Hard times at Hardee's: labour and death cult capitalism

[Saiwania]

Not entirely sure because I don't want to fucking work at a fast food restaurant. Or any food service. I don't know. Just wanted to vent, I'm sure this is well traveled territory by now.

It is perhaps the "scrubbing toilets" of workplace options, unenviable type of work and hardship to put up with. No one or very few people anyway, want to work such a job for longer than they have to. But someone has to do it if customers are to keep being served and the food and drinks keep being made and the restaurant keeps functioning.

Without staff and payroll that the prices can afford for what the market will bear, it all falls apart. Nobody wants the job, but someone still gotta do it. Alternative is that no income is earned by anyone there and restaurant shuts down, and people gotta eat something else or somewhere else.

[Kowani]

Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming all hop on the death train

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but all this bravado over people refusing to work low wage jobs has always been tempered by the idea that as soon as the unemployment boost goes away we're all going to go crawling back all 'yes master, sorry master, I didn't mean to speak out master, thank you for your sub-substanance wage master' because literally what choice or leverage do we have?

It's like we did a six month experiment on why they're never going to allow something like UBI because it does exactly what people who advocated for it said it would. I mean a handful of fast food places bumping their wage is great and all but as much as fast food is always held up as minimum wage they've kind of always paid a little extra because no wants to fucking work at a fast food restaurant. I think In n Out has been at $15/hr starting for a while. Not entirely sure because I don't want to fucking work at a fast food restaurant. Or any food service.


I don't know. Just wanted to vent, I'm sure this is well traveled territory by now.

a quick look through glassdoor puts their lowest salary at $13/hour

[Nilokeras]

Which is funny because the people one side moans like cheap labour is the side that wants to reduce the supply of labour whilst the side that moans about low wages is the side that wants to flood the market with cheap labour. One day the penny will drop that you need to control the labour supply if you want to help push wages higher.

A dishonest appraisal of at least one 'side' there considering that lack of legal immigration status is one of the big drivers in keeping the service economy's wages so low, since you can pay undocumented immigrants whatever you like and they can't go to the labour board or what have you. Giving them immigration status that allows them to work, which is what 'that side' advocates, knocks a big part of that downward pressure away.

[Nilokeras]

The answer is far more simple than that. They all fired their workers cos bottom line, the workers went and got other jobs, now they can't rehire the people they fired.

They expected all the people they fired just to sit at home and wait for a call for a year? They just caused their own shortage. In the UK at least there wasn't any massive extra benefits for those out of work it was all targeted at keeping people in jobs. People have quite literally got better jobs or extra jobs to do with the growth in online sales. There is a big problem with companies unable to hire enough people in the service industry.

Moral of the story don't fire workers you need and if you do you can't complain when a year later those people you didn't give a shit about got other jobs.

Which is why I've been highlighting that 'withdrawal of labour' refers both to choosing to not work, where pandemic supports were available, and in choosing to not work in this particular sector. Pandemic stimulus varied in its role in this from enabling people to choose not to work entirely (as in the case of payment systems like CERB in Canada that paid people in replacement for employment) or in providing that little extra push to help people who were just barely keeping their heads above water get their bearings and try to exit the pool, as it were. (ie the stimulus cheques from the US federal government or extended/more lenient unemployment benefits)

[The Nihilistic view]

There is a big problem with companies unable to hire enough people in the service industry.
Moral of the story don't fire workers you need and if you do you can't complain when a year later those people you didn't give a shit about got other jobs.

Normally, people aren't able to get better jobs in the short term if they previously worked a crappy job. But the pandemic really changed things to where people were able to have more options. Businesses are just used to being able to call all of the shots and mistreat or reject people for anything.

The big question is though, are those employers who can't find any employees now really and truly desperate enough to even accept someone like me? I'm more or less the worst possible candidate who isn't a high school drop out, who graduated from college with a 2 year degree with a Cum Laude honor. And yet also never worked for 32 years and has no resume?

If there is enough of a worker shortage, is this my one and only big shot or chance to be hired and stop being a NEET? Or do I still have absolutely no chance, even if I were one of the only people to show up for a job nobody is wanting?

One possibility is that places like a coffee shop will have less employees that are more highly trained but paid more to make them stay for longer in the job. One big chain in the UK is Costa, I know for a fact (because I worked in one for a job at Uni) the skill levels of your average batista is awful. Why on earth anybody would waste £3 on a substandard coffee I have no idea. The British public are just tasteless morons I supose, you'll get a much better product at pretty much any independent. Or only slightly worse quality for less than half the price at McDonald's.

Probably 80% of full time people don't stay in the job for longer than 2 years and the rest are managers. But when it's a job that young people and students and others using it as a stepping stone do it's become that way as a function of pay. If you paid say £12-14 an hour maybe you'd get people becoming skilled baristas but at the time I was there around 2014 for £8 an hour no you won't get anybody decent or that really cares.

Always amazes me when people have a problem with service at big chains. People working there aren't paid enough to care and they have no intrest in whether you come back or not. And to be honest if you are that kind of customer they probably don't want you to come back they just aren't allowed to say it to your face.

One of the best things about working in my family buisness is actually being able to tell the twats that say they won't come back good I don't want you back. Don't get me wrong it's not a daily thing, I've only done it three or four times in the last five years from memory but the look on their face is worth more than any amount of money. I make enough money, the profit on the £50 they might spend really isn't worth the hassle. Too many people are far too entitled when they go into a shop or a restaurant and treat regular staff far too badly because they think or know they can't say anything back.

I've believed this for a while but I think their should be one day a year where retail and service staff can say whatever they want to customers (racist stuff being an exception) because some people really need a dressing down. I say that as a boss and honestly if a staff member could justify to me why they told a customer to fuck off I'd let it fly. I'm not going to discipline a employee for something I might have done in the same situation. I have this revolutionary thought that customers usually get the service they deserve and or pay for. So if you want good service don't be cheap and don't be a twat.

I don't know your whole situation so impossible to comment beyond generalised points (although we didn't fire anybody through covid) we already operate in a way that reduces the amount of Labour required but pays people more than the industry average. So I'm probably not the average manager making such employment decisions. Also probationary periods of about three months are normally a good enough to decide on whether somebody can do the job ok so I'm not too fussed about employing the person with the best peice of paper. Actually for the sorts of roles I mostly have the best peice of paper usually doesn't turn out the best employee. And it's mostly just bullshit anyway, at any level of job a CV is just a big fat massive contortion of the truth with a side of bullshit even for applicationsfor a head office role. (If you've ever heard of linked in over half of everybody I know has at least one peice of fake news on their profile and some are bordering on outright lies) So if you came across as a decent person and seemed genuinely like there was a desire to get employed you'd have a chance at getting a job. I don't think you can ever trust a CV so not really having one isn't a massive deal to me.

But in general surprise surprise paying people more money, giving them more responsibility and training usually makes them stay a lot longer in the job and work better even if they have to do more work. I guess I could squeeze more money out overall by doing things like a lot of companies do but my Dad has never done that and I don't feel like starting that anytime soon and I've never felt like I need to do that to have a good life. It's also quite nice knowing your employees don't think you are a massive twat.

[The Nihilistic view]

Which is funny because the people one side moans like cheap labour is the side that wants to reduce the supply of labour whilst the side that moans about low wages is the side that wants to flood the market with cheap labour. One day the penny will drop that you need to control the labour supply if you want to help push wages higher.

A dishonest appraisal of at least one 'side' there considering that lack of legal immigration status is one of the big drivers in keeping the service economy's wages so low, since you can pay undocumented immigrants whatever you like and they can't go to the labour board or what have you. Giving them immigration status that allows them to work, which is what 'that side' advocates, knocks a big part of that downward pressure away.

I could go to prison for up to five years and or be fined an unlimited amount for knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant, most people won't therefore risk that. Sounds to me like capital Hill needs tougher penalties or enforcement on the employment of such people. You can get round that problem through such methods. As well as setting standards for proving somebody has the right to work I the country as part of the process. Its pretty hard to unknowingly employ an illegal immigrant in the UK.

[Nilokeras]

A dishonest appraisal of at least one 'side' there considering that lack of legal immigration status is one of the big drivers in keeping the service economy's wages so low, since you can pay undocumented immigrants whatever you like and they can't go to the labour board or what have you. Giving them immigration status that allows them to work, which is what 'that side' advocates, knocks a big part of that downward pressure away.

I could go to prison for up to five years and or be fined an unlimited amount for knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant, most people won't therefore risk that. Sounds to me like capital Hill needs tougher penalties or enforcement on the employment of such people. You can get round that problem through such methods.

Punishment in the US varies from fines scaled to the number of employees to about equivalent jailtime for 'harboring' an illegal immigrant, which can be easily construed from the act of employing and going through the measures required to keep an illegal immigrant employed. The problem is less of enforcement, since service industry jobs are much less consolidated and centralized than other sectors and there's less institutional power to discourage enforcement actions, and moreso the economic incentive.

[Caleonia]

Normally, people aren't able to get better jobs in the short term if they previously worked a crappy job. But the pandemic really changed things to where people were able to have more options. Businesses are just used to being able to call all of the shots and mistreat or reject people for anything.

The big question is though, are those employers who can't find any employees now really and truly desperate enough to even accept someone like me? I'm more or less the worst possible candidate who isn't a high school drop out, who graduated from college with a 2 year degree with a Cum Laude honor. And yet also never worked for 32 years and has no resume?

If there is enough of a worker shortage, is this my one and only big shot or chance to be hired and stop being a NEET? Or do I still have absolutely no chance, even if I were one of the only people to show up for a job nobody is wanting?

One possibility is that places like a coffee shop will have less employees that are more highly trained but paid more to make them stay for longer in the job. One big chain in the UK is Costa, I know for a fact (because I worked in one for a job at Uni) the skill levels of your average batista is awful. Why on earth anybody would waste £3 on a substandard coffee I have no idea. The British public are just tasteless morons I supose, you'll get a much better product at pretty much any independent. Or only slightly worse quality for less than half the price at McDonald's.

Probably 80% of full time people don't stay in the job for longer than 2 years and the rest are managers. But when it's a job that young people and students and others using it as a stepping stone do it's become that way as a function of pay. If you paid say £12-14 an hour maybe you'd get people becoming skilled baristas but at the time I was there around 2014 for £8 an hour no you won't get anybody decent or that really cares.

Always amazes me when people have a problem with service at big chains. People working there aren't paid enough to care and they have no intrest in whether you come back or not. And to be honest if you are that kind of customer they probably don't want you to come back they just aren't allowed to say it to your face.

One of the best things about working in my family buisness is actually being able to tell the twats that say they won't come back good I don't want you back. Don't get me wrong it's not a daily thing, I've only done it three or four times in the last five years from memory but the look on their face is worth more than any amount of money. I make enough money, the profit on the £50 they might spend really isn't worth the hassle. Too many people are far too entitled when they go into a shop or a restaurant and treat regular staff far too badly because they think or know they can't say anything back.

I've believed this for a while but I think their should be one day a year where retail and service staff can say whatever they want to customers (racist stuff being an exception) because some people really need a dressing down. I say that as a boss and honestly if a staff member could justify to me why they told a customer to fuck off I'd let it fly. I'm not going to discipline a employee for something I might have done in the same situation. I have this revolutionary thought that customers usually get the service they deserve and or pay for. So if you want good service don't be cheap and don't be a twat.

I don't know your whole situation so impossible to comment beyond generalised points (although we didn't fire anybody through covid) we already operate in a way that reduces the amount of Labour required but pays people more than the industry average. So I'm probably not the average manager making such employment decisions. Also probationary periods of about three months are normally a good enough to decide on whether somebody can do the job ok so I'm not too fussed about employing the person with the best peice of paper. Actually for the sorts of roles I mostly have the best peice of paper usually doesn't turn out the best employee. And it's mostly just bullshit anyway, at any level of job a CV is just a big fat massive contortion of the truth with a side of bullshit even for applicationsfor a head office role. (If you've ever heard of linked in over half of everybody I know has at least one peice of fake news on their profile and some are bordering on outright lies) So if you came across as a decent person and seemed genuinely like there was a desire to get employed you'd have a chance at getting a job. I don't think you can ever trust a CV so not really having one isn't a massive deal to me.

But in general surprise surprise paying people more money, giving them more responsibility and training usually makes them stay a lot longer in the job and work better even if they have to do more work. I guess I could squeeze more money out overall by doing things like a lot of companies do but my Dad has never done that and I don't feel like starting that anytime soon and I've never felt like I need to do that to have a good life. It's also quite nice knowing your employees don't think you are a massive twat.

Same overall concept at our restaurant. In fact we hired 5 people and only let go of 1 as he went to pursue better wages at another restaurant.

[Caleonia]

There is a big problem with companies unable to hire enough people in the service industry.
Moral of the story don't fire workers you need and if you do you can't complain when a year later those people you didn't give a shit about got other jobs.

Normally, people aren't able to get better jobs in the short term if they previously worked a crappy job. But the pandemic really changed things to where people were able to have more options. Businesses are just used to being able to call all of the shots and mistreat or reject people for anything.

The big question is though, are those employers who can't find any employees now really and truly desperate enough to even accept someone like me? I'm more or less the worst possible candidate who isn't a high school drop out, who graduated from college with a 2 year degree with a Cum Laude honor. And yet also never worked for 32 years and has no resume?

If there is enough of a worker shortage, is this my one and only big shot or chance to be hired and stop being a NEET? Or do I still have absolutely no chance, even if I were one of the only people to show up for a job nobody is wanting?

How the hell have you managed to not work for 32 years straight? You’ve been a NEET for twice the amount that I’ve been ALIVE.

[Myrensis]

It's almost like entire industries have built their business model around the threat of starvation and homelessness forcing people to put up with their shitty wages and working conditions, so have been royally fucked by unemployment benefits so "generous" that they...just about let people keep their heads above water.

It's downright un-American!

[Diarcesia]

It's almost like entire industries have built their business model around the threat of starvation and homelessness forcing people to put up with their shitty wages and working conditions, so have been royally fucked by unemployment benefits so "generous" that they...just about let people keep their heads above water.

It's downright un-American!

I'm having a "cry me a river" attitude here. It's the (big) restaurants that are more entitled here. Mom and pops could be struggling, so I wouldn't mind if something could be done that will be mutually beneficial to employee and employer.

[Caleonia]

It's almost like entire industries have built their business model around the threat of starvation and homelessness forcing people to put up with their shitty wages and working conditions, so have been royally fucked by unemployment benefits so "generous" that they...just about let people keep their heads above water.

It's downright un-American!

I'm having a "cry me a river" attitude here. It's the (big) restaurants that are more entitled here. Mom and pops could be struggling, so I wouldn't mind if something could be done that will be mutually beneficial to employee and employer.

And... what is that?

[Diarcesia]

I'm having a "cry me a river" attitude here. It's the (big) restaurants that are more entitled here. Mom and pops could be struggling, so I wouldn't mind if something could be done that will be mutually beneficial to employee and employer.

And... what is that?

Not sure what you're asking.

[Caleonia]

And... what is that?

Not sure what you're asking.

What could be done to be mutually beneficial to both parties that we haven't already done?

[Diarcesia]

Not sure what you're asking.

What could be done to be mutually beneficial to both parties that we haven't already done?

I don't know. I'm not an expert and it varies on where you are. One thing I know: unemployment support is limited to what the government can afford.

[Saiwania]

How the hell have you managed to not work for 32 years straight? You’ve been a NEET for twice the amount that I’ve been ALIVE.

I just really, really don't enjoy anything that's available and never quite absolutely had to work. I graduated K-12 in 2008 when the economy in the US crashed from a housing market gone bad. Got a 2 year degree from 2010 until 2014 but failed to actually break into the industry I had intended to, and was discouraged enough by the whole process and efforts that didn't pay off to not try for a time- but was unfortunate enough to get to when the national and world economy was way down again because of this pandemic now.

I would say the silver lining is that I'll never need to retire but if I do, I'll need less money because I'll need to die before such money runs out. I'd joke that I had a reverse retirement where as most other people do their retirement at old age. My plan is to never stop working if I ever do get work because I have no choice.

Best scenario is if I stumbled across enough wealth to become rich overnight. Then I'd be set practically speaking. It'd just be a matter of managing money as opposed to trying to earn it. I've never had trouble with money, other than on how to get money in the first place.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Best scenario is if I stumbled across enough wealth to become rich overnight.

Highly unlikely. Why can't you just get a part time job or go back to education? It beats doing absolutely nothing

[Saiwania]

Highly unlikely. Why can't you just get a part time job or go back to education? It beats doing absolutely nothing

Nearly all of us are going to have to "do nothing" anyways if automation ever gets good enough to accomplish every task that needs doing automatically, and if there will always be not enough jobs that actually exist to employ everyone who wants to work. Maybe I was just lucky enough to inadvertantly be living like how people will be living in the far future. Although, chances are I'm going to suffer from my long drought of unemployment and will have to work at some point. Even if its work that no one appreciates or respects.

My biggest obstacle preventing any desire to get more education, is that it takes too long and costs too much money. If education was so great, a 2 year degree should've had some value. What if I go for a 4 year degree next time around and it doesn't pay off again? Making sure to graduate is work in itself. Its not like you can graduate without doing all of the work and really applying yourself enough to make good grades.

[Nilokeras]

In order to shift things away from the 'let's all gawk at Saiwana and give them attention variety hour', another interesting quirk to the current labour troubles - the childcare feedback loop:

But another way to look at this is that there is a great reassessment going on in the U.S. economy. It’s happening on a lot of different levels. At the most basic level, people are still hesitant to return to work until they are fully vaccinated and their children are back in school and day care full time. For example, all the job gains in April went to men. The number of women employed or looking for work fell by 64,000, a reminder that child-care issues are still in play.

At Granite Start Early Learning Center in Nashua, owner Joyce Goodwin said the phone hardly stops ringing as families hunt desperately for child care. She gets calls every day from parents looking for a place to put their children as they return to work, and weekend tours of the center are reliably full.

Goodwin has the space to take on another 10 to 12 children — but only if she could hire three more teachers.

“You can’t find help, never mind qualified help,” Goodwin said. She has placed help-wanted ads on hiring websites and social media, she said, but nobody bites.

Child care is a notoriously low-paying field, but state licensing requirements mean workers have to have specialized training — even a four-year degree for some jobs.

Goodwin is one of hundreds of child care business owners struggling to hire in New Hampshire even as they are flooded with queries from families who need care.

Federal stimulus dollars shored up child care businesses and prevented a wave of closures during the worst days of the coronavirus crisis while parents kept their children home. But the pandemic also accelerated child care’s workforce crisis. Over the past year, hundreds of trained child care workers have left the field in search of higher-paying work and jobs that feel less dangerous in a pandemic.

Because of strict limits on how many children a care worker can tend to at once, a shortage of staff means a shortage of spaces for the children of New Hampshire’s working families.

Long story short, another important component of this 'labour shortage' is the looming question of childcare. In a lot of the Western world schools have been remote for the last year and continue to be remote or partly remote as the drum beat for reopening picks up pace. When your kids are at home doing distance learning/sneaking in Minecraft on their iPads the minute you look away, you can't work. And it's not a coincidence that many of the sectors experiencing 'shortages' are those where women make up a large part of the workforce, like hospitality. And even when people can afford to pay for childcare, as the second paragraph notes, there is a shortage of care spaces because women also make up a large percentage of the childcare sector's workforce.

Which is an important highlight on a key plank of modern labour - the free subsidy the state provides towards childcare known as 'school'. When that plank gets pulled away the market totters because all of that labour required to keep kids alive and educated gets deposited back onto the family and the gendered way we construct household labour duties means that it usually gets taken up by women. And that ripples back out through the economy in the form of the withdrawal of primarily female labour from the market, hitting sectors like childcare and hospitality disproportionately.

[Kowani]

Florida next

and an illuminating look at how this crisis was manufactured

Earlier this month, the Department of Labor released a less-than-stellar jobs report that sent politicians, economists and leaders in corporate America scrambling for answers. That report details an approximate 71% drop in job growth paired with a slight hike in unemployment, falling far below analyst expectations of a month-over-month boom. This prompted many "mainstream" or conservative pundits, along with Republican elected officials, to point toward a prime suspect: unemployment insurance.

Their logic is simple: if people are getting paid to do nothing, they have no incentive to do anything. But Democrats have argued that the reality is far too complicated to chalk up to one factor. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attributed the disappointing jobs report to a lack of proper child care and lingering fears about the pandemic. Others have pinned the blame on employers, citing low wages and poor working conditions as reasons why Americans might be more hesitant to rejoin the workforce.

Nevertheless, over the past two weeks week, a narrative about "labor shortages'' and the allegedly corrosive effects of overly generous unemployment benefits, has been force-fed to the American public. Within a matter of days, at least 16 state governors (Kowani edit: the number is now at 23)— including such nationally prominent Republicans as Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia — seized the opportunity to slash or eliminate aid to the jobless, even as the U.S. struggles to recover from the effects of a global pandemic.

Given how effective this "labor shortage" narrative was in driving reactionary GOP policy, it seems worth unpacking exactly where and how it arose. Several observers on the left have argued that it emerged from "explicitly ideological think tanks and explicitly ideological right-wing projects," as Henry Williams, co-founder of the Gravel Institute, put it in an interview with Salon. It then "trickled outward" through mainstream media sources, effectively cleansed of its right-wing roots.

Conservative think tanks and other institutions, Williams said, "will facilitate studies, analyses and articles that can then be laundered through various communications arms through their press releases." That material then appears in local media or the seemingly neutral business press, he said, and is then widely perceived as apolitical conventional wisdom.

The recent "labor shortage" narrative appeared to arise right after the recent jobs report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a massively influential pro-business lobby with one of the widest reaches of any political organization in the country. Within hours of the report's release, the Chamber released a statement arguing that "paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market" and announced a broad lobbying effort aimed at pressuring both the White House and Capitol Hill to kill jobless benefits. Republican lawmakers then jumped onto the bandwagon to trash unemployment insurance. "Systematically paying unemployment benefits that are more than a person makes working doesn't create an environment that's particularly conducive to going back to work," Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — a distinctly moderate Republican by current standards — told Fox News in a Friday interview. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also railed against the benefits, calling them a "special bonus for unemployed people to stay home."

But in fact this campaign against unemployment benefits can be traced at least as far back as last July, when the Chamber wrote a letter to then-President Trump urging what it called a "middle-ground approach" to federal assistance — which effectively amounted to a drastic reduction in benefits. "The additional $600 [in weekly benefits] is also causing significant distortions in the labor market and hurting the economic recovery," the group wrote at the time. "We routinely hear from our employer members who report that individuals are declining to return to work because they can take home more money on unemployment." Other conservative or pro-business organizations were also trying to build public sympathy for the struggles of employers. Mere months after the pandemic had forced millions of Americans out of work, groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute lamented that overly generous unemployment insurance was wreaking havoc on the labor market. As Rachel Greszler, a Heritage research fellow, put it: "Instead of bridging the gap, excessive unemployment payments will only increase the breadth and depth of the economic downturn."

This analysis then bled into the business press, with publications like Forbes and Business Observer publishing seemingly non-ideological stories about a scarcity of labor. Then it reached mainstream news, with a series of anecdotally-driven reports from the perspectives of disgruntled business owners in industries hit hard by the pandemic, including hospitality, construction, manufacturing, nursing, food service and more.

Potential labor shortages, as Williams told Salon, have been a concern for the business community since the pandemic began, with employers "wondering how they're going to bring people back in these conditions." He continued, "The business community was already fighting this proxy battle months ago. The difference was, when these jobs numbers came out, they saw a perfect opportunity … to connect them to this broader lobbying effort and create an economic narrative that they know has a unique power in shaping policy." Indeed, immediately after April's jobs numbers were released on May 7, business leaders vociferously hammered home this narrative. The National Owners Association, a group of McDonald's franchisees, wrote on May 10 about the "perverse effects of the current unemployment benefits" on hiring. Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius echoed this theory the day, arguing that "labor supply appears to be tighter than the unemployment rate suggests, likely reflecting the impact of unusually generous unemployment benefits and lingering virus-related impediments to working," as Yahoo Finance reported. On the very day the numbers were released, the New York Post published an article featuring testimonials from New York City restaurateurs who blamed jobless benefits for their hiring challenges.

The response of the business class was like a "lightning-flash reaction," said Joseph A. McCartin, executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, in an interview with Salon.

"Employers' associations and conservative groups have been seizing on the jobs numbers to campaign for the rollback of benefits in order to force workers back to work," he said, in hopes of regaining control over the labor supply and controlling wages. "There was a well-organized operation that's been in place for several months by groups who were preparing for the pushback. They knew they couldn't do it two months ago. They were ready for these numbers." Williams told Salon that the speedy response from Republican governors was best understood as a genuflection to their business constituencies. "Many of these Republican governors genuinely see themselves as serving the business community, above and beyond their constituents more broadly," he said. "They are willing to go out ahead of the evidence, and ahead of the political consensus, in order to demonstrate their fealty to the business community."
[...] Notably, the effort to eliminate federal benefits is being led out in the open for the public to see, instead of being astroturfed through pseudo-grassroots organizations. It's a lot like a "culture war," William Spriggs, a professor of economics at Howard University, told Salon in an interview.

"It is a purely ideological move" because "this is federal money," Spriggs explained, stressing that in the terms of pure economic self-interest, Republican politicians' decisions appear nonsensical. The federal money for jobless benefits "is not coming out of the state trust funds," he said. "From the local politicians, it's dumbfounding. The state of South Carolina is going to send half a billion dollars back to the United States Treasury" that would otherwise be spent in the state on rent, mortgages, groceries, gasoline and a host of other goods and services. "Don't they understand that?" he asked rhetorically. "You're going to take half a billion dollars of sales away from your companies?"

"In a case like this," Williams explained, "you're talking about a program that touches so many people that you need to change the public opinion first to win on it." Republicans and the business lobby, in other words, "want to change the prevailing political winds." The "prevailing winds" at this point appear largely in favor of unemployment insurance, despite Republican protestations that, somehow or other, they're bad for the average worker. According to a poll from March, three-quarters of all Iowa residents — in a state dominated by Republicans — oppose cutting unemployment benefits. A Politico/Morning Consult similarly found in March that 72% of Americans supported President Biden's latest COVID relief bill, with a broad majority specifically supporting the latest batch of unemployment checks.

In other words, it would require a truly impressive propaganda triumph for the GOP to change the minds of American workers, at least one-fourth of whom relied on unemployment insurance to survive throughout the pandemic. In seeking to accomplish that, Republicans are trying to link the unemployment issue "to the politics of reopening," Williams explained. "The goal is to use the media to try and create a national narrative that Biden is holding back the recovery."