by From David Ruccio Last fall, just before the presidential election, I posted a report on the perilous condition of the American working-class. Now, thanks to the Rand Corporation [ht: ja], we have a report on how terrible working conditions are in the United States. Most Americans between the ages of 25 and 71 spend most of their available time in a given day, week, or year forced to have the freedom to sell their ability to work to a small group of employers. Thus, as the authors of the study note, The characteristics of jobs and workplaces—including wages, hours worked, and benefits, as well as the physical demands and risk of injury, the pace of work, the degree of autonomy, prospects for advancement, and the social work environment, to name a few—are important determinants of
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from David Ruccio
Last fall, just before the presidential election, I posted a report on the perilous condition of the American working-class.
Now, thanks to the Rand Corporation [ht: ja], we have a report on how terrible working conditions are in the United States.
Most Americans between the ages of 25 and 71 spend most of their available time in a given day, week, or year forced to have the freedom to sell their ability to work to a small group of employers. Thus, as the authors of the study note,
The characteristics of jobs and workplaces—including wages, hours worked, and benefits, as well as the physical demands and risk of injury, the pace of work, the degree of autonomy, prospects for advancement, and the social work environment, to name a few—are important determinants of American workers’ well-being. Some of these job characteristics also affect workers’ social and family lives.
Here are some of the major findings, which paint a picture of a work environment that is often stressful, taxing—both physically and mentally—and demeaning:
- Nearly three-fourths of Americans report either intense or repetitive physical exertion on the job at least one-quarter of the time.
- More than one-half of Americans report exposure to unpleasant and potentially hazardous working conditions.
- Nearly one in five workers—a share the study calls “disturbingly high”—say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work, which can include sexual harassment and bullying.
- Most Americans (two-thirds) frequently work at high speeds or under tight deadlines, and one in four perceives that they have too little time to do their job.
- Only 57 percent of workers can take breaks when they want to, and just 31 percent can choose with whom they work.
- Nearly two-thirds of workers experience at least some degree of mismatch between their desired and actual working conditions, and this fraction rises to nearly three-quarters when taking job benefits into account.
And those conditions spill over into the rest of workers’ lives:
- About one-half of American workers do some work in their free time to meet work demands.
- While many Americans regularly adjust their personal schedules to accommodate work matters, many (31 percent) are unable to adjust their work schedules to accommodate personal matters.
Overall, as the authors of the study conclude,
for many Americans, work can be taxing across a range of core dimensions, including at the physical, social, mental, and time levels.
What then?
As that prescient Manchester industrialist wrote to American readers 131 years ago,
The development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed. . .to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages. And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact, that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the Capitalistic System itself.
