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."

Comments

Insecurity culture....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Insecurity culture....

[garyisabusyguy]

Yeah, it is called 'Enhancing Shareholder Value' these days

The current variation on the theme involves identifying employees that are owed pensions, converting said pensions (long term debt held by the Company) into 401k's, owned by the employee (at a rate below what the pension should have paid out at), then removing the employee from their position while replacing them with contract labor

This looks really great on the balance sheet, but faces long-term viability as companies face loss of job knowledge and higher long-term contracting costs, that outweigh the fudged numbers they used to make the idea look feasible. Unfortunately, the ass-hats that come up with these ideas usually get bonuses and leave their positions before the shit hits the fans and shareholders are left holding the bag of a broken company and out of control contracting fees

Re:Insecurity culture....

[im_thatoneguy]

One thing I've noticed too is that when they try to transition from a well cared for workforce to one in which the company essentially says "Work hard, but be ready to get fired at any moment" suddenly a lot of costs start adding up for the company. Suddenly people who might have clocked out for lunch before now start 'working' at their desk. People who would even buy supplies from time to time in order to keep working would just sit idly doing nothing if they didn't have everything they needed waiting on the company to provide everything. Someone who might not have religiously used all of their sick days now uses up every paid sick day available because their throat tickles. Oh and all of those employees you used to classify as independent contractors, a few of them just filed paperwork asking the IRS for guidance on their status. The company now owes 5 years of back taxes on 15% of their payroll. Goodbye last 5 years of profits.

When you become a stickler for rules as an employer you'll suddenly discover that your employees are also really good at finding rules that benefit them.

Re:Insecurity culture....

[NicBenjamin]

Americans are so predictable. Somebody complains some ridiculously intricate policy set up by the US Congress is too complicated for people who, unlike members of the US Congress, are not upper-middle-class Anglos, and they say a) it's their own damn fault for not being upper-middle-class Anglos, and b) we need to reform the education system.

Well, my fine upper-middle-class friend, everyone has to use the retirement system. It is not an option. Legal Mexicans, illegal Mexicans, people who are actually mentally handicapped, your mother, everyone. This implies that a system designed with 8 different plan types (IRA, 401k, 403b, and 457; all of which also come in Roth varieties), most of which I cannot quite articulate the difference between despite having an 8-hour class on the tax implications of individual retirement accounts this Saturday, is probably too damn complex.

As for the education system, these guys are Baby Boomers. 401ks were not legalized until '78, and not "discovered" by the private sector until 1980. They were out of the school system before the rules existed. Relying on shit people learn when they're 17 to guide their retirement decisions when they're 67 is not a terribly wise plan.

Re:Insecurity culture....

[tburkhol]

Stick to the Bible, son. It's for the best.

This is what the Lord has commanded: Gather of it, every man of you, as much as he can eat; you shall take an omer apiece, according to the number of persons who each of you has in his tent. And the people of Israel did so; they gathered some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; each gathered according to what he could eat (Exodus 16:16-18

All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. (Acts 2:44-45)

You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.Deuteronomy 24:14

Re:Insecurity culture....

[dywolf]

You ain't supposed to read the damn thing!

You're just supposed to thump it, while telling others what to do!

And it all comes down to greed

[gweilo8888]

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".

Re:And it all comes down to greed

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:And it all comes down to greed

[sjames]

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?!?

Re:And it all comes down to greed

[gestalt_n_pepper]

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.

Re:And it all comes down to greed

[PopeRatzo]

The fact that "corporate profits" are a higher percentage of GDP, a prioriy, only means that more private businesses are organized as corporations, hardly a big problem.

More than forty percent of all workers in the US are making less than $15/hr.

The claim that "the statutory top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent" is a half-truth, because the effective corporate tax rate in the US is actually closer to 50%, one of the highest in the world.

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...

Unions

[Fire_Wraith]

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.

Re:Unions

[misexistentialist]

Instead of spending millions lobbying why don't the unions start worker-owned companies? Because they can't cease making demands of "capitalists" anymore than a flea can jump off a plump dog

Re:Unions

[Rhywden]

I'm not quite sure why you're lambasting him for suggestion unions by listing the times where unions were indeed a hindrance... because he made this very point himself:

Can unions abuse their power? Absolutely, so stay involved, vote in your union elections, make sure your union reps are doing their jobs.

Or did you only read what you wanted to read? In fact, I think you stopped thinking the moment you read the word "unions".

Crony Capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Troll

[rtb61]

Do not confuse Stalinism or Maoism with socialism, those first two where strictly police states with the masquerade of what ever political system they were pretending to be. This being no different to Nazism.

So want to see socialism, first the psychopaths have to go, quite simply they will corrupt any ism they are a part of, attempt to turn it into an authoritarian state where they have control and can dominate and exploit the citizens of that society.

Socialism is the system that the majority of people were born into, the family unit, a socialist government is basically about expanding the socialism of the family unit into the greater community to gain the all to obvious outcomes, a caring and sharing society of human beings and the extended family concept.

The 'Free Market' is straight up marketing lie because it is wholly and totally dependent upon nothing in that market ever being Free, everything 'owned' and 'controlled', so that those with the most can control and exploit those with the least. With everything that can be owned being owned, including all of the essentials to life, so that denial of life becomes the tool of exploitation of the not free at all market place of human lives.

Either we shift to socialism or die as a species, that is the choice, suck it up.

New norm??

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Re:New norm??

[garyisabusyguy]

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

Re: New norm??

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Troll

[pesho]

I've been to Soviet Russia (Stalingrad (now St. Petersberg)) and lived in it personally, first hand.` Have you? I agree with the poster who said he'd take free market capitalism over socialism ANY DAY.

And I having been to Leningrad (now St. PetersbUrg) call bullshit on your post. Not only you haven't lived there but you are off by 1000 miles in your geography. I also doubt that you are old enough to have actually lived in Stalingrad and being able to tell about it on Slashdot. Stalingrad was renamed to Volgograd back in 1961. You can say anything about USSR, but they made damn sure they taught their geography and history at school. There is no way for somebody who has lived in USSR to mix Leningrad with Stalingrad. So stop trolling please.

UBER is not even close to that

[rsilvergun]

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.

one-way loyalty

[v1]

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.