Restaurants that fired workers this time last year aren't really complaining about being able to find new workers.

They're complaining that the former workers they dumped on their asses in a pandemic don't want to return for some strange and inexplicable reason

"We need to replace all these underpaid positions that used to be held. Where did all the workers go?"

Well, you fired them, last year. Maybe they learned how to code.

"All these new people suck, they need too much training."

Mate, you fired everyone who'd train them. What did you expect.

Restaurants have turnover rates measured in months and sometimes *weeks*.

Every restaurant: 80% of employees are gone in 6 months. 20% have worked there forever. 5% the restaurant was somehow built around them.

When restaurants complain about not finding workers, they're not really thinking of the expendable people they churn through in months.

They're really thinking of that waitress they fired with 20 years experience, that line cook who they'd *inherited* when they brought it.

They're complaining that they cast aside the people who know every littlest thing about the restaurant, and now can't lure them back with promises of minimum wage and zero sick days.

That waitress probably spent most of a year with her family living on one income, and then got another job that pays better and lets her sit down.

Restaurants *already* didn't give a shit about the majority of their employees. They happily churned through the pool of applicants in weeks and months.

They're now faced with their long-time employees *feeling in exactly the same position* as the newbies who don't last long enough for people to learn their names.

Those long-time employees, who already felt the sub-par wages and lack of any benefits and 70+ hour weeks etc, saw themselves cast out just like any dishwasher who only lasts a month

And now employers are trying to entice them back, for what? Starvation wages and zero sickdays and 80+ hour weeks with the promise that you'll get cast aside just as easily again?

Restaurants don't survive without that core of long-timers, people who stay more than a year. Their odds go right back to the 90% odds of closing in their first year.

And they know this.

They don't want you back as a prep chef because they want to make up to you, or help you.

They know they will close in a year without an experienced prep chef.

They know this, and everyone who got fired and saw the waves of restaurant closures knows this.

We all saw, vividly, what happens to restaurants who think they can get rid of their employees.

Restaurant workers are now in a powerful position. "Hire me or you close in a year" is a pretty damn good bargaining chip.

And this is why restaurant owners and their lobbying groups are spending as much money and effort as they are to reframe the issue as lazy workers.

They don't want workers who can walk in, tell the boss "either hire me at acceptable wages or burn your place down to collect insurance, either way works for me."

Restaurant owners showed their workers how little they valued them, and are now *terrified* at the idea those workers paid attention.