APA’s latest on healthy workplaces and toxic managers

The current issue of Good Company, the e-newsletter of the American Psychological Association’s Psychology Healthy Workplace Program (phew, that’s a mouthful), includes several features of interest to readers of this blog.

Fact Sheet (It’s a keeper)

Folks, this is worth saving and printing out. It’s an updated Fact Sheet on psychologically healthy workplaces, loaded with bullet point summaries and sources on the following topics:

• Workplace stress
• Work demands
• Work-life balance & flexibility
• Employee health & healthcare costs
• Mental health issues
• Employee and organizational outcomes
• The recession

Toxic Bosses

In a piece linking healthy workplaces with how managers relate to workers, Wally Bock writes:

Bosses make a difference in individual well-being. Early in my career, I worked with a manager named Cliff who defined the phrase, “hard-nosed.” He was also rude and hard-charging. The day was not complete without him stomping around the office in a rage.

Once, during one of his tantrums, a colleague suggested he calm down. “You’ll have a heart attack,” he said.

“I don’t get heart attacks,” Cliff growled. “I give ‘em.”

Advice

In his article, Bock expounds upon this short cluster of recommendations toward improving organizational leadership:

• Improve your Boss Selection
• Improve your Training and Support for Bosses
• Train for and Evaluate Specific Stress-Reducing Behaviors

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Work, Stress, and Health Conference 2011

In addition, it’s worth flagging the dates for the next Work, Stress, and Health Conference, which the APA co-sponsors with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology:

May 19-22, 2011 — Orlando, Florida — Doubletree Hotel

This is one of the best multidisciplinary conferences around, with presenters drawn from a wide variety of fields in addition to psychology. I have a learned a ton from the programs at this conference and recommend it highly to researchers, practitioners, and students in disciplines related to employment relations.

Singled out? Workplace bullying, economic insecurity, and the unmarried woman

(image courtesy shaow clipart)

Here’s my hypothesis, and I’m wondering if somewhere there’s a good study that brings together these strands: When it comes to workplace bullying and economic insecurity exacerbated by the Great Recession, single women — especially those with dependents — face a sort of double jeopardy.

Specially targeted for bullying?

Workplace bullying targets are not limited to any demographic set.  However, according to the 2007 national prevalence study (link here) conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute and Zogby International pollsters, nearly 6 of every 10 bullying targets are female.

In addition, while conceding that my impressions are anecdotal, I have found that, in my countless unsolicited exchanges with targets seeking legal referrals, unmarried women in their 30s or older, many of whom are single parents, appear to be disproportionately on the receiving end of some of the worst forms of bullying at work.

It makes sense, sadly.  Let’s start with the observation that truly abusive bullies often have a knack for sniffing out vulnerable individuals.  Then we look at potential targets: Demographically speaking, is there any group more vulnerable than single women raising kids?  They already are juggling work and caregiving, their schedules seem timed down to the minute, and not infrequently they are struggling financially — especially if there is no father in the picture.

Single women without children may not be as economically desperate to hold onto their jobs, but they can be very vulnerable as well.  Women in general remain underpaid compared to male counterparts. Those who came out of dissolved marriages may have re-entered the workforce later in life. Circumstances vary, but they may be less likely to have someone to fall back on if bullied out of a job.

Economic insecurity

In a report titled The Other Half: Unmarried Women, Economic Well-Being, and the Great Recession (link here) recently issued by the Center for American Progress and Women’s Voices. Women Vote, Liz Weiss and Page Gardner analyze the economic state of single women in the midst of the Great Recession.

Unmarried women lag behind single men and married couples by many economic measures, including earnings from work and household income, which includes earnings as well as other sources of income such as Social Security or investments. Unmarried women also have much lower median net wealth than men or couples, and they have significant debt. Single women are about as likely to have debt as single men, but the median value of their total debt is greater than single men. All of these factors combine to create a relatively insecure economic picture for unmarried women.

The Other Half is chock-full of facts, figures, and analysis. Clearly the mass media have underreported the impacts of the Great Recession on this significant segment of the population.

Summing up

Membership in any demographic group will not shield one from the realities of today’s workplace and economy. After all, plenty of white males with families and homes in the ‘burbs have experienced difficult work environments and unemployment. But when you start pulling together information about who is targeted for bullying at work and who is suffering financial distress, single women start to emerge as an especially vulnerable group.

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Hat tip: I first learned about the work of Women’s Voices. Women Vote and The Other Half at a July Congressional briefing on women and unemployment, sponsored by the Americans for Democratic Action Education Fund, on whose board I serve.

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Additional commentary, July 2018 — I wrote this piece some eight years ago, when the ravages of the Great Recession were still being felt most acutely. That said, during the intervening years I have become more aware of the targeting of middle-aged women in workplaces, especially when it comes to bullying, age discrimination, and other negative occurrences. I believe there are some bigger societal forces at play that have powerfully gendered dynamics driving them.

Continuing education is good, but where are the jobs?

The latest New York Times special section on continuing education leads off with a piece from Steven Greenhouse on the growing trend of adults returning to school to obtain additional education and credentials:

With the world growing ever more complex and new technologies being developed every day, it’s hardly surprising that millions of Americans have returned to campus. . . . Many experts say continuing education is more important than ever because most college graduates will go through five to seven job changes over their careers.

But where are the jobs?

I’ve been around colleges and universities for most of my adult life as a student and faculty member.  As an educator and lifelong learner, I have cast my lot with institutions of higher learning that cater to mature students. I’ve seen, up close and personal, what opportunities to retool a career or change professions can do for people.

But in today’s economy, we must ask if all this added learning and credentialing opens doors to actual jobs.  Lately I’ve been reading too many accounts of working adults who pursued expensive degree and certificate programs believing they would enhance their employability, only to find few openings in their new field. And as a law professor at a university that appeals heavily to working adults, I’m well aware of the difficult job market awaiting our students as they approach graduation.

Generically speaking, continuing education remains a good thing, but is not a panacea in an economy that isn’t producing a lot of new jobs.  Before people engage in a potentially expensive and time-consuming course of study, they should get an honest assessment of what that program can do for them.

The moral obscenity of a “jobless recovery”

We should be alarmed by the growing and blithe use of the term “jobless recovery.”  Indeed, let’s look right under the surface to see what it means:

1. Recovery of profits and stock values that disproportionately benefit the people who have suffered least or not at all during the Great Recession.

2. Return of larger salaries and bonuses for top executives.

3. A “new normal” of high jobless rates, with more despair and desperation as people use up their unemployment benefits, drain their meager savings and retirement accounts, max out their credit cards, and lose their homes.

4. Further destruction of the middle class, with a widening gap between the richest and the poorest.

Suffering, not recovery

A “jobless recovery” is about human suffering, not a healthy economy. Most who invoke this term with a straight face presumably do not imagine themselves joining the millions of unemployed.  Rather, they see their jobs remaining relatively stable and their retirement accounts bouncing back from the worst of the meltdown. Too many have shelved any sense of empathy or urgency about an economy that is inflicting devastating pain on millions.

But make no mistake about it: Most of the gainfully employed are one job loss away from that very despair and desperation.  And how easily we forget that in a society with a frayed safety net, the falls come fast and hard.

Responses

For the U.S., I favor three key responses:

1.  Hire people and pay them a decent wage — In some sectors, corporate profits have roared back with a vengeance, yet companies aren’t hiring, and others are holding down wages and benefits for the rank-and-file.  As a society, we must send a message to companies that creating good jobs at good pay is part of the privilege of doing business, especially when revenues are strong.  It’s not about “capitalism” vs. “socialism” or left vs. right; it’s about how we conduct ourselves in a civil society.

2.  Create a jobs program — Among other things, we need a public works program that puts people back on a payroll doing the vital work of rebuilding America’s infrastructure. We’ve got nearly 41 million people on food stamps, with unemployment levels remaining high and steady.  We have roads and bridges in this country that are badly in need of repair, with safety and quality of life at stake.  Let’s match the need for jobs with the need to rebuild our country.

3.  Build a strong safety net — This recession is not about workers suddenly becoming lazy and unwilling to work.  Countless folks are pounding the pavements and scouring the Internet in search of decent jobs.  In the meantime, let’s support them through continued unemployment benefits, transitional assistance to train for vocations, and whatever help they need to secure their health care coverage.

Connecting two dots of the Great Recession

Yesterday’s news items on Boston.com, the website of the Boston Globe, invited some connect-the-dots analysis concerning the Great Recession:

Item 1 — Nearly 41 million Americans receiving food stamps

Among the “most e-mailed” news items was this Bloomberg wire service piece:

The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.

…Unemployment in July may have reached 9.6 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts in advance of the Aug. 6 release of last month’s rate. Unemployment was 9.5 percent in June, near levels last seen in 1983.

Item 2 — Commuting nightmare on Interstate 93

Interstate 93 is a major artery in and out of Boston, and its traffic conditions basically control a commuter’s state of mind during rush hours.  As reported by Eric Moskowitz, I-93 commuters have faced a giant headache of a drive this week:

The surface of Interstate 93 ruptured here yesterday for the second day in a row, creating a gash large enough to swallow a car and snarling traffic for miles while the state performed emergency repairs that officials said will have the road open for this morning’s commute.

This was not your ordinary pothole situation.  As further reported by Moskowitz:

The vast holes that opened 25 feet apart on consecutive days were not the typical spring potholes bemoaned by New England drivers, but were caused by something far more serious: the decay of concrete and steel attributed to years of postponed maintenance.

It’s not that simple, or maybe it is?

We’ve got nearly 41 million people on food stamps, with unemployment levels remaining high and steady.  We have roads and bridges in this country that are badly in need of repair, with safety and quality of life at stake.

Among other things, we need a public works program that puts people back on a payroll doing the vital work of rebuilding America’s infrastructure.  The details are considerable, and from a standpoint of public policy it’s no easy fix, but for starters let’s look into matching our millions of unemployed with some of the nation’s real needs.

For all too many, the Great Crash is here

Bob Herbert’s columns for the New York Times have consistently, urgently raised concerns about the state of the economy and its impact on everyday people.  One of his latest highlights the findings of a Rockefeller Foundation study, indicating that economic insecurity is rampant and that a growing number of American families face financial ruin:

A rigorous new analysis for the Rockefeller Foundation shows that Americans are more economically insecure now than they have been in a quarter of a century, and the trend lines suggest that things will only get worse.

…The team’s findings were grim. Simply stated, more and more families are facing utter economic devastation: completely out of money, with their jobs, savings and retirement funds gone, and nowhere to turn for the next dollar.

Key findings

The Rockefeller Foundation report, available here, found that a “record one in five American households is financially insecure.” It further concluded:

• Using data dating back to 1985, the index shows that economic insecurity has risen across all groups in America, though not equally.
• Poorer households were twice as likely to experience a major income drop when compared with their wealthy counterparts.
• Those without a high school education were about 40% more likely to suffer a decline than college graduates.
• Because many Americans have little or no savings, it can take six to eight years for families to recover from a 25% income drop.

Spreading the blame

As Herbert suggests, there’s plenty of blame to go around:

Big corporations, sitting on fat profits even as the economy continues to struggle, have made it clear that they are not interested in putting a lot more people back to work any time soon. . . . Policy makers have dropped the ball completely in terms of dealing with this devastating long-term trend of ever-increasing economic insecurity for American families.

Answers?

So here’s the big think tank question: How do we create millions of good jobs at good wages? Regardless of one’s political leanings, it’s fair to say that if the answer was simple, presumably we’d be doing it already.

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Go here for a related post, “Jobs, Unemployment, and the Great Recession.”

Globalization and workers 101: A quick primer

Globalization is a term that understandably intimidates many of us.  Current events sections of well-stocked bookstores hold dozens of titles on globalization, and newspapers, news magazines, and public affairs journals regularly devote meaty articles to the topic.  It all sounds so, well, imposing.

But you don’t have to wade through academic tomes and hefty journal commentaries to understand how globalization affects the labor markets and everyday workers.  This aspect of globalization can be boiled down to three basic propositions:

1.  Globalization of markets is driven by the need to expand profits.

2.  One way to expand profits is to discover and develop new customer bases for goods and services.  Reducing the costs of producing goods and providing services — which, in turn, allows price cuts — is a favored approach.

3.  A prime route toward expanding profits and reducing prices for goods and services is to reduce labor costs.  This means finding the cheapest competent labor working in the least regulated countries.

From North to South to…China, perhaps?

In the U.S., we saw this dynamic play out during the latter part of the 20th century.  As labor unions helped workers negotiate better wages and working conditions in northeastern and midwestern manufacturing plants, many companies moved their plants to less union-friendly southern states where they could pay lower wages and not worry as much about governmental regulation.

But that wasn’t good enough.  Companies eventually realized that they could pay even lower wages — as in fractions of the American minimum wage — by closing their U.S. plants and transferring manufacturing operations to other countries, especially developing nations where workers were eager for work and governmental regulations were either nil or hardly enforced.  China, Mexico, and others became popular destinations for multinational corporations.

And now to Bangladesh!

It turns out that at least in China, the workers are getting too uppity.  Stirrings of an independent labor movement have now grown into a genuine force, and wages of Chinese workers are improving as a result.  In other words, they’re getting too expensive.

Vikas Bajaj, reporting for the New York Times, tells us that Bangladesh is now making incursions into the Chinese manufacturing sector:

As costs have risen in China, long the world’s shop floor, it is slowly losing work to countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia — at least for cheaper, labor-intensive goods like casual clothes, toys and simple electronics that do not necessarily require literate workers and can tolerate unreliable transportation systems and electrical grids.

Race to the bottom

For many years, labor and human rights activists have invoked the phrase “race to the bottom” to describe the practice of companies opening and closing plants in a constant search for the lowest-paid workers.  This path of economic destruction has left devastated communities and impoverished lives in its wake, all in the name of higher stock values and inexpensive VCRs and t-shirts.

A better way?

Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse reports on an American-owned garment factory in the Dominican Republic that pays its workers a living wage and doesn’t oppose unionization:

Industry experts say it is a pioneer in the developing world because it pays a “living wage” — in this case, three times the average pay of the country’s apparel workers — and allows workers to join a union without a fight.

The article goes on to question whether a doing-well-by-doing-good strategy can work:

“It’s a noble effort, but it is an experiment,” says Andrew Jassin, an industry consultant who says “fair labor” garments face a limited market unless deft promotion can snare consumers’ attention — and conscience.

It is a sad commentary that in today’s global economy, we cannot say for certain that paying a living wage to workers and financial viability are mutually compatible.  Stay tuned.

Graduating into a recession

Louis Uchitelle, reporting for the New York Times, penned a long news feature about the challenges and dilemmas facing younger folks who are trying to enter the workforce in the midst of this recession.  His overall assessment is a bracing one:

For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work…, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.

The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level (although some are in graduate school). The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession, in 2007, and the highest level — by almost two percentage points — since the bureau started to keep records in 1994 for those with at least four years of college.

Uchitelle’s article centers around a young college graduate who is searching for work and assessing his options.  It weaves into the story a look at the job prospects faced by his father and grandfather at similar stages in their lives, making for an interesting generational comparison.

Recession generations?

The sheer luck of one’s birth year may impact both short and longer term earnings.  Uchitelle cites a study by Yale economist Lisa B. Kahn, who found that:

those who graduated from college during the severe early ’80s recession earned up to 30 percent less in their first three years than new graduates who landed their first jobs in a strong economy. Even 15 years later, their annual pay was 8 to 10 percent less.

I remember that recession well.  I graduated from Valparaiso University in 1981, holder of a B.A. in political science, looking for work in the depressed northwest Indiana region where I grew up.  The area’s economy was especially hard hit by the decline of the steel mills, and jobs in all sectors were sparse.  I ended up taking work at the local drug store chain where I had spent college summers and doing some part-time reporting for a weekly newspaper, while living at home with my parents.

I would be among the fortunate ones.  It was my plan to go to law school. A year after graduating from college, I would pack my bags and head off to law school at New York University.  Three years later, with a law degree in hand and buoyed by a stronger job market, my employment prospects improved considerably.

Nonetheless, one of my enduring memories of that interim year is of working for the drug store chain, hearing stories from cashiers of spouses being laid off from the steel mills, and experiencing the indignity of having my own hours cut to the bone because business was bad. For northwest Indiana, it was a harbinger of things to come.  Those mill jobs disappeared permanently, and the lower paying retail positions in strip malls lining the region’s boulevards have not bridged the income gap.

This one is worse 

Comparisons between the current recession and that of the early 1980s are frequent, but this one is worse.  In terms of severity, the Great Recession lies somewhere between the 80s recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s. We appear to be looking at structural changes in the labor markets, with the term “jobless recovery” frequently invoked to suggest a sluggish comeback for the stock market with little or no corresponding improvement in the employment situation.

To make matters worse, younger workers are competing with, directly or indirectly, older workers who are staying in or reentering the labor force after their already meager retirement accounts took a battering during the stock market meltdown.  (Several months ago, I wrote a short piece about this looming generational conflict, which readers may access here.)

In addition, many of today’s college graduates are burdened by student loan debt unheard of in previous generations.  It’s one thing to wait out a recession, bohemian style, when not encumbered by heavy debt.  This comparative luxury is not available to those who leave school facing huge student loan payments every month.

No easy answers

If there were easy solutions, we’d be implementing them.  I believe that we need a jobs program that will put people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure, such as repairing our crumbling roads, bridges, and public buildings and creating a first-class rail system.  But that’s only part of it. We’re paying the price for a lot of sins and mistakes right now, and we cannot undo all that in a short period of time.

As unemployment benefits run dry, fear escalates

Nick Carey, reporting for Reuters,tells the story of Deborah Coleman of Cincinnati, whose unemployment benefits expired in April. Coleman is struggling to keep afloat, and she also fears for others without jobs if Congress does not vote to extend support payments to the unemployed:

“It’s too late for me now,” she said, fighting back tears at the Freestore Foodbank in the low-income Over-the-Rhine district near downtown Cincinnati. “But it will be terrible for the people who’ll lose their benefits if Congress does nothing.”

For nearly two years, Coleman says she has filed an average of 30 job applications a day, but remains jobless.

…Coleman, 58, a former manager at a telecommunications firm, said the only jobs she found were over the Ohio state line in Kentucky, but she cannot reach them because her car has been repossessed and there is no bus service to those areas.

…”I’ve lost everything and I don’t know what will happen to me,” she said.

Desperation, sadness, tragedy

These tragedies are playing out across the country — individual stories of careers, livelihoods, and lives derailed by the Great Recession. Most of the jobless are looking for work, while dearly hoping that Congress extends unemployment benefits. As the Boston Globe‘s Robert Gavin reports:

“The vast majority of unemployed are hard-pressed to find a job, and the risks of not passing the extensions are too great,’’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pa. “It could reignite the foreclosure crisis, and if the economy swamps again, there is no response.’’

In the meantime, those who have lost benefits are clinging to the hope that they’ll find new jobs while wondering how they’ll pay mortgages, keep food on the table, or send children to college.

Indeed, the individual stories in the Globe piece capture one of the most bracing realities of the Great Recession: How folks who had every reason to believe that a willingness to work would pay the bills are now in desperate straits.

If you’re in D.C. on Friday…

This Friday, the Americans for Democratic Education Fund (on whose board I sit), will host a Congressional Briefing, “Women, Unemployment and the Great Recession,” at which representatives from the Women and Girls Foundation and Women’s Voices, Women Vote will present findings from recently released reports. U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Chair of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee and newly-elected President of Americans for Democratic Action, will moderate the discussion. The event is free, and here’s the info:

Congressional Briefing: Women, Unemployment and the Great Recession

Date: Friday, July 16, 2010
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Rayburn House Office Building 2261

Please RSVP at (202)785-5980 or via email at megan@adaction.org or  hermin@adaction.org.

Is a day of reckoning coming for higher education?

Most parents of college-age children will attest to the skyrocketing expense of a college education.  The cost of a bachelor’s degree at a private college can run some $200,000. And for those who graduated from good ol’ State U back in the day, be prepared for sticker shock when you look at tuition levels and expenses for many publicly supported colleges.

Since the 1980s, two steady trends have been (1) continuous increases in tuition at rates beyond inflation; and (2) loans supplanting grants as the primary form of financial aid. Students are now leaving college with debt levels once reserved for graduates of professional school programs that promised high salaries in return.

Still and all, it has remained a gospel truth that earning a bachelor’s degree is worth it.

Not so fast

Francesca DiMeglio, writing for Business Week, reports on the magazine’s study of the economic value of a bachelor’s degree:

If there’s one truism that goes virtually unchallenged these days, it’s that a college degree has great value. . . . Over the course of a working life, college graduates earn more than high school graduates. Over the past decade, research estimates have pegged that figure at $900,00, $1.2 million, and $1.6 million.

But new research suggests that the monetary value of a college degree may be vastly overblown. According to a study conducted by PayScale for Bloomberg Businessweek,the value of a college degree may be a lot closer to $400,000 over 30 years and varies wildly from school to school.

To accompany its study, the magazine has developed a ranking study for colleges and universities based on tuition levels and graduate earnings.  The study concludes that:

the number of schools that actually make good on the estimates of the earlier research is vanishingly small. There are only 17 schools in the study whose graduates can expect to recoup the cost of their education and out-earn a high school graduate by $1.2 million, including four where they can do so to the tune of $1.6 million.

Is it all about earnings?

I’m not crazy about evaluating institutions of higher learning solely on how much their graduates earn.  A college degree should be about more than vocational clout and salary levels.  Degrees in the liberal arts, for example, may not translate into the highest paying jobs, especially in the years immediately following graduation, but they provide an exposure to important ideas and ways of thinking.

Nevertheless, college costs are out of control, and I can’t blame Business Week (or any other periodical or organization) for questioning the costs and benefits and evaluating whether future earnings justify the price tag.

A day of reckoning?

I doubt that we’ll see hundreds of thousands of high school graduates suddenly abandoning their college plans anytime soon. And plenty of adults will continue to return to school to finish up a degree.  However, the marketplace of higher education is headed for a crash. Rising college costs are starting to look a lot like the American health care system: The status quo is unsustainable.

It is anyone’s guess as to what this shakeout will look like, but unless existing colleges and universities get their act together quickly, the fallout will not be pretty for them.

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Go here for a related post, “Law schools and the legal job market.”