AnarchistSpaceDad on Nostr: This seems like a death spiral to me. First, Amazon and big chains drove small ...
This seems like a death spiral to me. First, Amazon and big chains drove small retailers out of business. Now wages have failed to keep up with inflation or the fact that there's a pandemic, chain stores shift to self-checkout, lock high value items behind glass, and then close claiming high crime, insufficient profits, and inability to hire staff.
I suspect that once a bunch of stores have closed down and there's less competition, the stores will finally raise prices, but wages won't go up by nearly as much because there will also be less competition among employers. If retail workers want better wages and working conditions they'll have to unionize. Which will have bigger bang for the buck with fewer stores. But the customers won't have any kind of collective bargaining rights; they'll be stuck busing or driving miles to get to the store.
I can imagine a situation where employees are trying to unionize the last store in a community and the company threatens to shut it down to get the community to oppose the union. I'm sure it's happened somewhere already.
https://chaosfem.tw/@rooster/111783150869431142
I suspect that once a bunch of stores have closed down and there's less competition, the stores will finally raise prices, but wages won't go up by nearly as much because there will also be less competition among employers. If retail workers want better wages and working conditions they'll have to unionize. Which will have bigger bang for the buck with fewer stores. But the customers won't have any kind of collective bargaining rights; they'll be stuck busing or driving miles to get to the store.
I can imagine a situation where employees are trying to unionize the last store in a community and the company threatens to shut it down to get the community to oppose the union. I'm sure it's happened somewhere already.
https://chaosfem.tw/@rooster/111783150869431142