Bush's Burgeoning Ranks of the underemployed
This issue had legs for Sen. Kerry in Debate #3 thanks to Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post in an Monday, October 11, 2004 article. To bad Kerry could not articlulate it.
“The growing ranks of what economists call the "contingent" workforce, the vast and growing pool of workers tenuously employed in jobs that once were stable enough to support a family. In a single generation, "contingent employment arrangements" have begun to transform the world of work, not only for temp workers, but also for those in traditional jobs who are competing with a tier of employees receiving lower pay and few, if any, benefits”.
“The rise of that workforce has become another factor undermining the type of middle-wage jobs, paying about the national average of $17 per hour and carrying health and retirement benefits, that have kept the nation's middle-class standard of living so widely available.”
“The impact of the temp trend on the American middle class can hardly be overstated. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in a paper last year, temporary workers "receive much lower wages than permanent workers, although they frequently perform the same tasks as permanent staff members." An analysis by Harvard University economist Lawrence F. Katz and Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger found that states with the highest concentration of temps experienced the lowest wage growth of the 1990s.”
“Toyota executives say they use temporary workers as a buffer, to insulate their full-time staff from the ups and downs of consumer demand. Since it opened in 1988, through two recessions, their Georgetown, KY plant has never laid off an employee, said Daniel Sieger, manager of media relations for Toyota Motor Manufacturing in North America.”
“Even without layoffs, however, the plant's full-time staff has declined by 706 positions from the 7,787 employees it had in 2000, according to Toyota. Over that time, the temp workforce dipped from 409 in 2000 to 301 in 2002, then rose to 425 late this summer.”
Toyota managers say they will try to hire all of their long-term temporaries by the end of the year or in early 2005, after they see how many Toyota workers accept an early retirement package. Forty-seven temps were hired in late September. The management move came after The Washington Post spent a week in Kentucky examining the temporary employment issue at the Georgetown plant. Before September's hires, it had been two years since the plant hired a full-time "team member," Toyota managers said, a period during which the plant shed 240 full-time positions. Temporary employment during that time rose by 124.
“The growing ranks of what economists call the "contingent" workforce, the vast and growing pool of workers tenuously employed in jobs that once were stable enough to support a family. In a single generation, "contingent employment arrangements" have begun to transform the world of work, not only for temp workers, but also for those in traditional jobs who are competing with a tier of employees receiving lower pay and few, if any, benefits”.
“The rise of that workforce has become another factor undermining the type of middle-wage jobs, paying about the national average of $17 per hour and carrying health and retirement benefits, that have kept the nation's middle-class standard of living so widely available.”
“The impact of the temp trend on the American middle class can hardly be overstated. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in a paper last year, temporary workers "receive much lower wages than permanent workers, although they frequently perform the same tasks as permanent staff members." An analysis by Harvard University economist Lawrence F. Katz and Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger found that states with the highest concentration of temps experienced the lowest wage growth of the 1990s.”
“Toyota executives say they use temporary workers as a buffer, to insulate their full-time staff from the ups and downs of consumer demand. Since it opened in 1988, through two recessions, their Georgetown, KY plant has never laid off an employee, said Daniel Sieger, manager of media relations for Toyota Motor Manufacturing in North America.”
“Even without layoffs, however, the plant's full-time staff has declined by 706 positions from the 7,787 employees it had in 2000, according to Toyota. Over that time, the temp workforce dipped from 409 in 2000 to 301 in 2002, then rose to 425 late this summer.”
Toyota managers say they will try to hire all of their long-term temporaries by the end of the year or in early 2005, after they see how many Toyota workers accept an early retirement package. Forty-seven temps were hired in late September. The management move came after The Washington Post spent a week in Kentucky examining the temporary employment issue at the Georgetown plant. Before September's hires, it had been two years since the plant hired a full-time "team member," Toyota managers said, a period during which the plant shed 240 full-time positions. Temporary employment during that time rose by 124.
posted by Anonymous | 1:12 AM
1 Comments:
Yes, excellent post. This was an issue the Dems failed to exploit fully in '04. Every American worker could relate to the contingency that he or she might have to resort to temp work, even at fairly high middle management ranks.
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