The relationship between company and worker, where the company makes an investment in the employee through training, stock options, a structured retirement and benefits plan, etcetera, is no longer the norm today. Furthermore, although in other countries, health insurance, a livable pension plan, and other benefits like daycare for children, are not necessarily tied to private employment, these necessities for survival are in America. To be unemployed or underemployed means living in a state of continual anxiety about caring for one's self and for one's dependants. This drives many workers to look for unhelpful assistance from paid personal consultants and headhunters, who administer unhelpful personality tests rather than make a real effort to seek employment for their clients. Besides the problems inherent to the way that American government and...
Supply favors the companies, not the employees. And managers are raised on a philosophy of 'less is more' -- less salaries to pay, lower salaries to pay if jobs are outsourced overseas, etcetera. However, if corporations do not make an investment in their employees in the long-term, and cutting short-term costs is seen as the only way to demonstrate results to shareholders, soon these cost-cutting zealots might find themselves out of a job, with few prospects for self-improvement.
" As Ehrenreich found, in some case you are your resume, but in other cases the individual is clearly NOT their resume. Instead, looking at what the book calls white-collar life "at its most miserable and precarious" (p. 216), one can only glean that this is clearly not the place for everyone, nor is it the do all end-all of Protestant expectations of actualization. In fact, pining for that perfect
For example, Ehrenreich tamed her naturally assertive nature into a more tame and likable demeanor: one that corresponded with gender norms as well as with norms for prospective employees. Working with one career coach in Georgia, the author presented a confident, convincing sales pitch. She marketed herself and her work skills admirably for a whole hour before the coach bluntly told her without humor that she seemed angry. If
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