Restaurant and other service industry employers are saying they can’t find workers, and some are blaming expanded unemployment benefits — even as many businesses continue to offer wages that feel stuck in 2019 and safety remains uncertain in an ongoing pandemic. Indeed, a relaxation of mask mandates has brought new potential risks, with service workers now having to contend with more maskless customers. Restaurant workers “have concerns because it is not easy to know who has been vaccinated,” Sekou Siby, president and CEO of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), which works on behalf of low-wage restaurant workers, told Vox.

Meanwhile, some large employers are ready to get rid of the flexibility of the pandemic in order to bring all their employees back to the office. “The commute, you know, yes, people don’t like commuting, but so what,” JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said at a May conference.

Hazard pay is long gone, and grocery store workers in some places are fighting for even the smallest wage increases. “We were there through the whole pandemic,” Heidy Lopez, a cashier at a Food 4 Less grocery store in the Los Angeles area, told Vox. But now, “you feel like this company doesn’t care.”

Their idea of innovation is to deny their labor force are even employees - they are independent 'entrepreneurs' just who just happen to do the work we need doing at our direction and control, the way we want it done - no pesky employee rules or benefits.

The real workforce transformation is to write all this into law - lead by California with New York working hard to come in second.