Has Corporate America Turned Callous Toward Its Workers?
What ever happened to the golden rule?
That's what I often asked myself as I was researching my new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. I often felt amazed, even appalled by the way many corporate managers treated their workers. It's understandable that corporate managers have grown tougher in recent decades because foreign competition and Wall Street have placed ever-fiercer pressures on companies to cut costs. But that hardly explains why so many managers seem to have grown downright callous and why so many treat their workers with a shocking lack of dignity.
Unfortunately, I found a disconcertingly large number of real-life examples to draw from as I was writing The Big Squeeze (for more information, see www.stevengreenhouse.com), which seeks to explain the tough times that millions of American workers--white-collar and blue-collar, male and female, twenty-somethings and fifty-somethings--face as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown worse, job security has shriveled, and many workers have been pressured to work harder and faster.
One company fired a computer engineer on Take Your Daughters to Work Day as his eight-year-old daughter looked on. At Electronic Arts, the video games giant, some employees complained that they were required to work 30 days a month, 80 hours a week.
Then there's the worker at a dollar store in Brooklyn who told me that several female coworkers were fired simply because they missed work for a day or two to take care of a sick child. In Syracuse, I interviewed several women at a plastics factory who had grown furious because the male workers often groped them and asked for blow jobs while the women were tending the machinery. When these women complained to management, the factory's managers blew them off, taking a boys-will-be boys attitude.
Many Wal-Mart workers told me of the indignity--and dangers--of being locked in their stores at night. As a result of being locked in, one night-shift supervisor at a Sam's Club in Florida complained to me that he couldn't take a worker with serious food poisoning to the hospital.
At a Koch poultry plant in Tennessee, the managers were so intent on keeping the line running all out that the workers who carved off chicken tenders were ordered not to go the bathroom except during their lunch and coffee breaks. When one desperate woman asked permission to go, her supervisor took off his hard hat and said, "You can go to the bathroom in this."
Laying off workers is always painful, but when RadioShack laid off 400 workers at its headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, it did so in an especially insensitive way. It fired them by email. Imagine sitting at your computer and receiving the following message: "The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."
Northwest Airlines must have thought it was doing hundreds of laid-off workers a favor when it gave them a booklet of tips on how to make ends meet. The booklet, called "101 Ways to Save Money," contained such tips as: "Borrow a dress for a big night out" and "Shop at auctions of pawn shops for jewelry." It also suggested, "Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash."
Al Dunlap, a.k.a. Chainsaw Al, the former C.E.O. of Scott Paper, was widely respected across corporate America for his don't-look-back approach toward slicing and dicing workers. Within weeks of taking Scott's helm, he laid off 11,000 workers and slashed the headquarters staff from 1,600 to less than 300. One day while visiting a Scott factory, Dunlap asked a worker how long he had been with the company. The employee proudly responded, "Thirty years." Dunlap's callous response stunned the worker: "Why would you stay with a company for thirty years?"
How in the world does any of this square with doing unto others what you would want them to do unto you?
Richard S. Wellins, a human resources consultant, had some explanations for management's harsher behavior. "We're asking managers to do a lot more with less," he said. "Expectations have changed. Things have gotten far more demanding. The stress of the job, along with the economics and expectations, is causing nastier behavior."
At fast food restaurants and other parts of the fast-growing service sector, managers have often been asked to pump up production while being given little money for bonuses or merit raises to reward greater productivity.
Jerry Newman, a management professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said this, too, has fueled worse behavior by managers. "One way to get people to work hard is to reward them," he said. "Another way is to punish them. If you don't have money to reward them because you have to control costs, then you have to go with the punishment model. That means you put more pressure on people. You set higher expectations and you try to achieve that by intimidating people. I call that the bullying model. Corporate officials never say they want bullies. They would say they want people who were performance-oriented. I don't even think they're looking for bullies. They're looking for people who get results, and those people just happen to be bullies."
To be sure, many companies and managers do treat their workers well and with respect, and in my book, I describe at length several companies, among them Costco, Patagonia and Ernst & Young, that deserve high grades. These companies should serve as models for all of corporate America.
When I began covering labor and workplace matters for The New York Times, I reacted skeptically the first few times I heard union leaders say in the midst of labor disputes that the workers were striking over dignity. But after several years of interviewing workers and visiting workplaces, I came to see that many managers do indeed treat their workers with a surprising lack of dignity and sensitivity.
Oftentimes I wonder what exactly are business schools teaching the nation's human resource managers. It seems that one thing that many business schools have forgotten to teach is the golden rule.
Turned?
June 30, 2008 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
For once, David and I are on the same wavelength. I was about to post the very same one-word comment.
The Golden Rule? You must be kidding. It is in the nature of the capitalist enterprise to encourage this kind of ruthless economic efficiency, and to promote the reduction of employees to mere productive inputs or "human resources". Every manager has a bottom line set by his manager, whose bottom line is in turn set by the manager above him, etc. Since you are required by the conditions of your continued employment to treat your employees as mere resources, then you are less likely to form with those employees the kinds of affectionate attachments that, in other spheres of activity, might lead to more frequent acts of kindness.
The only way companies are prevented from treating their employees like shit is through law and the power of organized labor unions. Both of these kinds of protections have eroded tremendously in recent years.
June 30, 2008 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cost cutters often do not understand products or services, or their markets. Many managers have no idea who is productive and who isn't.
We have too many accountants, MBAs, and lawyers making misguided decisions that, in the long run, hurt their companies and industries and undermine US competitiveness.
Good workers who really understand their products/services/markets get thrown aside, or leave out of frustration and disgust.
June 30, 2008 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Greenhouse: I was wondering if in your research you noticed a discernable difference between publicly traded corporations versus privately held corporations. I would imagine the squeeze is much bigger in former, but I have never seen any good research to back this up. Also, you wouldn't happen to know the percentage of corporate jobs that come from publicly traded corporations, would you? I ask these questions because the pheonomenon of the public corporation seems to twist and warp what might otherwise be a humane business environment into a very toxic one, and I just wonder how much of this is a hunch and how much it is reality.
June 30, 2008 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Has Corporate America Turned Callous Toward Its Workers?"
I'm waiting for Mr.Greenhouse's future article detailing the past beneficence of Corporate America towards its workers. It will be a shorter treatise than this post, I think.
June 30, 2008 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry but while this seems a worthy topic, your approach seems all wrong.
As VLaszlo points out -- it's not as if companies were ever good to their workers and it's hard to believe that they were any better in the past. Heck, go back too far and you get companies that dealt with strikes by hiring Pinkertons to beat up their own employees.
I really don't buy the theory that managers have gotten rougher because more is expected of them or because there's more competition. If managers have gotten worse it's only because they can. Employers simply have too much power over employees. When one class of people has power over another, the class in power with act eventually act like monsters.
June 30, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Steve Greenhouse here and just a brief reply to several less-than-friendly responses to my post today. I certainly realize that there have always been some corporations that are callous to their workers. My point is that American corporations, by and large, have turned more callous in recent years, and as a result, more and more managers are doing dastardly things. Some critics seem to suggest that all American corporations are callous and that has been the case ever since the republic was founded. I disagree.
One of the central points of my book--see especially Chapter Five, "The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract"--is that one and two generations ago, American corporations generally treated their workers far better than they treat them now. But, as I explain in today's post, more and more companies have turned callous in recent decades because of powerful forces, including foreign competition, pressures from Wall Street and, I might add, the dwindling power oflabor unions and labor's decreased ability to push back against callous companies and managers. Increasingly corporations are hiring tougher, less sensitive managers with one criterion in mind: they want people who know how to minimize costs. I'm not suggesting that callous treatment is totally new--it's always been around. But what's new is that this unfortunate treatment is far more prevalent than was the case several decades ago.
When corporate leaders have talked in recent years about making their companies leaner and meaner, let's not forget that meaner is part of that equation. (See my sixth chapter, "Leaner and Meaner," detailing how corporate managers have turned meaner and why. I write about a Wal-Mart store manager who describes in detail the huge pressures she faced to minimize payroll costs and how that pushed her to do some callous and even illegal things.)
June 30, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I gather that there was a certain amount of benevolent paternalism in the past, probably towards white collar workers and skilled blue-collar workers, but I don't think there was a golden past of employment.
I've heard anecdotally that many architectural firms that were used to carrying their staffs through tough times went bankrupt during the Great Depression. Firms that ditched their workers quickly became more likely to survive.
In my experience, while many firms mouth the mantra that their most valuable resource is people, very few architectural firms today wait more than two weeks to cut excess staff loose.
June 30, 2008 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I find the excuse of foreign competition to be less than genuine. In key industries, such as automobiles, the foreign competition has unions as well. Also, Europe and Japan face the same competitive from developing countries and their working class doesn't have to shoulder the burden the way ours does. Many of these places have worker relations norms much 'kinder' than our own.
In regard to the American work place, I think about Game Theory. Game Theory (according to Robert Paxton's 'Evolution of Cooperation') says that, civility is upheld by tit-for-tat strategy - I punch you in the nose, you punch me back. Eventually, if I get tired of being punched in the nose, I quit punching you in the nose.
My thinking has left me wondering if the decline of the mob during the 1960s predicated the decline of the labor movement. In the 1990s, when a local company threatened to move a plant to south Texas during union negotiations, I asked a construction worker friend of mine, who was instinctivel, exceedingly good at all manner of negotiations, what he would do. He replied, that he would go into the ghetto, find someone with nothing to lose and pay them to throw a brick through the living room window of the company's chief negotiator. What he was describing was 'tit-for-tat'. When you threaten to move the work you're threatening my family, let me remind you that you have a family that can be threatened too, albeit by other means.
Since the crackdown on the mob in the 1960s, management realized that they could treat workers like tripe with immunity.
This kind of problem is endemic in our society because the only real governing principle is 'free contract'. In such a society, bargaining power is everything. Lose bargaining power, and you lose everthing. Gain bargaining power and you gain everything. These days, executives have the most leverage and it shows up in their pay checks.
Other societies, many in Europe for instance, believe in fair contract. Even if you have bargaining power you don't necessarily apply the advantage because the outcome would be unfair.
Look at the NAFTA agreement. It was unfair to Mexican farmers. As a result, unable to live off the land, tens of millions of Mexicans are roaming the American country side trying to find work. The application of bargaining power advantage, just because it was available, was short sited.
The modern limited liability corporation was invented in 1860s. They are ownership collectives. That gave them bargaining power over individuals. Initially this resulted in widespread squalor and concentrated wealth. The initial solution for this was collective bargaining through unions. This is, increasingly, looking like a failed social contract.
Today Toyota is worth $160 billion, while GM is worth only $16 billion, (despite GM being from a country almost entirely reliant on cars - thanks to them - while in Japan, one can do quite nicely without one).
The solution would be adaptation of the Japanese model. Japan has the broadest distribution of wealth in the industrial world - as well as some of the most competitive companies in the world. Japanese model has weak employee unions. The workers strength isn't in collective organization, but in tenure. Tenure changes the behavior of corporations. Since they can't fire people they have to pursue civility.
This isn't just true in Japan, look how Universities treat their tenured employees. At my law school, during a minor crisis that was closely followed by the local media, the Dean was continuously quoted as saying he's working with the faculty to resolve the crisis.
In tenured organizations, the employees interest becomes the principle behavior determinant (employee primacy). Study of Japanese corporations demonstrates that Employees are better proxies for LONG TERM shareholders then board of directors or executives in American companies because employees and long term shareholders want the same thing: market share growth. Thus GM is worth $16 billion and Toyota is worth $160 billion.
You'll never find American executives backing the notion of tenure or employee primacy because executives would lose their bargaining power in the process. Compare the income of American versus Japanese CEOs.
In my view every publicly traded company should have employee primacy rules, for no other reason than as a way to protect shareholder interest. Private companies don't have this problem. (As one of the other posters have mentioned, it would be interesting to compare how private companies versus public companies treat employees).At the very least, any company receiving a government handout should have their charter revised to one of widespread employee tenure and employee primacy as a governing principle.
The basic problem with America today is that Republicans manage to win elections. Maybe when GM is gone, people will sit up and take notice.
In any competitive field of endeavor, be it sports, warfare or business, if a competitor has a superior strategy, you either adopt the strategy or give up competing. With GM at one tenth the value of Toyota, the debate is over. Our social contract lost, their's won. Theirs is a better idea. The smart thing would be to adopt the better points of their idea, leave behind the worse points, and try to improve upon it further still.
Instead we are increasingly experimenting in industrial serfdom (neo-serfdom) and the despite the draconian measures and the widespread suffering involved, we appear to still be losing ground.
June 30, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
You've obviously given a great deal of thought to the question of why Japanese companies (or at least some Japanese companies) have out-competed their American equivalents. I gather you've concluded that the Japanese management-worker model (the social contract) is at the root of the outperformance. I would suggest that you look, as well, at the cost of capital.
Where American firms are on a quarterly if not daily highly, risky treadmill to acquire and maintain capital, Japanese firms have had theirs handed to them on a silver platter and handed to them at low cost, a cost subsidized by the Japanese people, that is, the Japanese worker*. The result is that when events (principally, liquidity availability) go against American companies, they are less able to get through a bad patch -- and their stock performance suffers, proportionately.
* The trade-off of reduced returns on their household financial savings for jobs and job security may be a reasonable trade-off for the average Japanese worker. Every culture is different.
June 30, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I am aware of the fact that the Japanese have been very good about providing cheap money to their industrial (capital intensive industries). One secret of Japanese economic development is that they have nearly always (the post war era being an exception) had sufficient internal capital, even in the pre-Meiji era.
The technique (policy tool) developed by Japanese bureaucrats, which I have describe as 'a compression effect' involved several aspects, including artificially high levels of capital at artificially low levels of cost. That is one aspect of the compression effect. The other aspects include, but not limited to, protectionist barriers, and loan guarantees (again capital).
This combination creates compression: an artificially large number of firms with artificially large levels of capital and artificially low costs of capital within a protected environment creating artificially intense levels of competition WITHIN the protected zone - in otherwords, within an industry group, compression. The results of the 'compression effect' is industrial firms that in relatively short order go from primitive underdevelopment to hyper levels of competitiveness.
Important to all of this is the internal structure of these firms. Tenure creates a more competitive firm. For Tenured employees, their future is guaranteed secure so long as their firms future is guaranteed - so you have a more intensive relationship. But a fundamental element of Japanese competitiveness is the lack of consolidation in industries as they mature. Japan has 6 to 8 independent domestic auto manufacturers (depending on how you define that) for a nation that has half the population and a fraction of the paved road space as America does (2 to 3). One of the reasons for this is Employee primacy.
In most aspects, Employees are a good proxy for the shareholders, but there is one area they are not - consolidation. Shareholders love corporate mergers because they can get a control premium on the value of their shares. Employees hate them because they mean job reductions do to redundancy. But in this respect, the Employees interest is a proxy for society's interests regarding the economy. Society is better served by having more firms to compete offering more choices and lower prices and more competitive firms.
Because of the 'compression effect' industrial development policy, Japanese industrial firms are born in hyper-competitive environment. Because of employee primacy, they stay relatively competitive long after the state has dialed back on policy and moved on to other things.
An important aspect of Employee Primacy is the focus on long term market share growth. Employees want to ensure that the company is thriving 20 to 30 years down the road. The company, in order to protect the jobs it is responsible for maintaining, has to focus on long term market share. Thus, during the go-go 90s, while Chrysler, GM and most especially Ford were cutting back on money spent on cars for the sake of Trucks and SUVs, Toyota and Honda were tinkering with hybrid vehicles, the reason being, they can't predict where the market will go, some day energy consumption might be a market driver, as it had been in the past, so in order to protect their long term market share, they have to make sure that they have a competitive position if it does come to pass. Sure enough, Toyota is thriving on the Prius while Ford is choking on SUVs.
Because of tenure, Japanese companies will create research projects just to keep engineers busy. Honda did this with regard to jet aircraft, and the result was a very creative small jet aircraft that launched for them an entire new line of business - and it occurred at a time where owning a small jet mapped well to America's concentration of corporate wealth and high transaction cost to commercial air traffic (fear of terrorism, long lines, high prices). Neat trick, huh.
Of course a lot of the policy making doesn't work in a lot of industries, nor this corporate structure. However, for the developmental state, the mistakes are more than compensated by the successes and, on the other hand, I would not advocate that all companies or corporations be subject to the Tenure model. But some obviously should be. I don't want to be confused with a pollyanna on all things Japanese - they have lots of problems: but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water, especially when our own industry is running down the drain. Or so it would seem to me.
I agree with you on most things here. A separate analysis is called for regarding the nature of capitalization. While I have some limited background in analyzing that, the corporate and industrial structure is more my forte. The difference between 'them' and 'us' is one of intensity and purpose.
July 1, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for dropping by the comments. But your thesis really doesn't hold up too well. Henry Ford hired spies to follow his own employees around in order to make sure that they weren't spending their money on alcohol. As tough as it is in the modern work force, and it is tough, it's not as bad as it used to be. A Henry Ford would get his pants sued off if he tried that kind of thing today.
That said, we still need a stronger labor movement to deal with today's problems.
June 30, 2008 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Destor23! The Battle of the Overpass was 70 years ago!
During the Great Compression (say 1950-1970 or thereabouts) managerial policy tended to be bureaucratic, rule bound, and stable. It was the Carter and Reagan deregulations and the post-Volcker interest rate reductions that gave birth to the Milken M&Aers and freed managers (compelled them if they didn't want their companies taken over by Gordon Gekko) to alter the culture.
We truly do live in a different world.
June 30, 2008 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a good point, Ellen.
And damn, do you have style!
June 30, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The idea that this sort of treatment of workers is in any way "new" or different is pretty laughable. Seems to me the only kind of person who might ask a question like this with a straight face is someone who has been insulated from the typical American workplace.
June 30, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
And never, had so much as, read Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck or at least had watched "It's a Wonderful Life". Then there's Dickens. Christmas Carol takes place in England, but it's hardly different than America at the time.
June 30, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do believe it's time for some internal sabotage campaigns to begin at some of these corporations.
June 30, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
"When I began covering labor and workplace matters for The New York Times, I reacted skeptically the first few times I heard union leaders say in the midst of labor disputes that the workers were striking over dignity"
Just curious, how exactly did you draw this assignment since even now you seem to have no apparent knowledge of the history of labor relations in this country nor much personal experience working for corporations.
It is encouraging that you are curious enough to investigate challenges to your preconceptions and willing to change your opinion when confronted with new-to-you facts but was there not a more seasoned reporter or editor around to mentor you?
My confidence in NYT reporting is shaken. I am shocked. Shocked. ;)
June 30, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
How can there be a Golden Rule to follow when a country's leadership doesn't even believe in and does everything it can to undermine "normal" rule?
June 30, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
While mistreatment of employees is certainly not a new phenomenon, to claim it's an inherent feature of capitalism or corporations is ridiculous. Certainly during much of the last century corporations had little incentive to treat employees as more than replaceable cogs (at least until they unionized), but today such behavior should be viewed as what it is: bad management.
I have worked at companies that treated employees badly and those that treated them with dignity and respect. And I've found companies that do not value their employees are often badly managed in other ways, as well. Happy employees are more productive, more willing to work longer hours and more likely to come up with ideas that benefit the company — to say nothing of the money saved by reducing turnover.
If financial incentives were the only way to reward workers, maybe the "bully method" could be justified by managers strapped for cash. But as most people know, working at a job you like with people you like can be a lot more important than a bigger paycheck. I know lots of people who would gladly trade a cut in pay for a more pleasant working environment.
Pensions are already gone. Once health insurance becomes decoupled from employment, more and more people will feel comfortable leaving jobs they can't stand. In our increasingly knowledge-based economy, companies that maintain a happy workforce will have a huge competitive advantage. Mistreating your employees isn't just bad for your soul; more and more, it's bad for your bottom line.
June 30, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Inherent may not be exactly the right word when applied to capitalism, but it isn't far from the mark either. Without regulations and laws prohibiting the most egregious mistreatment of workers, it was inherent in the past. In modern America where legal protections for worker's rights are weak and the federal and state laws in nearly all instances favor the right of employers over the rights of workers, such mistreatment is widespread because it is allowed and the few protections afforded workers are poorly enforced and usually mean little when enforced unless the case is extraordinarily bad.
When considering government, it is nearly universally accepted that power corrupts and that too much power concentrated in too few hands will always be abused and thus must be prevented. Our federal system is predicated on this idea. The same is true in business but we do not apply the same wisdom despite the reality. Instead, we glorify the authortarian/dictatorial business leader, we lionize those who increase profits regardless of the human cost or any consideration for the employees of a given enterprise. As is abundantly clear from reading the business pages the past 15 years, when allowed to run amok, capitalists will, by and large, run amok.
So, perhaps it is not an inherent characteristic of capitalism to abuse employees, to mistreat them in myriad ways, but it certainly is an inherently human characteristic to abuse power and so long as humans run businesses we can expect this kind of behavior if we do not legislate, regulate, and subsequently protect the rights of workers to be free from such mistreatment.
June 30, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
This obviously isn't news. What's news is that, thanks to the enormous ongoing propaganda operations of the corporate right wing, so-called costcutters are now largely viewed as tough-minded leaders rather than as vindictive assholes with too much power.
Anyone remember how Jack Welch was for a while the brilliant architect of GE's turnaround, until the outcry about ripping off the shareholders with his outrageous retirement package? Those of us who knew him as "Neutron Jack" (the buildings were still standing, but all the experienced employees were gone) weren't surprised in the least that it turned out to all be about personal greed and power.
And he's just one of countless examples.
June 30, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
My impression is that most corporations now have a primary product, their stock, and a secondary product, what their employees produce. So, business schools teach how to optimize the value of their primary product, their stock, with very little consideration given to their secondary product.
A whole industry, the internet related businesses, prospered and existed solely to sell their own stock, until the bubble finally burst a few years ago. Enron was largely a corporation committed exclusively to selling their own stock. Newspaper owning corporations exist largely to sell their own stock.
A lot of laws need to be changed to force our industries to concentrate on the the products their employees produce, and to repair the balance of power between employees and management. I wish I thought that Obama and a Democratic majority in both house of Congress would lead to those changes, but I don't.
June 30, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Corporate management has exactly one job and none other: Maximizing shareholder value by every legal means.
To expect some corporate managers to behave humanely when others are not and never will, is to expect them to act, in essence, against the short-term interest of shareholder value.
If we as a society wish for employee-friendly corporate policies, then it is incumbent on us, also as a society, to stand up and require it.
I think it is reprehensible that this society allows so much of its productivity to be wasted by forcing workers to constantly look over their shoulders wondering how the next screwing will happen, rather than focusing on productive work.
I agree with you, this whole structure is unlikely to change, no matter how much it would improve the lives of those who actually do the work.
June 30, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Corporate management has exactly one job . . . .
To maximize the incomes of upper management -- and to get out with their bonuses in tact before the one-in-a-hundred-years event (the one that happens every 10 years or so) throws them out.
June 30, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as a textbook case, I offer up Carla Fiorina of Hewlett Packard - Now a Co-Chair of the McCain campaign. Her biggest accomplishment was merging HP with Compaq - two companies that both built PCs.
She lowered HP's stock by 1/3rd and was forced out with a $20million plus severance package. But she was good enough at marketing to finagle a sympathetic portrait of her cast on 60 minutes.
Just one example. There are thousands more.
June 30, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Obama campaign needs to harp on this constantly. If people get the sense that government can do something about this -- and how else will it change? -- it will be worth votes to Obama in the fall and worth votes down the road in Congress for actually making something happen. If people don't think government can do anything about it, they won't punish the Republicans and conservatives for allowing this state of affairs to fester and worsen for the last three decades.
June 30, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Geez, Louise.
Yeah, on the one hand, this is hardly new stuff.
But would you really rather that the New York Times continue not to notice than to now belatedly notice?
I don't understand what the snarkers on this thread think they have that make you so much smarter than everyone else. Way to welcome newcomers.
This is what changes in zeitgeist look like, people. It ain't about your egos.
June 30, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's probly related to reality-based awareness, sTiVo.
It's really decent of you to be so concerned about the NYT and what they are trying to now take notice of, but how many of us actually depend on the NYT for anything? Perhaps they've noticed that!
golly, here's hoping none of us sounds too 'unfriendly'!
June 30, 2008 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
A lot of the criticisms of Greenhouse's book premise posted here are not well-informed. Yes, there was a long history of treating labor badly before WWII. The point being made in The Big Squeeze is that the New Deal and the Great Compression (as mentioned by a previous poster) ushered in a great many reforms that brought America a strong middle class in the late 1940s through the 1960s, and then it unraveled. That's where we are today, and a lot of people struggling to get by today in this harsh labor climate would like to see the middle class become strong again. Greater income equality would do most of us a lot of good.
Greenhouse's book has a quite extensive bibliography of all the source materials. Lots of scholarly references to illustrate the state of labor through time. It's what you would expect from a New York Times journalist - thorough research tells a convincing story.
Paul Krugman's recent book The Conscience of a Liberal explores similar themes in the history of labor in America and how we can regain what the corporate kingpins have taken from us. It's also well-annotated, so if you read the book it's hard to be a skeptic. The data and the trends are all there to be examined if you care to do so.
June 30, 2008 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink