Striketober and the Great Resignation: It’s About Respect
Let’s call it a remixing of the American Dream, the phrase used by an interviewee in a Buzzfeed article aiming to tell the stories of millions of people changing careers.
The pandemic, it turns out, has one silver lining. The work/life cycle of people in the industrial west was disrupted. They had time to reflect on what work and life meant for themselves and their families. And millions of folks decided they didn’t want to go back to work in places where they weren't respected.
From Wikipedia:
According to Microsoft's 2021 Work Trend Index, more than 40% of the global workforce are considering quitting their job in 2021. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey conducted in early August 2021, 65% of employees said they are looking for a new job and 88% of executives said their company is experiencing higher turnover than normal.
In October 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food service workers' quit rates rose to 6.8%, which is well above the industry average of 4.1% over the last 20 years and still higher than the industry's quit peaks of 5% in 2006 and 2019.
For the 12% of the workforce that’s unionized, the media is calling what’s happening “Striketober.” I’m not sure how they’ll rephrase it once the month is over, but trust me on this one: it’s just getting started.
Here’s my quick accounting on who’s currently not happy with the bosses:
10,000 Workers at John Deeere @UAW
1,800 Workers at Spectrum @StrikeSpectrum
1,100 Coal Miners @UnitedMineWorkers
800 Nurses at St. Vincents Hospital @MassNurses
420 Distillery workers at Heaven Hill @HeavenHill1935
2,000 Catholic Health healthcare workers @CWAUnion
1,400 Kellogg's employees @BCTGM
450 Steelworkers in WV against Special Metals/Sultzer Pumps
And unknown numbers of workers, including Ironworkers in PA, Illinois El Milagro Strike, Musicians of San Antonio, McDonalds workers in Detroit, MI, Teachers in Redbank Valley, PA, Bus Drivers in Reno, NV, Caregivers at Sunrise Northeast, Inc.
And there’s more to come, including 24,000 nurses (probably) with Kaiser Health in California and University of California lecturers.
The 88% of the workforce that’s not unionized are voting with their feet. Restaurants and retail locations are cutting operating hours, putting up signs asking for forgiveness for slow service, and --sometimes- offering higher pay.
The shoe is on the other foot now for lower wage workers. For the last 40 years they’ve seen their pay, benefits, guaranteed hours, and schedules get progressively worse. Unemployment benefits have been harder to access.
Companies such as Jimmy John's, McDonald's, Carl's Jr., and Amazon have required workers to sign non-compete clauses and no-poach agreements that extend for months that legally bar workers from going to competitors in search of higher wages.
Here’s Paul Krugman at the New York Times:
For America is a rich country that treats many of its workers remarkably badly. Wages are often low; adjusted for inflation, the typical male worker earned virtually no more in 2019 than his counterpart did 40 years earlier. Hours are long: America is a “no-vacation nation,” offering far less time off than other advanced countries. Work is also unstable, with many low-wage workers — and nonwhite workers in particular — subject to unpredictable fluctuations in working hours that can wreak havoc on family life.
And it’s not just employers who treat workers harshly. A significant number of Americans seem to have contempt for the people who provide them with services. According to one recent survey, 62 percent of restaurant workers say they’ve received abusive treatment from customers.
The abuse of employees has become so commonplace that it’s accepted as the norm. This mistreatment takes many forms, ranging from sexual harassment to miscalculated wages. And workers typically have little to no recourse.
California is taking active measures to crack down on construction companies, one of the industries where ‘everybody knows’ abuse occurs. (I’ll bet much of the opposition to Project Labor Agreements in localities around the state is about avoiding additional scrutiny.)
In San Diego, two companies over the past couple of weeks have been hit with penalties for allegedly failing to pay hundreds of workers overtime wages: JPI Construction for $1.7 million and New Vision Drywall Inc. — operating as Performance Drywall -- $860,000 in wage theft violations.
“If you don’t like your job, quit,” which is what has passed for labor law with the libertarian set, has become a realistic option. Amazon may be making incredible promises about wages and perks, but the fact is about half the people they hire quit shortly thereafter.
Via Alternet:
On September 14, a young woman in Louisiana named Beth McGrath posted a selfie Facebook video of herself working at Walmart. Her body language shows a nervous energy as she works up the courage to speak on the intercom and announces her resignation to shoppers. "Everyone here is overworked and underpaid," she begins, before going on to call out specific managers for inappropriate and abusive behavior. "I hope you don't speak to your families the way you speak to us," she said before ending with "f**k this job!"
Let us not forget that many of those 700,000+ people that died from COVID 19 in the US were people who ended up working lower wage jobs.
It’s not just low wage workers who are making new choices about their vocations. Teachers, nurses, and other typically better paid professionals are leaving their fields.
There’s a palpable sense of panic in corporate America as they seek a magic bullet to rebuild their workforces.
Here’s a snip from an article at Inc.:
On the MIT Sloan Management Review Liz Fosslien, head of content at Humu, a company that uses data to help make employees happier in their jobs, dug into what the numbers say about the root causes of so many workers' sudden desire to quit. First, Fosslien confirms what your experience has probably already told you -- burnout is rising and is likely to spike even higher. And yes, it is one big reason why employees are handing in their notice.
But they're far from the only reason.
"Work overload is only one cause of burnout. Too often, organizations fail to acknowledge -- let alone address -- other dimensions," she writes. "Our research at Humu shows that lacking a sense of meaning and not receiving the emotional support you need to thrive are also strongly related to feeling stretched too thin."
Here’s economist Chris Farrell, looking at these changes from the outside:
"This is a really healthy development because I think on their deathbed, there are very few people who say, 'I wish I had bought that Mercedes Benz,' but there are a lot of people who say, 'I wish I had spent more time with my friends or family, or pursuing a cause or advocacy I believe in.' Thinking about purpose, thinking about meaning; thinking about what I want out of life isn't a luxury. It's really important to who we are and what we are," Farrell said.
So this reset offsets our labor force.
"It's something of a fundamental shift, or hopefully it's something of a fundamental shift, in the relationship between management and labor," Farrell said.
The duration of the pandemic and the fluctuations in businesses has lasted long enough to change the way people view their jobs. Via NPR:
In a new working paper, the UC Berkeley economist Ulrike Malmendier suggests there's something existential behind the Great Resignation: The pandemic and the rise of remote work have changed the way we view our lives and the world.
The idea that our experiences shape our choices is hardly radical. And Malmendier isn't alone among scholars in suggesting that soul-searching during the pandemic helps explain the surge in quitting. Texas A&M psychologist Anthony Klotz, who predicted and coined the term the "Great Resignation" back in May, credits "pandemic epiphanies" with motivating many workers to depart their jobs for greener pastures. But "experience effects," as Malmendier calls them, remain remarkably under-investigated in economics, which tends to be more focused on the cold, material incentives that influence our behavior. Malmendier has been working to change that.
The Great Resignation/Striketober isn't primarily about the logistics of work. It's about its meaning.
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I can’t help wondering if the sense that they’ve been screwed by the economy for so long has finally made it through all the noise that corporate America throws our way.
Here’s John Queally at Common Dreams:
American billionaires grew in number and expanded their collective fortunes by $2.1 trillion since Covid-19 sparked a worldwide pandemic nineteen months ago, according to a new analysis unveiled Monday.
On average, billionaires pay an effective federal income tax rate of about 8 percent when the increased value of their stock is counted, according to the Biden administration This is a lower rate than many middle-income taxpayers pay like teachers, nurses and firefighters.
FYI -The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded, in part, to an economist who proved: 1. Raising the minimum wage does not negatively affect employment rates, 2. Immigrant workers do not depress the wages of native-born workers.
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