Marx called this more then a century ago, any labor saving technology will always be used to put people in the unemployment line instead of lessening work because capitalist love a long unemployment line to keep the workers in line.
He thought that it would lead to the unemployed masses teaming up with the imiserated workers to overthrow capitalism, which hasn’t happened…yet.
Windex007@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I don’t think you or I or Marx need to over engineer the explanation in terms of “wanting unemployment lines to keep ‘workers in line’”
It’s sufficient to say there is an immediate profit motive to just fire the workers and pocket the surplus, I think.
Not well versed enough in social theory or empirical outcomes to really know… But it seems enough to me
Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
That doesn’t explain why they don’t just do a three day work week and pay workers 1/2 of what they did before. Cost wise it would be the same and would make the same profit as firing half the workforce, but you’ll almost never see companies reduce hours instead of head count.
They don’t reduce hours because that means the person will probably get a second job. Now they’re not the sole employer and the only thing keeping that person from poverty. This makes getting fired a smaller threat as the second job can hold you over for longer. It also gives the employees more bargaining power when negotiating for raises / benefits as they can threaten to quit and just live off the second job for a bit, they can also play both employers off one another to compete for the employees time. These all increase worker power which capitalists/employers don’t like.
A long unemployment line has the opposite effect and decreases worker power. It makes firing a bigger threat as the employee knows it will be harder to get a job, so the employer can work them more and pay them less. It also reduces employee bargaining power as the threat of quitting isn’t as real and the employer knows it.
This is why a Marxist approach is needed, economics just looks at the dollar and cents, but if you look only at that you can miss underlying power dynamics that also drive behavior.
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Maybe that’s why. I don’t dispute the outcome, just I wonder about the underlying motivation.
Headcount, regardless of utilization, carries a cost. Payroll HR benefit administration badges laptops uniforms etc etc.
As well simply “cutting hours” causes people to quit to find more stable full time employment. If you actually want to keep an employee, it’s a massive risk to do that.
Both cases, those are working against the employer even before you try and justify it as part of some grander scheme.
I’m completely open to the idea, but it strikes me as an Occam’s Razor moment. Why introduce the concept of secret colluding between competing businesses when it can be sufficiently be explained by individual greed?