The fast food place near my office has “$14/hr” emblazoned on their marquee right now. Minimum wage is already moot almost everywhere, even without it being raised
Which is IMHO a direct result of people deciding to quit en mass partially due to government handouts during the current Pandemic (and some other factors). But that is a good thing as it kinda simulated for a short while how people would behave if there was a proper social safety net in place.
I don’t really see the problem with part-time jobs though. Sure if you have a desolate and easy to exploit population then things like zero hour contracts and such shit is bound to happen. But the problem there isn’t the part-time job, but that people are forced to take such jobs. In any reasonably wealthy society that is just atrocious.
Imagine a scenario where grocery stores sold meals/food/ingredients in portions too small for even a single person. At that point, people would probably be compelled (I like this word better than “forced”) to buy them. Because they were compelled to do so, the prices would rise.
There is a finite amount of food, some of which is packaged in portions-too-small. Because of the less-than-widespread availability of normal-sized portions, some people simply have to get the too-small-portions… it’s all that’s left. Since people buy them at inflated prices, this causes food distributors to package yet more in the too-small-portions, higher profit margin. At some point, some equilibrium is reached, but by the time that happens it’s a large fraction that is sold Too Small™, and even the remainder carries a premium (since many people who don’t want to be gouged are bidding on a limited supply of normal portions).
In such a situation, it would be a legitimate power of government to put a stop to the nonsense and say “you’re not allowed to do that”. It doesn’t do so currently, because there’s no need to do that. For food. That situation is a little far-fetched, it is some local minimum that wouldn’t be easy to reach from where we are now, but would be quite sticky and hard to leave if circumstances ever did drive things there.
I think we’re stuck in that local minima now, for employment. If some business legitimately only needs 15 or 20 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to disallow this. If there is a business that needs 400 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to split that up among 20 part-time workers unless they are trying to manipulate the labor market.
It may be counter-intuitive that it’s possible to manipulate the market that way, and I doubt very much that most of them are perfectly aware that they’re doing it… but so many are partially aware of it. How many stories have I read on r/antiwork where someone’s griping that their manager is fucking with them by giving them zero-hour weeks and so on. Many more offer part-time because it sidesteps the requirement to offer medical insurance.
Since at least the first Bush term, I’ve heard the joke “the economy’s so great, everyone has a job followed up by the second guy saying yeh I know I have two of them”. This is a big deal, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And changing it might make a big difference.
Hmm, yeah that does seem to be a problem in a limited segment of the labour market.
However in Europe I think it is more common that employees want to have partime jobs and for various reasons the employers prefer to only hire full-time.
Which is IMHO a direct result of people deciding to quit en mass partially due to government handouts during the current Pandemic (and some other factors). But that is a good thing as it kinda simulated for a short while how people would behave if there was a proper social safety net in place.
I don’t really see the problem with part-time jobs though. Sure if you have a desolate and easy to exploit population then things like zero hour contracts and such shit is bound to happen. But the problem there isn’t the part-time job, but that people are forced to take such jobs. In any reasonably wealthy society that is just atrocious.
Imagine a scenario where grocery stores sold meals/food/ingredients in portions too small for even a single person. At that point, people would probably be compelled (I like this word better than “forced”) to buy them. Because they were compelled to do so, the prices would rise.
There is a finite amount of food, some of which is packaged in portions-too-small. Because of the less-than-widespread availability of normal-sized portions, some people simply have to get the too-small-portions… it’s all that’s left. Since people buy them at inflated prices, this causes food distributors to package yet more in the too-small-portions, higher profit margin. At some point, some equilibrium is reached, but by the time that happens it’s a large fraction that is sold Too Small™, and even the remainder carries a premium (since many people who don’t want to be gouged are bidding on a limited supply of normal portions).
In such a situation, it would be a legitimate power of government to put a stop to the nonsense and say “you’re not allowed to do that”. It doesn’t do so currently, because there’s no need to do that. For food. That situation is a little far-fetched, it is some local minimum that wouldn’t be easy to reach from where we are now, but would be quite sticky and hard to leave if circumstances ever did drive things there.
I think we’re stuck in that local minima now, for employment. If some business legitimately only needs 15 or 20 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to disallow this. If there is a business that needs 400 hours of labor per week, then there is no reason to split that up among 20 part-time workers unless they are trying to manipulate the labor market.
It may be counter-intuitive that it’s possible to manipulate the market that way, and I doubt very much that most of them are perfectly aware that they’re doing it… but so many are partially aware of it. How many stories have I read on r/antiwork where someone’s griping that their manager is fucking with them by giving them zero-hour weeks and so on. Many more offer part-time because it sidesteps the requirement to offer medical insurance.
Since at least the first Bush term, I’ve heard the joke “the economy’s so great, everyone has a job followed up by the second guy saying yeh I know I have two of them”. This is a big deal, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And changing it might make a big difference.
Hmm, yeah that does seem to be a problem in a limited segment of the labour market.
However in Europe I think it is more common that employees want to have partime jobs and for various reasons the employers prefer to only hire full-time.