- “The media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades,” Reich writes.
- “Many just don’t want to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage shit jobs,” Reich said about the 4 million American workers that have been leaving their jobs every month.
- “Corporate America wants to frame this as a ‘labor shortage.’ Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage,” Reich explained.
Robert Reich from The Guardian writes:
“Last Friday’s jobs report from the US Department of Labor elicited a barrage of gloomy headlines. The New York Times emphasized “weak” jobsgrowth and fretted that“hiring challenges that have bedeviled employers all year won’t be quickly resolved,” and “rising wages could add to concerns about inflation.” For CNN, it was “another disappointment”. For Bloomberg the “September jobs report misses big for a second straight month”.
The media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades.
You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.
No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land – Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.
Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better. After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.
But employers are finding it hard to fill positions…”
See full story here.
Economic Left 
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