Quote from: Naburimannu on November 11, 2022, 03:51:46 AM
It seems to me there's a bit of contradiction between "restaurant food is a luxury" and "restaurant margins are too slim to afford better working conditions" - prices may only be as low as they are because of suppression of wages.

The first is more true than the second. We've seen that in parts of Australia where because restaurants were closed for on-and-off 12 months of 24 from 2020 March to 2022 March, people simply gave up and left the industry. Now absurd wages are being offered. I used to be in hospitality a decade ago and there were stupid things like two week unpaid trials to start at places, it's very different now. Still, they can't get staff. In part this is because of that bad blood from the past, and people knowing the work is, ultimately, insecure. Sure, the guy might offer you $100k today - but he might have to close tomorrow.

And he might have to close because whatever the price, restaurant food is a luxury. When people feel cost of living pressures, that's the sort of thing they cut. As Corolinth said,

QuoteI'm not paying an extra $10 for a TTRPG book. Food, fuel, and energy is getting more expensive.

So if staff go on strike, that just pushes the small business over the edge and they close.

Unions are something which work very well with a booming economy and in a company with a board of directors producing necessities. They don't work as well with a struggling economy and in a company which has a single guy in charge who's mortgaged his house to make the business, producing luxuries.

Obviously in between there are going to be a lot of mixed cases and examples where unionisation might help or not, and government policy comes into it. For example most professional organisations like various countries' medical associations are in practice unions, and government backs them for the sake of "standards" or "safety" or something.

But something like RPGs really falls onto the "luxury, can do without, nobody will subsidise it" category. If anything, restaurant food is closer to being a necessity than RPGs, since about eight hours after I last ate I need to eat again from somewhere or other, but I can keep using the same dozen RPG books until they fall apart.