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I have a different take that most of the other comments here. I think what we are seeing is a direct reaction to what happened in 2020/2021 with many non-skille

I have a different take that most of the other comments here. I think what we are seeing is a direct reaction to what happened in 2020/2021 with many non-skilled positions. We had the "great resignation" where employees were the ones holding the cards. Many places like McDonalds and other low-wage jobs had essentially bidding wars for employees and if you weren't keeping your wages at the current market rate, folks would quickly bounce to greener pastures. Some employers rightly saw this as them just needing to pay more, offer greater benefits, and attract employees in a "positive" way. But for every business that did it in the "positive" way, you had many more that did it in a "negative" way by coercing their existing workforce to stay. If you're running a McDonalds and you're paying your employees $12/hr while all your competitors are going to $15/hr, your only option for retention is to either raise your wages or to coerce your employees from leaving. Some places did it the right way by offering more money because that what the market demands, others did it in a coercive way of making employees pay for training and other BS.

conductr 4y ago
This is my answer and I see it in the board room. Management feeling a lack of control as the leverage has shifted to workers is a major point of contention right now. Management is responsible for controlling costs and they have basically no control. They're also rich enough they are tone deaf to what inflation does to people at the lowest income levels. Generally they're also old enough to be tone deaf of all of the economic problems that younger generations have faced (student loans, underemployment, gig economy, etc). They also usually like to control productivity, so this is where the production of salaried employees comes into question - especially around WFH where the company/management is not bought in on that construct. A recent example that almost made me laugh in the meeting, some of our senior living businesses have had major staffing issues (the industry pays nothing to do what is a difficult and disgusting job). Employees basically gave up working overtime or picking up extra shifts, etc. When asked why we don't leverage them more, the operations guys gave a couple politically correct answers but they kept getting drilled by some members of senior management (basically telling him to do what ever is needed to force these people to work and do it with no extra budget! ) so the guy said something like "look, we pay these people $12/hr to wipe old people's asses. They all have second and third jobs and we're almost certainly not even their #1 employer if given a choice. They literally can not get called in or pick up extra shifts when it's needed by us. They're already working a shift somewhere else. We need to pay them enough to give a damn or overstaff so there's always someone available. Both costs money but our businesses problems are not theirs so you choose"

conductr 4y ago

This is my answer and I see it in the board room. Management feeling a lack of control as the leverage has shifted to workers is a major point of contention right now. Management is responsible for controlling costs and they have basically no control. They're also rich enough they are tone deaf to what inflation does to people at the lowest income levels. Generally they're also old enough to be tone deaf of all of the economic problems that younger generations have faced (student loans, underemployment, gig economy, etc). They also usually like to control productivity, so this is where the production of salaried employees comes into question - especially around WFH where the company/management is not bought in on that construct. A recent example that almost made me laugh in the meeting, some of our senior living businesses have had major staffing issues (the industry pays nothing to do what is a difficult and disgusting job). Employees basically gave up working overtime or picking up extra shifts, etc. When asked why we don't leverage them more, the operations guys gave a couple politically correct answers but they kept getting drilled by some members of senior management (basically telling him to do what ever is needed to force these people to work and do it with no extra budget! ) so the guy said something like "look, we pay these people $12/hr to wipe old people's asses. They all have second and third jobs and we're almost certainly not even their #1 employer if given a choice. They literally can not get called in or pick up extra shifts when it's needed by us. They're already working a shift somewhere else. We need to pay them enough to give a damn or overstaff so there's always someone available. Both costs money but our businesses problems are not theirs so you choose"