What Studs Terkel's 'Working' Says About Worker Malaise Today

NY Times ^ | 053104 | By ADAM COHEN

[Archangelsk]

I thank God everyday for the job I have. I wake up with a smile on my face and am completely fulfilled by the work that I do. I don't earn a gazillion dollars a year, but I know some people who do and are miserable (they try to validate their lives by filling it with "things." Always a poor substitute).

[snopercod]

modern management practices Oxymoron alert.

[Vigilanteman]

When America begins to pay attention to its unhappy work force — and eventually, it must —

I wouldn't hold my breath given the virtually inexhaustable supply of illegal aliens waiting in line to take anything. The best way to promote worker satisfaction is by promoting some kind of balance between the number of workers who need jobs and the number of jobs who need workers.

There is a mechanism which does this called the free market, but it only works when it is not selectively managed to undermine those which built this country and other free countries of the world by giving despotic regimes access to the fruits of the free markets without making them pay the costs.

[hellinahandcart]

Figures the NYT would resurrect that commie's book.

[sphinx]

But those gains have not found their way to paychecks. In a recent two-and-a-half-year period, corporate profits surged 87 percent, while wages rose just 4.5 percent.

Leave it to the New York Times.

In really, really sophisticated circles, this phenomenon is called "emerging from a recession."

[baltodog]

I am not rich by any means.

But I enjoy my work immensely.

I also strive to improve myself and to stay competitive.

Work is prayer. If you don't do your best, it's a sin. If you are not allowed to do your best, seek employment elsewhere.

[millefleur]

A gravedigger recalls how impressed a visiting sewer digger was with his neat lines and square edges. "A human body is goin' into this grave," he says proudly. "That's why you need skill when you're gonna dig a grave."

This just impressed me so much. This man really cares. Probably most people were in too much grief to realize or express thanks to the gravedigger for his efforts at making straight lines. But thanks to him now.

[John Thornton]

But those gains have not found their way to paychecks. In a recent two-and-a-half-year period, corporate profits surged 87 percent, while wages rose just 4.5 percent.

They are comparing apples and oranges. Are they really implying that wages should have risen 87% in the last two and a half years? Find me a period where wages have ever risen 87% in two and a half years and you will have found a period of hyperinflation.

[Little Bill]

Old Studs was the last of the entertaining Socialist Realist writers, I read the book when it first came out and laughed at the BS. Hauling ash in a coal fired power plant set my priorities.

[dennisw]

good one from the NY slimes

[John Thornton]

As much as 4 percent of the work force is now employed in call centers, reading canned scripts and being supervised with methods known as "management by stress."

And if these "dead end" jobs are "outsourced", the Times will be the first to complain.

[johnb838]

I've never heard of "Management by Stress" as a valid b-school technique. Wanna stress your employees? Fire half of them. That will do it.

[Archangelsk]

Yer missing the point. Nobody who works at a call center, and I defy anyone to argue otherwise, enjoys their job (unless they are some kind of masochist who likes getting cursed at, have air horns and whistles blown into their receivers and have managers who breath down their necks. There's a reason why the churn rate is so high in this "industry").

[math=power]

No kidding...these people are morons. Coporate profits were almost non-existant two years ago. If you made almost $0 then an 87% increase wouldn't be much. In addition...if you pegged peoples salaries to the profits of the company everyone would be happy in good time and claim they were getting ripped off in the bad (look at Saturn for example.)

[John Thornton]

Why do you think that was my point? My point was that call center work *is* probably not much fun, so why whine if it is outsourced? Like all of the cotton pickers who lost their jobs when mechanical cotton pickers were developed.

[Archangelsk]

Coporate profits were almost non-existant two years ago.

Source please.

[John Thornton]

The Times is burying the lead as usual---the good news is that corporate profits are up by 87% in the past two and a half years. When this happened during the Clinton bubble years, that would have been the point of the story. Since the goal of every article in the Times is to bash Bush, this fact becomes a piece of bad news.

[tiamat]

Thank you!

That is one of the best things I have heard regarding illeagals and free trade as it is practiced in this country.

There are too many people making too much money hiring illeagals, taking away jobs that Americans WILL DO ( but of course, the Americans will expect to be PAID decently) Too many people on both sides of the aisle are willing to wink at it, too.

Some of our capitalists have LOST their moral compass and if they don't regrow it, we are gonna have a HUGE problem down the line.

The French Revolution happened for a reason.

[neutrino]

Interesting post. Thanks!

[Bahbah]

When have wage increases been equal to the increase in corporate profits? I don't know much, if anything, about economics, but it seems to me that those profits must go to things like reinvestment in the company...and of course to politicians on both sides in the hope that they will at the very least leave them alone.