5 ms·

"Great resignation" is mostly that, a narrative. Workers aren't actually becoming powerful. They're just slightly less powerless, and everyone knows it's transi

by cs137 4y ago

"Great resignation" is mostly that, a narrative. Workers aren't actually becoming powerful. They're just slightly less powerless, and everyone knows it's transient--barring an overthrow of corporate capitalism, but I think we all know that such things are unpredictable--which is why people are itchy to move now before things go back to how they were and everyone is stuck in place for a while. It's good for cappie PR to create a narrative of empowered, entitled workers. It's just not true, though. Most of the current worker attrition has to do with COVID-related disability (long COVID), gas prices, and displacements caused by rising rents. It's not that people are suddenly deciding not to work because the Capitalism Fairy is putting seed capital under their pillows--it's that people who had few options now have even fewer.

beebmam 4y ago
Boomers are leaving the labor market without as many people replacing them, creating a labor crunch. COVID accelerated that process. It's not much more complicated than that
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Some are, some are coming back https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-workforce-171922301.html https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-wor...
  - WJW 4y ago
    Sooner or later they will leave the labor market for good though, because dead people cannot work.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Indeed, 1.8 million people over 55 die every year in the US.
      - metadat 4y ago
        And there are 3.6 million new births every year in the USA.. where does that leave us?
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyramid-infographic/ https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyra...
        metadat 4y ago
        Hey tmtd! Looks like our best bet might be to "hopefully" start hiring infants and young children into the workforce to make up for the attrition. Heaven help us :)
  - yardie 4y ago
    Early boomers had to push back retirement because of 2008 GFC. They are permanently exiting the market, now. Later boomers are going part-time or being selective. They aren't going back to blue collar and that's where things are completely fucked.
- cs137 4y ago
  That's a factor too, and I think that as Millennials and Xers realize that the BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review because the boss sees you as a friend rather than an exploitable resource--aren't going to be allocated to them, but written out of existence, we will see an acceleration of the discouragement and "presenteeism" that are already endemic. The only reason we haven't seen 85% of society give up all at once is that some people still hold out hope that the BoomerJobs, once vacated, will be given to them. That isn't going to happen, though. People work "hard" in our society, because they have no other choice, since there is no social safety net and employers can do whatever they want in this country, but no one really cares anymore. This has manifested itself as survivable mediocrity for quite a while, but as soon as our society finds itself in any kind of serious crisis it will collapse. It almost did, during COVID.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    > BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review Yes, boomers had better pay where a middle class blue collar job could afford you a nice house and kids in the suburbs, but this idea you quote, I'd need much more data on because the entire culture of being a boomer is much more top down, listen to your boss, do what your told then the modern culture.
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      Yeah but the reward for "listen to your boss and do what you're told" was often cushy overpaid jobs where you go golfing a couple of times a week with your boss and coworkers because you're all buddies. As long as you brown nosed your boss just enough.
      - cs137 4y ago
        Plus, you only had to brownnose for a couple afternoons. Once they decided they liked you, you just had to be not insufferable.
    - 4y ago
galdosdi 4y ago
I do not agree that the popular message about increasing labor power in the labor market is beneficial for the capital/employer class. A laborer will more easily dabble with unions or with negotiating harder, etc, when they feel the market is good for them. In fact, that's exactly what we have been seeing, an uptick in union activity. Even if the underlying market strength were not real, it could be a self fulfilling prophecy. If anything the reverse is true, and a general message that it's hard to find a job is much more benefecial for the capital/employer class, who would then find laborers who are happy to accept anything they can get and have no interest in taking the risk necessary to start or join a union PS: The last time unions started doing well in the US was also a time when labor was in scarce supply just after WWII. Europe had been destroyed and the USA was the China of the day, but even moreso, in that almost the entire surviving industrial capacity of the world was in the USA. A laborer in the USA, able and willing to operate a factory machine, was thus in terrific, just terrific demand. Unionization happens in good for labor times, to prepare for bad for labor times, not the other way around.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
magicroot75 4y ago
It's not about workers actually becoming more powerful. It's about them more frequently exercising it.
Jistern 4y ago

by cs137 4y ago

beebmam 4y ago

Boomers are leaving the labor market without as many people replacing them, creating a labor crunch. COVID accelerated that process. It's not much more complicated than that

Apocryphon 4y ago
Some are, some are coming back https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-workforce-171922301.html https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-wor...
- WJW 4y ago
  Sooner or later they will leave the labor market for good though, because dead people cannot work.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Indeed, 1.8 million people over 55 die every year in the US.
    - metadat 4y ago
      And there are 3.6 million new births every year in the USA.. where does that leave us?
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyramid-infographic/ https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyra...
        metadat 4y ago
        Hey tmtd! Looks like our best bet might be to "hopefully" start hiring infants and young children into the workforce to make up for the attrition. Heaven help us :)
- yardie 4y ago
  Early boomers had to push back retirement because of 2008 GFC. They are permanently exiting the market, now. Later boomers are going part-time or being selective. They aren't going back to blue collar and that's where things are completely fucked.
cs137 4y ago
That's a factor too, and I think that as Millennials and Xers realize that the BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review because the boss sees you as a friend rather than an exploitable resource--aren't going to be allocated to them, but written out of existence, we will see an acceleration of the discouragement and "presenteeism" that are already endemic. The only reason we haven't seen 85% of society give up all at once is that some people still hold out hope that the BoomerJobs, once vacated, will be given to them. That isn't going to happen, though. People work "hard" in our society, because they have no other choice, since there is no social safety net and employers can do whatever they want in this country, but no one really cares anymore. This has manifested itself as survivable mediocrity for quite a while, but as soon as our society finds itself in any kind of serious crisis it will collapse. It almost did, during COVID.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review Yes, boomers had better pay where a middle class blue collar job could afford you a nice house and kids in the suburbs, but this idea you quote, I'd need much more data on because the entire culture of being a boomer is much more top down, listen to your boss, do what your told then the modern culture.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    Yeah but the reward for "listen to your boss and do what you're told" was often cushy overpaid jobs where you go golfing a couple of times a week with your boss and coworkers because you're all buddies. As long as you brown nosed your boss just enough.
    - cs137 4y ago
      Plus, you only had to brownnose for a couple afternoons. Once they decided they liked you, you just had to be not insufferable.
  - 4y ago

galdosdi 4y ago

I do not agree that the popular message about increasing labor power in the labor market is beneficial for the capital/employer class. A laborer will more easily dabble with unions or with negotiating harder, etc, when they feel the market is good for them. In fact, that's exactly what we have been seeing, an uptick in union activity. Even if the underlying market strength were not real, it could be a self fulfilling prophecy. If anything the reverse is true, and a general message that it's hard to find a job is much more benefecial for the capital/employer class, who would then find laborers who are happy to accept anything they can get and have no interest in taking the risk necessary to start or join a union PS: The last time unions started doing well in the US was also a time when labor was in scarce supply just after WWII. Europe had been destroyed and the USA was the China of the day, but even moreso, in that almost the entire surviving industrial capacity of the world was in the USA. A laborer in the USA, able and willing to operate a factory machine, was thus in terrific, just terrific demand. Unionization happens in good for labor times, to prepare for bad for labor times, not the other way around.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

magicroot75 4y ago

It's not about workers actually becoming more powerful. It's about them more frequently exercising it.

Jistern 4y ago