Barb
Carpe Scrotum
- Apr 2, 2009
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Not really. Do employers hold jobs open thinking, "aha! A few more months on unemployment and they will be begging for jobs at pitiable wages"? No, I really don't think so.
Actually what happens is companies go out of business or massively scale down. If they start up or staff up in an expansion they will pay market wages. As they earn more money, they will need to pay out more money in wages to retain talented employees.
You would have to show that wages as a percentage of revenue are lower in the beginning of a recovery than at the height of the business cycle. I doubt you can. Actually I doubt you understand the point I'm making.
Cloward and Schorr tied cuts in social safety net funding to the intent of making it harder for working people to effectively bargain with capital. Cloward argued that social safety net programs such as welfare, food stamps, and unemployment insurance give the working poor and the currently unemployed a little control over what type of work, wage, and benefits they accept by allowing them to prolong their job search. Slashing funding for social safety net programs reduced the bargaining power of labor by reinstating the horrors of joblessness. Schorr concurred with that assessment, adding that government and corporations rely on competition for existing jobs to force wages down as well.
Schorr, Alvin L. Common Decency, 17-18
Ibid, 16-18. See also Cloward, Francis Fox Priven and Richard A. "Keeping Labor Lean and Hungry." 466.
Indeed. That is a very good point. Also, it seems to me that unemployed tent people are more of a detriment to society than people receiving an unemployment check so it makes more sense in my opinion that these people be subsized with strings attached of course for as long as possible. It should not, however, be a free ride.
Well, it is not a free ride. There are rules, and UI pays for spit when you consider the max one can collect. This recession rains on low paid and high paid labor. Poverty isn't just for the kitchen help anymore (and yes I can, I've been the kitchen help, so I'm family). Its taken professionals out of higher paid jobs and careers, and the financial commitments (kids college, mortgage, etc...) based on years of service at their chosen (trained and/or invested in education for) professions are shot to shit. UI is subsistence. Sadly, by and large, so are the available replacement jobs.