What’s more, as Osterman and Beth Shulman reported in their book Good Jobs America, research has found that workers at the low end of the labor market benefit significantly from unionization, which both increases their wages substantially and often results in training arrangements that create career advancement opportunities for them. In recent decades, unions, a traditional mechanism for giving workers a voice in the workplace, have been in decline in many countries, but the decline has been particularly severe in the United States: The percentage of workers covered by a union in the U.S. workers’ bargaining power has to do with just that: a loss of ability to bargain through unions. 1īut a significant portion of the decline in U.S. Globalization, meanwhile, has tended to raise wages in rapidly developing countries like China - while causing real wages for lower-income workers in developed countries like the U.S. Another study by Autor and Anna Salomons of Utrecht University School of Economics has suggested that advances in automation grow the economy but cause workers’ share of those gains to drop. That, in turn, results in greater income inequality between low-wage and high-wage workers. On the automation front, research by MIT economist David Autor indicates that automation of routine tasks through computerization has contributed to a declining proportion of middle-skill jobs. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the decline of unions to automation and globalization. Corporations and their shareholders began to receive a larger share of the economic benefits of productivity growth - and workers didn’t. Productivity continued its climb, but real hourly compensation fell behind. Then, starting in the late 1970s, the two measures diverged. economy, which is now characterized by a higher level of income inequality than many comparable countries? The following chart, produced by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), helps tell a key part of the story:įrom the late 1940s until the 1970s, productivity and hourly compensation rose pretty much in tandem in the United States - meaning that as economic productivity grew, so did typical workers’ paychecks. What went wrong for so many American workers? For that matter, what went wrong for the U.S. Real hourly wages for low- and middle-income workers have been stagnating for years, and about a quarter of all employed American adults - not teenagers, but adults - now work in low-wage jobs, according to Paul Osterman, who is the NTU Professor of Human Resources and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Nowhere is workers’ lack of influence and power at work clearer than in wages - one of the issues where survey respondents identified the biggest shortfall in the amount of influence they have at work. According to that study, a majority of American workers report having less influence at work than they believe they should have on benefits, compensation, promotions, job security, respect shown to employees, protections from abuse, and new technologies.įurthermore, more than a third of survey respondents experienced a voice gap on a number of additional workplace issues, including training, employer values, protection from discrimination, and ways to improve how work is done. As evidence of that, a survey of American workers, conducted in 2017 as part of a Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative research project, found substantial “voice gaps” - areas where workers believe they ought to have more influence and say at work than they do in reality. Many workers today just don’t have much clout when it comes to the things that matter most to them on the job. Unfortunately, such circumstances - unpredictable work schedules, low pay, and lack of respect from employers - are the reality for millions of American workers as they struggle to both make a living and manage the rest of their lives. It was a telling moment as the reality of that driver’s experience unfolded before my eyes. She was out of control in fundamental ways: She lacked control of her schedule, her income, and her ability to care for her child.
#When was the last worker employment in us full#
She was upset because she had already arranged a full day of paid childcare, and now she would not earn enough to cover the cost.
#When was the last worker employment in us driver#
The distraught driver had come to work planning - and needing - to work a full day but was now being called off the job at noon, presumably because of slower-than-expected demand. Two package delivery vehicles pulled up near my house, and one driver slammed her car door and approached the other driver in tears. I was standing on my porch a few years back when a drama unfolded in front of me.
0 kommentar(er)
