Oregon’s Senate has repealed a 72-year prohibition against self-service gas, with new legislation requiring gas stations to staff half the available pumps, while allowing the rest to be self-service. The bill, responding to industry staffing shortages, also prohibits charging more for full-service than self-service, likely leading to the phasing out of full-service pumps.
The article snippet quoted here literally says this was in response to industry staffing shortages…
There is no shortage of workers. There is only a shortage of employers willing to pay.
Sure, but that’s entirely beside the point here. Nobody is celebrating people being laid off en masse. The law changed because these jobs were apparently not being occupied to begin with,
Then this is a capitulation we shouldn’t have made. These companies tried to coerce us into letting them get away with not hiring people, despite us having a law intended to make them hire people, and we have allowed them to get away with it.
“Make work” laws are terrible policy.
You’re forcing consumers to pay a human who is only there to inconvenience them.
There’s a reason we don’t have laws protecting buggy-whip makers. People need to find new jobs that provide value to society.