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Yeah, this picture seems really odd to me. Cambria is seeing soaring demand for their products; they're having trouble keeping up, to the point that they're ac

Yeah, this picture seems really odd to me. Cambria is seeing soaring demand for their products; they're having trouble keeping up, to the point that they're actually losing sales and profit, because they can't staff up their factory; for the most part they don't require skilled labor; so they recently raised wages from $16.66 to a whopping $18/hr. Also their employees complain of poor morale and not being listened to. And on the other hand, they have an attendance problem. So it sounds to me like, they can't hire people because they're stingy assholes. Am I missing something? Seems like if they set out to share their success with their employees instead of keeping it to themselves, they would have better luck. So pay an attractive wage, like $24/hr, and treat people well (and listen to them), and then if an employee has an attendance problem you fire them, because you're not paying that kind of money for crappy employees either. Maybe someone can explain why I'm full of it, but from what I read here I have a hard time feeling very sympathetic.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>So it sounds to me like, they can't hire people because they're stingy assholes. Am I missing something? I don't think you're missing anything. I think that almost 40 years of nigh-state-enforced labor glut have made employers very, very entitled about hiring. Now that demographics are running the other way (as the article notes), with the total workforce actually shrinking slightly, they're being bitten on the ass by that sense of entitlement. A trained, punctual, polite, healthy, functional labor force does not spring from nowhere! It springs from years to decades of cooperation between employers, communities, and organized labor. Or from sufficient graft to hire prison labor... which is still only mostly going to work in the "slave states" and only for extremely low-skilled labor. You can't have a shrinking total labor force, degradation of workers' communities, and easy hiring.
- Futurebot 10y ago
  Exactly. Perceptions of there being a large reserve of army of labor lasts far beyond the end of its existence, and employers not only expect it to be there, but actually have it start impacting their worldview in some cases: the "you should be happy to have a job / I could replace you tomorrow" attitude isn't exactly a rational business calculation.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>So it sounds to me like, they can't hire people because they're stingy assholes. Am I missing something? I don't think you're missing anything. I think that almost 40 years of nigh-state-enforced labor glut have made employers very, very entitled about hiring. Now that demographics are running the other way (as the article notes), with the total workforce actually shrinking slightly, they're being bitten on the ass by that sense of entitlement. A trained, punctual, polite, healthy, functional labor force does not spring from nowhere! It springs from years to decades of cooperation between employers, communities, and organized labor. Or from sufficient graft to hire prison labor... which is still only mostly going to work in the "slave states" and only for extremely low-skilled labor. You can't have a shrinking total labor force, degradation of workers' communities, and easy hiring.

Futurebot 10y ago
Exactly. Perceptions of there being a large reserve of army of labor lasts far beyond the end of its existence, and employers not only expect it to be there, but actually have it start impacting their worldview in some cases: the "you should be happy to have a job / I could replace you tomorrow" attitude isn't exactly a rational business calculation.