Problems of Prosperity Challenge Workers

It may be hard in a lingering recession to see trends in the job world of the ‘90s as problems of prosperity. But that’s the way to understand the times we live in, even as we hear echoes of the past in the demise of Communism or the celebration of Labor Day.

In the next few years, look for individual employment contracts to move far beyond the little universe of top executives and star athletes to cover more and more working people. Incentive bonuses and pay-for-performance will apply to more of the company work force.

So employees will want to protect themselves on performance evaluations and against wrongful discharge. And employers will want to make sure that an employee stays long enough with the firm to justify the cost of his or her training.

Employees’ involvement in their own finances, including pension investments, will continue as a trend. But employee profit-sharing and stock ownership plans--now a feature of almost half the companies in the United States--may run into resistance from shareholders and creditors who will claim the workers are being coddled, says David Lewin, head of the Institute of Industrial Relations at UCLA.

On the other hand, there will be continued emphasis on employee participation on production and quality questions as well as “touchy-feely” human relations issues. A serious effort will be made to bring motivation and incentives to employees who don’t have the glamorous jobs, the less educated and lower-paid. There are firms that already do that well--such as Servicemaster, a Chicago-area firm that sends out crews to clean hospitals, office buildings and homes.

The decade will see a continued redefining of the relationship between the individual and the place of work, whether corporation or nonprofit institution or even government agency--where the trend is toward hiring on one-year contracts rather than permanent civil service.

If some of those trends sound threatening, it’s because jobs are uncertain just now. One of the few growth fields this fall will be graduate schools--as young people who couldn’t find jobs after college in June have decided to go for the master’s or doctorate now rather than later.

In a sense they’re doing themselves a favor because in the ‘90s education will continue to be the key to job opportunities, at home and increasingly internationally where English speakers with managerial and technical skills will find a welcome. The now-dawning reforms of the Soviet economy will expand such opportunities.

Communism is finally being laid to rest in the Soviet Union, although it has been dead for decades.

But 100 years ago, the Communists were a rising force in Europe, preaching the ideas of Karl Marx.

It was then, in 1882, that the United States celebrated the first Labor Day, inspired by two union organizers, Matthew Maguire, a machinist from New Jersey, and Peter J. McGuire, a founder of the carpenter’s union.

The U.S. labor unions and the Marxists, here and abroad, were preaching to a growing force in society, the industrial workers in factories and mines and railroads.

It was not a prosperous time; America had been in almost constant recession since the end of the Civil War. Most workers in America were dirt-poor farmers. The second-largest occupation was domestic service, the only work available for masses of young women.

All were poorly paid. Men worked 64 hours a week in factories for pennies per hour and had to be strong because if they got hurt or sick, there were no benefits.

To remedy such injustice, communism promised to remake society from top to bottom, to give workers control over the factory and the company and the whole economy. The labor unions’ promises were more modest: to get better wages, shorter hours, better working conditions.

Communism triumphed in the Soviet Union and ruled for 74 years, ostensibly in the name of the workers. When communism fell last week, a Soviet employee could earn the price of a pound of beef by working 2 1/2 hours. But the money was no good because the stores had no beef to sell.

In America, unions struggled for decades to redefine the relationship of employees and employers. They gradually gained full recognition in the 1930s when industrial workers, at more than one third of the work force, had become the largest occupational group.

At that time, a U.S. employee worked an hour-and-a-half to earn the price of a pound of beef.

At today’s average wage, it takes about 10 minutes to earn the beef, not only because of higher wages but also incredible improvements in production of food and goods every kind.

That’s despite fewer farmers and factory workers--heavy industry now accounts for less than 20% of the work force. And with fewer numbers, labor unions have also diminished.

But work remains to be done. The fact that these are times of general abundance makes it all the more imperative that America find a way to bring that abundance to those who are doing without. The problem of the ‘90s for the United States--and also for Western Europe and Japan--will be to make prosperous societies more productive and just and equitable.

In a way, the Soviet Union faces a simpler challenge: how to finally gain the abundance it has been denied for 74 years.