How corporatism is killing employees

After wrestling with the logic of Brent Regan's LTE (9/9/2015), I felt compelled to respond. As a business person, I would like to believe that the good employee is a protected and valued asset. At the same time, the state of corporatism in America is disturbing. Trends for ever-increasing shareholder equity and individual productivity have encroached on logic and reason.

Shareholder equity is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, most Americans look to the stock market to deliver results to fund our retirements. On the other hand, when delivering quarterly results is at the expense of employees or, worse, the long-term health of the company, that is a bad thing. This is where shareholder equity and productivity cross paths.

Delivering better results quarter after quarter is akin to fighting off a great white shark with a pocket knife. Business has cycles; the economy has cycles and the current cycle just might be the worst ever. While business is relatively healthy, meeting Wall Street expectations is tough. Granted, it sometimes takes a strategic nip and tuck to improve the bottom line, but it takes service, marketing, and product to drive the business forward. We have reached a point where productivity gains are harder to achieve, so corporate leaders have become fixated on doing more with fewer heads, unwisely tasking the person bailing the water also to put the sails up. Not such a good idea when the boat has leaks.

Productivity, on the other hand, has skyrocketed in the United States and continues to do so. Increasing productivity is not just robots on the assembly line; it ranges from fewer cashiers in retail stores to computers and mobile phones that theoretically make tasks easier for the business professional. As mechanical innovation slowed, companies zeroed in on headcount, pushing the envelope by reducing payrolls and transferring job responsibilities elsewhere - first, to offshore locations like India that resulted in more problems than savings, then off the backs of employees where the savvy company can pay the one employee to do more while eliminating headcount, seemingly saving the company money and boosting short-term profitability.

Where has this landed the worker who shovels the dirt? How do they fare in the new corporate order of things? Statistically, salaried and hourly Americans put in longer hours than 20 years ago, are inclined to fear using company-sponsored time off, and they are doing more job tasks than in any other developed nation. This trend is taking a considerable toll on middle-class America, especially since fewer Americans are entering the middle class and staying there.

This is a big problem for the world's largest consumer society. Job insecurity and stress are taking a significant toll on Americans' financial and physical health. We are stressed, which is a leading cause of weight gain, psychological dysfunction, and a medical book load of problems, including cancer and heart disease. We have less savings than we did 20 years ago and many Americans reach retirement woefully unprepared and will ultimately wind up depending exclusively on the government.

While many people smugly sit back and blame personal choices, the reality is contrary. The facts are, employment tenure and the number of highly qualified people losing their jobs in their mid-50s is pressuring retirement savings prematurely. Add to this wages not keeping up with inflation has further impacted the average American's ability to maintain a reasonable lifestyle and to save.

As a living example of the American worker myself, I built, operated and sold a successful business in my 20s, then joined the corporate world with great success for 21 years. I have documented the change in my company and can see how this is impacting my children; it is alarming. "At will" or "for Cause" termination normally should not be a serious concern for anyone whose goal is to perform in the employer's best interest. However, Right to Work initiatives are popping up across the country. The big supporters are far-right politicians beholden to the likes of ALEC, the National Right to Work, and oddly enough the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As with all political funding since Citizens United, it pays to follow the money no matter how hard this has become. We may not know the names for sure, but the outcome is crystal clear. Donations skyrocketed after Citizens United and record sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, have been spent since 2012 trying to scale back worker protections.

Corporatism has evolved to benefit fewer people and its effect on American society, and workers, has a profound and lasting negative impact.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/19/americans-vacation-days_n_5682576.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-the-gap-between-worker-pay-and-productivity-is-so-problematic/385931/

http://wrongforeveryone.org/behind-right-to-wor/

Reid Harlocker is a Hayden resident and concerned citizen who believes that government waste is not the result of ideology, but instead driven by the greed of politicians in the dominant parties, lobbyists and the wealthy.