Them What Has, Keeps 0
After pointing out that “speedup” refers to practices designed to wring more work for less money from employees (think Lucy in the candy factory), Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery point out that calling it “productivity increases” doesn’t make it any less insidious. Employees give the productivity and employers keep the increases.
A snippet:
Sure, but we all have to do more with less — employers struggling to survive the downturn are just tightening their belts, right? That’s true for some. But in the big picture, the data show a more insidious pattern. After a sharp dip in 2008 and ’09, U.S. economic output quickly recovered to near pre-recession levels. The United States did better than most of its fellow G-7 economies. But U.S. workers didn’t see the benefit: During the recession, far more people here lost their jobs than anywhere else, and far fewer were hired back once the recovery began. And who knows what will happen now that the economy has made another downward turn?
