Low Pay Causes Unemployment

It's one thing for corporations to take advantage of high unemployment to get skilled workers for half or a third of what they should be paying. Corporations are motherfuckers; fucking their mothers is what they do and they're proud of it.

But offering shit pay to desperate workers for back-breaking, family-killing work and then bitching that you can't find enough skilled workers is beneath contempt.

Kevin Drum checks out one corporate claim and finds a WATB:

So here's the story. Union Pacific is offering $48,000 per year for skilled, highly specialized, journeyman work that's physically grueling and requires workers to be away from home about half of each month. The competition is offering 50% more, but not only is UP not willing to increase their starting wage, they're so certain they can fill all their positions that they make qualified candidates pay for their own aptitude test. And despite all this, they filled all 24 of their positions in ten hiring sessions.

It doesn't sound to me like there's a huge shortage of qualified workers here. It sounds to me like Union Pacific is whining about the fact that it took them all of ten hiring sessions to fill their quota even though this is a really tough job and they aren't paying market rates for workers. It's as if they think that actually having to make a modest effort to attract job candidates is an inversion of the natural order or something. Speaking for myself, I think I'll hold off on breaking out the violins.

Pay workers what the al-fucking-mighty market dictates, and they will beat a path to your door.