290 - HR Riots

The Need for Workers

Up until the late 270s labor was cheap and the biggest roadblock to building a successful manufacturing business was being able to afford the incredibly expensive machines for your factory.

By the mid 270s, however, the production of industrial machines had become much cheaper. With the rise of the Corpo Playground investor class in the late 270s through the 280s, more and more land was being bought up for new businesses. The Infrastructure Riots of 277 had left the city with much improved rail transportation and the best public infrastructure in the world. More and more permanent residents moved to Tri-City every year. This resulted in the prime opportunity for old businesses to grow and new businesses to get started.

By the late 290s the rising cost of land in Tri-City began to slow the building of new residential properties. The businesses kept growing, but there was less and less room to grow the population.

Now businesses had the infrastructure in place for massive production, but the bottleneck became having enough people to do the jobs.

Human Resource Department

In the 270s and 280s when workers were abundant and jobs were scarce the people working in HR got more and more demanding of what they expected from job candidates. Being able to pick candidates based on having big name companies and big numbers of a resume meant less having to actually talk to candidates and learn what their skillsets actually were. This HR culture quickly became toxic and overly self important.

In 280s it had become common place for entry level jobs to require 2-5 years of experience. Advanced education and degrees were being asked for when hiring for jobs that don't even pay a living wage.

People who just wanted to work and honest job for an honest paycheck were struggling to get jobs. Being able to write a resume that could bend the truth and grab the attention of HR became the only real skill that mattered in Tri-City business culture. Over the years more and more people who were dishonest, lazy, or just not competent in the job they needed to perform began to fill corporations.

Be the late 280s low level jobs were simply not being filled because nobody with the overblown qualifications was looking for jobs that didn't pay a living wage. But now it wasn't just the working people who were mad. The business owners who were expecting constant quarterly growth in the company were seeing stagnation. Without more workers to operate the business, the profit couldn't grow. Bussinesses need workers to run.

For the first and only time in Tri-City history CEOs and other executive level Corpos were on the same side as the working class and against the HR departments.

Chain of Command

Why did the CEOs not just simply remove HR employees who were causing these problems? The head of the HR department in a traditional Tri-City corporation is appointed at the yearly shareholder's meeting. The head of this department is intentionally kept seperate from the standard chain of command as a result of the 'Nepotism Act of 277'. This act aimed at ending the corrupt practice of hiring unqualified family members to important jobs ended up granting HR the immunity to do whatever they wanted throughout the 280s.

New Graduates

The final tipping point that caused the tension to become a full blown riot was the first graduating class of Tri-City High School. With the Future Generations Act passed 16 years ago, this was the first generation of students who grew up in a culture focused on investing in a long term educated workforce for Tri-City.

With the sudden influx of high school graduates with more education that previous generations being thrown into the already imploding job market, and the expectations promised to these students if they studied hard, the students became one of the leading voices in the riots the proceeded.

The End Results

After the yearly shareholder's meetings of 290s, 98% of the people working in HR across Tri-City were fired. A new set of rules was put in place that allowed the removal of HR employees to be more easily fired without going through the shareholders. This eventually lead to different problems in the future with businesses putting unreasonable goals for growth on HR departments. To reach these goals HR employees became much more dishonest with potential employees, which is a whole new set of problems for the workers of Tri-City.

A new law was put into place that regulated what kind of job postings a company could post. This law included...

• Entry level jobs could not require any expereince at all
• Jobs that required a certain level or expereince had a higher minimum wage set
• Jobs that required a certain level of education had a higher minimum wage set
• Companies that didn't fill at least 90% of the jobs they posted would be fined

The law also included more changes to Tri-City's child labor laws.

The Conflict

Prelude

After the Nepotism Riots of 276 the law in Tri-City was changed to remove HR from the 'chain of command'. This way CEOs could not pressure HR departments to hire family members.
Throughout the 280s HR departments let this immunity go to their heads and they went crazy with the lack of oversight. Now it requires 5 years of experience to get an entry level job and a college degree to get below a living wage. The CEOs are crying in their offices because production is going down and they can't fire HR.
Then after the HR Riots of 290, the law was changed again where CEOs could fire HR employees who don't meet certain targets. Now it is common for HR to straight up lie to potential employees or hire people with no skills just to reach the arbitrary targets.
So no matter what they do, Tri-City gets screwed.

Start Date

290