A common refrain around here.

[snousle]

Jobs going begging in Willits and Ukiah Valley

(Excerpt from Ukiah Daily JournalWith unemployment still over 9 percent in Mendocino County, some employers are saying they are still having trouble filling the jobs they have available

Comments

[fingertrouble]

I bet they expect employees to arrive ready-trained and perfect to their needs too.

Thing is, like h0gwash says above, they use this argument about 'omg we have jobs' but as a freelancer myself I know they'd expect people to have buckets of experience and expect low pay or short term contracts...if they trained people that turned up at the door with no experience who were eager and really needed a job, great. But I doubt they'd do that. Employers never want to train, and always moan that higher education doesn't provide worker bees they want....which is not what it's for, in the main unless it's vocational qualification. It's there to provide transferable skills and make people think and question - one reason the current UK government is trying to kill it. Keep em dumb.

Also strange what message the employers are sending out. It's not 'an employer friendly location' so they use agencies. Which means short term. Which means as I've found employers are quite happy to fuck you over re: working hours and drop you if something happens you have no control over...or the other one, expect you to come in early or weekends. Or try not to pay you, or wriggle out of any contract.

This breaks the social contract between worker and employer....if they act by treating workers as an expendable resource, ie. employ them for one day when it was supposed to be a week, drop them leaving them out of pocket, when work is scarce and not building up trust, what do they expect? I have freelanced for 8 years until fairly recently, I had NO respect for the agencies and not very much for the end-clients in the end other than a vague feeling of wanting to be professional - but they kept shooting me and themselves in the foot by messing me around and making it impossible.

[snousle]

It is more than unrealistic employer expectations in this area. That may be a factor, but not the whole story. We ourselves have been offering $20/hr, cash, no strings attached work to interested people and having them repeatedly not show up. I realize that this is not a career path, but it's not particularly skilled work, and it's a no brainer for anyone who is unemployed and doesn't have anything better to do. Ergo, they either have something better to do, or they do not have brains.

Both factors are at work. Underground work in particular absorbs a lot of "unemployed" people that remain unemployed on paper. And there are a lot of people who just don't have two neurons to rub together, who would have a meltdown if faced with problems on the level of assembling Ikea furniture.

I suppose if you believe the efficient market hypothesis, there is no such thing as a "labor shortage", only "non-competitive wages". But there is nevertheless some weirdness in the local labor market such that getting competent people seems a lot harder than it should be. Does that make me a capitalist oppressor?

[h0gwash]

I think there are big differences between corporations hiring and private citizens hiring for day jobs. If I saw your ad on Craigslist (not THAT ad!!) I would assume it to be a fraud, not unlike many other Craigslist fraud ads.

Could social factors be at work? Might they be afraid of the gossip? Have you picked up day laborers hanging around outside the parking lot at Home Depot quien hablan ingles?

[snousle]

No, the people we hire are by reference. I dont do craigslist or parking lot day labor. I dont sense that anything is wrong, just a general lack of interest. I suppose teh ghey could be a problem but often they come once or twice before wandering off.

(NO THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEAN!!! LOL)