The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change - Hardcover

Ruppel Shell, Ellen

 
9780451497253: The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0451497252 ISBN 13: 9780451497253
Verlag: Currency, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Critically acclaimed journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell uncovers the true cost--political, economic, social, and personal--of America's mounting anxiety over jobs, and what we can do to regain control over our working lives.

Since 1973, our productivity has grown almost six times faster than our wages. Most of us rank so far below the top earners in the country that the "winners" might as well inhabit another planet. But work is about much more than earning a living. Work gives us our identity, and a sense of purpose and place in this world. And yet, work as we know it is under siege.

Through exhaustive reporting and keen analysis, The Job reveals the startling truths and unveils the pervasive myths that have colored our thinking on one of the most urgent issues of our day: how to build good work in a globalized and digitalized world where middle class jobs seem to be slipping away. Traveling from deep in Appalachia to the heart of the Midwestern rust belt, from a struggling custom clothing maker in Massachusetts to a thriving co-working center in Minnesota, she marshals evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show how our educational system, our politics, and our very sense of self have been held captive to and distorted by outdated notions of what it means to get and keep a good job. We read stories of sausage makers, firefighters, zookeepers, hospital cleaners; we hear from economists, computer scientists, psychologists, and historians. The book's four sections take us from the challenges we face in scoring a good job today to work's infinite possibilities in the future. Work, in all its richness, complexity, rewards and pain, is essential for people to flourish. Ellen Ruppel Shell paints a compelling portrait of where we stand today, and points to a promising and hopeful way forward.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ellen Ruppel Shell, a correspondent for The Atlantic, co-directs the Graduate Program in Science Journalism at Boston University. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Smithsonian, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O, Scientific American, and Science Magazine. She is the author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, The Hungry Gene, and A Child's Place. She lives in the Boston metropolitan area.

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1

Suffering Less

How many years of fatigue and punishment it takes to learn the simple truth that work, that disagreeable thing, is the only way of not suffering in life, or at all events, of suffering less.

—Charles Baudelaire

If the American dream came packaged in human form, Abe Gorelick would be a perfect match. Crisp, youthful, and tirelessly upbeat, his hair has just the right touch of gray, his smile just the right blend of humility and charm. He lives in a fine house on a cul-de-sac in a million-dollar neighborhood known for its good schools. He drives his three kids to soccer practice in a forest-green Jaguar the likes of which his own father—a retired high school Spanish teacher—could barely imagine. He sits on two philanthropic boards and holds a leadership role at his synagogue. He plays league softball and basketball and can’t help feeling proud of his three-point shot.

One glance at Gorelick’s résumé makes clear that this seeming prosperity was well earned: titles like “senior vice president,” “general manager,” and “principal consultant” all funnel into an Ivy League degree capped with an MBA from the University of Chicago. A veteran strategist, Gorelick had partnered with major financial institutions, airlines, pharmaceutical companies, global retailers, and start-ups large and small. Digitally savvy and forward thinking, he was by all appearances a winner—a member of the top 4 or 5 percent flying high in the knowledge economy.

But that was then, just short of his fifty-seventh birthday. Just shy of his fifty-eighth, Gorelick was still proud of his three-point shot. But the rest of his life had come unhinged from his résumé. When we first met in person, he was driving a cab, manning a cash register at Whole Foods, and peddling neckties at Lord and Taylor. The take-home pay for these part-time gigs paled compared to his previous earnings, most recently as principal for global strategy and innovation at an international marketing firm. Gorelick was unceremoniously “downsized” from that job for reasons that elude him, but he tried not to dwell on that. He was clinging to what he called the “bright side.” He enjoyed bantering with customers at the supermarket. He was pleased when an elderly woman brought him a treat after he helped her get in and out of his cab—it felt great to make a difference in people’s lives and to be appreciated. Still, he wanted his career back. He knew the obstacles—his age, for one, worked against him. He wasn’t naive. But he didn’t believe that age was the essential problem. He believed the problem was him. And he had plans to fix that. He had enlisted a job counselor, had joined a support group, and, with his wife, was spending long hours rehashing the past in an attempt to make right whatever was holding him back, as well as preserve their marriage in the face of these new headwinds and challenges. The marriage, he said, teetered on the edge of his fragile ego, and his ego depended on his professional success.

“For a long time I wanted to be who I am,” he confided over chamomile tea in a café outside Boston. “And I think that hurt me. Most companies, you’ve got to fit into their culture. And I guess I didn’t always do that. I was always, you know, me. And I guess that wasn’t what they were looking for.”

Gorelick’s career successes surpass those of most Americans. With all his savvy and privilege, we might believe, he should have known and planned better. He freely acknowledges that, and agrees that there is no shame in driving a cab or bagging groceries.

Still, the outline of Gorelick’s story may strike a familiar chord. We know how he feels because we’ve felt the same way, or know someone who has. Our job title is a sort of shorthand that in just one or two words captures who we are and where we stand in the minds of others, and in our own. If you doubt it, try this thought experiment. Close your eyes and picture Abe the fifty-eight-year-old supermarket cashier/cabdriver/retail clerk. Now picture Abe the fifty-eight-year-old senior vice president of marketing strategy. In your mind’s eye do these men—really two versions of one man—look anything alike?

I’ve introduced Abe Gorelick so early in the book not to evoke your sympathy but to sound the alarm. By almost any objective measure, he has done everything right. With his advanced degrees, sterling résumé, and upbeat outlook, he is not the sort of guy we associate with bad job karma. He is an eager and well-connected networker, a flexible thinker, a generous volunteer. There are no obvious gaps in his skill set, and no grass is growing beneath his feet. But while his case might not be typical, his response to his situation is: like so many of us, he blames himself—not the system—for every setback. And that self-blame takes a heavy toll on far too many of us. Clinging to the canard that we—as individuals—have near-complete control over our vocational trajectories has brought misery, as public policies built on this myth risk being not only counterproductive but in some cases dangerously divisive. And as Gorelick’s case makes clear, that divisiveness can hit terribly close to home.

Sociologist Ofer Sharone knows Abe Gorelick well, and he knows quite a few other people like him. Not only has he made a study of them, but not all that long ago he was one of them, at least in some ways. Before entering academia, Sharone practiced international law, circling the globe to negotiate deals in several languages. He felt powerful and important. Like Gorelick, by conventional standards he had done everything right. But on one overnight flight from Israel to Japan, he started to question himself. The money and status were intoxicating, but the power—well, that wasn’t quite real. Many of his everyday tasks seemed silly and futile, yet like a nagging toothache these matters demanded his full and near-constant attention. “I found it horrifying that I was expected to give myself to a job over which I had almost no control,” he told me. Even more sobering was the realization that he was sacrificing so much of his life for a job. And here is where Sharone and the people he studies part ways. Rather than contort himself to maintain his career identity, he began to plot his escape.

Sharone quit the law and entered graduate school to study sociology and grapple with the question of why he—and so many people he knew—felt trapped by jobs that afforded them so little control. To truly understand the problem, he needed a base of comparison: Did workers in other nations feel the same way? Born in Israel, he figured that was a natural place to have a look. So he gathered his frequent flier points and went off to investigate.

Israel and the United States have many things in common: both are market economies with low labor union participation rates and a relatively flexible private sector labor market. They share important economic structures, including a thriving high-tech sector. And they are business allies. “Since the 1990s, Israelis considered the American economic model synonymous with progress and efficiency,” Sharone said. Yet despite these commonalities, Sharone observed that Israelis and American workers related to their jobs quite differently.

Sharone noted that Americans felt less control over their working lives than did their Israeli peers. Even in high-pressure sectors like corporate law or finance, Israelis were better able to negotiate the terms of their employment and to find a balance between their professional and personal lives. A...

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Verlag
Currency
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0451497252
ISBN 13 
9780451497253
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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