For anyone who's been paying attention the last several years, we know the companies across the country are hiring more and more part-time positions instead of hiring full-time people and work. Instead of hiring one 40 hour person, they hire two 20 hour people.
Why?
Well, first, it gives the company more flexibility in the work schedule but second, and more important to the company, they don't want to pay benefits.
Health care, health insurance, dental insurance, vision, 401k, any and all of it, forget it, it's out the window.
How great for the companies, eh?
And with our health care system being the most expensive in the world and going ever higher, it's all the better for them.
To a point.
In the meantime, the people hired can't make a living wage.
How do you pay for rent and food and car and health and life insurance and, oh, take care of your children and pay for a car on a part-time wage?
We all know it's not possible.
And those expenses, I list above, are all without the additional need and yes, expenses of having a family.
So the middle class suffers. And shrinks. And more people get kicked down to a lower class status. Or, worst yet, become homeless.
But what the companies and corporations don't take into consideration is that this hurts them, too.
How do you get committed, intelligent, familiar, hard-working employees and associates unless or until you pay them fairly--and commit to them--with full-time work?
How do you get someone who's truly familiar with your products and/or services unless they're there long-term---years---and dedicated to those products and services and company?
The answer is, of course, you don't.
So your sales and/or profits naturally suffer. This is a matter of the old, old, very familiar situation of getting what you pay for.
Yet it's a spreading concept and situation in our nation.
This is no way to build and keep a middle class, ladies and gentlemen. This is no way to keep a functioning nation.
Henry Ford, the car magnate from early in the last century knew this. Fortunately, some companies, rather famously, like Costco, know this and for it they are rewarded with growth and profit.
We have to somehow stop this trend but with "free market Capitalism", it likely can't be stopped.
Here's hoping it's a short-term experiment, of sorts, that is shown to fail quickly so we can turn this around. Part of the way we do that, part of the way we get this changed back is to solve our health care system's problems and situations of being so obscenely expensive that it wrecks not just household budgets but whole states and our nation's economy. And that's what is happening, to all of us.
The Walmarts and 24 Hour Fitnesses and restaurant chains that are doing this must be stopped. They must be changed. They have to learn the error of these ways.
It makes for a very mean culture and society that can and would take advantage of its people and staff this way.
Workers of the world, unite, indeed.
If anyone thinks we--America--the working class and the lower and middle class don't need Unions and that solidarity and strength in numbers and organization, they need only look at this example, this situation to prove otherwise.
Otherwise, it's "God help us."
Because the wealthy and corporations surely won't.
Link to a list of articles on this topic:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&gs_rn=11&gs_ri=psy-ab&cp=14&gs_id=1k&xhr=t&q=companies+cut+hours&es_nrs=true&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=companies+cut+&gs_l=&pbx=1&fp=1&biw=1366&bih=668&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&cad=b
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3 comments:
Here's how we can make it better, legalize 11 million workers to compete with the existing legal workforce. We can shift the supply curve of low/un skilled labor to the right and really depress wages.
Or, we could use e-Verify to make sure that workers are legal to work in this country and let companies bid up their wages because they can't attract decent workers. A tight labor market is a beautiful thing.
You can't off shore manufacturing jobs and import illegal labor and expect anything other than the decimation of the workers in this country.
At least you're correct about the offshoring of jobs.
What we needed, regarding immigrants from Mexico, was, years ago, decades ago, a policy for granting them legal status. Instead, our government did nothing for decades and we ended up with what is reported to be at least 11 million people here without legal status. So it goes.
We're supposedly, hopefully creating a path for citizenship now but it will at least be difficult, if anything happens at all.
As for offshoring jobs, I have written here before that it is unconscionable that we have a tax system that gives the wealthy and corporations tax deductions, tax benefits to offshore jobs. It's insane. It's irresponsible. It helps only corporations and those same wealthy.
The Democrats have tried at least twice to do away with those tax benefits. They introduced legislation in Congress to do away with it twice, only to have it shut down by the Republicans, corporate lackeys that they are.
The people--you and I, all of us--have to demand that this go through and that we eliminate those tax deductions to offshore jobs and manufacturing (and profits to other countries, too, but that's another issue).
Until the people demand it, it won't happen. It's got to come from us.
We did give legal status to many illegal immigrants in 1986. We did give many legal status. That amnesty did act as incentive for more to come.
I think that ending the deduction of expenses for moving production overseas would be wonderful. I'm sure it would keep accountants busy but too damned bad.
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