Russell Brand: the great resignation continues ..

[DaisyStiener]

He’s not wrong is he?
I know he generally is on about USA, but the U.K. - feels like people cannot be arsed to go back to shite jobs with shite pay with shite management?

My DH work is a fairly nice atmosphere.
His bosses are quite reasonable , they get sick pay ,but not much above the minimum wage.
DH has been covering the crappiest part of their office, ( not his job) as the work cannot get or keep staff- they don’t want to be getting hassled for minimum wage.
And DHs bosses have got him thinking that they’re doing him some sort of favour by continuing to employ him?
They’ve NO STAFF

Yeah : f*ck that. If you’re going to take a shitey job role, then at least pay me well

Other side is: I’ve found any service I’ve received recently has been quite bad - staff are outright rude ( and tbh I don’t blame them ) but it’s still like “woah!” when you get let down.
Are we just accepting that a Hermes /yodel parcel may or may not appear today/tomorrow/in a bin…? I was served a cold dinner in a restaurant this weekend. Just got a “sorry….” as I’d already paid for it on a bloody app.
Staff member on webchat just down right lied, to get me off the chat a few nights ago..

Have YOU left a crap job? What are you doing now ?
Do you have an important job ( nursing ) and left because youd rather stack shelves in Tesco for £9 an hour ?

Feels like a huge big change in society…

The posters above who pointed out that life wouldn't feel so unlivable if property wasn't such a racket, are spot on. Money that people could be spending on their kids/keeping warm/ enabling them to drop the night shift is being siphoned away to make people wirh propeet richer - either right now, or at least in capital terms (before the landlords come on to say their property doesn't make them a penny).

I think a property tax is needed to redress this, increase the £ going into health and social care, to improve conditions for staff and to even out the postcodes and end of life lotteries where some people get to keep a £1.5 mill house in the family and others lose half the £170k house to pay fees. At least now its only half, but still grotesquely unfair.

Apologies I have derailed from work and jobs, as you were! And thank you to posters this is such an interesting thread.

My jobs-related contribution would be that when the labour market is relatively on employees side like now would be an excellent time to rebuild the unions. I still beling to mine, but when I was working for a company back ahem a couple of decades ago, (now self-employed) our union negotiated some really good terms there, particularly around maternity rights. I was a convener at one point and it was actually really satisfying to improve the lot of my colleagues collectively.

@candycane222 I’m just amazed there’s not been any intervention for housing. Buying multiple properties AND crazy rents
My streets jumped up over £500 this past few years, to about 1100 for a 2 bed flat

Crackers, isn't it @DaisyStiener?

Estate agents have been pushing up house prices for so very long and show no signs of stopping

@Summerbubbles

Handed in my notice as a teacher to work in retail. Absolutely love having less responsibility and no stress. The working hours are slightly longer but balances out because I don't have to work at home for free. I feel like I have my life back and my DH tells me I'm back to the "old me" one that jokes and is relaxed, not permanently stressed.

I'm on the verge of doing this in my job. I work in a senior position in HR and have worked hard over the years to get to the position I am in.

During the pandemic senior management decided to cut back on support staff such as the admin team - because they figured the company needed less support staff when everyone was working from home - no need for an office manager, etc. For whatever reason the leadership team decided that HR would take on the 'small tasks' that the admin teams did which actually all add up to actual jobs and many more hours per week.

The savings made on these employees salaries were dished out in payrises to senior management and I am now extremely demotivated and wondering what the point is. I'm working an extra 10+ hours a week, more stressed out that ever and thinking back to the stress free jobs I had when I was in my teens and early 20s where I could literally clock off and forget about work in the evenings and at the weekend.

@DaisyStiener

But does anyone think those ON benefits will be forced to fill these crappy positions?

Yes of course they will. The idea that people can choose to quit then claim benefits is nuts. It hasn't been the case that this is possible, for a long long time. If someone did quit, live off savings for a few months until they were eligible to claim, kept living off savings waiting for their claim to be processed and receive their first payment, they'd very soon find themselves hassled back to any job because that's the way it works. You can't choose you industry, wages, job location, hours or anything else. You're expected to look for work of any sort whether its impractical for your life circumstances or whether you're not trained in it or whatever. They don't care, it's get a job or have you benefits cut partially/cut off completely.

What I think is happening is people have realised they can survive on less money than they thought, if they stop spending on unnecessary things. So people in shit jobs or jobs where the risk of covid is higher because you're mixing with the public or something, they no longer think the wages are worth the risk and they're swapping stress and hassle for a quieter, if poorer, life.

Within my circle of friends etc it seems like...

• Some have left to go back to the EU because Brexit

• Some realised over the pandemic that they could live with less money and still be pretty happy so have gone part time

• Some realised over the pandemic that they hated their jobs and have set up small businesses / retired early

@Zampa

The vast majority of people receiving benefits are in work. The right wing myth of "the scrounger" is just that.

People who receive benefits are tax payers too.

For sure it's not more people on benefits. Unemployment is at record low levels so it's not like loads of people have started signing on.

From what I hear speaking with younger colleagues and family, the younger generation are doing more entrepreneurial gig economy jobs. They don’t want to be an employee

They can wfh and choose their own hours.

Eg crypto currency, matched betting, shares trading, eBay and online selling, freelance online work, influencers, then you have delivery drivers and food delivery.

A lot of people are choosing these types of employment. Many of them will also be able to avoid paying tax so they pay better.

I just don't get it. If there are people quitting , surely they are then getting other jobs ? So it isn't "the great resignation", it's more "the great moving to another job"' . Even more so in the US, since they don't get benefits from the government. They can't all become self employed.

@ftw163532

How are we supposed to afford to keep benefits at a liveable level for the disabled and infirm without more people like me to pay taxes for them?

"Keep" ?

Disability benefits have been repeatedly cut. They are not at a liveable level and people have died trying to access them because it's so difficult.

Attitudes like yours are the reason for that.

Benefits are not always low for everyone. My mum gets disability benefits (higher rate mobility and care) on top of the rest and rakes in a good amount, believe me! I don't for a second begrudge her it, however she is most definitely not living in poverty.

@starrynight21 see my post above. From my circles I’m hearing that younger people are rejecting traditional jobs for self employment/ gig economy roles or side hustles that turn out to be pretty lucrative. All you need is a phone/ laptop, maybe a vehicle.

we have a job offer where i work , a year ago there were 80 applicants, a month ago just 10

Anecdotally, I have noticed quite a few families dropping down to one income. It has come about due to a perfect storm of high childcare costs, people realising they can live on a lot less than they realise, people enjoying what they assumed would be a boring life 'at home', during the pandemic.
Obviously, this will primarily be women. In my case, my husband hates his job and I don't mind mine. He has just dropped down to 3 days, and we plan for him to give up completely in a few years.

Thinking about this time last year I remember how we had money but very little we could actually spend it on. I wonder if many others have ended up learning to make do with less.

A lot of jobs are so badly paid that it feels like more trouble than its worth.

@babybooboodedoo It's not just younger people becoming self employed.

I put my hand up for pandemic-related redundancy from my not very well paid job and became self employed in my late 50s. I also started taking an occupational pension from a previous very well-paid job.

DH also took redundancy and his self employed business in particular is booming while the companies who made us both redundant are now advertising for staff left right and centre.

At our stage of life (mortgage paid, no kids at home) it's a great way to live and what happened during the pandemic gave us the push to do it.

What's interesting is that this cuts across all sectors.
I'm not in a 'crap job', I'm in a decently paid professional job and there are currently enormous gaps in the workforce that my employer just won't be able to fill.
Anecdotally, in the last year, aside from people leaving to go to competitors, I've seen my colleagues:

• choose to take early retirement in their 50s
• leave the workforce to care for elderly parents
• leave to go freelance
• leave to focus full time on a 'side gig'
• leave to become a stay at home parent, having realised through the pandemic that they only need one wage
• leave to retrain

It's resulted in a net reduction in the number of workers available and is, in many cases, forcing employers to explore the use of automation to fill the gap.

Mustbeteatime

Top work 👍

@FeatheredHope

where have all these people gone, do they not need to work ?

This is what I can’t work out!!

Home, they've gone home.

All that bollocks about coming over here and taking our jobs. They were coming to do jobs we can't fill, better than UK people do them, hence the marked downturn in service.

Very interesting insights!
@Minceandonions yes same in my industry. Everyone dropped to 3 day week due to childcare and also hating their jobs and again, making do with less money

Since I posted this , DH work have agreed to let him back to his own job for one day a week, whist still covering the shite job they can’t recruit for ..

*although unlike other workplaces, the lower paid staff are not annoyed at wages of colleagues as they work amazingly hard , pandemic or not- and we were all paid 100 of wage if furloughed.

I know lots of people wo have retired earlier than they originally planned over the last 18 months.

Some because they were anxious about going back to the office/using public transport/their general working conditions in a Covid environment, but most because they realised they actually needed far less to live on than they thought they did.

Was recently in Grassmarket, Edinburgh. Lots of pubs there. Most were closing their kitchens by 5pm, or closing earlier altogether. Went to one pub where, because all the others had closed kitchens, had a massive rush on and all their food had been sold by 6pm. Alongside the supply chain problems, the chef told my husband at this pub he was thinking of also quitting.

We went to a cafe one morning, and the owner was doing everything himself, because he couldn't find help. Another cafe we went to was closed three days that week for the same reason.

Separately, a friend of the family is a corporate lawyer and quit her job. She now is self-employed as a legal consultant. No commuting, not targets, no pressure, and she gets to work from home and see her child more.

[quote DaisyStiener]@candycane222 I’m just amazed there’s not been any intervention for housing. Buying multiple properties AND crazy rents
My streets jumped up over £500 this past few years, to about 1100 for a 2 bed flat[/quote]
From the current government? They're the type of people who are likely to own multiple properties. They already voted not to give tenants better rights.

I retired earlier than planned at the start of Covid as I found that wfh was not for me, if I am at home I don't want to spend my time in the back bedroom so I retired.