U.S. job quality is in trouble

[rfranklin]

-snip-

With almost 13 million unemployed workers, competition is intense, and some workers with new jobs are taking cuts in pay and responsibilities. Henry Farber, an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey, studied employment in the Great Recession, and found that job losers who found new positions earned on average 17.5% less in the new job.


Job gains during early part of recovery were greatest in lower-wage occupations. A "Now Hiring" sign seen in front of a McDonald's recently in Fair Oaks, Virginia.
With persistent high unemployment, there’s downward pressure on wage growth.

“Employers know workers don’t have outside options. If your employer knows you don’t have outside options, it reduces your bargaining power,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-job-quality-is-in-trouble-2012-02-27?dist=beforebell

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[ProfessionalLeftist]

2. The 1% wont be happy until

labor is almost free as in prison labor, or $1.78/hour like it is for those workers at the FoxConn factory in China. They want two classes: the ruling class and the slaves. Period. Who's gonna buy their shit in this country? Who cares? They'll just export it. Never-ending greed at any cost.

[rfranklin]

3. Better yet, if they could bring wages in line with other Western Hemisphere countries....like Haiti

WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day

The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3-day

[ProfessionalLeftist]

4. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy"

[CAPHAVOC]

7. Leveling the playing field

Is painful. They say we can compete with China? No thanks. Next we will be competing with Haiti. Why is obama doing nothing but enabling the Buffetts of the world?

[Brigid]

5. US job quality has been in trouble for a while now.

The town I moved from last fall is a perfect example. It has been job-poor since about the early '70's, and it really shows in the wages, benefits, and the way employers treat their employees. It's also why that county is one of the poorest in the state. The young have no future there, so the smarter and more ambitious ones leave. There are plenty of colleges in the area, but unless you're planning to leave once you're finished, don't waste your time and money. Nothing left there now but rednecks and a few dead-end jobs. Think Flint, MI. And like Flint, it didn't used to be this way. There were lots of factory jobs in the area, but they're long gone. Welcome to the one-percent's wet dream, boys and girls.

[Ron Obvious]

6. That's why the unemployment numbers don't tell the whole story

This is why I never find the unemployment or job growth numbers very interesting. If an out-of-work engineer or laid-off construction worker finally accepts a job at Walmart to make ends meet at a fraction of what he used to make, the statistics consider this a like for like job. It isn't.

[Romulox]

8. For years, I think white collar workers thought "COMPETE!" only applied to blue collar workers.

Not so.

[flexnor]

9. why do you have it in for white collar workers?

first of all, with the change of dress codes over the last 15 years, and offices becoming cramped 'bull pens', the distinction between white and blue collar has been blurred if not eliminated in most cases. and the working conditions that led to unions has been visited on the formerly 'white collar' workers (speedups, scabs, and any of a million things that translate to working more for less compensation)

maybe you once worked(or still do) in a place where the white collar workers had/have an attitude worthy of contempt, (i know i've had contempt toward a white collar worker, even while wearing one myself, so i do 'get it' somewhat)

but most white collar workers understand/undestood, that as go the 'blue collar' jobs, so go the 'white collar jobs'. Nobody had to explain to me, that in the company I worked for, that if they closed any of the plants, the office jobs in that plant would go too.

And even if someone did work in a company that had few blue collar workers, those white collar workers who lost their jobs when plants closed would be on the job market, along with former blue collar workers who retrained for white collar, even if it were a tiny percent.

a lot of white collar workers (myself in particular) have always understood the basic labor economics of this (and yes, every car i've ever owned has been a GM or a Ford)

[Romulox]

10. Wages have been stagnate for blue collars workers for 30 years. This is just catch up.

It has not a thing with who I "have it in for"--it's just cause and effect.

"most white collar workers understand/undestood, that as go the 'blue collar' jobs, so go the 'white collar jobs'."

I don't think so. We've been told for 30 years that white collar jobs would replace the blue collar jobs that we consciously threw away through our policies of "free trade" and outsourcing.

It's only supposed to be a "crisis" now because what went around is beginning to come back around. Well, who do you expect will put an end to all of this? The blue collar workers that were displaced when the white collar workers developed a taste for imported autos, for example?

It's simply unrealistic.

[flexnor]

11. 'We've been told for 30 years that white collar jobs would replace the blue collar jobs'

you sure as heck didnt hear that from the average white collar worker, the average white collar worker had to take Econ 101, you really think the average white collar worker was shouting 'let the ship go down, everyone can jump in my lifeboat'? becasue that's what they would have had to have believed - and they didnt

you heard that from corporate propaganda, and the corporitists in BOTH parties

NOT the average white collar worker

[Zalatix]

12. As a white collar worker, I heard it plenty of times from my companions.

In addition to that, they kept telling the blue collar workers, "Adapt! Adapt to change, like we did!"

Then the tide reached us.

[flexnor]

13. well there is some truth to that, and look where it got them

"Adapt! Adapt to change, like we did!"

we

1) came to the table with expensive high tech skills

2) worked heavy overtime for NO pay beyond 40 hours

3) sweated every change is super-complex skill sets and lost our careers on the slightest mis step

4) worked multiple projects at one time, usually not changing existing deadlines as new projects were added, and never complained about working conditions

5) were often the empty chair at family holidays as that was the only quiet time to implement new systems

6) trained our h-1b replacement and got a job at home depot

but no, i never personally said "Adapt! Adapt to change, like we did!" i always saw through that, and considered a manager in a plant (who worked his way up from union line job) the smartest guy on labor i ever knew - i once asked him how he liked working in a union, and his answer was as simple and legitimate as it could possibly get, that his boss didnt like him but it didnt matter because his boss had to deal with a steward. these guys understood workplace reality and chose to face reality. they werent lazy, they werent anti-company, they just didnt think kool-aid was a substitute for standing up for yourself and your fellow workers when it was honorable and just

[Zalatix]

14. Yup, a rising tide lifts all yachts.

It also swamps villages. If you're a white collar worker you're not on the yacht...

[flexnor]

15. the managerial/professional salaried 'exempt' classification is the biggest screw job of all

back in the 'old days' when it wasnt abused, it was ok, it meant you didnt have to punch in/punch out, and you were respected as being on the honor system

but once the consulting/contractor it model took over, with deliberate heavy overtime to profit from no pay after 40 hours, it became theft

a large percent of people who are exempt, do not 'supervise' anyone and have no 'management' authority

and as far as 'professional' goes, next time you meet with a lawyer or doctor, go after 5 and tell them 'oh, it's after 5, so it's free to me, you're a professional' and see how far it goes