Wednesday, June 11, 2008
A Fruitful Digression
I am terribly sick of research. It has been a harrowing journey, mostly because the majority of people who discuss labor extract themselves from that definition. It is to me very odd considering intellectual activity is no less labor, and no more financially rewarded than skilled physical, clerical and service labor. In any case, I want to get back to the work of listing positive labor practices, or should I write Positive Labor Practices, lest I find it actually signifies something in the general discourse that I have not yet found, PLP proper. I have already discussed shortening work hours by taking a part time job or swapping the job you have now for one that doesn't require overtime. What about job hunting?
It is a great idea to peek at the want ads regularly and apply to better paying employment if not for yourself, for the sake of promoting the idea that better pay will give employers better choice of employees. Let's reward the employers who want to pay us more by making ourselves readily available. After all, it won't hurt us. This of course brings me to the actual issue at hand, employers who don't post their intended compensation range.
When I was a wee worker bee, long ago in my preteens, I was under the impression that real jobs didn't post income ranges because it is unsophisticated to do so. I thought that once you got to a station in life where you had a respectable title and benefits, publicly announcing the dollar value of one's work was tasteless. I believed that a grown up sat with a potential employer and with true savvy, negotiated income with confidence, knowing their worth. As I got older, I realized that we all bought into this myth as young people new to the work force and it takes decades to see it for what it is, a construct that gives the employer the benefit of the negotiation.
"Compensation Commensurate with Experience" is a ploy that successfully convinces laborers that if the employer doesn't offer a decent wage, it is due to the fact that the employee lacks competence. What if we all decided that any employer that did not post a tight-range income figure was insulting our intelligence? We can individually decide not to respond to employers that use this ploy and eventually render this practice obsolete. It's kind of like how it is now really cool to support "being green" or how we all know, thanks to the Kaiser commercials, that 50 is the knew 40, given we eat right and exercise. If we make it obvious to employers through repetition that refusing to post a genuine salary range will garner poor results, it is truly possible to change how all employers approach a job post. After all, people who are responsible for hiring are just people who too respond to repetitive messages.
If it seems that this practice will limit your list of potential jobs and if you have that nagging feeling that the mysterious posts without a compensation range could potentially be offering much more than the posts that are transparent, that is because the ploy works. Just ask yourself, why would someone truly offering a competitive salary fail to tell you how competitive that salary is? Why would someone who wants to offer you far more than other employers hide the fact that they pay really really well? In real estate, the listing agent doesn't list the price of a house as "competitive". They list the price close to what the seller really wants and thinks she can get for the house because they are involved in an open competition with other sellers trying to get the attention of buyers with industry representation. This is in no way intended to promote the role of headhunters and temp agencies. Though employment agencies have their place in the infrastructure of labor exchange, if employers listed their intended compensation, there would be less mystery around the employment process, therefore, less need for such middlemen.
As an aside (aside squared), don't buy into the other myth, raising income causes inflation. Raising income only causes inflation in so far as corporations will not reduce their profit margins. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corporations taking a little less profit. In fact, in theory, inflation doesn't match the raises of workers, what it matches is the increase in cost of labor in addition to the exponentially larger increase in profits that companies will demand to keep profits and the paychecks of CEO's vastly larger and ever expanding at a much higher rate than inflation. Also, considering the bottom 80% doesn't have investments, it really isn't such a big loss to us (we in the middle) if the value of shares do not climb at historical rates every year. So get out there and rest more and demand more pay with a clear conscience.
It is a great idea to peek at the want ads regularly and apply to better paying employment if not for yourself, for the sake of promoting the idea that better pay will give employers better choice of employees. Let's reward the employers who want to pay us more by making ourselves readily available. After all, it won't hurt us. This of course brings me to the actual issue at hand, employers who don't post their intended compensation range.
When I was a wee worker bee, long ago in my preteens, I was under the impression that real jobs didn't post income ranges because it is unsophisticated to do so. I thought that once you got to a station in life where you had a respectable title and benefits, publicly announcing the dollar value of one's work was tasteless. I believed that a grown up sat with a potential employer and with true savvy, negotiated income with confidence, knowing their worth. As I got older, I realized that we all bought into this myth as young people new to the work force and it takes decades to see it for what it is, a construct that gives the employer the benefit of the negotiation.
"Compensation Commensurate with Experience" is a ploy that successfully convinces laborers that if the employer doesn't offer a decent wage, it is due to the fact that the employee lacks competence. What if we all decided that any employer that did not post a tight-range income figure was insulting our intelligence? We can individually decide not to respond to employers that use this ploy and eventually render this practice obsolete. It's kind of like how it is now really cool to support "being green" or how we all know, thanks to the Kaiser commercials, that 50 is the knew 40, given we eat right and exercise. If we make it obvious to employers through repetition that refusing to post a genuine salary range will garner poor results, it is truly possible to change how all employers approach a job post. After all, people who are responsible for hiring are just people who too respond to repetitive messages.
If it seems that this practice will limit your list of potential jobs and if you have that nagging feeling that the mysterious posts without a compensation range could potentially be offering much more than the posts that are transparent, that is because the ploy works. Just ask yourself, why would someone truly offering a competitive salary fail to tell you how competitive that salary is? Why would someone who wants to offer you far more than other employers hide the fact that they pay really really well? In real estate, the listing agent doesn't list the price of a house as "competitive". They list the price close to what the seller really wants and thinks she can get for the house because they are involved in an open competition with other sellers trying to get the attention of buyers with industry representation. This is in no way intended to promote the role of headhunters and temp agencies. Though employment agencies have their place in the infrastructure of labor exchange, if employers listed their intended compensation, there would be less mystery around the employment process, therefore, less need for such middlemen.
As an aside (aside squared), don't buy into the other myth, raising income causes inflation. Raising income only causes inflation in so far as corporations will not reduce their profit margins. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corporations taking a little less profit. In fact, in theory, inflation doesn't match the raises of workers, what it matches is the increase in cost of labor in addition to the exponentially larger increase in profits that companies will demand to keep profits and the paychecks of CEO's vastly larger and ever expanding at a much higher rate than inflation. Also, considering the bottom 80% doesn't have investments, it really isn't such a big loss to us (we in the middle) if the value of shares do not climb at historical rates every year. So get out there and rest more and demand more pay with a clear conscience.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Money Can’t buy Corporations Happiness Because Corporations aren't People
Studies show that once you have covered basic needs, money does not increase levels of happiness. For people who can't make ends meet, money will definitely increase happiness levels. Thus, increased wages for the middle and lower classes will have a marked effect on national levels of happiness but increased income for the rich has no effect.
Why then has inflation outpaced wage increases while the wealth of the affluent increased exponentially in the past three decades? It certainly hasn’t been because our national agenda has been to increase the Gross National Happiness Quotient, despite the fact that this agenda is clearly stated in our constitution. Many other countries are now taking into consideration the Gross National Happiness per capita as well as the gross national product in their policy making but the United States doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with these nations. Doing so would mean a tremendous change in government policy as it pertains to wage increases and taxing the wealthy (reverting back to policies that were in place prior to the Reagon Administration would pretty much take care of it).
Until our country becomes smart enough to start making these policy changes, it is our responsibility to use our considerable influence to nudge it in that direction. In every study that I have read thus far, it is assumed that higher unemployment is due to a reduction in available jobs. I have not yet found any studies that have been able to determine the affects of intentionally reduced employment for political purposes. An intentional reduction of labor by the labor force would result in diminished supply of labor whereas a population that has lost jobs by force causes an excess labor pool. This is why it is so hard to wrap our minds around what it would be like if members of the middle class made a conscious choice to work less-it just hasn't been done.
A small percentage of the population is already intentionally unemployed, roughly 4%. They are not counted in the national unemployment statistics because they are not actively looking for work, therefore not considered unemployed. If that group became an organized political body and grew to about 15% I wonder what the landscape of our economic future would look like? Let's try it and find out! If worse comes to worst, we can all go back to letting corporations run our lives and things won't be any different than they are now.
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