The recent strikes at Starbucks and Amazon warehouses highlight a deeper issue: the fundamental breakdown of work conditions in the United States. The text explores how unpredictable scheduling, lack of social mobility, and the erosion of a fair work-life balance are affecting Americans across various industries.
Chances are slim that the dual strikes at Starbucks stores and Amazon warehouses around the country disrupted your holiday season. By most accounts, packages arrived on schedule, while consumers jonesing for Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espressos almost certainly managed to find sugar and succor elsewhere. Still, the issues at the heart of the strikes offer a way into understanding how fundamentally broken the terms of work are in the United States.
Whether you log shifts behind a counter, work a classroom or factory floor or sit at a desk, the current battles over opportunity have not only ensnared more Americans than ever, but have undercut the social mobility that was once essential to America’s concept of itself. In 2023, an economic opportunity poll by Gallup found that 39% of Americans believed that they were failing to get ahead despite working hard. That figure in 2002: 23%. The failure of hard work to pay off in America makes our communities wobbly, our faith weak, our lives lonely, our politics toxic and our relationship with work masochistic and unsustainable. In lobbying for a higher quality of life, for example, one of the top grievances raised by striking Starbucks workers was unpredictable scheduling, a popular practice in which employers don’t set worker schedules more than a few days (or even hours) in advance. “Employees in lower-wage industries are increasingly at the mercy of scheduling algorithms designed to maximize efficiency and minimize labor costs,” Rebecca Plevin noted last year. “When staffing doesn’t match expected customer demand, workers might be called in at the last minute or sent home early.” Anyone with email on their phone knows how work can bleed into off-hours, but for those working second or third jobs, enrolled in training, college or certification courses, providing steady childcare or simply hoping to spend time with family or friends, a lack of predictable hours makes the basic patterns of life errati
LABOR STRIKES WORK CONDITIONS SOCIAL MOBILITY UNPREDICTABLE SCHEDULING AMERICAN ECONOMY
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