If you've read even one evening newspaper or watched just one network news broadcast recently, you've likely heard this phrase intoned: "America's middle class is under attack".
Now, I generally don't watch network news (and certainly NOT cable news) but even I know that much hyperbole is used by news readers today.
But, in the case of the above phrase, I must stay that television and newspaper commentators are for once possibly understating the reality here.
Any economic expert will cerify that that two features of our society in the past 50 years most dramactically encouraged the robust growth of a strong middle class:
1. Greatly expanded college enrollments.
2. Union membership.
For any of us with children either currently in college or recently graduated, it is appalling to realize that our "typical" college graduate today is walking away with more than $15,000 of college debt.
Faced with a decade or more of college repayment, fewer and fewer college graduates in their late twenties have the financial capability to raise the downpayment to buy even a starter house.
Why does this matter? Because home ownership has been the foundation of entering the "middle class" in America for all of the post-war period to date.
For young Americans who choose not to attend college, there has been the alternative of well paid factory work, often as part of an union workforce.
As an entrepreneurical coach and member of my local workforce development agency, I have first hand experience of what has been happening in the job market for the past decade or more - no real growth in income for non-union corporate workers.
What I have been observing is a sobering truth - workers not represented by unions have been falling behind economically for years - slowly edging their way out of the bottom end of the middle class.
Now, I'm the first to verify the assertion that some union contracts call for wage and benefit provisions that are no longer sustainable in an America that has lost millions of manufacturing and service jobs to foreign competitors.
And so I favor renegotiation of many union contracts to require greater contribution of union members to their pension and insurance plans, just like the public employees union in Wisconsin has publicly declared their willingness to do.
But, what I do not support is the effective dismantling of the right to collective bargaining.
It is only because of collective bargaining agreements that any worker in the U.S. is seeing any increase in their income.
Let me close by proposing a thought.
Most large corporate CEOs today work under generous and rigorously enforced employment contracts, often negotiated for them by corporate recruiting firms.
If a CEO works under a negotiated employment contract, that is next to impossible to change and got this arrangment via the involvement of an outside negotiator, then one can conceivably describe CEOs as working under "collective bargaining agreements".
But, do you read about any Congressman or woman suggesting that we take this right away from CEOs?
Till we speak again...
Jeff Williams
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think it is my duty to share the experience I had with Jeff Williams from Bizstarters.com and his book “Earn Big”. I will try not to make any judgement; I will just put the facts on the table and leave it up to the readers to make their own judgement.
ReplyDeleteLast December I read a reference about Jeff’s e-Book “Earn Big” in a Start Up community similar to this one and clicked on the link to find out more about it. In his site (www.bizstarters.com), Jeff says that, with this book you will “Learn 175 ways to turn your knowledge and experience into a great business. Guaranteed!”. Sounds like a magical formula as many others you find out there to which I don’t normally give much credit. Additionally, it was a quite an expensive purchase, US$ 49, especially for an e-Book (it is now being marketed for US$ 19 – a 60% drop in two months!). But, as the site had a “100% satisfaction guarantee or your money back” statement, I decided to have a look, bought and downloaded it. The book has 45 pages, of which 28 are tables with blank spaces to be filled-in. It has a total of 7,165 words and 38K characters. As one can see, quite a hollow document, especially for the price. Anyway, I read it in its entirety in a mere one hour, including filling in the questionnaires and, at the end, I confirmed that, as feared, what I found was not exactly what I was looking for and it did not add much to my knowledge or my ability to create a new business.
Not to worry, I said to myself, I will write back to them, thank for the opportunity for having had a look into their book, explain it was not to my satisfaction and request the refund. Which I did.
On December 4th Jeff Williams himself answered to my email saying that my credit card would be credited “in the next couple of days”. In the same e-mail he offered to arrange a short chat with me to discuss my business ideas, for free. I found it, at the same time nice and strange but, again, as it was offered for free, I decided to give him a credit and have a go. In reply on December 6th, he said that, as I was located in the UK, instead of a chat, he proposed that I put my ideas down in an e-mail and promised to reply back to me with his “appraisal, with usually includes some thought-provoking questions” in a couple of days. I then took time to write him a comprehensive view of my ideas, without going into too much detail which could give away some competitive details.
After a month without any reply from them about the refund and the offered appraisal, I wrote back to him on January 4th asking what the situation was. Jeff replied on the next day saying that he could not offer any appraisal on my ideas because they didn’t have much detail. One can wonder why someone would offer free appraisals for business ideas that need to be described in detail. He also said in this email that he would have another look at the refund question.
Another month passed without any news from him or about the refund. On January 25th I wrote a more assertive email giving him 72 hours to process the refund or run the risk of further actions I could take to pursue my rights. Only then he offered to expedite the refund but not without saying that I should “pat yourself on the back for being the first one in browbeating us into doing it”.
I leave any judgement up to you.