WP: Permanent Job Proves an Elusive Dream

[Southpaw Bookworm]

A killer story that has been part of a series on the current economic situation in the U.S. This is the kind of thing that Kerry needs to HIT HARD at the final debate: If jobs are being created and hiring freezes thawed, it isn't full-time positions with benefits that are available, the sort of jobs necessary for a person's and a family's stability.

Phillip Hicks had loaded his rusting pickup and was heading to work one afternoon last year when his tearful daughter called from a pay phone. She had been pulled over for speeding, she told her father, and worse, she was driving with a suspended license. The police had impounded her car and left her by the side of a dusty highway.

To most workers at the sprawling Toyota plant where Hicks works, the detour to pick up his daughter would be a headache, no doubt. To Hicks, 40, it was considerably more. He called his employer to say he would be late for the swing shift. But since Hicks is a temporary worker, his daughter's brush with the law became a permanent blemish on an already shaky employment record. Temps are allowed only three days off a year, and Hicks was coming up against that.

"They told me I had an attendance problem," he sighed wearily, his soft mountain accent revealing his roots in coal country to the east.

Hicks is among the ranks of what economists call the "contingent" workforce, the vast and growing pool of workers tenuously employed in jobs that once were stable enough to support a family. In a single generation, "contingent employment arrangements" have begun to transform the world of work, not only for temp workers, but also for those in traditional jobs who are competing with a tier of employees receiving lower pay and few, if any, benefits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22773-2004Oct10.html?sub=AR

I'm in a professional field (librarian) where most of the jobs coming available are of this sort -- at academic libraries they only want temps until the end of the school year, and in both academic and public libraries they only can hire part-timers without benefits.

[papau]

1. If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?

An excellent read - but 8000 words!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-riskshift10oct10....

THE NEW DEAL
If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?
For 25 years, government and business have forced workers to take on mounting risk. A Times analysis shows ever-larger swings in household incomes.
By Peter G. Gosselin
Times Staff Writer

October 10, 2004



By most conventional measures, Paul Fredo is an American success story.

The son of a coal miner, he made almost $200,000 in the last year, enough to place him in the top 2% of wage earners. As a financial manager for the U.S. unit of Alstom, the French bullet-train maker, he has lived an expense-account life, spending most nights in hotels and jetting to meetings in Washington and Paris.

But look carefully at Fredo's circumstances and a less appealing picture begins to emerge — one in which, over the last 25 years, economic risk has been steadily shifted from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working families like his.

By the time Fredo joined Alstom here last year, he had become an itinerant executive, a contract worker brought in for a particular purpose, then sent packing. "They tell me every Friday whether to come back," the 57-year-old explained.

Between his last regular job as the chief financial officer of another company and his hiring at Alstom, Fredo was unemployed for nearly two years and saw his income decline by two-thirds. He has long been without health benefits, holidays, paid vacation or job security.(read on about how he just lost Alstrom job!) <snip>


All amounts were adjusted for inflation, expressed in 2003 dollars.

For a more detailed description of The Times' analysis, visit www.latimes.com/newdeal.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

2. Makes an excellent point

I think the issue here is exactly who falls under their definition of "America."

It sure the hell isn't anyone I'm in contact with: my friends struggling to make it in an urban area on two salaries, the community college students who come into my library with kids in tow because they can't afford childcare, my father, who's trying to get disability payments for a workplace incident that left him deaf in one ear and with nerve problems in his hand.

I guess in this case "America" is a rich, white guy with a business based in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes and a workforce in India.