Grateful to have a job
BOSTON — There was a New Yorker cartoon last spring picturing a nearly empty galley ship with only two slaves still pulling their oars under the grim eye of the master. In the caption, one of the slaves says to the other: “At this point, I’m just happy to still have a job.”
It turns out that this is the mantra of the new economy and its icon: the grateful worker. When I Googled “grateful to have a job”—this is how I quantify trends these days—I came up with 3.7 million hits. Gratitude is in.
I thought of this reading the statistics boasting that productivity was up again, this time by 6.6 percent. This “good news” means that more work is being done in the same time.
But this doesn’t say anything about the people working harder and whether they are engaged in what economists call a “speed-up” with all of its Charlie Chaplin implications for our own “Modern Times.” Nor does it say how many workplaces have four people doing the work once done by six or eight.
The spotlight of the Great Recession has been properly on the nearly 10 percent of workers who are unemployed. But there has been far less said about the collateral damage on the 90 percent who “still have a job” but are looking at the empty seats. Fearfully. Gratefully.
In many workplaces, of course, fewer widgets—or cars or clothes—are being made, requiring fewer widget makers. But there are, after all, just as many cases to be managed by fewer social workers. There are just as many floors to be cleaned by fewer janitors. There is no less news to be covered by a smaller newsroom. And I don’t even want to think about regional airlines.
The government doesn’t track how many are doing the labor of their former co-workers. Nor does it quantify economic anxiety. The closest we get to numbering the grateful worker is in the figures showing that job-leavers—those who voluntarily quit—are at an all-time low. Trust me, they aren’t all staying because they suddenly love their bosses.
And while we’re on the subject, I’m willing to wager that many people on those unpaid furloughs are actually working at home. And a whole lot of stunningly productive workers aren’t putting in for overtime.
In what economist Heather Boushey calls the “gloves-off economy,” even those with jobs are feeling powerless, unable to say no.
“This really puts employers in the driver’s seat,” says Boushey, “and the backseat driver can’t even suggest putting on the brakes.”
The most immediate effect is on families. The dirty little secret is that workers with families—make that moms—are still seen as “less productive.”
“Discrimination against mothers is still the strongest and most open form of discrimination,” says Joan Williams at UC-Hastings College of the Law. “When employers have to cut, they turn to the underperformers who may be readily confused with mothers. People who see them targeted are afraid.”
It’s not a coincidence that the number of pregnancy discrimination complaints went up by 12 percent in 2008. For that matter, the number of workers calling the Hastings WorkLife hotline with stories of being targeted for care-giving has doubled. We have even seen a decline in births in California and Florida, where the housing crisis hit hardest.
The talk of work-life balance has fallen as fast as a 401(k). There is still a stigma attached to flextime, and only half of workers get a single paid sick day. As Debra Ness of the National Partnership for Women and Families says, worried workers are “less likely to ask for benefits and less likely to use them if they have them.”
Indeed, if fear is more contagious than the swine flu, what’s going to happen when workers choose between putting their health on the line or their jobs?
After the dot-com bubble burst, we got a jobless recovery. Will the Great Recession and the grateful worker end up with a benefit-less recovery?
In Mel Brooks’ famous routine about the 2,000-year-old man, he’s asked what they used for transportation in the old days. His answer: “Mostly fear.” The fear that he was being chased by an animal.
Well, fear is what keeps a lot of people productive. Fear is what makes many of those still working become averse to change when we need it most. How will we know when the Great Recession starts to lighten up? Maybe when gratitude begins to grate.
Ellen Goodman is a columnist for the Boston Globe. Her e-mail address is ellengoodman1@me.com.
Sep 10, 2009 at 7:56 a.m.
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NeoBartly: This boils down to America greed and the fact that we took our success for granted. What's the other option? Build a wall around the United States? Don't think for a second that without trade with Mexico, China, and other various countries that we wouldn't be in wars far worse than Iraq. We tried the wall method at the beginning of WWII and look where that led us. Free trade gives us additional security, but also opened the doors to people who were hungry to work much like we were during the industrial revolution. The downside for us is that we weren't prepared to compete. We took global dominance for granted. In addition, although I believe organized labor has a place in America, it also needed a reality check. The days of protecting lousy workers and letting workers sit at home and make a full wage should have been over a decades ago. Like all economics, organized labor must learn to ebb and flow with the times. Rather then plan for the future the union kept electing officials who were the same dopes that shouldn't have had a job in the first place. Rather than investing union wages into schooling and training for workers, the union dumped millions into politics. I don't like our current situation. I'm one of those people who've been laid off. I'll likely take a job that pays less than half of what I used to make. That said, I can either be part of America's solution or part of the problem. While I'm at home, I'm going to complain and remember the past. While I'm at my new job, I'm going to give it 110% and build my life back to what it was. We can't sit and wallow in what was, we can only push forward with a new found respect for what we have. Clean running water and a flushing toilet are a luxury and benefit we take for granted. Freedom is another luxury we take for granted. Benefits can be different things to different people. I think as American's we need to put things in perspective. At the end of the day I'd rather be a poor American then live anywhere else in the world. Once we get back to believing that, the basics, then we'll begin to rebuild and innovate. As long as we keep feeling entitled to benefits and success, we'll continue to face economic struggle.
Sep 10, 2009 at 7 a.m.
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My Word,I am shocked after reading this story.
Someone acknowledged the basic fact that most commentors in-here, that have dissed the prior workforce-now-lost as being too greedy, selfish, and many comments I care not to repeat because I was one of those they hated?
Someone is stating a full circle effect that WAS the reason for all people, those terible nasty Organized Union Workers stood for?
What is really happening here is a now keen employee base, now seeing the illimination of their co-workers, and taken up the load. Health care is at risk for everyone, and everyone is at new and exciting risks of illness and germs that there is no cure for. 401K What? What is that? I believe we saw what happened to that wet-dream, and all can agree.
My answer to Ellens addition to scare-tactics is this;
It is not as if We that disagreed with the hate-mongers of organized labor, stood aside and just let them curse us. It is not that We just did all we could to explain the facts of historical life to them, and why we did as we did to achieve such standards. Its not that they, in their high and mightiness know-it-all states could see past the shadows of being vindicated for their persistance of bad-mouthing the ones that kept the evils in check for them.
I find as I have said in the very begining of the disemination, along with numorous counterparts; its time to really reap your harvest folks. Your only getting what you cried for for years. Tiz a shame you didn't give your mouth a rest and stand up for all commoners.
All I can say as I am in the 10% bracket is, so sad, too bad, the tables have turned. Have at it and stop your complaining, fore you only get what you begged for for years. Now that the time is here, as we expected, your going to go on the offense for getting what you wanted too. Some people just have to complain. Some people will never be saticfied with anything, even when they get what they wanted.
You want to know whom is going to get torn-down now complainers of the world? You. You complained your fannies right into that which you hated so dearly.
With that, I wish you all a fine life. I wish you all a grand career. I hope that you all take great pride in your successes, and do not choke on your own self-revolations.
Have a good time with it. You wanted it? You got it.
This aint gonna fix itself either. It took decades to achieve that wich crumbled in a blink of an eye. You, I am afraid wont see the recovery to set standards again in your lifetime, your kids may, but you wont. I only hope you impress upon them, with humility that Yes, you were wrong to discredit organized labor. You were not thinking strait, and that now, in the aftermath of gaining your sucesses, you would do it differently. Wisdom. Thats called wisdom, share it with your youthful ones, they will need it now to pick up the pieces after what you have destroyed for yourselves.
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