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Good Jobs, Bad Jobs and Those In-Between
By Bill Schweke on 11/24/2010 @ 11:54 AM
Given today’s high unemployment rate and slow economic recovery, many American ex-workers would appreciate landing any job. But when they return to the workplace, issues of wages and working conditions will return. Two complimentary books that I recently ran across focus on these issues admirably. The first is authored by economist Francis Green and is a clearly written scholarly treatise that probes the major issues in “Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy.” (2006) The second work, “Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America’s Best Workers are Unhappier than Ever” (2008) is a fascinating and moving exercise in the journalistic art. It tells a good story.
“Demanding Work” follows the trends since the eighties, regarding five dimensions of job quality – skill requirements, work effort intensity, job autonomy, wages, and employee security. His findings are mixed – some traits are getting worse, while others are improving or holding their own. For instance, job insecurity has not risen on a secular basis. It does increase during downturns of the business cycle. However, there is an increased use of part-time employees as a means of lowering costs that is troubling for those seeking or retaining full-time jobs.
In Britain, worker discretion, or the ability to make decisions and have a “say,” declined in all occupational groups, but especially for professionals. At the same time, job skill requirements have increased since the mid-1980s. And it appears that the increased use of computers and skill-biased technological change are the major causes.
Interestingly, work intensity has definitely risen for public employees. Two-income households in general are experiencing lots of work stress and family versus work conflict. Declining employee bargaining power in the US has contributed to a steady American trend to fail to share broadly the fruits of productivity gains during the last couple of decades. Green also discovers evidence of skill polarization – lots of good and bad job creation, with little in the middle.
Readers should not regard these facts fatalistically. The countries studied exhibit a lot of differences in their performance, management philosophies and strategies, trade union power, and public policies. For instance, Scandinavian countries are doing the best at encouraging and retaining good jobs.
“Demanding Work” is also exemplary in its subtle discussions of methodology and data. It makes a persuasive argument for doing more comprehensive surveying of the labor force in an effort to collect the data needed to monitor trends in good jobs availability and access.
David Kusnet’s “Love the Work, Hate the Job”(2008) looks at a segment of the workforce: those who express their unhappiness with their jobs, despite the fact that their work has become more intellectually challenging and less physically overwhelming. The author tracks workers in four Seattle-based companies: Microsoft, Boeing, Kaiser Aluminum, and Northwest Hospital. The employees are not as focused on pay and benefits as one would think. Instead, they are far more concerned about respect and a say in shaping the future of the business. Ironically, in each case these are highly skilled employees, who are critical to any effort to pursue the high road to economic growth by competing on the basis of quality, not lowest costs.
Likewise, circumstances arose that led to a less than ideal situation for both workers and management and financiers. Boeing professional workers went on strike. At Microsoft, employees became annoyed about the thousands of “temporary” workers that were hired, with lower pay and more meager benefits. These “perma-temps” appeared to undermine the security of the original workforce, as well as the quality of the Microsoft product line. At the local hospital, employees believed that patient health was being sacrificed to the bottom line and became so frustrated that they elected to join a union. Similarly, Kaiser workers were involved in a protracted labor-management squabble that dragged on for two entire years, leading eventually to a new employee alliance with environmentalists.
Thus, in each example, workers felt thwarted in their aspirations to be “real” professionals. They want to do the work they care about and enjoy, but they are put off by shrinking health coverage, shaky pension plans, workplace autocracy, “short-termism”, and decreasing company loyalty to their labor force.
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