Thread by @ebonstorm

Everywhere I look, I see #companies complaining about a lack of #workers.

Their solution: Blame the workers because they don't want to rush back into the #workforce.

Can't say I blame them, since technically, the workforce threw them to the wolves at the start of the pandemic.

Didn't whole industries (let go, furlough, lay off, or outright fire) their staff at the start of the pandemic if they couldn't do their work remotely?

Didn't they let them go without any concern with how they were going to pay their bills, maintain their healthcare & the like?

Companies just said: "Bye, Felicia," like it we were breaking up at summer camp, not entering a worldwide pandemic which we were not ready to navigate, lied to by our government, and lacking a dedicated healthcare system, ill-prepared to weather.

Then the same bumbling government proceeded to tell those same people who are now without jobs, they need to pay their bills, manage their rent, and now teach their children, in addition to finding new ways of making their ends meet.

Because as we all know, even with the supplemental incomes, many Americans were left hanging in the wind.

No jobs.
Delayed stimulus.
Maybe unemployment? Depending on where you live.

Some states (Florida) had the worst unemployment engine in the NATION, intentionally!

Then the nation spends the next year lying to people, telling them the pandemic is not the threat we believe it is as it devastates Europe and eventually arrives in the United States killing upwards of 4000 people a day at its peak.

Then a new administration begins and with it, vaccinations start being meaningful and the nation starts getting vaccinated at a rate which might prevent us from having this disease become an endemic and annual infection killing thousands of us every year.

Alas, the same bastards who wanted Donald Trump for president, are also the same people who don't believe in vaccines, think people are being micro-chipped, and believe the insurrection at the Capitol was a just cause now slow the capacity for herd immunity.

Without a touch of irony, these same people have decided to attack governors who protected the people with mask mandates, lockdowns and unemployment options which gave people a sliver of a safety net to stay home, protect their families and themselves from SARS-CoV-2.

Those are the same people who owned businesses and somehow feel people should drop what they're doing, leave their kids at home without supervision to RUSH back to work, risking life and limb for a company who threw them under the bus at the start of this pandemic.

But they're vaccinated you say. Yes, THEY are, but for many, their kids are not.

And you can still get and transmit the coronavirus even if you have been vaccinated. Meaning you could still bring it home to your kids.

And now we want to send kids to school.

But it isn't for the kids. It's for the businesses, to allow them to tell the government to turn off unemployment and FORCE PEOPLE BACK TO WORK.

Who cares that unemployment paid better than their shit job?

Will jobs do the right thing and pay people BETTER WAGES?

Not likely.

How about we look at this differently:

Companies have paid poorly for decades.

In point of fact, their mission has been to pay as little as they could get away with.

They lied and killed unions so people couldn't negotiate in good faith.

They KNOW they pay poorly.

It is literally a corporate mandate no matter how large or small the company is.

Amazon, one of the most profitable companies on Earth, avoids paying taxes whenever it can, pays its executives fabulously and routinely mini-maxes on its staff whenever it can.

Mini-Maxing is a RPG term I am co-opting to describe how corporations pay the very least they can figure out how to pay for a job, while demanding the longest hours, the most demanding schedules while offering the least benefits possible.

Don't deny it. You know it's true.

Why is no one in a rush to go back? Maybe, just maybe, they are tired of being taken advantage of.

Of being thought of last when it's time for raises.

Of being underpaid, to the point of being eligible for welfare or other government aid - after working a full time job.

Maybe the truth is starting to be realized.

For forty years, corporate productivity in the US was staggeringly profitable and yet wages remained stagnant as CEOs and other investor/executives grew fabulously wealthy while you lived on debt incurred as the cost of living rose.

Perhaps, the scales have been lifted and people have decided: Fuck you.

You won't post what a job is worth. You expect me to underbid on a job so I can MAKE myself pay me less and say it's my fault for not knowing the industry.

How about we just acknowledge: The game is rigged.

Rigged against everyone.
Against students.
Against women.
Against older workers.
Against senior citizens.
Against the environment.

The game is rigged against anyone who isn't already a member of the lucky sperm club already firmly ensconced in generational wealth.

Why should people return to being pawns in a game in which they have spent their entire lives being harmed, abused, or exploited?

Why shouldn't they look around, assess the battlefield, and make different choices because, let's face it:

Big business learned nothing from this.

Big business has learned nothing from the pandemic. It continues to assume people should be little more than indentured servants paying out their wages in subscription services which keep them so broke they can't change their lot in life.

EVER.

Why should anyone rush back to anyone who can't recognize we need to change the game because if we don't, when this happens again, and it will happen again, there will be no coming back?

People have had a chance to be human again. They aren't going back to being drones.

Every company, no matter how big or small, better recognize. If you can't pay a living wage, maybe you shouldn't be in business.

If you are a megacorporation with a CEO making tens of millions of dollars and being paid 300 times your lowest paid worker, maybe your time is done.

Big corporations, small businesses: It's time to assess your business model.

Let paying people be in your future.

Pay the workers who make it possible for you to exist.

Because I think in the near future people are prepared to make other choices.

What do they have to lose?

Nothing but their poverty. And their self-loathing. And a predatory company without the respect to recognize what it owes to the people who do the work in your businesses.

Plagues redefined society in the past and will likely redesign the workspace of the future.

Get ready.

@threadreaderapp
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