The Disposable Worker

[Octafish]

Our Corporate Overlords primed us for Perma-Temp World...

The Disposable Worker

Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary

By Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst
Business Week
Jan. 7, 2010

You know American workers are in bad shape when a low-paying, no-benefits job is considered a sweet deal. Their situation isn't likely to improve soon; some economists predict it will be years, not months, before employees regain any semblance of bargaining power. That's because this recession's unusual ferocity has accelerated trends—including offshoring, automation, the decline of labor unions' influence, new management techniques, and regulatory changes—that already had been eroding workers' economic standing.

The forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk. "When I hear people talk about temp vs. permanent jobs, I laugh," says Barry Asin, chief analyst at the Los Altos (Calif.) labor-analysis firm Staffing Industry Analysts. "The idea that any job is permanent has been well proven not to be true." As Kelly Services (KELYA) CEO Carl Camden puts it: "We're all temps now."

Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says the brutal recession has prompted more companies to create just-in-time labor forces that can be turned on and off like a spigot. "Employers are trying to get rid of all fixed costs," Cappelli says. "First they did it with employment benefits. Now they're doing it with the jobs themselves. Everything is variable." That means companies hold all the power, and "all the risks are pushed on to employees."

SNIP...

Diminishing job security is also widening the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. At the top, people with sought-after skills can earn more by jumping from assignment to assignment than they can by sticking with one company. But for the least educated, who have no special skills to sell, the new deal for labor offers nothing but downside.

SNIP...

At the bottom of the ladder, workers are so powerless that simply getting the minimum wage they're entitled to can be a struggle. A study released in September and financed by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes, and Russell Sage Foundations found that low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage. It followed a Government Accountability Office report from March 2009 that found that poor oversight by the Labor Dept.'s Wage & Hour Div. leaves low-wage workers "vulnerable to wage theft." Some companies have been fined for misclassifying employees as freelancers and then denying them benefits. Meanwhile, the George W. Bush Administration made it easier for people earning as little as $23,600 a year not to be covered by overtime-pay rules.

CONTINUED...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b4163032935448.htm

So who'll buy all of the stuff we make? Oh, that's right. We don't make all that much stuff anymore -- Wall Street makes profits on paper.

[DJ13]

1. The administration has to see the trends

That they refuse to try and reverse those trends is an indication of who they really work for.

[Octafish]

2. That's what I'm thinking, too.

Wall Street got trillions. Main Street got the tab.

[Octafish]

3. Long-term unemployment on the rise in US - manufacturing hard hit (2003!)

A second story on the subject:

470,000 stopped looking for work in July

Long-term unemployment on the rise in US

By Shannon Jones
WSWS.org
4 August 2003

Job-cutting and downsizing among US manufacturing corporations and retail establishments continued in July, wiping out tens of thousands more jobs and further belying claims of an economic recovery. It marked the 36th consecutive month in which manufacturing employment has fallen.

Among the major companies announcing job cuts in the last several weeks are Pillowtex, the manufacturer of home textiles, which declared bankruptcy and announced the planned closure of its 16 plants, employing 6,500 workers. Retailer Lord & Taylor is closing 32 stores and laying off 3,700 workers, while film and camera maker Kodak is preparing to eliminate up to 6,000 jobs.

Even more job losses seem certain as state and local governments cut spending and downsize their workforces due to budget deficits. It is estimated that state cutbacks may reduce economic growth by at least one-half percent. State governments have eliminated some 91,000 jobs over the last year.

Some 470,000 people stopped looking for work in July, dropping out of the total workforce figure used in calculating unemployment percentages. As a consequence, the official unemployment rate fell slightly, from 6.4 percent to 6.2 percent. However, manufacturing employment dropped 71,000 and retail employment fell by 14,000. Since January payroll employment has fallen by 486,000. The official unemployment figure is only a pale reflection of the actual situation, since it does not include some 2 million long-term unemployed—workers who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work altogether.

One economist, Larry Mishel of the Employment Policy Institute, called the ongoing US manufacturing cuts “the greatest contraction in private sector employment since the Great Depression.” In fact, two years after the 2001 recession, private sector employment has fallen by 2.5 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/jobs-a04.shtml

That was 2003.

And a kick for Democratic Underground Workers.

[Raster]

7. Gahan Wilson!!!!

:headbang:

[Octafish]

9. Gahan Wilson is TOPS!

The cartoon came from :smile:, back in 1972. I got it from the National Lampoon DVD-ROM collected 70s, 80s, 90s for less than...$20. A bargain on any world. Speaking of aliens, you might enjoy:



Click!

[Aeon10101110]

4. gop protracting the recession

The world has managed some recovery after capitalism attempted to devour itself once more. But those who led us down the path of their inevitable destruction are now the loudest whiners. We are discovering that it was worse than imagined. Also we know that the socialistic measures instituted were once again the saviour of the capitalists (read - bailouts). But now, when hope appears in many facets of economic indicators, jobs aren't being created. Who's fault? Well, who hires people? You guessed it, the capitalists. But they are content to let the government pay unemployment compensation to people who would otherwise end up rioting. History is proven in blood.

Predictable even by their own equations, the most greedy among us plunged the entire world to the brink of a labyrinthine abyss of depression. And those who represent the capitalists the most, who are the Republican Party of the United States, refuse to participate in the recovery. Now these same people refuse to do any hiring! How often can history repeat itself without society learning? Apparently, ad nauseum. The Republicans should sicken any person with merely a consciousness, perhaps even simply a pulse. They have refused any measure of assistance for not only the economy but also to it's very backbone, the workers.

Of course we need people to take risks with their money to keep it circulating. But if they didn't and just hoarded it, what would it be worth? Who would want it? It is the duty capitalists owe to themselves to keep their money in circulation. But as everyone knows, labor is the source of all wealth. So, is it the duty of labor to bail out the capitalists when their excesses become brinksmanship? Pitiably, yes, and so do labor's children and even their children by way of taxes to pay off the Republican binge of spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. And of course the wars of the Republicans rage on, maximizing our debt, again ad nauseum. But they couldn't be bothered with 'details' like infrastructure - roads, bridges, information, et cetera.

Republicans are shamefully opposed to providing for such basic human needs as healthcare. But if the businesses they own would be better providers of such minimal services, the government would not need to step in to fill this very desperate need. Instead, their concern is merely to funnel wealth to fewer and fewer people. Theirs is the legacy of the Whig Party, essentially bankers' interests who also led the U.S. into a severe depression!

There is no credible doubt that unregulated financial machinations were responsible for the banking collapses and global recession of 2007-2009. The Republicans are thoroughly aware of this, they are the party of deregulation. When they had sizable U.S. political majorities in recent years, they in fact deregulated financial sectors to unparalleled levels; the distinction of "bank" was even blurred. While such irresponsibility allowed a temporary boom, it was short-lived. Now while Republicans sock away former profits, they complain about jobs. But primarily, they are the ones with wealth and companies, they must create the jobs. They appear to be creating unemployment artificially for political gain.

[varelse]

6. Welcome to DU - great post!

I like your blog, too :)

[Octafish]

8. ''A Culture of Service''

Spot-on analysis, Aeon10101110. The GOP greedheads amount to little more than cowardly gang of warmongering traitors. They have never heard of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes idea that "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." By way of background, a few dots Corporate McPravda doesn't want to talk about:

Know your BFEE: It wasn’t Obama who Looted the Treasury and Banks. It was Bush and his Cronies.

Know your BFEE: Goldmine Sacked or The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

Here's how Neil Bush looks at economic justice, addressing friends of Rev Sun Myung Moon in Paraguay a couple years back...

Rev. Moon-allied group hosts Bush brother in Paraguay

Neil Bush, younger brother of U.S. President George W. Bush, called on Paraguay’s president as the guest of a business federation founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

MercoPress.com
Saturday, Saturday, March 1st 2008 - 1:00 pm UTC

A presidential press office source, who spoke on condition of not being named, confirmed the younger Bush met President Nicanor Duarte on Thursday along with a delegation from the Universal Peace Federation, a group associated with Moon.

SNIP...

The federation’s Web site says it is trying to promote peace in the Middle East, South Asia and other regions, as well as proposing an 50-mile, $200 billion tunnel linking Siberia and Alaska.

A leading Paraguayan newspaper, ABC Color, reported Friday that Bush spoke at the leadership seminar about instilling a “culture of service” and better uniting individuals and organizations behind objectives that serve peace and the common good.

It said the seminar, held at an Asuncion hotel, was entitled “Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Government in Times of World Crisis.“

SNIP...

Groups allied with Moon publish a newspaper, operate businesses and have large land holdings in Paraguay, South America’s second-poorest country.(AP)

SOURCE:

http://en.mercopress.com/2008/03/01/rev-moon-allied-group-hosts-bush-brother-in-paraguay

"Service" means nothing to these guys. And they won't settle for "indentured servitude." They want the paeons to serve the state for free. As they consider themselves the aristocracy, that would mean them.

PS: A most hearty welcome to DU, Aeon10101110.

[Me.]

5. K & R

[Octafish]

11. The New Feudalism

We the Serfs are less than cannon fodder. Unheeded wake-up call from Business Week, 1999:

Welcome to the New Feudalism (int'l edition)

Luxury spending is part of the mechanism that will lead to the disappearance of democratic capitalism and the coming of Feudalism II (''A $50,000 car and you're still not happy,'' Books, Feb. 15). The new Middle Ages will be worse for most of humanity than the older ones were for the serfs; the latter were at least needed in productive processes and thus received employment and a certain amount of maintenance.

So-called progress in technology and management methods is reducing this need, a fact currently masked by migration of formerly productive employees to service sectors, which, in the long run, are unsustainable. For the moment, the lords of the manor still depend on the population at large as the consuming element, but there are indications that their problem is being resolved. The pleasure boat industry, for example, has in recent years increased its dollar sales while reducing the number of boats built.

In general terms, tomorrow's serf will find himself not only sub- or unemployed, but socially excluded from state-of-the-art living, be it in communications, transportation, health care, education, or recreation. Tossing the entire population into one statistical pot can be used to refute this argument today. But no amount of neoliberal propaganda can hide the ongoing economic cleansing, perhaps more fastidious but in truth as cold-blooded and as destructive to mankind as ethnic cleansing.

Hanns John Maier
Ubatuba, Brazil

SOURCE:

Thanks for getting it, Me.

[HughBeaumont]

10. Good thread. Good book:

http://www.amazon.com/Disposable-American-Layoffs-Their-Consequences/dp/1400034337/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263488837&sr=8-1

Devoting a book to the necessity of preserving jobs is perhaps a futile endeavor in this age of deregulation and outsourcing, but veteran New York Times business reporter Uchitelle manages to make the case that corporate responsibility should entail more than good accounting and that six (going on seven) successive administrations have failed miserably in protecting the American people from greedy executives, manipulative pension fund managers, leveraged buyouts and plain old bad business practices. In the process, he says, we've gone from a world where job security, benevolent interventionism and management/worker loyalty were taken for granted to a dysfunctional, narcissistic and callous incarnation of pre-Keynesian capitalism. The resulting "anxious class" now suffers from a host of frightening ills: downward mobility, loss of self-esteem, transgenerational trauma and income volatility, to name a few. Uchitelle animates his arguments through careful reporting on the plight of laid-off Stanley Works toolmakers and United Airlines mechanics. Descriptions of their difficulties are touching and even tragic; they are also, alas, laborious and repetitive. And Uchitelle's solutions are not entirely convincing: neither forcing companies to abide by a "just cause" clause when they fire someone, for instance, nor doubling the minimum wage are likely to increase employment. Yet Uchitelle's basic argument—that no American government has taken significant steps to curb "the unwinding of social value" caused by corporate greed— is all too accurate.

[Octafish]

12. How to Play Robin Hood to the New Feudalism

Thank you for the heads-up on "The Disposable Americans," HughBeaumont! Here's something on how we might do something about it...

How to Play Robin Hood to the New Feudalism

by Ben G. Price

When Robin Hood left the cover of Sherwood Forest to do battle with the sheriff of Nottingham, it was because he was fed-up with overtaxation and the dehumanization of society that the powerful justified with one very defendable argument: the weight and influence of tradition. Without actually saying so, it was to be understood by common people that they didn't deserve to have what their "betters" had.

The presumptions and condescension of privilege have nowhere been more blatantly advocated than in Matthew Arnold's century old book "Culture and Anarchy." Arnold was on the side of "culture", aristocracy, and that sense of values that imagines rights and dignity can only be inherited from wealthy or influential progenitors.

Tradition is the central premise of every argument in favor of the ideology of conservatism. With tradition favoring the favored, a socially engineered hierarchy and expedient pecking order has long constituted the core reality of inherited social expectations, the "affirmative action" of wealth. The "haves" are always in a better position to define the "have-nots" in whatever terms they like. Defining the criminal element in a nation is left to the traditionally preferred rulers of the land, who select the "highest values" based on "scientific" research of civil behavior that promotes their class interests. It is the science of self-interest that rules elite preceptions more surely than the laws of thermodynamics define classical physics. Today, greed is silently adopted as the basis for moral judgement; an ersatz morality is culled from the presupposition that traditional values are without question superior to modern demands for the notions of equality and individual rights.

Whenever the genius of the controlling aristocracy fails to produce favorable economic results robust enough to trickle down to the marginally powerful middle class who, unlike their underlings, are in a position to raise a rhetorical stink strong enough to make the elite hand out some rose water, someone other than the wealthy decision makers in positions of responsibility must be held responsible.

That government becomes the focus of complaints is misdirected misery. Government is only a valve in the soldered plumbing of the conduits of power. Modern representative governments represent anything but the reality of citizen's needs and desires. The rhetoric of democracy has been purchased and is now for sale, like Coca Cola, without the original kick. No cocaine in Coke and no democracy in democratic government. Too strong in both cases for stupid and easily led citizens.

CONTINUED..

http://www.progress.org/feudal02.htm

Reverse Reverse Robin Hood. Nice.