From the point of view of someone looking for a job, employers will only hire people with experience if they are going to pay them that much so that leaves entry-level jobs non-existent. Case in point, back in the 60’s when I got out of the Navy, I went looking for job in the metal trades, specifically an apprenticeship to become a toolmaker. I had no formal training and had only worked part time in a shop on Saturdays to help clean it up and stack new material. Nobody would hire me because I had no experience running the machinery to do the job. I then moved out of my home state to one that advertised starting state sponsored skilled trade apprenticeships and the rest is history.
My whole point is you can’t get a job without experience so how do you get experience without a job? Even so, they are only hiring the best of the best because they don’t have the capital to hire then train new people. In days gone by, this was the job of a union, but unions are a thing of the past.
11 replies on “$15 an hour minimum wage?”
If you look at the unions that contributed to the Dem party this last election, I’d say they still have some sway.
Kind of sad how they started out versus what they do now. I don’t think they’re for the workers anymore. Especially backing a party that plans to raise min. wage to $15 and raise taxes to unbearable levels with all their “free” stuff.
I used to work in the employment services and very few companies would hire people w/o experience. Then same companies would complain because they couldn’t find qualified people!
I guess they didn’t realize that public schools and universities weren’t churning out qualified people.
FUBAR
https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/robert-lerman-on-apprenticeships/id135066958?i=1000482851204
I noticed in particular both the host’s and the guest’s emphasis on Apprenticeship Programs being driven, even originating with Government. The only other Originator mentioned is Unions.
Why not employers?
Why not hire people aged 16 or 17 who show good Attitude & Aptitude and train them? At 21 or 22 they might end being the ones who supervise and even interview the College Pukes. And are married and getting the mortgage for that first house before the College Pukes are done with their Masters Degrees – and supervising them when they finally get out of school.
I used to think there should be Tax Credits for that sort of Early Hiring, but why gove the Government any more opportunity than they already have to interfere with HR without giving firms the opportunity to hand over HR to the government and spare themselves the expense?
Get the apples from the orchard, not the barrel.
Actually in the beginning of cultural social structures like villages and towns, masters of trades like blacksmithing and carpentry took on apprentices if the found a young person they thought had aptitude and they took them under their wing, gave the room and board in some cases. Even during the industrial revolution, companies took on apprentices at their own expense, but it got to the point where companies weren’t willing to risk spending the time and money to train people, so the government gave them money to guarantee the program. Henry Ford started hiring people for life and training them, housing them and their families, giving them medical care, all of it. Ford was actually forging their own steel and making everything needed for building his cars in house with no other suppliers.
So there is a modern enough precedent to reach back to.
We’re at the point now where the risk is in taking on people with degrees because you don’t know what the hell their heads have been filled with.
It’s one reason for the Modern Apprenticeship scheme here in the UK.
The UK (I’m in the midlands) had a great history with apprenticeships, but the disastrous experiment with socialism between the fifties and the eighties did a lot of damage. Even now, the government is trying to fix problems the government creates. Not least, the ridiculous rates of taxation make training workers uneconomical so that the state then needs to fix the problems they created.
“We’re the government. We fucked things up. So we need more government to fix it!”
exactly. well put.
Has that program made headway into the University For All Cult?
That seemed to be in force when I was studying Economics at the University of York.
I failed because I found all the 3rd Derivatives in Econometrics to be more Quatsch than Illuminating.
I did come back a year later to be an Independent Living Aide for two men, one with Advanced Muscular Dystrophy and another a Quadriplegic for going on 30 years after an industrial accident.
The quadriplegic (that sounds like it ought to have been a very funky Who song) mentioned keeping his Marriage alive for a few years after the accident with the help of what he called the “erection injection” – I first learned the term “Viagra” later on, from the Pedro Aldomovar film Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown.
Indeed. It is a similar issue for those who will never be ‘high productivity’. Those with ‘difficulties’ can be productive members of society, but $15/h prices them out of the market. This cruel.
The only winner – the politicians who deceive people into thinking they are going to help them.
Yes, my son is one of those people with minimum skills and labeled as autistic, although his disability is almost non-existent. He is 30 years old and hasn’t held a job for more than 90 days twice.