Work, Crisis and Pandemic
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/04...-and-pandemic/
Quote:
The Federal aid programs are capitalist in the sense that they see the world through a capitalist lens. Unemployment benefits are premised in the idea that only paid labor matters. Since the 1970s, women entering the workforce have added to household income without the work that they were doing— household labor, being considered. The informal economy that sustains the poor exists outside of Social Security numbers, unemployment insurance, and many times the law. It ebbs and flows with the broader economy, growing in times of broad social failure and pitting citizens against the forces of capitalist order.
A virtual chorus of leftish economists has called for maintenance of this order through keeping workers ‘attached’ to their employers.
...
Income pays the rent; the rent pays the landlord’s mortgage and the mortgage payment keeps the bank solvent. As long as owners and bankers are happy, the ultimate plight of workers is an afterthought.
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It's easy to fire people now, get a corporate bail out, become a zombie company that should be dead, let workers stew on piss poor unemployment benefits for as long as it takes, then hire desperate workers at half the salary when productivity resumes.
I am surprised at how easy it has been for Australian employers to fire employees in this crisis. Without knowing each employment contract, I would guess that many instances are indeed unfair dismissal which should be a redundancy with payout. It is technically a redundancy in most cases. Something stinks about the "stimulus" in US and in Aus.