Employers struggling to fill positions with hundreds of thousands unemployed

Fred Cryton · 09-05-2021 2:38pm

EddieN75 wrote: »

Guilting the working class back to their stations so the multinational staff and public sector workers who never lost a cent throughout the past year can buy shiny things.

Just to be clear, you're referring to the same multinational workers whose taxes are what pay for the €350 handout for the working class?

Fred Cryton · 09-05-2021 2:39pm

Deleted User wrote: »

This is really really awful.
I suppose they will just have to increase the wages then.

Right you start a business and pay your staff 20 euro an hour when the going rate is 10. See how long you stay open.

Smee_Again · 09-05-2021 2:48pm

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Right you start a business and pay your staff 20 euro an hour when the going rate is 10. See how long you stay open.

If they can’t fill the positions at €10 an hour then that’s not the going rate and they need to up it.

The DayDream · 09-05-2021 2:49pm

OP has been ranting about welfare since Bertie Ahern was cashing checks in pubs. Imagine having a puss on you because our country prioritizes saving thousands of lives during a deadly pandemic over... (checks notes) people in low paid retail and service industry jobs going into work.

Fred Cryton · 09-05-2021 2:50pm

Smee_Again wrote: »

If they can’t fill the positions at €10 an hour then that’s not the going rate and they need to up it.

Only when competing with government welfare of essentially 10 euro an hour for a 35 hour week. Getting rid of that would sort the issue right?

Also two things happen when you raise min wage too high:
1) prices increase, making everyone poorer, including the worker
2) fewer jobs in total are created, meaning less opportunity.

If the worker wants a higher wage then they should upskill and change career.

Dempo1 · 09-05-2021 2:51pm

head82 wrote: »

Not forgetting when the EWSS is wound down.
A lot of employers have become used to having their wage bill subsidised to the tune of approx. 70%.
Gonna be hard to let that go.
Tends not to get as much coverage as PUP.

Your 100% correct and in essence EWSS is a form of pup albeit directed towards maintaining employment. Its also cost far more than PUP. My fear is that a false economy is at play generally. Whilst I applaud the governments supports, I can't help but wonder how many businesses were propped up that were insolvent. Its also worth pointing out, Revenue are about to chase 7000, yes 7000 businesses who have either not complied correctly with the EWSS and previous TWSS or who have failed after months of warning to produce evidence that they are in compliance, one curious question will be how much was not actually passed onto employees. I have to assume a large proportion of those who have responded have been acting the maggot and also worth pointing out its the employee's ultimately who'll pay dearly if its true.

Dempo1 · 09-05-2021 2:53pm

The DayDream wrote: »

OP has been ranting about welfare since Bertie Ahern was cashing checks in pubs. Imagine having a puss on you because our country prioritizes saving thousands of lives during a deadly pandemic over... (checks notes) people in low paid retail and service industry jobs going into work.

Yes, I noticed that re OP but God bless them, I don't mind giving them a little attention on a Sunday afternoon

99nsr125 · 09-05-2021 2:55pm

The short answer is pay more you miserable bastards

Everyone everywhere will work for proper reward

Scoundrel · 09-05-2021 2:56pm

Simple solution pay proper wages and you'll get staff if your business cant survive paying proper wages then it isnt really viable and shouldn't survive.

Employers need to stop exploiting poverty and pay properly simple as that.

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 3:03pm

Idbatterim wrote: »

Employers struggling to fill many positions with hundreds of thousands unemployed. E350 a week for many to sit on their ass or work for slightly more, if full time on minimum wage... More genius from FG, who could have foreseen such issues? Any way, take the system for all its worth lads, if you are on PUP, you have at least worked and it wont last forever. There are tens of thousands here, who live off you and I from cradle to grave! luxury apartments, medical card, welfare bonuses, few hundred euro a week cash etc... the more you take, the less that is wasted on wasters! remember that!

there needs to be a proper pay related social insurance scheme introduced, time limited, based on what you paid in and possibly, that you start paying some of it back, when re-employed...

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/you-cant-blame-them-for-taking-other-jobs-hope-of-long-retail-hours-under-threat-as-employers-struggle-to-recruit-staff-40400535.html

...because it would have been so much better to send low waged workers into work during one of the most serious pandemics humanity has ever experienced...

you do realise, a lot of that money went straight back into the economy, yea?

The DayDream · 09-05-2021 3:04pm

Paulownia wrote: »

With retail people are now buying online and will continue doing that. In my experience retail customers in the main have little fidelity when it comes to purchasing goods, some do but not the majority.
Price and ease of access come first

Not in my view. I think there will be a huge short term boom in retail, we can already see it with the eejits queuing for Penney's. But social distancing will make it hard to take full advantage of consumers desires for new gladrags.

If anything the pandemic has illustrated to me how many pitfalls there are to online shopping. I had to order new work shoes (somehow managed to get a job during all this) and it took me 6 tries to find a pair that were comfortable for standing all day, fit correctly etc. Things like men's dress shoes are really not easy to select without trying on.

And I also found Amazon is totally crap, especially since Brexit. Stuff from there took twice as long as they did from Irish retailers and even British retailers to get delivered. There's lots of chinese crap and factory seconds being sold on there, and a shirt I ordered pre-brexit was outside the delivery area post-brexit when i tried to get it another colour. And price comparisons showed I saved money ordering direct from Irish shops.

I live in a small town with pathetic options for shopping especially for men's clothing but in future instead of ordering online I'll take the bus to Dublin or somewhere, it'll cost extra but then so does delivery when buying online, especially if the place doesn't have free returns and you need to send anything back. Sending a pair of shoes back to the UK cost me 20 quid, even going back to schuh in Cork cost around a tenner.

Smee_Again · 09-05-2021 3:04pm

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Only when competing with government welfare of essentially 10 euro an hour for a 35 hour week. Getting rid of that would sort the issue right?

Also two things happen when you raise min wage too high:
1) prices increase, making everyone poorer, including the worker
2) fewer jobs in total are created, meaning less opportunity.

If the worker wants a higher wage then they should upskill and change career.

But they’re not competing against €350.

Jobseekers is €203.

Everyone on pup has a job waiting for them.

landofthetree · 09-05-2021 3:08pm

PBP SDs Labour SF all want the dole to be 500 to 1000 euros a week.

Going to be fun when they takeover.

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 3:10pm

landofthetree wrote: »

PBP SDs Labour SF all want the dole to be 500 to 1000 euros a week.

Going to be fun when they takeover.

where did they say that?

Paulownia · 09-05-2021 3:21pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

SF want to up it to €500 / week and continue it indefinitely, as do most of the "opposition".

Thank goodness they are not running the country, everyday complaining has become very wearing for the electorate

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 3:24pm

Paulownia wrote: »

Thank goodness they are not running the country, everyday complaining has become very wearing for the electorate

...and the norm is working because????

Executioner511 · 09-05-2021 3:56pm

Paulownia wrote: »

Thank goodness they are not running the country, everyday complaining has become very wearing for the electorate

Won't be long before they are this government has preformed abysmally since taking office with regards to the Health services, Housing and the lockdown which has been handled so badly and has destroyed the Private sector while Public servants sit on their hands watching boxsets all year without getting financially impacted.

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 4:00pm

Executioner511 wrote: »

Won't be long before they are this government has preformed abysmally since taking office with regards to the Health services, Housing and the lockdown which has been handled so badly and has destroyed the Private sector while Public servants sit on their hands watching boxsets all year without getting financially impacted.

any government would have struggled with the virus, many public sector workers worked all the way through this pandemic, some even put their lives, and the lives of their loved ones in great danger throughout. the government again had no choice but to shutdown the economy, in order to save lives, but it has not done enough to protect jobs in both sectors, particularly in the private sector. post covid will be a blood bath for some in the private sector because of these failures

timeToLive · 09-05-2021 4:01pm

Employers need to pay enough for people to work. If they can't pay they don't deserve to be in business!

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 4:04pm

timeToLive wrote: »

Employers need to pay enough for people to work. If they can't pay they don't deserve to be in business!

this is a lot more complicated, many businesses run on fine margins, i think the only way around this is some sort of basic income, even 50 a week from the government would help many

KyussB · 09-05-2021 4:05pm

Great article - snipped through the highlights (bold bits are a TLDR), but the whole article in the original link is worth reading:

The Business Class Has Been Fearmongering About Worker Shortages for Centuries
Our so-called staffing crisis hearkens back to the colonial era.

The current blizzard of stories about a “worker shortage” across the U.S. may seem as though it’s about this peculiar moment, as the pandemic fades. Restaurants in Washington, D.C., contend that they’re suffering from a staffing “crisis.” The hospitality industry in Massachusetts says it’s experiencing the same disaster. The governor of Montana plans to cancel coronavirus-related additional unemployment benefits funded by the federal government, and the cries of business owners are being heard in the White House.

In reality, though, this should be understood as the latest iteration of a question that’s plagued the owning class for centuries: How can they get everyone to do awful jobs for them for awful pay?

Employers’ anxiety about this can be measured by the fact that these stories have erupted when there currently is no shortage of workers. An actual shortage would result in wages rising at the bottom of the income distribution to such a degree that there was notable inflation. That’s not happening, at least not now. Instead, business owners seem to mean that they can’t find people who’ll work for what the owners want to pay them. This is a “shortage” in the same sense that there is a shortage of new Lamborghinis available for $1,000.

...

Many European countries instituted unemployment insurance programs in the early 20th century over the ferocious objections of the business world, which opposed them for obvious reasons: They allowed workers to eke out a bare-minimum survival without jobs. This changed the power equation between employers and employees, forcing businesses to raise wages and improve working conditions.

...

Unemployment insurance finally was created as part of the Social Security Act of 1935. With that battle lost, business turned to a two-fold strategy: first, lobbying to keep unemployment benefits at the lowest level possible, and second, preventing the unemployment rate from ever getting too low. It may seem counterintuitive that businesses would not want the economy operating at full capacity. But low unemployment alters the balance of power between owners and workers just as unemployment insurance does — and when workers can easily quit and get another job across the street, the dreaded worker shortage simply appears again in a different guise.

The battle against low unemployment was eventually cloaked in scientific jargon. In 1975, two economists announced the existence of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or NAIRU. If unemployment fell below NAIRU, inflation would start rising uncontrollably as businesses were forced to pay workers more and more. At the time, NAIRU was purportedly 5.5 percent, while later estimates placed it somewhat higher. This meant that whenever unemployment was getting too low, the Federal Reserve had to step in and strangle the economy until lots of people were thrown out of work.

...

Today, with the additional unemployment benefits from the recent Covid-19 relief bill, business owners are living their greatest nightmare: workers with genuine leverage over their wages and working conditions. The owner of a Florida seafood restaurant recently explained this straightforwardly: “You need to have incentives to get people to work, not to stay home. You’ve got the hard workers who want to have a job, but the others need that motivation.”

In theory, there are many possible such incentives: better pay, better working conditions, even a slice of ownership of the company. But the owning class hasn’t been interested in those incentives at any point in the last few centuries. There’s only one incentive that makes sense to them: You work or you starve.

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/07/worker-shortage-slavery-capitalism/

EddieN75 · 09-05-2021 4:28pm

Public sector got a pay rise before Christmas.

A lot of frustration out there

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 4:31pm

EddieN75 wrote: »

Public sector got a pay rise before Christmas.

A lot of frustration out there

the private sector certainly is in a lot of trouble, but some public sector definitely deserve a rise after this

EddieN75 · 09-05-2021 4:36pm

Wanderer78 wrote: »

the private sector certainly is in a lot of trouble, but some public sector definitely deserve a rise after this

Like a ball and chain around the ankle of an economy trying to stay afloat.

Slowly increasing in weight until it eventually pulls us all under

Wanderer78 · 09-05-2021 4:43pm

EddieN75 wrote: »

Like a ball and chain around the ankle of an economy trying to stay afloat.

Slowly increasing in weight until it eventually pulls us all under

yea certain major sectors of the private sector certainly are killing us alright, and theres little or no will to change them either, which is extremely disturbing, after the largest economic crash in modern times

Furze99 · 09-05-2021 4:52pm

timeToLive wrote: »

Employers need to pay enough for people to work. If they can't pay they don't deserve to be in business!

Sure employers can pay staff more...but and it's a big but.. will you be whining when prices and costs rise for you and it hits you in your pocket?? That's how business runs, it's how they stay in business.

SnuggyBear · 09-05-2021 5:02pm

Fred Cryton wrote: »

Just to be clear, you're referring to the same multinational workers whose taxes are what pay for the €350 handout for the working class?

The people on pup have also tax payers. They wouldn't be on pup if they weren't paying tax before the government shut down their industries. They also have to pay tax on that 350 when they start working again.

Would you like to be on pup or would you prefer to not have your job taken away from you? Answer that please.

EddieN75 · 09-05-2021 5:04pm

Wanderer78 wrote: »

yea certain major sectors of the private sector certainly are killing us alright, and theres little or no will to change them either, which is extremely disturbing, after the largest economic crash in modern times

Are you talking about banks?

SMEs go bust and are replaced regularly by better companies.

CosmicFool · 09-05-2021 5:09pm

I was in the local offie last week and a guy was chatting to one of the employees saying that he was asked to go back to work and he was better off on the pup payment so he refused. He said and while laughing why would he bother doing a 40 hour work week for only 50 quid more. People like that piss me off. Leeches of society

NSAman · 09-05-2021 5:09pm

EddieN75 wrote: »

Are you talking about banks?

SMEs go bust and are replaced regularly by better companies.

And the pool becomes smaller and smaller. Until Amazon and the other online retailers are all that are left. Then what?

Employers struggling to fill positions with hundreds of thousands unemployed

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