The New "Job Gypsy" Business Model Is A Complete Economic Dead End For US Workers.

[TheMastersNemesis]

The repeated memes that American workers will have multiple jobs and multiple careers is business and corporate bullshit. Almost no worker will ever reach any modicum of job security, wealth or even retirement. This meme is the biggest lie ever told. In the end there will be very few workers who will retire. And we will have a nation full of workers finished in the job market by the time they are 50. Just ask present boomers who bought into the business bullshit..

Long term employment of an earlier era worked and created a healthy country. The Reagan revolution took away all job security, upward mobility and job equity with age and experience. Now the job market is just plain CRAP. Moving from job to job or being forced into being a job nomad is economic and even personal death for workers and the nation.

Workers better wake up and demand a fair share of the wealth they create. We will look like Africa wage wise unless things change.

[CK_John]

1. We are already seeing this in the housing market. Renting is becoming the norm

due to low wages and job insecurity and high student loan debt.

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. The term Job Gypsy is not only an offensive term, it is a racist term.

Sounds like a Luntzism.

[KingCharlemagne]

12. Adjunct faculty in academia have long been referred to as 'Gypsy Scholars'. Until

you mentioned it, I had never even stopped to consider that it is anti-Roma. I will be modifying my lexicon forthwith and henceforth and thank you for raising the issue. Continuing Education never stops!

[Dont call me Shirley]

22. Bigotry is easy to spot, if a race of people are spoken of in a demeaning way, there bigotry is.

Exception: the big bankers, hedge fund traders, etc deserve the backlash and shaming they are getting.

[brush]

3. it's already here, try getting a decent job after 50 . . .

after you've been let go because employers nowadays look to get rid of workers over 50 and replace them with younger people they pay a lot less.

Retirement at 66-67 is a myth now. It rarely happens anymore.

[Fumesucker]

4. Just to be clear, not all the Boomers bought the bullshit

And yeah, the "gypsy" thing is kind of an ethnic slur if similar terms using other groups are slurs.

[Ken Burch]

6. I'd suggest "Job Okie" as an alternative, or "Job Joad" or "Job Serf". n/t.

"Workfugee" might also work.

[Fumesucker]

10. Well I've been self unemployed for years

So..

[Jesus Malverde]

19. Migrant workers...nt

[Ken Burch]

5. Of course it is...but that's by design. This model wasn't created to HELP workers.

It was designed to reshape this country on neofeudalist lines...with "home" and "community" being privileges for a tiny few, and everyone else being forced, ultimately, to become latter-day "Okies"....driven from place to place, rootless, voteless, with no real rights at all.

We're getting close to the end of the time in which there will be any possibility of stopping the neufeudalist train-and most of the leading figures in either major party, including ours, don't really seem to WANT to stop it.

Market values and "labor market flexibity", in the end, have turned out to be the TRUE "Road to Serfdom".

[TheMastersNemesis]

7. The Term I Used Was Not Meant To Be A Slur

I am sure I could have used a term like "nomad", "itinerant worker" or some other description, However based on how employers now look at employees and how workers are described by certain conservative politicians it would seem to be appropriate in this context. Workers are now seen the same way as this ethnic group has been seen an portrayed as.

Workers of all levels are seen as no more than liabilities and undeserving takers even if they have earned their salaries. And the subconscious code about low wage workers is that they are undeserving subhumans not worthy of a decent wage. And the ultimate implication is that they are minorities. Some employers regard their employees as no better than thieves.

We have an employer problem in this country and not a worker problem. It is the business community that feels it is entitled to the last ounce of blood of its workforce. Workers are now no more than a commodity to be exploited. Anytime any conservative politician talks about a valued worker it is bullshit.

Workers asking or demanding fair treatment or wages are labeled socialistic or even communist. Or thugs. So very little has changed since 1900. Different players same rhetoric.

The social contract of the 1950's & 1960's worked and was destroyed by Reagan and big business. What has replaced that contract is criminal.

[Dont call me Shirley]

23. I wasn't after you about using that term, Nemesis, the term sounds Frank "Luntzian".

You are so spot on about "nomadic jobs" becoming the new way to exploit workers. It looks like the corporations are using this model based on migrant farm workers moving on to each new field. No long term social connection between worker and employer can lead to a whole new level of employee abuse.

[Cal Carpenter]

8. Yep

I only refer to my sig line as a reply.

[font size="1"](I refrain from commenting on the use of 'gypsy'; while it, too, is an important discussion I hope the economic questions raised by the OP are the focus of this thread)[/font]

[TheMastersNemesis]

11. I Only Make The Reference I Made In The Economic Sense And As A Metaphor --

for how workers and employees seem to be looked at today. In 1980 the social contract between worker and employer was destroyed. From that time on the employer was given all the advantages and employees were reduced to chattel. Today the idea of employee or worker is even more denigrated. You are lucky to be called even an associate now.

As workers are moved into a "contracted" world where they have no rights and no world, they will not even be recognized as even existing. Corporations are dedicated to an "employee" free institution. The writing is on the wall as we see more and more employees being classified as contractors. All you have to do is look around.

The decline of the worker has been deliberate and planned. In looking at this campaign it is amazing that GOPPERS are openly saying we need no minimum wages, unions should be gone, labor laws are too oppressive etc etc. EVERY SINGLE GAIN that workers have made since 1900 are under direct and open attack. Yet scores of workers will vote to really enslave themselves further.

Economically very few workers will survive economically without the same social contract their fathers and grandfathers had.
I keep saying this multiple job CRAP IS BULLSHIT AND A LIE AND ECONOMIC SUICIDE.

When workers now look for work it is not a search it is BEGGING for any job any level. And it is particularly true if you are an older worker.

[marions ghost]

17. +++++++

[DAMANgoldberg]

9. Try getting gainful employment...

at age 45. I'm currently 49 and nobody locally will give me the time of day, and that includes retailers and grocers.

[TheMastersNemesis]

13. Unfortunately Your Predicament Is Understandable And Was Predictable.

I worked at DOL until 1998 for 24 years and was saying all along what the GOP, conservatives, Chamber of Commerce, and big business was up to when it came to workers. The multiple jobs meme arose during Reagan's second term. Yet few workers understood what code it was and what it really meant.

Age discrimination has been pandemic since the early 1990's. It has only gotten worse over time. Now it is right out in the open and the powers that be have dismantled virtually all redress from older workers. Until workers embrace an aggressive pro labor pro worker movement and begin to shake things up, nothing will change. All these years working Americans have been diverted by racism and cultural issues, when work issues and pay issues were the issues that mattered most.

By allowing the demeaning of unions and workers rejection of what unions brought to America they have given big business the opportunity to virtually end union and labor influence on the debate.

[Efilroft Sul]

14. 47 here and I share your misery.

I've been laid off five times from the same employer over the last five years. This April was the last and final layoff, and the job hunt and interview process since then seems like I'm stuck in something only Voltaire could have written.

[Octafish]

15. Parts is parts.

Thank you, TheMastersNemesis, for putting the system into words. It should serve as an indictment.

[TheMastersNemesis]

21. The New Business Model Is Like A Hidden Deadly Disease Whose Effects Are Seen Too Late.

Almost all workers were not aware of the change being forced on them. The media knew but ignored what was going on. And the media even went further in aggressively promoting this new way of doing business and treating workers. IT WAS GOOD FOR YOU was the mantra played since Reagan took office. It was also part of the "service economy" that Reagan spoke of during his first term. No one realized that his speech was code for "the obliteration of the social contract between worker and employer".

I was at DOL and understood what a "the service economy" was all about in 1980. That code meant the end of benefits, job equity, long term employment and an increase in itinerant work, temp work, part time work, contract work, at the expense of regular secure full time work over a long period of time. We were headed for a nation of temp and contingency workers. I could not understand why workers never understood what they were being forced into.

Workers accepted the attack on unions. And workers also seemed to accept the meme that unions were what screwed up the labor market. That mind set has been suicidal. And in my opinion a lot of workers who are now in their 50's pretty much went along with the "shiny new idea" of job flexibility and mobility. But it was a trap in the absence of labor law enforcement and good labor laws.

And what I am saying is an INDICTMENT of what is immoral and criminal actually. That is because all the benefits of this new slavery has led to insane great wealth supported by stagnated wages, low wages, outsourcing, contracting, sub contracting, mis classification of workers etc. All these evils have deprived millions of workers of a decent livelihood and in many cases has even openly stolen their retirement and pensions. It is just as evil as putting gun to someone's head and demanding all their money.

And the chief progenitor of this insane, deranged, sadistic madness is the GOP and its business allies. And in case you have not notice thousands of Europeans are in the streets challenging low wages and austerity. Yet NOT A PEEP from our media.

We all have to go after these media people even personally and start slamming them for their criminal malfeasance. They will not allow any other message but the GOP message now. Just look at this campaign.

[Octafish]

24. Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda -- The Attack on Democracy

From Andrew Lohrey's introduction to the 1995 edition of "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty" by Alex Carey:

Not only does there seem to be widespread social fragmentation and disillusionment with democracy in the United States, but the possibility of reversing this sense of alienation appears to many of us to be already lost. Any Democrat president who wants to institute the desperately needed reforms in health, welfare and the environment faces one of two options. he can stick by his reform program and suffer a loss of public confidence through orchestrated campaigns to publicly portray him as 'too liberal' and ineffectual (the Carter image) or too indecisive or sexually indiscreet (the Clinton image). Alternatively, a reforming Democrat president can move further to the Right, forget his promises and become part of the propaganda campaign. [font color="blue"]Given the history of democratic propaganda in the United States, some of us doubt that another Roosevelt or New Deal is possible. The political system is now so attuned to business interests that this kind of reformer could no longer institute the substantial health, welfare, education, environmental and employment reforms the country needs.[/font color]

SOURCE: https://www.scribd.com/doc/194120767/Taking-the-Risk-Out-of-Democracy-Corporate-Propaganda-Versus-Freedom-and-Liberty-Alex-Carey

To help spread light, Maria Galardin's TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy


The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html

If you find a moment, here's the first part (scroll down at the link for the second part) on Carey.

http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3

Helps explain how we got here and what we need to do to move forward, starting with putting the "Public" into Airwaves again.

Here's more on how things got so bad that SCROTUS could install George W Bush of the BFEE.

The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”[/font color]

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)

So did Powell’s political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment “right” for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.

CONTINUED...

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

This story continues through today, where we have Chief Justice John Roberts shepherding corporate friendly law through the court, let alone appointing nothing but BFEE-friendly pukes to the FISA Court. As you detailed, TheMastersNemesis, Wall Street hijacking the economy and the Great Bankster Bailout, these are the liars who control the courts and lie America into wars without end for profits into infinity. Unless it gets spelled out, the People might never know.

[bananas]

25. Maria Galardin's TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio: is great.

Found out about it a long time ago, more people should know about it.

[SoCalDem]

16. Those of us of a certain age can remember "Kelly Girls"

These were women office temps who came in when someone went on vacation or if someone had a baby..

It did not take employers long to figure out what a wonderful thing that "leased workers" were.. No benefits to pay..they were overly eager to please because they hoped to get hired on full time.. Since "the gals" did not realllllly need to work (ugh!), it never hurt to bring in a few Kelly Girls to get everyone else working faster, longer, more diligently.. The bosses had pick of the littler, and often hired the cutest ones..

Fast forward..and we are all pretty much Kelly Girls these days..

[marions ghost]

18. good point

[whatthehey]

20. I for one am doing ok as one. It's not for everyone sure

I'm on my 8th state and 10th city. EVERY job search, either voluntary or after layoffs etc, is a national one for me. It gives me more options. Nine out of those 10 moves have been to my financial benefit, the outlier was a take what you can after a year out of work but moved on again 18 mos later.

Some people decide "roots" are more important than socioeconomic wellbeing but not my preference. I hear people almost everywhere I have lived and their conversations are often tedious rehashes of what they - fortysomethings and above - did in high school. Their worldviews are limited to their county and they raise eyebrows at accents from two states away. Everybody? No obviously not but way more than most would think. Where many people think that "sense of close knit community" is a plus, I consider it a limiting handicap. Even were it not for career progress I'm glad I've lived in different regions, from massive cities to rural villages, from walking distance to Canada to Dixie. It has expanded my knowledge and my reference points, and all I've had to give up are people who know what I did as a teenager and can talk about the same teachers.

I'd take that trade for free, but being willing and ready to move has also advanced my career, opportunities, bank balance, and otherr selfish criteria too.

[peacebird]

26. This may be ok if you don't have children in school

But that many moves would be really hard on school age kids...

[LiberalElite]

27. What do you do for a living? nt

[Throd]

28. May I ask if you have children?

We moved a lot when I was young. I got to see a lot of places, but socially, it was very difficult.