Work in America Is Greedy. But It Doesn’t Have to Be.

After reading this article and comments, my suggestion is as follows: 1) pick an industry that sells high ticket items, such as commercial real estate. 2) get an entry position with an industry leader. 3) study and learn as much as possible in your early years with the company. 4) smart work coupled with sales ability and knowledge will reward you financially 5) sales managers are intimidated by big producers so they will give up trying to push your buttons. 6) the result, a successful career.

Workers = slaves. Or Indentured servants. Long hours w no security for retirement or family support. No reliable future in a company. This article is a slice of goodness not found without union representation. Young workers 28 to 50 have no quality time when a boss can text you on your one day off. In my employment starting at age 16 as a nurses aide I was always able ;till retiring from hospital administration ; to stress in job interviews that “my family responsibilities come first and my job does not have priority over them. I could do that because by age 22 I was married and we made sure if one of us were unemployed we could still survive. At 67 and retired without a pension because I balanced employment with raising a family and all that entails ;I rely on my husbands 6 figure pension and my own social security of $900 per month. If my hubby or I were not primary bread winners while one of us managed our busy lives ,then our wealth would have been greater. Most of our family and friends are retired as millionaires. We are not. We did not start saving till our late 4o’s. We have real estate assets and some safe investments and two adult kids we continue to help as needed. Does this sound familiar to my age group? Our kids are suffering in a gig economy. They are exhausted by our American work ethic gone awry . Thank Congress and our colossal mismanagement of taxes. Trump is a chancre on middle class values and our needs to survive. This isn’t a positive !

Articles like this one reveal a lack of understanding of how our economy works. The capitalist system is based on the exploitation of labor. The capitalist pays the worker less in wages than the value the worker produces. This "surplus value" is the source of all capitalist profits. . . . The workers always seek shorter hours, more pay and better working conditions. The capitalist for his part is compelled to demand longer hours, less pay and more intense work. If he does not, his competitors will, and force him out of business. . . . There is no such thing as humane capitalism. If the tight labor market forces a few hi tech companies to make few concessions, they will withdraw them at the first economic downturn . . . The only way to end wage slavery is to replace it with a Socialist system. This is what young American workers are realizing today.

Here are some thoughts that apparently never occurred to the author. 1) If your job can be telecommuted form home it surely can be telecommuted from India or Pakistan. Guess which one is a better deal for the company. I have come into way to many jobs and asked wheres so and so? Answer: They shipped his job to India and laid him off. 2) For those calling for 30 hour weeks and Unionization ? I gotta ask what's a better deal for the company? Paying somebody in the developed world 40 hours pay for 30 hours of work or paying people in the 3rd 30 hours of your pay for 80 - 100 hours of work? In an era of global competition by labor? Standards are headed down not up. For all the hopes? of the progressives. It's more likely we will wind up with the asian model of 70+ hour weeks for 40 hours pay then 30 hour weeks for 40 hours pay. After all which one is a better deal for the share holders?

I worked for a multi-national CPG company who encouraged remote work and flexible hours. This allowed them to create global roles, so you ended up working at home from 6:30 in the morning to 7:00 at night to collaborate with teams all over the world. Then, they reduced the amount of office space available and made everything completely open seating. So, when you showed up at the office, there might not be anywhere to sit. What really worked for the company was that global teams facilitated training people in low cost countries to do our jobs, and then the jobs moved off shore. The flexibility was actually the early steps to a different end. Once the work can be done remotely, it in theory can be done any where, so you can outsource or off shore it. I now look at some of these remote arrangements with cynicism.

It's the real reason why America's birth rates are DECLINING.

The vast majority of work today occurs in non-union settings has allowed employees to be exploited for excessive work hours beyond 8-hours daily or 40 hours a week and for employers failing to offer sensible adjustable work schedules and some telawork at home. Most U.S. employers offer only two weeks vacation time and little or no sick leave. In the EU, most companies offer at least 6 weeks of vacation and ample sick leave. I worked at an agency with a strong employees union (AFGE) that negotiated flexible work schedules and enforced compensation for overtime work. Morale was high and so was productivity, and the agency remains the one of the best in the U.S. Government. The union led the way for better employee treatment and then came higher productivity and respect for employees. American employers get away with abusing their employees because they do not face strong unions. As Miller concludes in her article, these temporary gains some companies offer today may disappear in the next recession. American workers deserve at least six weeks of paid vacation, six weeks of paid sick leave, compensation for any type of work (including emails or at-home work) including overtime beyond 8 hours, flexible work scheduling . This will only happen when unions expand beyond their pathetic 10% coverage rate today.

I had a boss who would often come by my office at 6pm and think nothing of asking me to do work requiring me to stay in the office until 2am or 3am in the morning. This boss would often say that bankers are like firemen. They get paid to be on standby.

At my federal agency, many of the flexible work options are being taken away. Telework, alternate work schedules. Agency leadership is moving towards requiring employees to be at the office for four days a week, we hear (and managers cannot telework at all). It’s a total u-turn from the last two administrations. Ironically, in my office, which consists of researchers, more people started teleworking when we moved from a building with individual offices into a cubicle-based setting that would allegedly encourage more collaboration.

I left a contract to hire position recently because the IT department in which my position was located insisted that no telecommuting was allowed despite the office being located nowhere near transit--and even though they had developers who lived in another country who obviously weren't on site. After manufacturing various doctor's and mechanic's appointments to justify ad hoc work from home, I took another job near transit and allowing telecommuting. That organization has lost many skilled folks with their pointless inflexibility.

Interesting survey, but one factor not addressed is importance of flexibility vs. phase of life. My experience was greater flexibility needed in early working life, less flexibility and longer work hours through mid-life, and shorter work hours were needed in the approach to retirement. Unfortunately the company I worked for did not see this, and I was fortunate in being able to choose an early retirement. But I would have been quite satisfied to continue worked at reduced hours.

Baby boomer here. Find it funny how my generation always rants about the lazy millennials when we worked 9-5 most of our work lives. The notion of my boss calling me at home 24/7 seems absurd. Obviously cell phones etc are a big contributor to this, but also the recession which put the last nail in labor’s coffin. Can’t imagine what it would be like to try to piece together a livelihood like the young people do today.

I’m all for flexible work arrangements but having been in the past and am currently in such an arrangement I would add the following caveats: 1. There still is no substitute for a certain amount of face to face conversation and communication. It builds relationships. 2. Beware the flexible arrangement when there is a central “core” workplace that most people on the team show up to everyday. You can risk being placed on an island or left out of key decision making events. You may have to force your way into the workflow.

Work in America wouldn't be so greedy if employers hired the number of people they needed instead of the number they want to pay. There is a difference.

Text messages for work? Sure, I'd do it at work on a work-provided cell phone and cell plan. No way am I answering my personal cell phone for work related things, and no way I'm working 24/7.

"as long as the work gets done" is the key part and in a world where everyone wants everything done yesterday and everyone's priority is super high, that can be hell, no matter the amount of flexibility. I would rather work a mostly predictable schedule with a modest workload, than have flexibility with insane deadlines.

My father was right. He resisted getting a cell phone for years. “Why would I want to be that available?” All the tools that allow us to work from home also turn home into an office extension. Work now routinely interrupts leisure hours, family dinners, holidays, vacations, even committing time. We cannot get away from the office by leaving because we are leashed to our laptops and cell phones.

We need a movement to clock and measure all work-related time. What we measure, we can affect and be paid for. If you’re on call anywhere, simply put, it’s work. Change in work cannot be cultural and be sustained in tougher times without also being political. I’m going back decades for this next reference - the system of medical internships and residencies. We had measurable improvements from legal changes in work hours - measurable medical outcomes and diversity of employment. When NY and other states started forcing limits on medical internship hours (initially because of medical mistakes after day(s)-long shifts), older physicians who had once been sleep-deprived interns fought hard against change, and they complained when they lost. Medical care is plainly better when your intern has gotten some sleep in the prior 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, afterwards, more women entered and completed a training system that had few footholds and denigrating attitudes before.

I came of age in 1980s Germany. There was an understanding that management realized that their employees needed to have some understanding that the rent was payable; they could take their families out to dinner on Sunday; and that the annual vacation train ticket to the Black Forest was in sight in the family budget. Employees, for their part, understood that management was concerned for their (employees') well-being, without which their (management) business could not survive. The American anti-labor attitude, reducing employees to the level of a screwdriver, is anathema to me. Isn't getting along better than this "race to the bottom"?

You're allowed to telecommute so that you work 24/7. You can take as much time off as you want so that people around you have work life balance while you take up the slack. You can go on vacation as long as they can call you up and spend a few hours resolving the issues. Sure you get X weeks vacation but you'll need to schedule them months in advance (except for that mandatory week they are closed where you still work but we really needed you to get it done) and we might need you to cancel at the last moment.

In my close to 30 years in the manufacturing industry. I seen American companies move to Cheap China where the companies exploit the unsophisticated workers paying them rice and perhaps $1.00 an hour with no unions, and no oversight like osha, fda, etc. Years ago American companies would receive their retirement benefits directly from the companies it worked well until greedy companies decided to invest their retirement benefits in Wallstreet, Hedge fund Companies charging egregious fees with lax oversight. Very few American jobs in manufacturing left any more a vast amount of employment is serving hotels,hot foods, jobs that pay nothing any more. our country has been sold out by weak government policy and greedy American companies where CEO rather make billions than share with working slaves in their companies.... USA

Some of the pay in trucking has gone up a little and some of the freedom a company driver has ,but not much. Mostly because there's a shortage of drivers,for many good reasons.A few companies will pay $ 1,000. to 1200 hundred if you work 5.5 days ,though often you will work the legal 14 hr. cycle with up to 11 hr. /day driving.So it sounds good up front except you will definitely earn it when you do the math on hrs.In addition truck driving big rigs can be extremely dangerous and the fatigue levels immense.

I'm 60 gave up the corporate life about 16 years ago...the stock options, the 401K, the relentless travel, the idiotic hours, etc. I still work (light construction) and live somewhat modestly...a 10-year-old car and no cooking trips to Tuscany...but I haven't regretted it for one second. Honestly, some days I truly miss the money, but articles like this confirm that I made the right decision.

Whether or not you will be offered flexible options depends greatly on how likely your employer thinks you are to go elsewhere. Sure, Silicon Valley tech wizzes will get flexible options -- their skills are in demand and many other employers will snap them up. If they are afraid you'll leave, they'll make concessions. If not, they won't. Most of us in middle ranks in cube farms, whose skills are not hotly in demand or who are over 50, will be told 'You don't like the deal here? There's the door.' Why offer anything extra to someone who isn't going anywhere if you don't?

It's cheaper than pay raises.

I've been reading stories like this for decades. And yet I have never, ever worked for an employer that offered this kind of flexibility. Personally, I think it's a pipe dream. Certainly for low-level office workers like myself ...

There are still employers who do good things and treat people decently. They are usually the small businesses that this country was built on--ones where the owners work beside their employees, or at least near them. what we have now are big corporations with lots of investors, who know nothing about what they are investing in, other than the dividends they pay. The relationship between owner, producer, product, and consumer has never been more fragmented or misaligned.

I am a very conservative man when it comes to social and political issues. On the other hand, I absolutely loathe american corporate culture. I've always felt like I was looked down upon because I was never willing to sacrifice extra time or energy for my employers outside working hours. I do not understand people (outside of those where it is necessary law enforcement, medicine, military) who willingly sacrifice themselves for their employers. Greedy mega-corporations thrive on encouraging employee burnout. All anyone needs to do is read the NYT article on working at Amazon.

Flexibility to work all the time from home, until the next downturn. Then you will be let go.

About 100 years ago, as the result of the industrial revolution and labor unrest, we got the 40-hour work week. In the 1990s, we had an information revolution that forever changed how we work and significantly increased our efficiency and productivity. But there was no reduction in work hours for this later revolution. I'm not interested in flex time if my boss also has the flexibility to ask for more of my time. I don't want to work 4 10-hour days. We need a 30-hour work week. And those people should be stretching their pre-run cold muscles so hard.

"Work" in America isn't greedy. It's the monsters who run the companies and business that are greedy.

Work in American is greedy?! Corporations in America are greedy.

As a full-time working mother of two young boys, with a job at which I could be highly successful from home 80 percent of the time, I will be elated to find the moment common sense catches up to organizational structure. Of course parents would be happier removing some of the stress toll of parenting in abstentia via text message and covert phone calls to child care providers and neighbors filling in for us. Productivity will increase infinitely with only a bit of flexibility. As my co-worker once said, "When I am a benevolent dictator..."

Speaking from the perspective of a retired person, working for a corporation generally sucks. You have to deal with people telling you what to do, when to do it, even how to do it in many cases. You have to make an appearance daily, sit in an open plan office where you can't even burp or pass gas w/o someone snickering, deal with the incessant politics and the latest management/business/personnel crisis. Oh and don't forget the daily commute that drains your soul, especially of you live in a crowded major coastal metropolitan area, like the SF Bay Area, for example. In truth, what passes for work is mostly repetitious drudgery where you try to look busy and productive so you don't get fired or laid off. Work is generally a place holder while waiting for retirement to happen. Imagine if you knew that after being born, you would go through 18 years of parenting and basic schooling, followed by 4 years or so of college and then 40+ years of mostly unrelenting drudgery as a preliminary to finally being able to relax in retirement, assuming you saved adequately to do so. Would you choose to be born in those circumstances? I would not!

Great point about how inflexibility disproportionately impacts those who are expected to rear children the most.

Unending loyalty? Where is this exactly? That sort of thing died out 30 years ago. Everyone knows they're on the block the moment the company and its execs face losing dime on in profits and bonuses. Maybe in Silicon Valley where stock options are a vested interest in working like a slave, everywhere else this just isn't a thing anymore. And your example in hospitality? That's how that's ALWAYS worked. As someone who worked in the industry for 30 years exceedingly rare was ever the time that I couldn't book a day off. And even then there was generally always someone willing to trade of pick up an extra shift outright. The only thing people are doing these days is always looking for another job that's better.

I survived 40 years of Silicon Valley by understanding that I was bought and paid for by the company and that I could be thrown aside at any moment. Thank God I loved the work, but I ignored any praise, took the money, and internalized the rest of my reward system. I would like to hope that as my child heads out into the working world that things have changed. I really do hope.

If you have to work together as a teams he adding a skill, that contribution time slot has to take precedence. Many production jobs, including back office jobs, have key periods throughout the day when everyone on the team absolutely has to be at work doing their piece of repetitive tasks down by everyone. If you have a large team of people below supervisor level, with varying experience and assessed maturity levels, HR policies can restrict variations. At one level, giving flexibility, beyond standard days off, to someone in a clerical role that has proven to be responsible for 10 years makes excellent business sense. Refusing to do the same for someone that has worked 18 months and has done a barely adequate job leaves the firm open to complaints and possible legal action. The usual response is one rule must fit all. The communication tools mentioned are standard with most large firms. The biggest problem with e-mail vs. instant messaging is that people expect instant responses from instant messaging. E-mail is asynchronous, allowing reader time to evaluate and set priorities. The pattern usually is an e-mail followed a few minutes later by an IM asking for the same response. I have had people IM me during a meeting when we both are at the same meeting , conducted remotely and I was the presenter, speaking. If you want to reduce stress and increase flexibility, ban IMs.

I like how treating people decently, providing flexibility and decent pay, is suddenly touted as a management innovation.

Level of happiness....just look at the number of people on anti-depressants, drinking more and have trouble sleeping. I have never heard a eulogy about how hard an individual worked. If an employer can get rid of you they will. There is always a new technology or someone willing to work for less. Never have your orbituary title state: _________ worked as a __________ for 38 years. If that is the best summary of your life then you made a big mistake.

I’m a physician. I have a commitment to my patients but no loyalty to my employer. Why? Salaried physicians now work inflexible schedules set by their MBA masters and their sycophant overpaid physician administrators. Once a doctor, now a line worker in one of the greed professions not mentioned by the author, modern American medicine. It’s now all about the customers and the brand. Gag me with a tongue depressor.

There was plenty to do at work and lots of money to be made. I saw men work themselves almost to death. Some of us followed the credo “Pigs get fat, Hogs get slaughtered”. It worked for me.

Flexibility sounds good in principle, but for many, it will only mean time devoted to work and irregular scheduling. For myself, I enjoy being able to work remotely a couple of days a week and limited management flexibility on my hours, but for many Slack-like apps on their phones, remote dial-ins and links, and remote work itself will mean more work and more work off-hours. It can reduce stress in one form, e.g., the conflict between one's personal life demands while increasing it overall or off hours. Yes, if managed correctly, it does not have to encroach on one's life and can enhance it, but in many ways, it will only be a way to extract more work from people.

Over the years - yes I am a somewhat jaded older worker - the idea of being a good highly productive employee has really turned. I am still highly productive, creating quality software products for people, or leading people to positive outcomes, but I am much more aware that companies don't matter. Few corporations have a mission that is worth devoting one's energies to. They are just business entities that don't deserve our commitment. I am much more likely to ask, how good is that employer, and how good is that employer for me. After 25 years in the financial sector, I took a role with a major cancer center, and part of the reason behind that was its high rating as an employer. Compared to finance, which is harmful to our collective welfare, my new employer devotes resources to human development and provides a better quality of life, besides having a mission one does not feel ashamed about. Sadly, the US will never be a country concerned about human welfare - at least in the near future - where life matters more than work.

Generally, businesses don't deserve our commitment. Yes, there are entities that combine business with nobler aims, e.g., environmental concerns, healthcare, human welfare, etc., but my sense is that people are fooled into the notion of work as being redemptive and uplifting. It isn't. Across the developed world, more work is associated with less human welfare outcomes and a tendency toward higher inequality. Although Americans might get a little smarter and realize that the US has a huge deficit in social welfare for our cultural tendency toward work, enforced and enshrined in laws and policies that benefit corporations, it is not likely to change significantly.