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In labor enshittification, bosses use noncompetes, arbitration, trade secrecy, and nondisparagement to keep workers from walking across the street and into a better job. Some workers are even encumbered with "training repayment agreement provisions (TRAPs) that force them to *pay thousands of dollars* if they quit their jobs:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose
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Worker power: In tech enshittification, tech workers - empowered by the historically tight tech labor market - are able to hold the line, refusing to enshittify the products they develop, with the constant threat that they can walk out the door and get a job elsewhere.
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In labor enshittification, NAIRU, combined with corporate capture of the necessaries of life and the retreat of unionization, means that workers have very little power to demand a better situation, which means their bosses can worsen things to their shriveled hearts' content.
As with my theory of enshittification, the erosion of worker power is an accelerant for labor enshittification.
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Weaker competition for workers means weaker labor power, which means weaker power to force the government to regulate. This sets the stage for more consolidation, weaker workers, and more state capture. This is the completion of the bait-trap-switch of the postwar social contract.
For Tcherneva, this enshittification arises out of the failure to create a job guarantee as part of the New Deal. And yet, a job guarantee remains very popular today:
https://www.jobguarantee.org/resources/public-support/
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How would a job guarantee disenshittify the labor market? The job guarantee means a "permanent, publicly provided employment
opportunity to anyone ready and willing to work, it establishes an effective floor for the entire labor market."
Under a job guarantee, any private employer wishing to hire a worker will have to beat the job guarantee's wages and benefits. No warehouse or fast-food chain could offer "poverty wages, unpredictable hours, and a hostile environment."
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It's an incentive to the private sector to compete for labor by restoring the benefits that characterized America's "golden age."
What's more, a job guarantee is *administrable*. A job guarantee means that workers can always access a safe, good job, even if the state fails to adequately police private-sector employers and their wages and working conditions.
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A job guarantee does much of the heavy lifting of enforcing a whole suite of regulations: "minimum wage laws, overtime rules, safety standards—that are constantly subject to political attack, corporate lobbying, and enforcement challenges."
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