198
Biden Cancels Speech to Teachers After Union’s Staff Strikes
(www.nytimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
198 points (97.1% liked)
politics
18138 readers
3684 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Only scabs cross the line.
I come from a union family and walked way further than I thought it would be to see sanders speak at a union hall. Worth it.
The strike that happened a week or so before the event would have had me staying home, had it extended, though. Even tho I only ever saw one single person on the picket line. Only scabs cross the line.
What sucks is that in this economy, employers know that they can get scabs to come in at like a dollar more an hour—union be damned.
We need to get back to where employers feared, or at least listened to, unions and their power of collective bargaining. They’ve done an amazing job of gutting unions, and will not stop until they are made illegal.
4.1 percent unemployment is not a sign of an economy that favors bringing in scabs.
Ahh, I wish it were that easy, but 4.1% of 350 million is like 14 million people (I’m willing to accept that my math is wrong but I double checked it 4 times including using the internet.. and idk if I mathed it wrong or if that’s just an accurate number… I really kinda hope I’m wrong..)
That’s a lot of people either way.. and you can’t fault them for looking out for themselves or their family.
That's not how unemployment numbers work. They (the government) only count the amount of work eligible adults (i.e. 18+, legal/documented persons) who are actively seeking employment It would be silly to include babies and school-aged children in their statistics for employment, heh. But it also leaves out a large number of adults who have simply given up looking for work. I think it also doesn't include those who have been actively seeking employment longer than a certain amount of time, but I don't fully recall.
Honestly, the unemployment stat is a pretty weak economic health indicator overall: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0609/what-the-unemployment-rate-doesnt-tell-us.aspx
Lots of economists have long criticized it for being way too broad of a stat that isn't inclusive enough. I remember my macro econ professor in college going in tangents about it and it kind of surprised me how many people it doesn't include.
Anyway, back to the main point: It isn't calculating 4% of the entire US population.
4.1 is an exceptionally low unemployment rate. An unemployment rate of 1% would be beyond impossible to achieve and would certainly cause out of control inflation, yet there would still be over 3 million people unemployed. That's still "a lot" of people. That's not something that any economy fixes. Most of those people are going to be unemployed because they haven't found the job they want, not because they can't find any job. For instance, tech workers get laid off all the time and typically take their time finding the right next position.
I never said it wasn’t low. It’s low, but 14 million people is still a lot of actual people, people just like you, under a different circumstance.
14 million people looking for work means there are a lot of potential scabs, because our social safety nets are fucking laughable. They don’t even exist for a lot of people, such as those with no work history yet (can’t get unemployment if you’ve never been employed, for example, and if you only have a couple years employment history, unemployment in a lot of places doesn’t cover shit).
Having been one of the underemployed, you often take what you can get because you don’t have the luxury of finding the “right job”.
Or you and your family become homeless.
Those are basically the options these days and I’m not willing to say that’s not the case just because unemployment (which does not include underemployment, nor those who left the job market) is low by some economists standards, because it absolutely is for millions of people.
So sure, many of those people might be looking for “the right job”, but in the interim, they find and take “the right now” job. And that might be scabby.
It's not low by some economist's standards. It's low by every economist's standards. Economists don't agree on much, but they agree on this. Under all circumstances in every economy there are always "a lot" of people looking for employment .
Again, I don't doubt or disagree with your assessment of your situation. Again, I support you. It's not the economy making the safety nets so bad. There is plenty of money to pay for it, we just don't. It's not the economy attacking unions, it's the employers and many politicians. It's not the economy allowing companies to fire striking workers, etc. the economy is fine. It's the labor system that's broken, and no economy will fix that.