US Businesses Have Given Workers Good Reasons to Mistrust Them
Workers have gotten a raw deal for years.
It's not easy to be calm in today's US workforce.
American workers have good reason to suspect that Management is trying to get rid of them or squeeze them dry in the process. Here's a lightly researched list of evidence why, just since the 1970s:
- US worker's real wages have barely risen since 1971 (a phenomenon known as the Productivity-Pay Gap and the Great Decoupling), while profits have risen and executive compensation has exploded (what's bigger than exploded?).
- In 1981, Reagan's first act as President was to break PATCO, the Air Traffic Controller's union. It got worse for unions after that.
- Corporate Raiders gutted pension funds in the 1980s, leaving many workers with no retirement savings.
- Starting in the 1990s, Reengineering, Outsourcing and Offshoring left many Americans unemployed, often forcing them through the humiliation of training their replacements.
- Globalization was great for cheap consumer goods, bad for US workers. Nobody appeared to care.
- Policy makers replaced "Citizens" with "Consumers," thus changing policy goals from assuring citizens' rights to "everyday low prices!"
- No US Government, Democratic or Republican, moved significantly to help displaced workers.
- Digital surveillance is everywhere.
- Part-time work (where employers aren't liable for benefits) has been replacing full-time (though the data is squishy, because employers keep creating unusual working relationships).
- The shifts to part-time status are often involuntary.
- Worse, part-time workers often face Zero-Hour Contracts (no paid hours guaranteed), On-Call Worker Scheduling (no pre-set schedule, so you can't take a second job), and wage theft.
- Universities have been shifting teaching staff to Contingent Faculty, while bloating administrative expenses and amenities. They now compete as country clubs and sports franchises.
- Life in the modern Gig Economy, often seen as a life raft in difficult economic times, is very precarious. It's a very leaky life raft.
- US companies have consistently shifted risks onto workers, with no consideration in return. Long-haul truckers aren't paid for wait time at terminals. Flight attendants' pay clock only starts once the doors close on the plane. Teachers, health care workers and meatpackers are often not paid for essential prep time.
Here's this messy nexus in my Brain.
This is some of the evidence of how the social contract is broken.