That’s a rather entitled attitude - that employers are somehow ‘owed’ job applicants regardless of who they are and the pay and working conditions they offer and that any lack of applicants is a failing of prospective employees than of the employer.
No kidding. After decades of wage stagnation, employers seem to think that a permanent supply of low-wage workers who will come to them hat in hand begging for a wage that wouldn’t feed and house a dog, let alone an adult human being, let alone a family, is their God-given right, and any disruption of the supply of serfs is a challenge to the natural order of creation, and therefore to God himself.
Much like those medieval barons I mentioned above who actually made it illegal to offer better pay, and illegal for a person to refuse any work offered to them, so affronted were they by the serfs’ and laborers’ demand for better wages.
For years now employers didn’t think applicants were owed a response, and cut HR departments to the point where it was impossible for them to give a response, or even an acknowledgement.
I’ve also seen discussions for years now about how employers have screwed up the hiring process, and how hiring managers don’t care or didn’t have time to recruit. Now this neglect is biting them. Boo hoo.
The local amusement park (Worlds of Fun) is closing Tuesdays and Wednesdays through June because they can’t find workers. That’s traditionally a first job in high-school kind of thing, so the unemployment boost (which Missouri is no longer paying) wouldn’t have been a factor (or as much - there are some older folks working there, presumably most of the team lead type people?).
Exactly. If management can’t hire anyone at the wage they are offering, they should offer a higher wage. That’s how the free market that right wingers love to praise works.
Wendy’s is now starting its wages at $16/hour locally. Their sign advertising it is just a sticker over the $/hr portion so it seems like they are planning on the number continuing to drift upwards at least through the summer tourist season in my town.
Companies don’t just mention their products and expect people to flock in and buy them. But usually they just mention their job openings and don’t bother to give anyone a reason to apply. More money? Promotional opportunities? Training? Good work environment?
People have forgotten how to sell.
Sufficiently attractive for interviewees to show up?
~Max
Yes, that’s what you’d have to offer to get interviewees to show up.
I’m not at all sure what your point is here. Seems clear enough.
If people aren’t showing up for (or even making appointments for) interviews, then it’s seems clear that management/owners aren’t offering sufficient compensation to make the job appear desirable.
I mean, isn’t that basic free-market economics?
This is true, however,
My opinion is that just because management fails to make a job appear desirable enough to keep an interview, does not mean the management deserves blame for short staffing.
~Max
It is literally the job of management to manage the hiring process.
Think about a warzone. I’m not going to blame a grocer who can’t staff his shop in a warzone because he isn’t offering enough money to attract people to a warzone.
During a pandemic, I’m not going to blame a grocer who can’t staff his shop because he isn’t offering enough money to offset the risk of working such a job during a pandemic, or offsetting the loss of pandemic level unemployment benefits, or offsetting the costs of childcare in such a situation, etc.
~Max
I’m not going to blame that grocer either.
Nor am I going to blame a prospective employee who doesn’t take a job because the compensation isn’t enough to make the job worth taking. That person has no obligation whatsoever to subsidize the grocer by taking a below-market wage.
If the grocer refuses to have and enforce masking rules because the customers might complain, then I do blame them for short staffing.
If the boss won’t pay at least as much as unemployment and offer perks such as advancement and training, and perhaps sell the opportunity to get a job ahead of the rest before the money runs out, then I blame the boss. How about flexible hours? How about childcare support?
Lots of stuff you can do if you are desperate enough. Like things done in Europe now.
One problem with the grocery business these days and masks is that customers aren’t just complaining, sometimes they shoot the store staff and kill them.. And it’s happened multiple times across the US.
Grocers aren’t “enforcing” mask rules because doing so can be actively unsafe to the people doing the enforcing. Sure, we do have mask rules, but I sure as hell am not going to confront customers because I want to go home at the end of my shift rather than go to a hospital or morgue.
If someone doesn’t want to work retail I can’t fault them - it’s often physically demanding, very stressful due to the slice of the general public that never mentally matured past the age of four, and thanks to the “Ah need muh GUNNNNNN!” crowd actually physically dangerous.
My store offers competitive wages for the area, completely covered any and all medical costs for anyone getting covid (and covered funeral costs for the at least have dozen employees who died of it), provided hazard pay on top of several raises, flexible hours, and helped people with both child care and elder care during this mess. We’ve had training and tuition reimbursement for decades. They don’t just offer scholarships to employees, they also offer them to the families of employees. Anyone can get into management training, the pre-requisites are published and I’ve known a number of people who have climbed the ladder from stocking shelves to management like running an entire store. Are they a Perfect Place to Work? Hell no, but far from the worst, either. My employer does everything you mentioned and more.
And we just can’t keep our staff levels up right now.
Can’t blame the extra unemployment - that’s ended in my state. A lot of it has to do with self-entitled shits who think they have a god-given right to heap abuse on front-line workers with no authority or power to change things. That’s just the verbal stuff - people throw things, too. They smash things. They threaten violence. Hell, we’ve called the police on some of these folks a couple times and at least one of them decided starting a fist-fight with a cop was a good idea.
Yeah, it’s a bit personal for me.
Aye; our social contracts are all shit right now in the US. They have been for decades. And mostly we’ve been employing the most popular, time-tested, proven-successful method of dealing with problems: ignore it and hope it’ll go away. But like a plumbing problem, things are only getting worse.
You admit to not enforcing masking at your store. (Because hiring a big burly guy, or two, for the entry, works for bars but not for you?)
Why would anyone want to work in an environment where their health is actively (and unnecessarily) being put at risk?
Why are you pretending this couldn’t be the issue?
Would I want my teen working for you? Big No!
You may have missed the headlines in May 2020 when a security guard at a Dollar General in Michigan was shot and killed after telling customers to wear their masks. While that was one of the more extreme responses, there were assaults prompted by retail/restaurant employees asking customers to don masks in New York, California, Rhode Island, and other states. It’s not just Brookstick’s employer that has experienced difficulties with enforcing masks mandates since last year.
So you think the problem is an unsafe work environment? Sounds reasonable to me, and it falls on the employer to hire some security if it is an issue. Same goes for mask enforcement. I could see not wanting to come to work if the boss allows potentially deadly people to get in your face.
It is definitely harder to enforce safety when politicians are telling store employees that their lives aren’t worth the “freedom” of maskholes. Our local politicians are for masks, and I’ve never seen a maskless person in our grocery, or even any confrontations.
The point is, anyhow, that these same politicians shouldn’t criticize people not wanting to work in the unsafe environments they helped to create.