Clyde Wilson 1993 Published in: Northwest Technocrat Newsletter, Nov/Dec 1993, No. 119
The downsizing and the lean and mean look is taking its toll among the once permanent white-collar workers. Drake Beam Morin, who recently released a study of the trend, predicts that 3.1 million white-collar employees will get the pink slip this year, more than the 3 million last year, the 2.6 million in 1991 or the 2.2 million in 1990.
According to studies by Harvard University professor, James L. Medoff, those white-collar workers who are fortunate in finding another job after being terminated will, for the most part, wind up making less money than before.
Even the brightest in college will have a hard time being hired during this economic transformation. “More and more people are realizing they are going to have to fend for themselves”, stated David Speights, editor of a Silver Springs, MD newsletter called American Marketplace.
It has become a fact of life that there is no such thing as job security or permanency under the present economic system; boosting profits is the name of the game and the people have always been pawns to be moved around in the process. This nation with its present resources and industrial capacity, provided it eliminates its parasitic pursuits and super financial structure, could substantially reduce the hours a person has to work and at the same time provide a high quality standard of living for every American. Basing purchasing power on the man-hours a person works or a jobs per se in this technological age has become an anachronism.