this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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This is why big business and the government want a “mild” recession so badly…unemployment is below 4% right now so employees have the upper hand in a lot of things (wages, union negotiations, working from home). Push the unemployment back to 8% or so and big business is hoping the workers lose most of their leverage on these issues.
I wish I could say you're wrong and that's tinfoil hat paranoid... but sadly maybe not.
Right now there's a resurgence of the workers rights and unionization movement, and low unemployment helps push that. Businesses need their employees more than the employees need their employers and the smart employers are skimming the cream of the crop.
I don't think federal government gives a crap but local governments in business districts are pushing return to office as hard as everyone. They see their (way overvalued) commercial office districts sitting empty, and every worker that doesn't commute is a worker not riding the metro / buying Starbucks / buying a paper / otherwise stimulating the downtown economy.
Smarter cities are starting to realize that their downtown property values are a fucking bubble that is not sustainable, and they're exploring turning office space into desperately needed apartments. But that takes time and isn't easy and it involves hosing a lot of commercial real estate developers and their investors who invested on absurd property values.
Fact is though- real estate (especially in downtown districts) is a bubble that's long due to be popped. There's no valid reasons humans have to cluster together like that, the country's more than big enough to spread people out and not have people paying through the nose for shitty apartments.
Regarding the unionizing, for me, a big push towards it was seeing what's happening in many companies without one. A good union can help in so many ways. I've seen the writing on the wall with some situations that have happened over the last 5 to 10 years. Bad companies are trying to remove a lot of worker protections, and it feels like we really need to remind them that they aren't invulnerable.
My union for example, has some of the best employment lawyers in the country, and we don't have to pay on the spot if we need one. Previously, fighting a wrongful dismissal over unsafe working conditions would have taken time and money that many of us don't have. Now, we know we won't be screwed.
I would argue that a good company should want a union. They protect and guide both "sides", and if they're doing everything right, a union really shouldn't be a hassle for a company to deal with.
I heard a great quote once- this came from a guy running a maintenance operation for JetBlue back before they had labor issues. He proudly talked about how they paid their people well and treated them well and thus were one of the last non-union aircraft maintenance shops in the area, and in his words, 'Every shop around here that's gone union has deserved it'.
The problem is now the same thing it was in the early to mid 1900s when the labor movement first took off- companies view employees as disposable cogs in the machine, so the more work they can get out of each worker for the less pay, the less overhead they have to spend on adequate relief staffing and healthcare and PTO and whatnot, the better. Thus the best situation is high unemployment with desperate workers, where everybody NEEDS the job so they can balance the pay rate with hiring so people get fed up and quit at the same rate as they hire new people. And that way if someone gets sick they can just lay them off and not pay extra healthcare or whatever.
Of course that situation is great for the company, but shitty for the country. It requires a nation of wage-slaves. And that's a bad way to run a 'prosperous' nation.