Friday, March 02, 2007

Temporary workers and baby boomers

As someone who has been in a casualized work environment almost all my career, I have to agree with this article. The article is about much less privileged people than those I have worked with but this kind of casualization is now endemic at all levels of our economy. I chose to be a freelance, but many don`t. The cost is not only in generally poorer terms and conditions but also in the huge opportunity costs of not being able to plan, put down financial roots, get mortgages etc..

I`m going to go off on one now: Those damn baby boomers talked some big stuff when they were on the threshold of their adult lives and then - apart from their multifarious other disasters and murderous misadventures - oversaw the destruction of the basic employment rights and bargaining structures that older generations had worked hard to achieve. It is not a left/right thing. Many of us have been in places where younger workers had to cover for sabbatical taking old radicals on permanent contracts and had to listen to their tales of the good old days when they were on strike and they irresponsibly destroyed collective bargaining trying to add one more enhancement to their ridiculously comfortable contracts. Or so it seemed to us. Oh, and then there were the managers who would, if it was up to them, give "you young people a better deal" but "it is out of my hands, that just isn`t the way it is done any more." ("But just keep paying my pension when I am gone, will you?")

No comments: