If you’re not familiar with what I call “the Absurd Disconnect,” in a nutshell, it’s when people look at the sky and tell you it’s green—or when someone tells you it’s safe to go swimming in a part of the ocean that just had millions of gallons of oil dumped in it—like that. There’s been a lot of this kind of thing going on lately and it’s continuing.
In this instance, I saw a link on Newsweek’s Tumblr to an article on Newsweek’s main site claiming to be “What the JetBlue Guy Says About the Economy” well, it wasn’t that. I was hoping to literally hear Slater’s take on the job situation, but alas, I got some reporter-guy’s opinion of it. Part of his opinion was based on USG docs. Yeah, yeah, let’s trust USG docs. They’ve never been wrong before. Anyway, so here’s the part of the article that pissed me off the most (italics are mine):
For the past year, the U.S. economy has been whipping roughly the same number of workers to do more, produce more, serve more, with each passing week, without much assistance, and without much of a raise. Over the past four quarters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “unit labor costs fell 2.8 percent as output per hour increased faster than hourly compensation.” But when the BLS reported the second-quarter productivity numbers on Tuesday, Aug. 10, the results were a little shocking. For the first time in several years, productivity actually fell—at a 0.9 percent annual rate. Workers put in more hours, but output didn’t keep up. They simply can’t run any faster.
via newsweek.com
OH, REALLY? Just the past year?
Since college, I can’t name a single boss I’ve ever worked for who didn’t hire me for one thing who didn’t then pile on extra responsibilities. Sometimes those responsibilities were tenuously related to the work I was paid to do (so I dealt with them) but *every* time I didn’t get a raise to make up for the extra work. I finished college in the early 90s, right when the downsizing trend was kicking into high gear. Shortly thereafter, it stopped being a trend and became business as usual.
Seems like some folks never noticed that. I remember Paul Krugman, not too long ago, saying something about how he was worried high unemployment would stop getting apologized for and would just be assumed to be part of the system. He hadn’t noticed that it’s already part of the system. But that’s what he gets for being one of those people that base their reality almost entirely on what they are told by “authorities” and not what they’ve experienced or heard from other “grunts.”
I worked for a company from 1999 to 2006 and held two positions. In that time, the first position never saw a raise. Not for the 7 years I worked there. In the other position I only got a 75¢/hr raise after I demanded $1/hr. This was after they tried to get me to become the receptionist for the entire company, sort the company’s mail AND do my original job of running my department (which was something I did only because my boss, the actual head of the department, wasn’t doing it).
That’s just one example.
It’s amazing to see the media just now catching on that employers are greedy. What’s next? Choice words for executives for this “new trend” of owning expensive luxury cars and wearing expensive suits?
Yes, that op-ed will no doubt be written by Sherlock Holmes—for only someone as brilliant as the fictional detective would be able to make such profound observations on humanity today.
>_<
Why is the media so slow to do it’s job? Why are we so willing to put up with being shit on by our bosses? The last time I had an office job where my boss tried to dump more duties on me, I put my foot down and they survived without me having to do work I didn’t sign up to do. The work I was not willing to do was absorbed by other employees whose job it already was. Later they laid me off when all of my duties got folded into other folks’ jobs (d’oh!). They offered to hire me elsewhere in the company but couldn’t tell me how much more I’d be making but that I’d be working directly for the top executives at the company. Bleh—not for me. So, I turned it down. Turns out the woman who got the job ended up being forced to work 6 days a week without OT. Yep. She felt compelled to not risk the gig because she was a single mom.
This was three years ago—before the recession.
Well, it was before the officially recognized recession, anyway.
That’s the other falsehood that the media and other “authority” types haven’t noticed yet. Thanks to a number of factors, our economy is on a downward trajectory and has been for some time. It was just easier to ignore before.
Shame we can’t all just face reality and do something about it.
What are those factors?
Outsourcing
Offshoring
a money system not based on anything tangible
lousy regulation
corporations having the “right” to “give” as much as they want to campaigns
These five factors, I believe, are behind every problem facing America, and the western world, really.
