You’re getting downvoted, but this is absolutely correct. There is no reason at all you would expect the pay of low-skilled workers to increase during a period of increasing unemployment. For every union member that refuses to work without increased benefits, there’ll be a queue of newly unemployed people willing to work for less. The unions have no sway over the supply of labor here, the only thing they can exploit is the threat to temporarily disrupt service during a crisis. Something which won’t go over well with all the country’s unemployed, and everybody who’s going to have to pay the increased prices.
As a counter, low skilled workers absolutely should get a pay increase because their work is more valuable and the hazards they face are more extreme - "professional class" workers should expect a real income pay reduction during this crisis since their labour is relatively lowered in value compared to during a normal world state.
Additionally, we, as a society, should value minimizing the number of people working in these roles and their interactions to ensure they remain healthy and don't become transmission vectors.
It depends on the job. For warehouse employees, they are absolutely necessary since packaging is both hard, tedious work, and also specialized enough that you can’t have customers do it for themselves.
But Instacart is just grocery shopping. At a certain price point, people will go into stores themselves, or self organize to do bulk purchases for a small group. Right now in NYC, some people have started a charity to deliver goods to older residents in apartments for free. Instacart can’t compete with that.
That’s an abstract view of value, based entirely upon your own personal views and opinions. The labor is only worth the equilibrium point between what somebody is willing to pay for it, and what remuneration somebody is willing to accept for it. The truth is that for all of these low skilled industries that are seeking pay rises, there is currently an influx of available labor that could fill those positions. If they are not willing to work for that level of pay, there are most certainly others who would be willing to do so. They do not have the power to prevent people from applying for those roles, should they become available. The only card they have to play is to exploit the threat of a temporary disruption to service. They may have some luck exploiting this, but it can only get them so far. It’s also no different from any of the other price gouging that’s often derided here on HN. When huge portions of the population are facing unemployment, there is no reasonable basis for demanding pay rises, especially in low skilled industries, where the labor can be so easily replaced.
OK I usually agree with this but the elephant in the room is- what if some large number of those let go and also employed drop dead and people perceive it's because of Instacart/Amazon's callous attitude towards their safety?
Serious question, not being combative with you.
Doesn't Amazon have a very real hazard here which could result in burdensome regulation and or customer defection?
As Amazon or any of these other companies aren’t organisations devoted to the study of epidemiology or medical expertise, the only thing they can possibly do is follow the guidelines/regulations imposed on them. I’m not sure what that has to do with compensation though.
You're talking compensation not going up because too many people want the jobs and Amazon employees quit or strike because of COVID-19 working conditions so it's all connected.
I appreciate that you either can't see that or don't buy it so I end my participation here having tried to make the point as clear as I could. That is not a sly way of saying "I'm right, you're wrong" by the way. I am just out of words and ideas and time to re-express the relationship again.
Your thesis seems to be that the conditions that would lead these workers to strike would be sufficient to also deter all of the millions of newly unemployed people. A proposition which is unfounded and completely defies logic. Your question about how these companies should ensure business continuity with the threat of their workers getting sick is both unrelated to remuneration, and not a question those companies are in a position to answer themselves. That responsibility would fall upon a regulating body.
