"This book is a tretise on the changing demographics of the American workforce and how corporations should work to alter job patterns on order to adapt to evolving employment trends. The authors first cite statistics to show the lack of growth in pay, benefits, and positions for the lowest-skilled workers. Despite the technological and economic growth since World War II, the majority of manufacturing jobs remain low paying and provide few prospects for future growth. According to these workers will improve without changes in these jobs. Among the strategies the authors advise: raising the...

In recent years, much attention has focused on the growth of nonstandard and contingent employment (including part-time work) which involves up to 30 percent of the total U.S. labor force. There is little agreement on either the causes or the effects of this trend. Some researchers emphasize the advantages: employees may explore the job market and obtain work that does not necessarily involve rigid schedules, while employers enjoy greater flexibility and lower costs. Others point to the disadvantages for employees, such as lack of job security, fewer benefits and chances for promotion, and...

Three quarters of the American workforce is now employed in services, a substantial portion in low-paying, dead-end jobs. Can the service economy do as well by the American worker as the old manufacturing economy? Can the widely shared prosperity that accompanied steady increases in productivity and performance in manufacturing be replicated in the services? They can and they will, the authors of this text contend, but only if outmoded policies and practices are brought into line with the new economy. The book explains why this must be accomplished and how the US can start.