Posted on 04/21/2008 4:02:38 AM PDT by rightwinggoth
In the last couple of decades, corporate profits and executive salaries have soared. But for many workers, the only thing that has increased is insecurity. In “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” Steven Greenhouse, a labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, examines the difficulties faced by workers at companies like FedEx and Wal-Mart, and points to Patagonia and Costco as models for corporate America. The book was published by Knopf on April 15. Chapter One is excerpted here.
Excerpted from “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker,” by Steven Greenhouse (Knopf, 2008).
In his job at a Wal-Mart in Texas, Mike Michell was responsible for catching shoplifters, and he was good at it, too, catching 180 in one two-year period.
But one afternoon things went wildly awry when he chased a thief — a woman using stolen checks — into the parking lot. She jumped into her car, and her accomplice gunned the accelerator, slamming the car into Michell and sending him to the hospital with a broken kneecap, a badly torn shoulder, and two herniated disks. Michell was so devoted to Wal-Mart that he somehow returned to work the next day, but a few weeks later he told his boss that he needed surgery on his knee. He was fired soon afterward, apparently as part of a strategy to dismiss workers whose injuries run up Wal-Mart’s workers’ comp bills.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No surprises here. The area I work in has to do the same work with 6 people that we used to do with 10.
Kind of makes you wonder if drying up the source of illegal immigrant employees will cause a resurgence in unionization among the legal employees?
Republicans fault
Women and minorities most affected
Actually this is very fair and accurate article. Note the following sentence... “The massive influx of immigrants has created a huge pool of easy-to-bully workers that has given managers greater leverage”
huh...? spoken like a true FRetard.
This is just a recitation of every anecdotal whine the "author" could find. Statistics can be made to say whatever you want them to. Count how many times, the writer says "apparently," "seems to," "could," "might." He can't refrain from mixing apples and oranges: He talks about corporate America but uses stats from small business America to support his contentions. This is just another piece of socialist propaganda dispensed by the NYT.
The article IMO is an attempt at electioneering pretending to be news. I've put up with my share of bad bosses, being downsized, BTW. Complaining to the press would not have helped my career development..
No mention of gov workers, they pay, benefits, retirement, ‘hard’ work scheduals?
Mark
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