Is Growing Job Dissatisfaction Due to Disrespect?
January 6, 2010
by Tony Blizzard
tblizz@earthlink.net
Yesterday, a headline in the business section read: "Survey: Workers Unhappy" under the AP byline of one Jeannine Aversa. Most of her information came from Linda Barrington, managing director of "human capital" at the Conference Board research group.
Whatever that is, it has been operating for 22 years and has never seen such a low level of job dissatisfaction. Now only 45% of workers are satisfied with their jobs compared to nearly 61% in 1987.
Various reasons are given such as boring jobs, low incomes, not keeping up with prices, other costs not compensated for, etc.
"One clue that may explain workers' growing dissatisfaction: Only 51 per cent now find their jobs interesting - another low in the survey's 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70 per cent said they were interested in their work."
"Only 51 per cent now find their jobs interesting - another low in the survey's 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70 per cent said they were interested in their work."
"Weak wage growth helps explain why workers' unhappiness ... average household incomes adjusted for inflation have been shrinking since 2000."
MISSING THE POINT
But both women miss the most natural reason for discontent which Barrington's job title gives away immediately. "Managing director of human capital," for God's sake.
Gee, two guesses for whom they make these surveys. You can bet it's not on behalf of employees, those "human cattle .... oops, Freudian slip ... human capital."
Shades of: "American workers are at the highest level of efficiency in the history of the work force," which, translated from economist-ese simply means workers are forced to put out more work for less pay than ever.
Great for the Wall St. stock gambling racket but hell for the workers in the squeeze and their families. You will note that all the economists' rosy bullshit is reserved for the stock market, nothing for the joblessness and homelessness of countless more PEOPLE every day.
As though the stock market IS the economy, not the real economy of human survival. In fact, every time workers lose jobs, the stock market "gains." Every time, bar none.
Who the hell wants to be treated as just another expense of the corporation, hired through their "human resources" office to be eternally kept down at the lowest level of cost efficiency regardless of attitude or aptitude? Just another entry on the spread sheet figured into the bottom line, constantly "scientifically" squeezed for another drop of blood?
Most Americans may be too dumbed down to catch the true meaning of these inhuman phrases, now commonly used when referring to employees, but any human being instinctively understands when he is not given human dignity.
I remember the first time I ever heard the phrase "human resources" in the early 1950s. I was a kid, not yet twenty, hitch-hiking across the U.S., when I stopped at Lowry AFB in Colorado to visit an older brother. He had "earned," at the time, the highest ranking of a non com in the Air Force, some kind of top Sergeant. His job at Lowry, it turned out, was head of human resources.
I asked him what the hell that was. His explanation was that he had to place all the new guys coming on the base in appropriate jobs. I replied something like "Oh, like a hiring clerk in a business."
I didn't like the term then and I don't like it or this new one to me, "human capital," now. "Human resource" puts one in the same business category as machines or raw materials but "human capital" has the further dehumanizing connotation of one being simply a dollar value to the employer, not even recognized as a human.
Just another instance of "we're human, they're cattle" a la the devil's Talmud.
