Sunday, April 3, 2011

Imaginary Jobs

One of the things that I suspect Julia is going to try on is the manufactured story that we need to get people off welfare and into jobs. Sounds good doesn't it? It will certainly appeal to the RWA's.

Welfare = bad and Jobs = good. Only question is how and why did they get there - on welfare that is? Do you think there might be a reason? Could it have anything to do with a dysfunctional jobs market or unscrupulous employers and recruiters or a lack of real jobs? No of course not Virginia.

Both the opposition and our media are frantic about "skill shortages" and they are even more frantic about people who are on "welfare". How dare they!

Now these would be the jobs the business community say exist all over the place. You know there might be a shortage of CEO's and other executives with half a blue clue but I haven't yet found a shortage of anyone who actually does real work for a living and I have been looking for over 40 years.

Unless of course we are talking about those imaginary jobs that the slimy end of the business community dog whistle about - you know the ones where they want to pay bugger all for real skills - all to undermine their existing workforce. Yep there are plenty of those at $15 an hour that last for a week and a half. They might want to replace the opinionated, safety orientated, 20 year experienced fitter or mechanic or welder but can't find a compliant coolie who can do it - and that annoys them.

The imaginary and confected story around "skill shortages" is all about putting pressure on wages, keeping workers under the thumb and getting rid of any thoughts that the proles might have about getting above their station.

In other words - it’s BS. Pure and simple.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said.