Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 29, 1994 TAG: 9408020072
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Millions of Americans with full-time jobs are working more hours than they would like to be, while millions of others would like to be working more hours than they are.
Among the former are those who're finding that unwanted overtime, formally recognized or not, is becoming more the rule than the exception. Among the latter are those - young people trying to enter the job market, older victims of corporate "downsizing" - who're finding that full-time employment commensurate with their qualifications is very hard to get.
This looks like a problem with the solution staring it in the face. Let the underemployed pick up some of the load from the overemployed.
In practice, however, little has been done with this notion of the "shared economy." It's as if the 40-hour (or plus) workweek were sacred, and that official unemployment rates of more than 5 percent were inevitable.
Yet for much of this nation's history, a steadily shortening workweek was a commonplace trend. And in the not-too-distant past, full employment was thought a reasonable goal, and an unemployment rate of more than 2 or 3 percent a matter for concern. For employers as well as employees, there was reason to favor the shared-economy approach: Paying a fresh worker straight time was more cost-effective than paying a tired worker overtime.
This is no longer true, or at least not as true as it once was. In part, this may reflect economic changes: The relative decline of manufacturing and rise of service industries; increased competitiveness of markets for U.S. goods and services; automating technology. Faced with economic uncertainty and plagued by declining strength, organized labor in America went on the defensive, concentrating on protection of the sometimes obsolete jobs of its aging members. Managers grew reluctant to enlarge permanent payrolls, preferring to pay overtime or take on temporary employees when necessitated by work demands.
But public policy has also contributed to the problem, and changes in public policy can help make the hiring of new, permanent, full-time workers less expensive for employers.
For starters, the public schools must provide more young people with the skills to make them employable. The better-trained (or more quickly trainable) are new workers, the lower is one cost of hiring them.
Beyond that, the per-worker cost to employers of paying benefits must be brought under control. That may mean changes in Social Security and pensions laws. It almost certainly implies that health-care reform must include provisions for universal coverage. And if such coverage is to come via employer mandates rather than a Canada-like single-payer (i.e., the government) system, then the reform must avoid penalizing those businesses that hire new full-time employees as opposed to those relying on part-time workers or overtime to meet their labor needs.
The idea of the shared economy shouldn't be regarded as impractical dreaming. All manner of social ills - crime, poverty, dependence on welfare - are linked to the availability, or lack thereof, of good jobs. The quality of America's economic future is linked to the productivity of all its potential work force. The charge of impracticality is better laid at the feet of those who dismiss or ignore the need to find a better balance between too much work and too little.
by CNB