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Sociologist: Job Insecurity Is the New Normal
Mr.Intel writes: Allison Pugh, professor of Sociology at University of Virginia, and author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity, says workers in the U.S. are caught up in a "one-way honor system," in which workers are beholden to employers. She says that the golden era when Americans could get a job, keep it, and expect to retire with an adequate pension are over. JP Morgan Chase has cut 20,000 from its workforce in the past 5 years, last year HP cut 34,000 jobs, and many others have announced layoffs. In this interview Pugh talks about the social effects of this "insecurity culture."
How about a blast from the past.. "within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital."
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
It's not a surprise really. Right now, unless you happen to live in one of the few states where companies are required to offer you more than simply at-will employment, or you're one of the few people still in a union, you pretty much have few protections against the company deciding to fire you tomorrow, whether in the name of downsizing, outsourcing, or just deciding that they don't want to pay someone with your level of experience instead of getting some fresh undergrad desperate to pay off student loans who'll work for a fraction of your salary.
And yes, as much as people decry unions, and the abuses that comes with unions, that's your answer in terms of balancing the power. One person alone just doesn't have the power, unless they're being hired for an executive/C-level position. Can unions abuse their power? Absolutely, so stay involved, vote in your union elections, make sure your union reps are doing their jobs. It's sometimes easier said than done, but it can be better than the alternative. That's what we had to do the last time things were like this, roughly 100 years or so ago.
The people with unique skills can job hop all they want, collecting big pay bumps as they go. Works both ways. If you do just enough to get by, then yeah, you're always going to be worried your job won't be there, and that you can't compete with people who are always improving.
Consumers want more product for less money: Greedy.
I did NOT ask my employer to ship my job overseas. I did NOT ask that they move the division overseas. I did NOT ask to train some Chinese guy about what a pointers and basic programming - let alone dipshit CS topics - because employers are ALL liars when they say they cannot get qualified workers. Liars. Period. There are NO exceptions.
This consumer wants to keep his AMERICAN made good stuff but is stuck with Chinese made crap - and it's all crap - because my I cannot afford more. Thanks in part to my education loans. CS degrees are NOT a guarantee to a decent life.
When were those conditions NOT true?
Answer, never. It's something more. Perhaps the level of greed increased somewhere, perhaps the short term consequences for taking it too far diminished.Perhaps someone gained disproportionate control of the government.
So let's see here, OH, it looks like corporate profits are at an 85 year high and wages are at a 65 year low!
Hrmm, where DID that wealth go?!?
The big corporations have bought enough presidents and members of congress (in BOTH parties) who allow them to violate the rules of the marketplace. We no longer live in the American free market place, we live in a split economy run by cronies. The average person lives in the consumer half, foreign workers live in the producer half, and the big corporations, investor class, and politicians live astride those two halves (enjoying the benefits of each half and dodging the downsides of each half). This is absolutely NOT free market capitalism.
These corporations demand all the protections of the American marketplace (including things like large consistent marketplace, a stable legal system, stable banking system, intellectual property laws that are actually enforced, and more) but then when the natural laws of supply and demand would hurt them (in labor costs) they ship work out of that market or import cheaper workers into it thereby escaping the rules of the marketplace. BOTH parties let them do it in exchange for "campaign contributions".
Do not vote "R" or "D". Vote for the individual, of whatever party and stop letting them destroy the middle class by using "wedge issues" to distract you. They want you to vote R or D to "protect choice" or to "stop abortion", or to "protect marriage equality" or to "preserve traditional marriage" but the reality is that these things are all being decided by judges in courts and the politicians on both sides have no intention of solving any of them (solving them would remove the issue and eliminate a tool for motivating the party base). What is CERTAIN, however, is that most of these politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle will do whatever the wall st investment bankers who fund their campaigns tell them to do (i.e. continue the destruction of the middle class). There is a reason why the establishment candidates of BOTH parties ("->Hillary" and "Jeb!") share so many Wall St banker backers.
That would have been true about 15 years ago.
These days you seem to have forgotten that most of the truly physically productive jobs have already been outsourced to other countries (China, Mexico, etc), and you are now sliding down the slippery slope of those countries refining their ownership, capital, and trade situations to take advantage of this.
Japan was once the 'cheap labor' for the US.... and yet people never seem to see a trend.
My only suggestion? Stop damn well following the crowd and consuming every little luxury you can convince yourself you deserve on credit!
Learn a practical skill or three (and no, manipulating office politics is not a practical skill).
Live somewhere that is sustainable n what you can actually contribute.
Take a walk in a park on a nice day and revel in the fact that you are alive.. and that doesnt actually cost (well, much).
Oh, and perhaps treat your friends/family with due care and respect, because when shit happens - everyone needs some support.
Oh, sorry, not in line with the American Dream? oh well, good lucky with that.
Yes, well funny you should mention that. Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland all have mixed socialist/capitalist models using whatever works to solve actual problems.
For instance, UBER is a great capitalist solution to the problem of transportation, requiring no new infrastructure. Eventually some regulation will be required to make it safer, but it's a great working solution.
Health care would benefit from this approach too. If health care providers were legally required to post all prices up front (regulation) and the import of foreign drugs and insurance was legal (deregulation), you'd have a combination of government action and market forces that would go a long way to solving the health care mess and keeping a lid on prices.
A simplistic, "Rah, rah, free market capitalism" approach eventually leads to Somalia. An all regulation approach takes you to North Korea. Take your pick. In both cases, evil lives at the extremes.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The idea that US workers are "beholden" to employers is ridiculous; it isn't company loyalty that keeps employees with the same employer, it's the cost and difficulty of changing jobs. A big part of why it is so costly and difficult to change jobs is government regulations and government-mandated benefits.
I don't know if this is representative, but I've found that employees who are treated as disposable often treat their jobs at disposable. In other words, job hopping is often at the employee's initiative. They are ready to look for new work the minute their old job feels a bit more insecure, and are ready to jump at a new job if they are offered new benefits. Note that I said benefits, not security. It is assumed that job security does not exist so it is not something that is worthwhile seeking.
The sad thing is that it hurts employers as much as it hurts employees. It costs money to look for new employees. It costs money to vet new employees. It costs money to train new employees. It costs money to terminate employees or have employees resign. It also costs money in lost productivity in the intervening period. It also adds a great deal of risk, since there is no guarantee that the new employee will be of any value or, if they are of value, that they will be a good fit. Yet a lot of businesses don't seem to realize the impact on the bottom line because churn is not broken out when the accounting is done. Rather, it is a bunch of different expenses that fall in different categories -- if they are even recognized as expenses to start with.
When you bought that foreign car, you voted with your money that auto workers in that country are better than domestic ones.
a lot of fords and chevys are made in mexico, and a lot of foreign brands are made in US. careful when you fling your jingoistic mud.
Oh goodie, someone spouting Karl Marx. What's next? Lennin, Stalin, Mao, Obama? I'll take my chances with free market capitalism over socialism ANY DAY. Name one country, where the people have moved UP in life, that runs under socialism. China doesn't count because the MAJORITY of it's citizens don't live in Hong Kong or Peking (Beijing).
Let me guess, no kids?
That same worn out tune has been playing since Reagan and it has only made matters worse for people year by year.
The greedy poor man holding them billionaires down just because he thinks he has a right to eat or something after putting in a 10 hour day. And not even a shred of evidence to back it.
More than forty percent of all workers in the US are making less than $15/hr.
That is some happy American Enterprise Institute horseshit. The real, effective corporate tax rate in the US is less than 13%:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/0...
You are welcome on my lawn.
And big debts.. Or those hard working parents 'helped'.
people have come to misunderstand the term 'own' these days..
Taco,
I understand you come from a different angle on this whole 'merica thing.
For a large portion of the population, for the years from say 1950 until the late 1980's it was totally normal to get a job out of high school, to join a union associate with that job and to work that job until retirement, with a decent pension. This was not unusual for white collar (professional, non-union) positions either.
Just how common this was started to trend downward through the 1990's, both in the union trades (which were decimated as legacy companies failed to keep up with quality and production) and in white collar positions as eager workers from overseas (familiar?) hit the job market and demonstrated their capabilities and lack of expectation of a life-long position with a pension.
Some upper executives made the mistake of believing that all over-seas applicants where as capable or enthusiastic as the first (and second, third) wave of fresh minds that hit the job market, when in fact they were the upper percent of a percent of their nation's respective bell curves, and started making plans to pitch their local workers under the bus in hopes of bringing on endless droves of freakin braniacs who would have no expectation of wages or benefits that native workers would expect
From my stand-point (my father had the same employer for 40+ years, I have had one employer that I was at for more than a decade, with most lasting less than five years) there are trade-offs between seeking long term employees vs 'contract' work. Long-term employees can benefit a company by providing deep knowledge of the organization and may benefit projects by understanding how thet fit in to the ethos of the culture. They can also be horrible lard-asses who want to ride on the coat-tails of the few employees who want to trailblaze and develop new markets.
Similarly, contract labor, outsourcing companies, etc can provide incredible new opportunities to existing companies and drive them into new markets. They can also become a persistent crutch that cost tons of money and take all of their knowledge with them when they leave, letting the companies wither and die like hollowed husks who have no capability to stand on their own.
In truth, black and white gets us no-where and in order to be successful companies will need to leverage whip-smart contract labor, while building capable internal teams to support their efforts after they have been sent off to their next world-building exercise. Maybe the 'stability' from 1950 to 1980 was the real 'aberration' and the constant changes driven by an influx of new workers is the real American norm
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Uber only works when there are lots of drivers who used to have good jobs or who had family that had good jobs. That's because the $15/hr that Uber drivers max out at (if you account for gas & maintenance) isn't enough to buy a new car when the old one starts falling about at 200k miles. Maybe in a country w/o safety regulations, professional drivers insurance and emission standards Uber could work. But again, it all falls apart as soon as Uber stops externalizing it's costs onto either the driver, their family or society at large.
Uber isn't a solution. It's a symptom of a very diseased and dysfunctional system that'll eventually collapse in on itself.
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Wrong. The effects you described are not and should not be taken as normal. Why? Because we the people want an economy that serves us, NOT the other way around. That's the whole point of unions, in fact--to make sure that workers get a decent share of the wealth they produce.
What happened in the 80s and 90s was a fairly massive right wing media war on worker propaganda initiative, one sided 'free trade' deals, and of course massive corporate deregulation. Combine that with the huge rise in home equity loans people used to maintain their lifestyles in the face of falling incomes, tax cuts for the wealthy resulting in benefit cuts for all, and corporations being permitted to raid pension funds in fake bankruptcy proceedings while buying laws preventing you from discharging credit card and student loan debt and doing nothing about medical costs (the number 1 by far since of bankruptcy in the US).
This is how you get our economy today. It was deliberate, it was to benefit the few, and it is not normal except if you define normal the way the corporate propaganda media does.
I think that "golden era" ran from the late 1940's to the '70's. From the end of WWII, until the rest of the developed world rebuilt their industrial bases, infrastructures and populations. That generation where we had no industrial competition.