What Happened to America's Good Jobs?
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Apr. 26, 2016 | ECONOMY | As the picket lines swell with more and more Verizon workers, the company’s chief executive, Lowell C. McAdam, asserted that Verizon wanted to protect "good" jobs. But what are good jobs? The tech workers at Verizon are not objecting to the introduction of new technology. As Marilyn Irwin, a president of a union local put it, “We understand technology and that things are going to change [and] we are going to be able to do things quicker, easier, and [in] a better way. That’s not really our issue.” Their issue is protecting good jobs. The rise of the “sharing economy” has changed the way people find work and the tech industry has changed the way people behave at work. Anxieties over these transformations have affected the working lives of American workers, especially those who have been left behind. In state after state workers have lost economic ground and “good jobs.” Historically the definition of a “good job” has changed over the last century, and understanding why could help us understand how to make better sense of what is going on today in workplaces across the land… historynewsnetwork.org
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