Surviving in the New Economy
Sharecroppers in the Ownership Society
Description:... For many Americans, the promise of thriving in the new economy has been replaced with the realities of survival. The dot-com boom of the late 1990s marked the coming of age of the much-heralded new economy, an economic, technological, and social transformation that had been in progress for decades. The same entrepreneurial spirit that characterized the stock market frenzy is still expected of high-tech employees. A highly mobile and in many cases highly compensated workforce face a multitude of new risks: Jobs are no longer secure nor insulated from global competition, employer-provided health benefits are drying up, and retirement planning is almost entirely the responsi-bility of employees themselves. These changes are not restricted to the high-tech elite. American workers now face a restructured labor market that asks individuals to bear more responsibility for their jobs, training, and benefits; a global labor market that pushes real wages down; and a broken social contract that replaces the promise of security with the hollow rhetoric of ownership. This book brings together people who are thinking about the challenges that workers face in this new economic environment.
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