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"According to ILO statistics (from 2001), Americans are the most productive workers in the world -- a fact that is often touted by the 'boot-straps' folk on the right as proof of our system's superiority. But we're not the most productive workers per hour; we merely work more hours than any other industrialized country, and our hours increase almost every year. It's the kind of productivity that is built primarily on the backs of the middle class and the poor. Squeezing every last drop of productivity out of working people to maximize growth is the essence of the Wal-Mart model. It's good for the economy, but not for the people who live within it." -- Joshua Holland, 2005-04-25 (the essay makes several interesting points, and I'm interested in hearing others' reactions to it.)
And a related quote that I ran into after copying the above passage into my QotD queue: "[...] The unwritten executive policy handed down to lower levels of management is to squeeze every moment out of your team's lives. If an individual stands tall for his family and refuses to put in the ridiculous hours the company expects, he is removed from the organization. Our industry only need look back to labor areas where unions resulted from these practices and heed the warning. [...]" -- Wayne Berthiaume, in a letter to the editors of InfoWorld, vol. 27, #20 (2005-05-16), p. 10.
(no subject)
But there is a bright side. This is self correcting. With unemployment at the lowest rate in any country in the world, the demand for employees could not be higher. This means that should a employee feel that the company is being unfair in the working hours they are being asked to work they can seek another job in with they will get better hours. Capitalism works. It only really goes bad when government, here or overseas, gets involved in protecting workers or the jobs. Look at any heavyly socialized nation and the unemployment rates are on average double or more that of the USA.
(no subject)
Even during the growth of industrialization, places like Ford realized that efficiencey per unit work was paramount and that production per unit declined when workers were asked to perform for more hours. Obviously some other places missed this. We must realize that Marxism was floating around and unionization is probably all that saved the U.S. from joining much of the rest of the world...
Pensions are breaking on both sides of the fence. The pension guarantee is billions underfunded and United just got out from under theirs in court. There is no guarantee in the future. Every future fund proposed has broken at least once...
(no subject)
While worker productivity has been going up, income has remained basically flat (adjusting for inflation). So might it not be more accurate to say that workers have been forced to work longer hours just to stay afloat, rather than than they 'chose' to work for more money?
As far as employment figures go, I consider them to be meaningless when comparing different countries because there isn't common definition of what 'looking for work' is, so I strongly suspect that a lot of the US's unemployment rate is hidden in the ranks of 'discouraged workers'. What really matters is not what the unemployment rate is, but rather how hard it is to find a job in your field of endeavour.
(no subject)
If you can cite a source for that "double unemployment" claim, I'd be interested to hear it; according to our own Department of Labor, some "heavily socialized" countries have unemployment rates higher than ours, some lower; Sweden, possibly the most "heavily socialized" country in the world, is only a percentage point higher.
Capitalism is indeed a great thing, but it alone does not produce a high living standard for a broad population. The reason we have such a large and strong middle class in this country is not because of unfettered capitalism, but because we also had worker protections, the GI Bill, and antitrust laws, to name but a few. There's always room for discussion about an appropriate level of regulation, but the history of the robber baron era should demonstrate clearly that it can certainly "really go bad" at that end of the scale, too.
(no subject)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sw.html#Econ
5.6% (2004 est.) is Sweden w/ a 3.6% (2004 est.) growth rate and a small population by any standard.
purchasing power parity - $28,400 (2004 est.)
USA = purchasing power parity - $40,100 (2004 est.)
4.4% (2004 est.) growth rate.
That means the average american earns nearly double the average Sweden and that the growth in that income is almost a full point higher then the sweden.
Most of the "robber baron era" had there positions protected by contracts and laws they help create linking the government to their companies and protecting their monopolies. Thusly it was indeed the involvement of the government that aided in their power.
(no subject)
I would like to see a situation where the salaries to the top folks in a corporation could not exceed some certain multiple of the bottom tier. Say, 50X. So, if the chief executive is worth $2,500,000/annum, the lowest full time worker gets a living wage of $50K. This could easily be encated through the tax code - a wage greater than 50X (or some other multiple) that of the lowest full time wage you pay is not a reasonable business expense and cannot be deducted from profits as such.
Yep, that American businesses for you
behind when I joined it ... and that was the design stage. At one
point in the project the powers-that-be decided they could get 25%
more output if we worked 25% more hours. Obviously we were not
thrilled at the idea. Since they could not out-and-out demand the
extra time they told us if we gave the extra time and met the
delivery date we would get bonuses. I responded that my family time
was more important to me, and what if I met the date anyway but did
not put in the hours. They were hesitant, so I put in my normal hours
not counting on the bonus, got done before delivery, and got the
bonus.
So where did the extra time come from? Simple, I figured most of
my co-workers were already wasting huge ammounts of time.
To use the cliche, 'work smarter not harder'.