor shortage. There is only employers’ unwillingness to pay market wages.

          • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            So I work in industrial automation, and live in a high cost of living part of Canada.

            Back around 2017 or so, companies said we were in a labor shortage. I sold a few robots to factories that couldn’t keep people in a few of their jobs (I’m thinking of two different small factories). These are tasks that are so boring that people lose their minds. The factories would hire someone and they’d quit after a week.

            When the cost of continuously hiring new people became apparent, they bought robots.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I guarantee that there was some wage that would’ve kept those employees on the job. It might have been unpalatably high for the people in charge, but it certainly existed.

              • BluesF@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Personally I’d rather see those jobs done by robots. No one wants that job, let the robot do it.

              • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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                6 months ago

                I’m not sure it’s that simple. I think if you offered someone 150k to do the job, they’d do it for long enough to build some savings then quit and live off of that while they found something more fulfilling to do.

                I think that really the only way to keep people in that job is for them to have terrible alternatives.

                The job was to put a small piece of metal into a machine (brake press), push a button, and take the now slightly bent piece of metal out of the machine.

                The metal is part of a hinge for something like a knee brace. The factory makes a bunch of metal components for different things but didn’t make the whole knee brace.

                I guess the company could try to get a higher price for the part, or just say they don’t want that contract… but people need knee braces. So yeah, I don’t feel bad about selling them a robot. Some jobs are just better done by machines. The issue is wealth concentration.

                Maybe a worker’s council could have found a way to make the job less bad.

                • grue@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Wanting to automate something because it’s better/cheaper is very different from falsely claiming that there’s a “labor shortage” because they allegedly can’t find anybody to do the job, though. There’s no need for them to be fucking self-servingly dishonest about it.

            • Cypher@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Interesting but anecdotal and not necessarily representative of the bigger picture.

            • niartenyaw@midwest.social
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              6 months ago

              while just looking at the scenario itself, that’s all pretty fair. but the company’s efforts to commoditize its labor directly brought that boring job into existence.

      • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Sectorial and regional labor shortages are real. In a population the size of the US, national labor shortages don’t— it’s just wages below what the labor market determines appropriate.

        • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          For example? I don’t know of a single so-called labor shortage that wouldn’t be solved by higher wages or better working conditions.

          • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Anything that requires licensure and/or certification, it’s common in medicine and the skilled trades for this reason.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              all that those hoops means is that the lag to fill them is a year or two. which sounds like a long time but there’s always another graduating class coming along, if the employers are willing to pay competitive wages.

              And that’s a big fucking goddamn IF.

            • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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              6 months ago

              In most cases this will be easily solved by on-the-job training, but with doctors there is also the added problem of a bureaucracy that has acted deliberately to restrict the supply of doctors, so as to protect the wages and prestige of that profession. That’s not to say that these problems don’t exist, but describing them as labor shortages that can be solved simply by importing more bodies is misleading.

              • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                On the job training doesn’t solve this at all. These are jobs that take significant theoretical and practical training. You can take any idiot and give them some CS classes and boom, software engineer. Nursing, MRI Technicians, CPAs, etc. need actual education and training.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          That’s not a labor shortage, though. Big Ag is just too stingy to pay enough for non-migrants to want to do it.

        • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          I don’t agree. There are tons of people in Florida who would be capable and willing to do manual labor, provides the wages and working conditions were better than alternatives. The ag economy depends on migrant workers because they are more desperate and therefore easier to exploit, which is more profitable.

          Also, the orange shortage specifically is more driven by a deadly disease introduced by global trade than any labor shortage.

  • satanmat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So. We the people, meat sacks who pay taxes; are paying $775/ day…

    TO WHAT CONTRACTOR? I’m guessing here, that cost is being paid to KBR? to house them. Just a guess?

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      My favorite quote will always be: “Blast off, it’s party time and we live in a fascist nation”

  • Truck_kun@beehaw.org
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    6 months ago

    Not if you add it to a non-dischargable debt the inmate has to repay, and attach any wages to repay it, including government assistance, such as welfare. ♻️♺

    /s

    • Tower@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      They don’t care about the cost if it means people they don’t like are being punished. The alternative could be half the price and they would still go this route.

      The cruelty is the point.

  • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    I don’t think this argument would go in the right direction, cause there’s plenty of Republican types who’ll just go ‘ok, then let’s just shoot them on sight, bullets are cheap’.

  • dillekant@slrpnk.net
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    6 months ago

    Watched this recently. “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of bubble gum”.

      • dillekant@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        I love how they’re like… frenemies during the fight, so three’s a bit where he grabs a metal pole and breaks a window of a car, realises what he’s done, says sorry, throws the pole away, and they go back to fisticuffs.