Something about the hows and the whys that the 'Meritocracy' has eaten its children - reminding that: that acquired-taste seeks even More. When does a Gourmand become a Glutton?

On Cambridge forum Sun. There's a [link|http://www.technorati.com/tags/podcast| podcast] and a range of eclectic material (incl. re The Beast) at [link|http://burksselect.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_burksselect_archive.html| Burks' Selections].

Also this [link|http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/09/barbara_ehrenreich.html| Mother Jones] interview.

In her latest book, Barbara Ehrenreich trades her Wal-Mart vest for a business suit. After exploring the world of dead-end minimum wage jobs in Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich has set her sights higher on the career ladder in Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, this time aiming to infiltrate the corner offices and listen in on the water cooler conversations of corporate America.

Her plan seemed attainable enough: get a top-notch career coach, sell herself to a range of companies, land a PR job with benefits, then reveal the dirty underside of the corporate world in her usual provocative fashion. Using her maiden name and a fake (but realistic) resume, Ehrenreich began drafting cover letters and posting her profile on Internet job sites. She attended career fairs in multiple cities, networked with job seekers and employers at churches and restaurants, and offered her services to dozens of companies. She hired two career coaches to guide her and underwent personality counseling. She even signed up for a \ufffdboot camp,\ufffd where coaches instructed her how to cover-up the \ufffdgap\ufffd on her resume, develop a three-minute personal \ufffdpitch\ufffd to beguile potential contacts in the elevator, and adopt a \ufffdwinning attitude.\ufffd

The only problem was, after ten months, thousands of dollars, and hours of exhaustive efforts, she never found a job. In the end, she was offered two commission-based positions, one selling car insurance, the other selling cosmetics, and neither offering benefits or a high enough salary to land her in the middle class. Ehrenreich couldn\ufffdt help but begin to take the rejection personally. Her commiserations with other increasingly desperate job seekers only added to her bitterness, and fueled her ideas on what\ufffds to be done. While most of her criticism is aimed at the companies that suck the life from their employees before firing them, she also issues a call for action to the unemployed to rise up and organize. \ufffdNo group is better situated,\ufffd she writes, \ufffdor perhaps better motivated, to lead the defense of the middle class than the unemployed.\ufffd

MotherJones recently spoke with Ehrenreich about her experience among the ranks of the white-collar unemployed.

Mother Jones: How did you conceive of the idea to research and write a book about the white-collar workforce?

Barbara Ehrenreich: The impetus came out of Nickel and Dimed. I get a lot of letters from people who are having major financial problems and it just began to strike me that many of them had college degrees, master\ufffds degrees, and good, corporate jobs. But they lost a job at some point and never quite pulled themselves out of it. I became very curious about what\ufffds going on in corporate America and what happens to these people. What happens when you lose a job? How do you go about trying to find one? And once I began to realize just how common these firings and layoffs are, I began wondering, why isn\ufffdt there more protest?

MJ: What were some of the things that you discovered during your job search that you felt people should be speaking out about?

BE: One is how common it is to be fired or laid off within corporate America. A number of people that I talked to seemed to have been doing very well when they were laid off. They had been praised; they had been promoted. If you\ufffdve just been given a laudatory evaluation of your performance and then a week later you\ufffdre fired, what\ufffds that about? That itself is disturbing. It creates a lot of anger and emotional hardship. People may become quite depressed. The psychological trauma of losing a job can be as great as the trauma of a divorce.

Then once you do lose a job, in whatever arbitrary fashion, there are not a lot of social supports for you. Our unemployment insurance benefits only last for 6 months now; it used to be 15 months. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. Some people may have money saved to deal with a situation like this, but it doesn\ufffdt last forever. And that\ufffds when you get into selling the house. Or, you turn to your parents. You think that parents might be the people who need help, but in our culture, it\ufffds the older people who are increasingly propping up the generation of people in their 30s and 40s.

MJ: Why do you think that is? What is it about today\ufffds economy that limits the opportunities available to younger generations?

BE: Well, the whole nature of corporate employment has changed very dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years. Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable. A research group found that 56 percent of major companies surveyed in the late \ufffd80s agreed that \ufffdemployees who are loyal to the company and further its business goals deserve an assurance of continued employment.\ufffd A decade later only 6 percent agreed. It was in the \ufffd90s that companies started weeding people out as a form of cost reduction. That\ufffds why the person who achieves more may be the most vulnerable to a layoff because he or she is now making enough money to look like a tempting target for cost cutters. One person recently told me about a boss saying to one of his employees, \ufffdYou don\ufffdt want a raise; it\ufffds like painting a target on your back.\ufffd

MJ: Do you think that what\ufffds happening with the economy has been a natural consequence of globalization? Or do you think the government is somehow responsible for the evolution of harsher corporate policies?

BE: I think the big thing has been the failure of government to step in and provide some kind of cushion or social support for people who are being churned out of this increasingly jungle-like situation in corporate America. There\ufffds no buffer, there\ufffds nothing much that helps you beyond unemployment compensation and that doesn\ufffdt pay much, as I said before, that\ufffds limited to six months.

MJ: At the beginning of the project, you hired several career coaches to help you design your resume and guide you in your search. What are your overall thoughts about job coaching?

BE: A lot of what was going on with my coaches was a complete and utter waste of time. First, they all want to do a personality test. My first thought was, \ufffdI already told you I\ufffdm a P.R. person, that\ufffds what I do. So what if I have the personality of an embalmer?\ufffd In 1993, 89 of the Fortune top 100 companies were administering the Myers-Briggs test to their employees. The philosophy behind personality tests is that they don\ufffdt want you to be in the wrong kind of job. The tests have been completely exposed as nonsense. People take the test in the morning and then take it again in the afternoon and have a new personality. There\ufffds a wonderful recent book, Cult of Personality by Annie Murphy Paul, who just goes through how it\ufffds ridiculous.

MJ: Do you think that job coaching is an element of the current job market that\ufffds going to fade out as times change?

BE: The thing is, whether it works or not is not what determines whether it fades out or not. It\ufffds something that builds on anxiety, and as long as you have anxiety, people will look anywhere for solutions.

[More ...]

She picks the early '90s as the point where employees ceased to be considered valued assets of The Corporation; became: expenses .^.. liabilities .^.. a target for increased Efficiency (That marvelous Market-Will-Correct! doxology) -- profit for 3% via decimation of the proles. This behavior was applauded by Wall Street, (thus became as popular as a new TLA like Growing-the-Enterprise cha cha cha. My phrasing, natch.)

A theme: "The people in power are not responsible. And where that is the case - it is the responsibility of people to take the power."

While she did not mention Ronnie specifically (though.. "greed is Good" came up in the questions) she did mention \ufffdChainsaw\ufffd Al Dunlap with the others piling on, cutting 'costs' as CIEIO salaries rose exponentially to -?- find a place for all those savings? (my query, not hers.) This-all started well before the current facile excuses, World-is-Flat and similar ilk.

Condensed, she asserts that she found:

1) Experience and qualifications rate low (<10% in interviews)
Also - any experience listed beyond 10 years is a distinct liability!

2) Personality, attitude -- the emotional response of interviewer is the remaining 90% of an 'evaluation'. And the Right Clothes, makeup, make-over.

Reports the necessity of dumbing down a resum\ufffd - to be hired at all; hey, it ain't just IT where you go to work for bosses who are custom-tailored not-to-Know-shit.
{is that any consolation?}

She concludes: How Do They Get Anything Done?
(Does not go into material examining the 'things' that Are called 'done'. And how much of that is Beast-grade deranged stuff.)

(Meta-conclusion: Time to organize for some new bizness rulez..)
or The Revolution? -- as the Two-Class corporatocracy fortifies its lock on a deranged society's assets. She said part of that..



Pity.. seems there's nobody out there lauding biz-talk in '06 except the Suits at the top, (and the usual Econ theorist-toadies) who define Success as: Theirs.
He who defines the words ... gets to start warz on a caprice / keep all the Wealth of Nations\ufffd and explain, Nigata ga nai: It Can't Be Helped. cha