We been hearing a great deal recently about the difficulty some businesses, particularly in the service sector, are having with finding workers to fill open positions. The rightwing response is, as it has always been, to blame government “handouts”; according to Faux News and other establishment media, enhanced unemployment benefits are keeping lazy workers at home. What needs to be done is to get rid of these social benefits and force workers back to work.
The is nothing new about this approach. Capitalism has been grappling with this problem for hundreds of years, and as history shows, the answer now is the same as it’s always been. The laboring classes must be forced into circumstances in which they must work or starve.
In the current situation, the capitalists are eager to forget one of the fundamental principles of their system: When a commodity is in scarce supply, that will automatically increase the price of that commodity. It’s the Law of Supply and Demand. But, and this is a big but, when monopoly rules, this Law goes out the window. Since labor has lost much of its bargaining power (the decline of unions and the value of the minimum wage as a floor for wages), it’s the employers who have had all the power to determine the price of labor.
So, we should look at the current situation as a strike
of low wage workers. These workers want, no, need, higher wages and benefits
(either provided by employers or by the government) and they will return to
work. Although informal and unorganized, this strike is an important response
to the 40 year long assault on the working class, the class war that the rich launched
and have been winning.
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