We Will Become A Nation Of Temp And Contingency Jobs Under The GOP/Business Allies.

[TheMastersNemesis]

Unless workers start to kick back and put pro worker politicians in office we will become a nation of mostly temporary, part time and contingency jobs. Under the radar jobs are becoming more part time, privatized, contracted and temporary. The media will not cover these changes. Government statistics inadequately show these structural changes.

And since Reagan a lot of key labor reports have disappeared. Most employment indicators are quite ambiguous. A large number of jobs no longer have significant benefits and labor reports do NOT reflect those losses in job values over the last 35 years.

The Democrats have not been able to reverse these trends. And overwhelming money since Citizens' United has kept progressive agendas off the table.

[RKP5637]

1. Exactly what is occurring. I hope more and more Americans wake up to WTF is happening

in this country. It's damn nasty and it's growing!

[hifiguy]

2. Kick and Rec for TRUTH!

[Hoyt]

3. It's been going on for quite awhile in some industries. I don't think

it will change, although government should have safety nets that protect workers short-term, and help provide new training for new jobs and kills.

Working in the same job for decades is long gone for most.

[TheMastersNemesis]

5. There Are Not Enough Jobs To Go Around

The only way a person makes it economically over a life time is a labor market that provides "continuity of employment and continuity of income over a long period of time". That means have even decades of employment with the same employer or in the same or similar industries.

Constant retraining and job changes are a loser for most workers. The older you get the harder it is to train and retrain as you income needs grow with the raising of families and other expenses like homes, periodic illness etc. And paying for it yourself is nearly impossible. Also maintaining an income stream while in training or school is pretty much a lost cause.

The whole new business labor model is suicidal bullshit for workers. It never has worked and never will work. Until workers wake up and demand better nothing will change. Conservatives bitch about planned economies of communism. The planned economy is even worse.

Where we need to go is to demand the same "workers bill of rights" FDR proposed in 1947 and Teddy Roosevelt first espoused in 1912. The kind of economic model they supported is the only way to restore any semblance of a middle class.

The job creation for what it is worth now is not worth "spit". Obama cannot change it. Only voters and workers can change things by voting in more socialistic politicians who support collective bargaining and employer regulation.

[Hoyt]

12. This is not 1912 or 1947. The world is different.

The government can't change that, but they can help workers deal with the new world.

[SamKnause]

4. Maybe you should inform the Democratic president.

He signed Free Trade Deals with Panama, South Korea (we have already lost 60,000 jobs) and Colombia (the country known for killing labor activists and union organizers).

Now the Democratic president is pushing for fast track for the TPP.

It does no one any good to pretend the Democratic party is not just as responsible for the off shoring of jobs and dismal wages in this country.

Democratic Bill Clinton signed NAFTA.

Neither party is on the side of the working class.

They are on the side of the 1%.

[TheMastersNemesis]

6. I Agree. Do Not Understand Why Obama Supports The TPP Crap.

It is hypocritical to support "middle class" economics when your actions are more super trickle down economics. And I kind of wonder if he really is in control. What would happen if he went radical and decided to trash TPP and stay adamant about it? I sometimes wonder if there are other powers that be that would not allow that to happen.

I think about what happened to the Kennedy's, MLK and other super progressive very pro worker politicians. We have even more powerful forces today at work. I look at how ruthless things got with the Occupy movement. They were shut down very severely and laws were passed to make protest nearly impossible. So you wonder.

[SamKnause]

9. NYC

is starting a police unit with 350 officers.

They will be armed with machine guns and special body armor.

They will be dispatched for protest and terrorists attacks.

Imagine protesters being in the same group as terrorists.

20 governors shut down Occupy Wall Street thanks to the Department of 'Homeland Security'.

The United States is a police state.

Free speech zones.

Permits for protests.

It truly is sickening and frightening.

[hifiguy]

11. Wall $treet wants it.

And Wall $treet financed his campaigns. Do the math.

[bvar22]

7. Hillary won't change anything.

She helped write the TPP.

[SamKnause]

8. Exactly.

I will not vote for her.

She is a warmonger and she is BFF with Wall Street.

[bvar22]

13. President OBama KNOWS that "Free Trade" has destroyed America's Working Class.

Korean Free Trade Deal devastating for US Workers

What happened to the 70,000 jobs that the Korea Free Trade deal was supposed to create? They never materialized. Instead, U.S. workers lost 40,000 jobs in the first year of the agreement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-cohen/koreaus-free-trade-agreem_b_4965492.html

[appalachiablue]

15. +10. More & more I read of people working on projects, not having a job or real career.

It's the Uber job model some say for the newer taxi co. How long can people hop from one project to the next, w/o much stability or security for housing, marriage, family & community? This also gets into itinerant type work. I know that colleges rotate adjunct staff, teaching assts. to several locations & that nurses are also moved around quite a lot sometimes. Now there's a GD post on another teacher's resignation & comments how that profession is disappearing. The Media says nothing of this, same with govt.

[KingCharlemagne]

10. In August 2013, antropologist David Graeber published an essay that has stuck with me

ever since. Graeber is probably most famous as one of the anarchist eminence grises behind the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, but this essay (and its coinage of 'bullshit jobs') bears reading by all on DU who follow the issues you've outlined:

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Graeber's voice is one definitely worth listening to, right up there with Chris Hedges and Charles Pierce, imo.

[AZ Progressive]

14. Actually, the future is the increased scarcity of jobs because technology will eliminate them