Category Archives: Labor

The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On “Indefinite Back Order,” the Machine Grinds to a Halt, by Charles Hugh Smith

For want of a nail . . . From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

A great many essential components in America are on ‘indefinite back order’, including the lifestyle of endless globally sourced goodies at low, low prices.

Setting aside the “transitory inflation” parlor game for a moment, let’s look at what happens when critical parts are unavailable for whatever reason, for example, they’re on back order or indefinite back order, i.e. the supplier has no visibility on when the parts will be available.

If the part that blew out is 0.1% of the entire machine, and the other 99.9% still works perfectly, the entire machine is still dead in the water without that critical component. That is a pretty good definition of systemic vulnerability and fragility, a fragility that becomes much, much worse if there are two or three components which are on indefinite back order.

This is the problem with shipping much of your supply chain overseas: you create extreme systemic vulnerability and fragility even as you rake in big profits from reducing costs. Speaking of costs, let’s look at the costs of having a large, costly, complex mechanism sitting idle in a non-functioning state due to some broken element for which there is no substitute available. Whatever productive capacity the mechanism, process, etc. had is now stuck at zero.

Buying a new replacement is extremely costly, and that’s not always available for all the same reasons that parts and components aren’t available. Finding someone to fabricate a new component is not easy due to the wholesale transfer of manufacturing moxie and capability overseas.

You might be able to find someone to weld a replacement strut, but try finding someone to fab a new bicycle derailleur or better yet, a multilayer semiconductor chip. What about 3-D fabrication? Doesn’t that solve this problem? If the part can be “printed,” yes, but there are limits on what can be 3-D fabbed. You can’t 3-D fab a complex thermostat or controller, for example. You can’t 3-D fab a rubber gasket, either, or a great many other bits of petrochemical-based manufacturing.

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NY Hospital Forced To Stop Delivering Babies After Maternity Workers Resign Over Vaccine, by Tyler Durden

I’m sure skilled maternity workers are easy to find in this economy. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A hospital in upstate New York has been forced to ‘pause’ the delivery of babies starting Sept. 24 after a flood of maternity workers resigned over Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

Lewis County Health System CEO Gerald Cayer made the announcement in a Friday press conference, according to WWNY. According to Cayer, six employees in the maternity unit resigned and another seven are ‘undecided,’ rendering the hospital unable to safely deliver children.

“If we can pause the service and now focus on recruiting nurses who are vaccinated, we will be able to reengage in delivering babies here in Lewis County,” said Cayer.

Cayer said 165 hospital employees have yet to be vaccinated against COVID-19; that’s 27 percent of the workforce.

The other 464 workers, or 73 percent of employees, have gotten their shots, he said.

In August, the state announced all health care workers at hospitals and long-term care facilities across New York would be required to have gotten at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination by September 27.

Cayer said the announcement prompted 30 workers to get vaccinated, while another 30 resigned. -WWNY

New York isn’t the only state with healthcare workers who refuse to get vaxxed. Last month, a group of New Mexico healthcare workers protested vaccine mandates – which they say ‘take away people’s choice and informed consent,’ and ‘violate medical codes of ethics as well as fundamental human rights, the constitution, and the Nuremberg Code,’ according to KFOX14.

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Biden Exempts Over 600,000 USPS Workers From Federal Mandatory Vaccination Order, by Tyler Durden

This blows the whole rationale for the vaccine mandate out of the water. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

All people are equal before “the scienceTM“, but some unions are more equal.

We previously noted that in an unspoken footnote to Biden’s bombastic “no jab, no job” speech, various labor unions had quietly (and not so quietly) voiced their displeasure to the now official mandatory vaccinations including NYC teachers, California’s largest public sector union and of course, the US Postal Service. And now we know that while Biden was eager to frame his new vaxx policy as all inclusive and with no exception, that was not really true.

According to the Washington Post citing a “White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss not-yet-public portions of the president’s plan”, U.S. Postal Service workers were not included in Biden’s executive order requiring all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

While Biden framed his mandate as one covering all federal workers and all companies with more than 100 staff, he forgot to mention that any labor union that is instrumental in keeping the Democrats in power would be granted a very “unscientific” exemption. The loophole in question, according to the report, according to the White House source, is that the “USPS has a separate statutory scheme and is traditionally independent of federal personnel actions like this” even though postal workers would be strongly encouraged to comply with the mandate. Paradoxically, the WaPo also notes that this “explainer” is in conflict with reality: after all, the Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch, and it is required to be specifically included in executive orders that apply to working conditions for federal employees.

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Slowly But Surely, The Stupid Is Failing, by Karl Denninger

Way too slowly, unfortunately. From Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org:

t is slowly dawning on all the different entities, including health care, that if they actually try to enforce jab mandates they’re going to be screwed.  Some of this is very visible already if you know where to look.  Hospitals report “staffed and available” ICU (and regular) beds.  For a bed to be usable legally-mandated staffing levels must be present.  Beds don’t “disappear” in a hospital; you don’t make the building larger or smaller, do you?

Nope — it’s all about staff levels.

Well?

There has already been a contraction — and the mandates aren’t, for the most part, in effect yet.  In a few places they’ve fired people.  In others they’re threatening to.  The problem, beyond being sued and losing, is that they can’t actually make good on the threats without immediately detonating any chance of being able to help the poor bastard who has a heart attack a week later — and people are already leaving over these demands.

Witness what just happened in Chicago.  Lightfoot mandated jabs for everyone in the schools; a large number of bus drivers quit.  Now what?  No school bus for your kids, that’s what!  The city is claiming Uber and Lyft will be provided; uh huh, good luck there because, guess what — neither mandates their drivers be jabbed!

And don’t kid yourself — those arguing that Jacobson, a USSC decision centering on smallpox from 1905, a disease with a 30% fatality rate, are flat-out wrong on several levels.

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California Nurse Shortage Reaches “Crisis Level” As Vaccine Mandate Wards Off Traveling Nurses, by Tyler Durden

One thing the mainstream media hasn’t even tried to explain away or lie its way through is why so many medical professionals refuse to take the vaccines. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As America’s hospital beds have again filled with sick COVID  patients, nurses and other healthcare workers have been quitting at the fastest rate since the early days of the pandemic, when nurses in some NYC hospitals were using garbage bags instead of PPE. Across the Internet, on subreddits and in Facebook groups, nurses have gathered to commiserate.

But it’s not just remote areas of Arkansas and Mississippi that are having problems. Local media in California have reported that across the Golden State, low staffing levels have reached a “crisis point”.

According to a story published by a newspaper in Bakersfield, in the past month, no fewer than four emergency room nurses have quit at one Eureka hospital.

And aside from the burnout and the pressure and the stress, nurses have also cited California’s mandatory vaccination rule as one reason they’re thinking about leaving the state. Traveling nurses have been turning down assignments in the Golden State at record rates  because they don’t want to get vaccinated – and the mandate hasn’t even taken effect yet.

Cole of Scripps Health said the state’s testing requirement, imposed last week, already has discouraged some out-of-state, traveling nurses from taking temporary jobs at California hospitals.

“If they don’t want to get vaccinated, they are turning down California assignments,” he said.

Here’s more according to Bakersfield.com:

Hospitals are struggling to comply with the state’s nurse staffing requirements as pandemic-induced burnout has exacerbated an already chronic nursing shortage nationwide.

But burnout isn’t the only thing compounding California’s nursing shortage: The state’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is already causing headaches for understaffed hospitals before it is even implemented. Some traveling nurses – who are in high demand nationwide – are turning down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated.

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Stop The Mandates Or People Die, by Karl Denninger

What happens when an “essential” worker, say an EMT, walks off a job rather than take a vaccine, and somebody dies because the vacant spot couldn’t be filled? From Karl Denninger at market-ticker.org:

Better watch this one folks and let it sink in.

“If I don’t show up for my job, as I just explained to you, people die. On Saturday night at 10 p.m. I got a page. I did not want to go to work. Somebody was having a very critical problem, they were dying. I worked until 6 a.m. the next day. If I had not of showed up, there would have been nobody to do my job. These guys can’t show up to their job, and I’m sorry, your jobs are not as important as mine.”

There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people just like him.

They’re everywhere in the health care system.  They have unique skills without which the system does not function, and when you need those skills you need them now, not later.

There is no “later”; there is either now or death.

Take someone on dialysis.  This is not a “robotic procedure”; each patient has specific levels of various drugs and their specific metabolic reactions to them that must be individually managed.  The people who do that job are not replaceable on short notice, if at all.  If you need dialysis and do not get it, you die.  This is not a “maybe” or “might die” you WILL die with absolute, 100% certainty.

Things happen at odd hours of the day and night.  Most real medical emergencies are not scheduled — heart attacks, strokes, car wrecks, gunshots and similar.  They happen when they happen and either someone is there to respond to it and deal with it or the person in question dies.

Those hundreds of thousands of people who are utterly essential to people not dying every single day — hundreds if not thousands who will otherwise die if those employees refuse to show up — and exactly zero of those people can be compelled to work.

This is America.

It is not the Soviet Union.  It is not North Korea.

NOBODY is a slave and EVERYONE has the right to say “**** you” and walk out.

EVERYONE.

ALL THE TIME.

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The Extra $300/Week Unemployment Benefits Encouraged Many to Not Work: Details about the “Labor Shortage” Pile Up, by Wolf Richter

Whatever happened to the endlessly repeated bromide that nobody wanted to draw welfare and unemployment, and everyone so doing would take a job if any were available. The Covid affair has blown that one sky high. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Business owners and hiring managers have known this in their gut for months.

In the 27 states that have ended the extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits, paid on top of the regular state unemployment insurance, people are returning to work at a much faster rate than in states where the extra $300 a week are still being paid: this was further confirmed today by the unemployment insurance (UI) data from the Labor Department.

At the end of June, Texas and Florida joined the group of states that ended the extra $300 a week (the Enders). These states are still paying the regular state unemployment benefits; only the federal top-off $300 a week was ended. Since the end of June, the combined “continued claims” (the number of people having claimed unemployment insurance for more than a week) of the 27 Enders dropped by 25%.

Over the same period, the continued claims by the states that kept the extra $300 a week (the Keepers) dropped by only 11%. In other words, continued UI over just those weeks since the end of June dropped over twice as fast in states that had ended the extra benefits:

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Message From France, by Hardscrabble Farmer

France moves to full-bore totalitarianism, but it doesn’t always work out the way the potentates want. From Hardscrabble Farmer at theburningplatform:

Here in France it has gone to the extreme with the “Health” Pass. Last week on the 21st ALL restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and any leisure activities like sporting events, theaters, cinemas, museums, were closed to anyone without “the pass” and all staff at these places are mandated to get the jab to keep their job.

It is now a 6 Month prison sentence if you are caught inside any of these places without the pass (the man who slapped the president in the face got only 3 months prison time). Business owners will get a fine of 45,000 euros and 1 year prison sentence if they do not comply with the use of “the pass” and force all their employees to get the jab. (If you know France, you can commit murder and have less of a sentence)

So the result? All the low paid employees quit, they can make more on welfare here. (for now) We can still technically “get take out food” but I just tried last night and every restaurant in our town (that is dine in with take out) has closed their doors due to the lack of staff.

As of last week ALL doctors, nurses and health industry workers have been mandated to get the jab or lose their license, practice, job, business etc. (ALL health care here is Govt paid positions and there are no private health care Doctors or Hospitals etc.)

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Amid Clamoring of “Labor Shortages” as 13 Million People Claim Unemployment Benefits, Job Openings Spike Sky-High. Sector by Sector, by Wolf Richter

There are a lot of job openings for anyone who would rather work than collect money from the taxpayers via the government. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

And many people quit their job to take a better job with higher starting wage & signing bonus, offered by desperate employers.

All the evidence – data and anecdotal – has been pointing at the same weird phenomenon: Employers are facing a “labor shortage,” even as 13 million people still claim some form of state or federal unemployment compensation, because millions of people who used to work and who could work, cannot work now or still do not want to work at the pay and benefit packages offered.

So here is another piece of this phenomenon: A record spike in unfilled job openings, along with a large number of people who quit an old job to take on a new job, incentivized by aggressive hiring efforts, such as raised wages, hiring bonuses, incentives, and better benefits.

Total unfilled job openings spiked by 590,000 in June to 10.1 million openings, seasonally adjusted, and to 10.3 million not seasonally adjusted, blowing out all prior records, up by 42% from June 2019, according to the JOLTS report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today:

Faced with difficulties in filling open positions, employers are engaging in aggressive hiring efforts that include increased starting wages, hiring bonuses, other bonuses, better benefits, etc.  – and there have been reports to this effect all over the place, from small companies to major employers such as Walmart and Goldman Sachs.

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What Would Our Economy Look Like in the Shadow of Vaccine Passports? by Brandon Smith

Has anybody really thought out what a vaccine passport requirement would do to business and the economy? From Brandon Smith at alt-market.us:

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

Yes, it’s an official concern now. The mainstream media and the Biden Administration have gone from suggesting that Covid vaccinations would “not be mandated” to saying they “should be mandated.” This means several very uncomfortable consequences are on the way for our economy and the nation as a whole. Remember, the federal government already decided it’s legal for companies to require coronavirus vaccines. The most obvious next step: A mandatory “vaccine passport” certifying its holder has gotten the recommended injections.

The assertion by the establishment is that life would simply go back to normal as long as you comply and get your shots like a good citizen. But from what I have seen even some people who have taken the vaccines voluntarily do not want a passport system in place, and for good reason. Should a mandatory vaccine passport system be implemented, life will never be normal again.

Vaccine passports are not a panacea

First we have to take into account the fact that there will never be a 100% vaccination rate in the U.S.; not even close. With a number of states at or below a 50% vaccination rate, there is a question of practicality regarding vaccine passports. Such a program would mean that around half the country could be put in the position of hearing they have no right to employment or possibly even general interaction in trade because they won’t take the experimental jab.

The real concern with a vaccine passport has nothing to do with coronavirus, or herd immunity, or saving lives. It’s a tool of control. Like the Soviet Union’s communist party membership card, it’s an official document that demonstrates compliance to authority. It’s a tool to divide the U.S. population.

If this autocratic diktat was directed at a tiny minority of people within the population, it might work at frightening them into accepting the vaccinations; to go along to get along. But, with hundreds of millions of people saying “no way,” history tells us the more pressure applied the more rebellion is inspired.

Second, we have to consider what the immediate economic and financial effects will be in light of this conflict. For example, look at the amount of relocation and migration that has happened in the U.S. in the past year alone. Many millions of people have escaped from predominantly blue states based on political and social factors; and the covid mandates and lockdowns are a big part of what inspired most people to leave.

As has been well documented, blue states are much slower in recovering economically when compared to red states with less restrictions. Not only that, but money moves with people. This is a hard reality. Conservative states are seeing ample cash inflows from tourism and mass migration while blue states are bleeding tax revenues. In light of this revelation, red states are going to ask themselves this question:

“Why would we commit economic suicide like the blue states by following their example? Wouldn’t vaccine passports be the equivalent of blue state covid mandates times a hundred?”

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