Author Topic: The changed future after CV-19  (Read 124007 times)

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #210 on: May 30, 2022, 08:46:02 PM »

rcjordan

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #211 on: June 02, 2022, 03:25:55 PM »
Dreaded Commute to the City Is Keeping Offices Mostly Empty (wsj.com)
Urban areas where people live closer to work have a higher return-to-office rate, WSJ analysis shows

littleman

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #212 on: June 02, 2022, 05:08:06 PM »
The recent growth of unions is somewhat surprising to me.

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #213 on: June 03, 2022, 04:26:55 PM »
How so?

And by that, I guess I'm asking...

... because it seemed like an inexorable downward trend?
... because you expected an ebb and flow, but just didn't expect it now?

I feel like people have been trying to reboot the union movement in greater earnest for about a decade with some successes, but an overall consistent outflow. Perhaps they organizing tools were being put in place, but conditions were unfavorable until the tight labor market meant workers were more willing to take risks and Covid work conditions meant workers were less attached to their jobs.

Most "front line" workers I know say they have never been treated so poorly and disliked their jobs so much as in the last two years.

rcjordan

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #214 on: June 04, 2022, 07:16:50 PM »
Gen Z and millennials default on auto loans at far greater rates than before the pandemic
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/gen-z-millennials-default-auto-loans-far-greater-rates-pandemic-rcna31479

littleman

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #215 on: June 04, 2022, 10:02:03 PM »
>... because it seemed like an inexorable downward trend?

Yes, mostly that.  The anti-union rhetoric has been so strong and consistent in it's message in the United States that I felt the movement was permanently on the decline. 

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #216 on: June 05, 2022, 02:01:44 AM »
I suspect that there is so much coverage of the exceptions because you’re still basically right.

rcjordan

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #217 on: June 17, 2022, 01:01:35 PM »
>rise

Starbucks now has 150 unionized shops.

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #218 on: September 06, 2022, 12:05:29 AM »
4,000 Google cafeteria workers quietly unionized during the pandemic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/05/google-union-pandemic/

My first reaction was, "Google has 4000 cafeteria workers?" Then I realized that it has a lot more than that. 4,000 are unionized.

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #219 on: September 06, 2022, 04:22:45 AM »
Next up, UPS. They are already Teamsters, but the contract is coming for renegotiation next year

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/09/05/business/ups-teamster-union-strike/index.html

DrCool

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #220 on: September 06, 2022, 03:55:40 PM »
>UPS

I was working at UPS back in 1997 (Maybe '96?) when they went on strike. That big strike fund the Teamsters talked about before the strike and how they would make sure we still have money coming in if we strike? Yeah, we never saw any of that. Really hope that isn't the same for workers this time around. I was pretty low level at the time and thought the contract they were offering was pretty good overall. The contract the union ended up signing seemed to just benefit the long time workers and people who had been there for 20+ years.

But every night at our scheduled shift we would just hang out outside the gate, grill up a bunch of food the union grocery stores around the area brought us, have a couple drinks, and overall have a good time. No picketing or harassing trucks or anything like that.

ergophobe

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #221 on: October 29, 2022, 03:33:43 PM »
From today's NYT newsletter about China...

Quote
I wrote this week about these young protesters, and I interviewed a college student in the southern port city of Guangzhou, who used Apple’s AirDrop feature to send photos of protest messages to fellow subway passengers’ iPhones. He’s so young that when he said his age, my heart ached. (He asked to keep his name and his age private for fear of punishment by the Chinese authorities.) I asked why he risked so much to protest. He said he wanted to end the rule of the Communist Party and make China a democratic country.

I asked him why democracy was important. “In a dictatorship, the dictator doesn’t need to answer to anybody,” he said. “If the Chinese have the votes, the government will have to think twice before implementing the zero Covid policy.”

It seems that anti-government sentiment in response to Covid is not leading to authoritarianism or democracy, but a regression to the mean.

rcjordan

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #222 on: December 06, 2022, 04:04:05 PM »
Remote Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453 Billion

"What is clear is that an office-centric downtown is soon to be a thing of the past."

"Before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. Today that number is closer to 47%. Employees' not returning to downtown offices has had a domino effect: Less foot traffic, less public-transit use, and more shuttered businesses have caused many downtowns to feel more like ghost towns. Even 2 1/2 years later, most city downtowns aren't back to where they were prepandemic."

https://www.businessinsider.com/remote-work-gutted-city-downtowns-office-real-estate-apocalypse-2022-12

littleman

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #223 on: December 06, 2022, 07:04:00 PM »
>"Before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. Today that number is closer to 47%. Employees'

Lots of talk about the housing bubble, but no one seems to be paying attention to the office space real estate bubble.

Travoli

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Re: The changed future after CV-19
« Reply #224 on: December 06, 2022, 08:29:16 PM »
>Less foot traffic, less public-transit use, and more shuttered businesses

So, convert it to residential space? Seems like that would solve multiple problems.