Has anyone else been noticing that the majority of employers have been doubling down on stupid?
Here in the US people, fed up with toxic working cultures, low wages, and receding job benefits have been either quiet quitting or leaving their respective industries entirely. Now, this has been going on since around the start of the Pandemic, so it's not exactly some short term movement. But, despite most industries crying, desperate for help, signs in nearly every window and posts all over job sites and craigslist; these employers appear not to have learned a damn thing.
Not only are they electing not to get better, they seem clearly intent on getting worse.
My (now former employer) has suffered from losing people in droves. Many of these people were in critical positions that are, on their own, already not easy to fill. Exit interviews were all the same. Low wages, low to no benefits (the company would rather pay fines for not providing insurance than actually providing insurance) and a myriad of other poor conditions. The company is now also in a legal battle with the labor board for forcing people to work overtime and then not paying them for it. Alteration of time cards without notice or consent, demanding several maintenance techs to work in hazardous conditions without proper safety gear, etc.
In a state of total ambivalence, they asked me to write up “attractive” job postings to refill some of these roles. Instead of offering 'attractive' benefits and wages, they actually said that recent increases in Minimum Wage is competitive wage enough and that the few perks they did offer are no longer on the table. Not only would new hires not have access to them, but they were actively going to be rescinding them from everyone who has remained on the team.
And when I went searching through job posting, I notices indication of the same behavior with pretty much every employer posting!
It blows my mind that these morons are looking at the problem of severed access to needed and skilled labor as an excuse to be even less competitive and less attractive to new people. It's like there is some unspoken agreement amongst these idiots that if they just hold out long enough, they can fill these roles for nickels on the dollar.