Comment by nemo44x
21 hours ago
Do we even have people to work in the factories? I know a guy who started as a worker and is now a plant manager and he says their biggest problem is finding qualified people (high school or equivalent) that are willing to show up every day. Many get their first check and then suddenly stop showing up and then return 2 or 3 weeks later looking for work.
A lot of younger people it seems like value flexibility over higher pay. They’d rather work casual jobs that are dead ends. At the factory you start with a decent wage and benefits and within a year you’re promoted and salary increases noticeably. If you can put 5 responsible years in you’re certainly recruited to the management development path. These skills are highly transferable between companies.
Instead of blaming the workers, they should figure out how to make workers want to show up and find out the incentives they need.
Here’s a start: daily pay (there are a bunch of fintechs out there that will do this for you). My buddy who does construction does this. It filters out people who need a quick fix of cash on day 1 instead of wasting two weeks on them.
View labour unions as a friend, not an enemy, who will figure out where to get more workers and how to keep them willing to show up to the job.
It’s not just pulling levers. These are manufacturing jobs that require some skill development. The starting pay is above median for the area.
There’s plenty of college educated people that are unemployed that refuse to enter this kind of work even though they’d quickly rise and make a lot of money. The other group is without any aim in their lives and can only plan a week or 2 out.
The workers that do reliably show up want nothing to do with unions because they are already compensated as well or better than a union could bargain for. It’s a workers market. Unions only work when it’s not as they exist to artificially limit the labor pool.
Pretty weird that our society doesn't want immigrants if we could use more workers.