The Real Future of Work

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: January 7, 2018 at 3:01:16 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Real Future of Work
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend David Rosenthal.  DLH]
>
> The Real Future of Work
> Forget automation. The workplace is already cracking up in profound ways, and Washington is sorely behind on dealing 
> with it.
> By DANNY VINIK
> January/February 2018
> <https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/04/future-work-independent-contractors-alternative-work-arrangements-216212>
>
> In 2013, Diana Borland and 129 of her colleagues filed into an auditorium at the University of Pittsburgh Medical 
> Center. Borland had worked there for the past 13 years as a medical transcriptionist, typing up doctors’ audio 
> recordings into written reports. The hospital occasionally held meetings in the auditorium, so it seemed like any 
> other morning.
>
> The news she heard came as a shock: A UPMC representative stood in front of the group and told them their jobs were 
> being outsourced to a contractor in Massachusetts. The representative told them it wouldn’t be a big change, since 
> the contractor, Nuance Communications, would rehire them all for the exact same position and the same hourly pay. 
> There would just be a different name on their paychecks.
>
> Borland soon learned that this wasn’t quite true. Nuance would pay her the same hourly rate—but for only the first 
> three months. After that, she’d be paid according to her production, 6 cents for each line she transcribed. If she 
> and her co-workers passed up the new offer, they couldn’t collect unemployment insurance, so Borland took the deal. 
> But after the three-month transition period, her pay fell off a cliff. As a UPMC employee, she had earned $19 per 
> hour, enough to support a solidly middle-class life. Her first paycheck at the per-line rate worked out to just $6.36 
> per hour—below the minimum wage.
>
> “I thought they made a mistake,” she said. “But when I asked the company, they said, ‘That’s your paycheck.’”
>
> Borland quit not long after. At the time, she was 48, with four kids ranging in age from 9 to 24. She referred to 
> herself as retired and didn’t hold a job for the next two years. Her husband, a medical technician, told her that 
> “you need to be well for your kids and me.” But early retirement didn’t work out. The family struggled financially. 
> Two years ago, when the rival Allegheny General Hospital recruited her for a transcriptionist position, she took the 
> job. To this day, she remains furious about UPMC’s treatment of her and her colleagues.
>
> “The bottom line was UPMC was going to do what they were going to do,” she said. “They don’t care about what anybody 
> thinks or how it affects any family.” UPMC, reached by email, said the outsourcing was a way to save the 
> transcriptionists’ jobs as the demand for transcriptionists fell.
>
> It worked out for her former employer: In the four years since the outsourcing, UPMC’s net income has more than 
> doubled.
>
> What happened to Borland and her co-workers may not be as dramatic as being replaced by a robot, or having your job 
> exported to a customer service center in Bangalore. But it is part of a shift that may be even more historic and 
> important—and has been largely ignored by lawmakers in Washington. Over the past two decades, the U.S. labor market 
> has undergone a quiet transformation, as companies increasingly forgo full-time employees and fill positions with 
> independent contractors, on-call workers or temps—what economists have called “alternative work arrangements” or the 
> “contingent workforce.” Most Americans still work in traditional jobs, but these new arrangements are growing—and the 
> pace appears to be picking up. From 2005 to 2015, according to the best available estimate, the number of people in 
> alternative work arrangements grew by 9 million and now represents roughly 16 percent of all U.S. workers, while the 
> number of traditional employees declined by 400,000. A perhaps more striking way to put it is that during those 10 
> years, all net job growth in the American economy has been in contingent jobs.
>
> Around Washington, politicians often talk about this shift in terms of the so-called gig economy. But those startling 
> numbers have little to do with the rise of Uber, TaskRabbit and other “disruptive” new-economy startups. Such firms 
> actually make up a small share of the contingent workforce. The shift that came for Borland is part of something much 
> deeper and longer, touching everything from janitors and housekeepers to lawyers and professors.
>
> “This problem is not new,” said Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the few lawmakers who has proposed a 
> comprehensive plan on federal labor law reform. “But it’s being talked about as if it’s new.”
>
> The repercussions go far beyond the wages and hours of individuals. In America, more than any other developed 
> country, jobs are the basis for a whole suite of social guarantees meant to ensure a stable life. Workplace 
> protections like the minimum wage and overtime, as well as key benefits like health insurance and pensions, are built 
> on the basic assumption of a full-time job with an employer. As that relationship crumbles, millions of hardworking 
> Americans find themselves ejected from that implicit pact. For many employees, their new status as “independent 
> contractor” gives them no guarantee of earning the minimum wage or health insurance. For Borland, a new full-time job 
> left her in the same chair but without a livable income.
>
> [snip]
>
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