A slack labor market also leads to bosses mistreating workers, lack of raises, lack of career advancement etc. This is why bosses hated the Biden labor market and love Trump restoring post GFC levels of worker precarcity. - ThreadSky

mtsw.bsky.social • 13 days ago

A slack labor market also leads to bosses mistreating workers, lack of raises, lack of career advancement etc. This is why bosses hated the Biden labor market and love Trump restoring post GFC levels of worker precarcity.

Reposted from Bobby Big Wheel

I had a job all throughout the Great Financial Crisis, that doesn't mean that being constantly worried about losing my job didn't fuck me up big time.

Comments

which-witch-ru.bsky.social•13 days ago

“You should feel lucky to have a job,” they say as they lengthen your hours and double your duties without raising your pay. Oh, and no more lunch hour or working from home.

bearforpunishment.bsky.social•13 days ago

The precarity is the point.

caodragao.bsky.social•13 days ago

wonder if they will also love the pre union form of workers showing their dissatisfaction

dsng480.bsky.social•13 days ago

Workers remained polite and superficially grateful after 2008, allowing management to pretend they were magnanimous benefactors, beloved and admired by their underlings.

The Biden years released a nuée ardente of FUCK YOU from labor, a jarring disillusionment which hurt managerial fee-fees deeply.

cdpositive.bsky.social•13 days ago

When 60% of Americans can't currently cover a $1,000 unexpected expense, a recession (layoffs, high cc interest rates, higher groceries/utilities, etc.) will push massive numbers into poverty. Prosperity declines along with health & purchasing power (on a massive scale). This isn't rocket science.

cdpositive.bsky.social•13 days ago

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saving-money-emergency-expenses-2025/

maxima-infinity.bsky.social•13 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/maxima-infinity.bsky.social/post/3lmefg2rp7c2z

tinpottop.bsky.social•13 days ago

Soapbox time: Obamacare gave a lot of power to workers.

You can easily switch jobs without a plan because marketplace plans will cover your healthcare needs at half the cost of COBRA.

It was the first step in decoupling health from employers.

IT'S NOT PERFECT. Just a good step.

tinpottop.bsky.social•13 days ago

Also, it expanded Medicare so you could more easily get government funded healthcare coverage for a few months between jobs.

Unless you lived in a red state who refused all that. That's happens when most people vote for proto-MAGA to run their state.

tinpottop.bsky.social•13 days ago

*Medicaid. Darnit. No matter how many times I talk about it I still have to search for which term means which.

tinpottop.bsky.social•13 days ago

This but worker rights.

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

Absolutely. Unions are already on their last legs in the US and a recession will give the bosses a chance to stamp out the embers. https://bsky.app/profile/viktorshtrum.bsky.social/post/3lmcsulsdyb2i

sherribells.bsky.social•13 days ago

Thanks, Republicans 😑

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yes https://bsky.app/profile/banditelli.org/post/3lmct4uaf2c2m

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

Most of us remember the post-Great-Financial-Crisis period as one of deprivation and insecurity. It was something like a golden age if you were already independently wealthy and wanted to hire a white, college-educated au pair though.

numb3r5ev3n.bsky.social•13 days ago

I can confirm. There was a real feeling of being utterly disposable, and that any job might vanish into thin air at a boss's whim or a moment's notice. And bosses reveled in it. They loved the idea of workers constantly feeling anxious and terrified.

numb3r5ev3n.bsky.social•13 days ago

1000% they want to bring this situation back. They feel like any concessions we got during Covid, especially wfh, as something that we connived away and stole from them.

numb3r5ev3n.bsky.social•13 days ago

If they could somehow pin responsibility for Covid onto the working class, they would do it. I feel like they threw their support behind Trump so he would do exactly what he's doing now to terrorize the working class.

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

Or you were a wastrel heir and wanted to launder your inherited wealth into "investing" in cheap houses you could landlord. Or a restaurant owner who wanted to sexually harrass your staff. Then 2008-2013 were boom times for you. That's the economy the rich desperately want to bring back!

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

"The stock market's down" so they're worth $800M instead of $900M. Numbers on paper. The employee being terrified of losing her job vs the employee who can tell you to go fuck yourself because she can walk across the street and get a better job is a real, material change for them.

justingwallace.bsky.social•13 days ago

I work in an Amazon Fulfillment center and the last four years have seen radical changes in how they have to treat employees. They actually had to care about us and put in procedures and processes that preserved our health.

We're gonna go back to 300 applicants an opening. It'll all go away.

mtsw.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yes https://bsky.app/profile/intense.wiggling.me/post/3lmcuacfjvs2g

grumpyrootbeer.bsky.social•13 days ago

Employers happily demanding three to five years experience for entry level positions knowing they'd get dozens of applicants with that much experience and more.

chossboard.bsky.social•13 days ago

The big difference is that people are way, way more aware of this dynamic today. I think we'd see less acceptance of one's lot and more outright rage, especially since there is one obvious person to blame for everything.

repetitiveuser.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is why younger voters that went from trump are so infuriating - they didn't have that experience and therefore felt free to vote for their imagined riches

moodcreative.bsky.social•13 days ago

I lost my house

reftpt93.bsky.social•13 days ago

lol I was lucky enough to have job and remember how quickly I got responses for child care

bigfarts420.bsky.social•13 days ago

Same thing happened in the Dot Com Bubble collapse / recession of 2000-2001. Lots of guys who were getting paid at-the-time exorbitant tech salaries ended up doing desktop support at local ISPs or banks or whatever. Many of them became today's Gen X reactionaries.

banditelli.org•13 days ago

A temporary recession is an opportunity for the billionaire class and bosses to claw back progress eternally. https://bsky.app/profile/banditelli.org/post/3lmaibwwog222

phil367.bsky.social•13 days ago

There's a good paper called "The Political Consequences of Full Employment" by Michal Kalecki.

quetwo.com•13 days ago

Also, anybody who started their career during the financial crisis in 08 had depressed salaries for at least a decade and still didn't track to people who stated 10 years earlier or later.

necho.org•13 days ago

still dealing with this and still angry about it

repetitiveuser.bsky.social•13 days ago

And if you started on 99 you got an extra decade of that as a treat

friendlyhandle.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is exactly what Amazon and Meta want. People making fun of Bezos and Zuckerberg right now are missing this point.

chriburn.bsky.social•13 days ago

The future promotion dangled in front of me last June seems MUCH more precarious for this coming June...

nicolekidmansnose.bsky.social•13 days ago

Trump will take away your cushy lil gigs now you wish you'd all voted for genocide Kamala no

jenlucky.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yup.

jeffreyskarski.bsky.social•13 days ago

They were literally saying that all the time when Biden was president (not that he was some hero), complaining about how "uppity" workers had gotten.

gatorgirl1974.bsky.social•13 days ago

I stayed at jobs with toxic work environments during the Great Recession because I needed to take care of my family. Like millions of other Americans.

theturtlemoves.bsky.social•13 days ago

Also that whole wave of employers all deciding at once that workers have had it too good and need to suffer: RTO mandates with no credible justification or measured outcome

darthburkie.bsky.social•13 days ago

🎶 Come on, baby, eat the rich
Put the bite on the son of a bitch
Don't mess up, don't you give me no switch
Come on, baby, and eat the rich
Come on, baby, and eat the rich🎶

viktorshtrum.bsky.social•13 days ago

terrible for union organizing as well

kirklonguski.bsky.social•13 days ago

Deprivation is bad for workers and labor politics! Deprivation is bad for the Left!

talkatoo.bsky.social•13 days ago

tRrump is definitely doing this on purpose.It benefits his aim to cause chaos and destruction. He wants to be dictator.

obsoletevernacular.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is literally the plot of "horrible bosses" - none of them can quit because of the Great Recession and deal with everything you just mentioned.

obsoletevernacular.bsky.social•13 days ago

I worked as an intern for FREE in the great recession because I needed any experience despite having a law degree. The law firm had smarmy attorneys who loved not having to pay.

My first job had low pay, no 401k match, and emails with subject lines like "buckling down" - office space type stuff.

trumbullbrod.bsky.social•13 days ago

So so many of my friends had the exact same experience in businesses…but first it took them 15 interviews to get a starting level job with all those terrible benefits

obsoletevernacular.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yeah, I didn't have a ton of interviews but often applied to 50 plus jobs a day. I found my first full time job on Craigslist, and it was crappy, but that's why there was enough turnover during a recession to have any hiring at all.

kimberleelynn.bsky.social•13 days ago

I lost jobs -- had one employer lose most of their business, one employer go out of business. Worrying about where my next meal & house payment were coming from led to my stroke. I had to retire.

Now they're taking away everything I worked for for 55 years.

0/10 -- DO NOT RECOMMEND.

woodsidehouston.bsky.social•13 days ago

It also leads your coworkers into crabs in a barrel--desperate to do whatever it takes to get ahead. Backstabbing, rumor-mongering, made-up bullying--whatever it takes to get a promotion. I know from first-hand experience in 2010.

jackiecinmht.bsky.social•13 days ago

agreed. https://bsky.app/profile/jackiecinmht.bsky.social/post/3lmapietigs2w

yussefr.bsky.social•13 days ago

Kalecki intensifies

dovergirl.bsky.social•13 days ago

I wish the fellow Canadians I hear say they’d like to be 51st state would recognize that their work lives would drastically change if this were to happen

jaunxpatrol.bsky.social•13 days ago

This is true for small businesses - which are a lot of the workforce, given that 1 in 3 employed Americans is at a company of <100 employees. But at big orgs, bosses usually have bosses themselves and thus are subject to the same pressures, so I'm not sure this holds everywhere.

kevwiat.bsky.social•13 days ago

Looks like Trmp has solves the post-COVID "nobody wants to work (for poverty wages)" problem.

rubymcrae.bsky.social•13 days ago

I should have had great bleeding ulcers while raising my kids, worrying about how secure we were financially, because there was zero job security half the time.

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