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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
Consumers want more product for less money: Greedy.
Companies want higher profit margins off their products: Greedy.
Investors want higher returns on investment: Greedy.
Upper management sees that there is no way to fulfil all of the above and still give themselves huge pay rises without laying off half the riff-raff and making the other half work twice as hard for half as much: Greedy
Cue ever-decreasing circle as consumers earn less and want even more for it, in the hope of compensating for their shrinking earnings, thus repeating the circle. No single tier here is to blame; we ALL are in a more abstract manner. The blame lies squarely with basic human nature and the words "I want".
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 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.
I've been working for 25 years to try and beat this system. I hate it. I hate that I can take a corporate job where I'm told what kind of pants to wear, what angle to sit at in my seat, and be given more work than a person can complete in a reasonable timeframe, complete it anyway, and be given even more as a "reward". Alternatively, I can go work for a startup where I have more flexibility, but less security. My "solution" has been to live cheaply. I live in a small paid-off house. I drive paid-off cars. I owe no one any money. I have a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. I am occasionally tempted to tell the nasty little bastard I work for to go fuck himself, but I haven't given into the temptation. Knowing that I could helps a bit. The thing I hate about it is that it all seems so unnecessary.
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.
Greed is a problem when others are denied their fair share. G. Gekko's psychopathic (but brilliant) speech used positive examples of greed, such as "greed for knowledge", in order to convince his audience that all greed is good.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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).
Some decades ago, the multinational I worked for was all excited to get us to work like the Japanese, who were so gungho that they gathered before work to sing the company song. We responded that we would gladly do that in return for guaranteed lifetime job security. (Crickets.)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Thank you for the blinding flash of the obvious, Ms. Pugh.
What she says is not "obvious". It not even true. The "lifetime employment" of the past is a myth, based on false nostalgia. For most people, it never happened. Average job tenure is as high today as it ever was. We may have fewer people employed for 30 years at the same company, but we also have far fewer people employed as migrant workers or day laborers. Overall, people today have more job security than in the past, not less.
Now where do I start? 1. The "Luxuries" you speak of are pretty much Cell Phones, cable tv / Internet and eating out once a week. These are a drop in the bucket next to the cost of a car/house/college education. Get rid of all the luxuries you want, it won't make up for the 40 years of declining wages while productivity has more or less doubled.
2. I like this one: "learn a practical skill". Reminds me of a neighbor of mine who'd been to night school 3 times and each time seen her new career outsourced. What you really means is "Somehow develop a significantly higher IQ as if by magic so you can get the STEM degree that you couldn't get when you were 18".
3. The working class doesn't get to pick where they live. It's expensive as hell to up and move. You live where you're born and hope for the best. If people could just move somewhere that's better there'd be no 3rd world countries.
4. See Point # 1.
5. See this. Specifically the chorus ("Turning 30, 40, 50 gotta move in with my Parents...").
Fuck the American Dream. It's a bill of goods we've all been sold.
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I arrived at America in the 1970's, and immediately plunged into the job market (Chinatown) because I practically had no money with me
After schooling and so on (paid for with the slave wages I got from working in Chinatown and other places) I 'upgraded' my career into research institutions
After that I was (repeatedly) head-hunted and ended up working in a string of tech companies
None of the places I worked had any of the 'job security' clause in the agreement - and in fact, more than one time I've seen long-time employees being escorted by security guards out of the building, with only an envelop with the pink-slip inside and a cardboard carton of personal belongings cleansed out of the cubicle of that employee
I do not know where the that 'sociologist' got his 'new norm" from, but in the good ol' U. S. of A., I never had any sense of 'job security' since 1970's, at least not until I started my own businesses
Unlike research papers dealing with real science, many of the 'research reports' from those 'sociologists' make no freaking sense whatsoever
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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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Overall, people today have more job security than in the past, not less.
75% of American jobs are in the service sector. The vast majority of these job are jobs that no one wants, even the people filling them currently. Surety of keeping a crappy job is not job security, its indentured servitude. It may not carry the same contract, but in point of fact it is the same thing.
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Unfortunately, unions in the USA managed to becomes completely self-interested and corrupt institutions. This is partly due to lack of competition: in most of the rest of the world you have a choice of at least a couple of unions to join, so if your union isn't representing your interests you can switch to another one. Partly due to the ties between unions and organised crime in the USA coming out of the prohibition era. Partly due to the demonisation of anything vaguely socialist during the Cold War, which reduced employee involvement in unions (and if most people aren't involved in the union, then the few that are have disproportionate influence).
Even this has been somewhat eroded by automation. If you're replacing 1,000 employees with robots and 100 workers, then a union's threat to have 600 people go on strike doesn't mean much and even when it does it's very hard to persuade those 600 that striking won't mean that they're moved to the top of the to-be-redundant list.
But, back to my original point: lack of jobs for life isn't the real problem. A large imbalance in negotiating power between companies and employees is. When employees are in a stronger negotiating position, companies will favour keeping existing employees because it's cheaper than hiring new ones.
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The rise of two income families changed expense / income dynamics. High income earning units can drive up housing costs and increase the costs of other services. It can also change the vacation and time off dynamic of families with the need to sync work schedules, school schedules and paid time off.
Singles can't live on their own in many places because they are competing with pooled earning couples. Blue collar working families are now at double the disadvantage when looking for housing, child care or other social and physical services.
No we should not return to the past. Yes, we should realize that single parents and single income families have a long term disadvantage. Societies movement away from long term unions around children creates significant financial disadvantages for large portions of the US population.
A couple jobs ago I was chatting with another employee, we were discussing some "ominous signs" such as HR shredding documents like she was preparing for a parade. The topic of "giving notice" came up. The other guy said that if he found a good job somewhere else he'd walk with zero notice.
The manager overheard this and stepped in on the conversation, trying to berate us with "that's not how it's done in business, I expect you to give me at least two weeks' notice if you're going to quit!" I turned to him and said "so, how much notice will you give ME if you're going to lay me off or fire me?" (huff) (huff) (snort) is about all I got back, he couldn't even form words let alone a coherant sentence to respond to that. So I added, "I'll give you as much notice as I believe you'll give me." So rather than answer me, he just stomped away.
I don't think they consider just how much more inconvenient being unemployed is, compared to having to hire someone to replace a single employee that departs unexpectedly. For the boss, it's inconvenient. For the employee, suddenly losing their income, possibly the only income for an entire family, can be devastating. And yet they expect to be provided with notice, while providing none themselves. Sselfish, arrogant, and inconsiderate!
So everyone with a clue began job hunting. I had found new work, it wasn't nearly what I had now, but the writing was on the wall in pretty bold print at this point, so I accepted it. I showed up on a Thursday evening to start my (3rd) shift, and the gal from HR was in the parking lot with her hatch open, handing out unemployment packets. The entire center had been closed, everyone there got laid off that day, no one even was offered a transfer. I found out later that our manager had known this was going to happen for months.
My new job started on Monday. (total time unemployed - two days) Unfortunately, that's how they play the game, so that's how I have to play it too. If they don't like that, they have no one to blame but themselves, I'm just playing by their rules.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No business wants to shrink, or find out they have to lay off thousands of employees to survive. They are every bit as interested in stability and security as their employees. But it seems nobody wants to talk about that, everyone would rather assign blame or demand radical changes to fix a symptom without asking what the cause is. Or worse, saying "we know what the cause is, it's the greed of evil [corporations/unions]!", assuming their bias is correct and going no further.
Maybe, the "era of security" was an aberration stemming from the absence of international competition in the aftermath of WWII and the devastation wrought on the industrial base of every other developed nation? Is it actually good for workers or the economy if workers spend their entire working lives in the same job? Have we forgotten that a dynamic economy means even established businesses can be forced to shrink in order to survive? What about the high levels of economic uncertainty they have had to contend with of late?
What if it's better this way? Maybe not having a guaranteed job-for-life is better for everyone in the long-term. Can we consider that? What if too much security causes stagnation, making it an unstable condition that necessarily leads to less security in the long term?
Does this article do anything more than let people vent their biases? Flamebait from the start?
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.
How does "I don't give a shit, the compiler deals with that crap for me" score?
FTFY.
Whenever I talk about a 2.5% raise being insulting and not a real raise at all, barely keeping up with COL, people look at me like I have three heads. We've been conditioned to never expect a raise of any substance, no matter the company. Bad raises and poor job security, you would think, would lead to more attrition, with all those employees taking their institutional knowledge with them. It's hard getting management to care about that, since the employee only MIGHT leave, whereas their salaries are lower NOW. My company is well aware that the compensation structure here is the #1 issue that their employees have with how they're treated. They have made it very clear that they are not willing to do anything about it.
I work in the USA for a company based in France, where workers actually have some protection from being fired on a whim. As a result, there is a process here that must be followed before someone can be let go. The worker is given a chance to improve their performance, instead of just kicked to the curb with the rest of the garbage. It works. Institutional knowledge is retained, employees enjoy better job security, fewer new employees have to be recruited/hired.
But, if you ever suggest that that be the norm here, management flips their shit and screams something about "agility" and "flexibility", while in the same breath issuing rules/policies that stifle an employee and are the opposite of flexible.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.