The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America

by Rick Wartzman Narrated by Rick Wartzman

Overview

Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore.

In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers. Through the stories of four major employers--General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola--he shows how big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits. At the height of the post-World War II economy, these companies also believed that worker pay needed to be kept high in order to preserve morale and keep the economy humming. Productivity boomed.

But the corporate social contract didn't last. By tracing the ups and downs of these four corporate icons over seventy years, Wartzman illustrates just how much has been lost: job security and steadily rising pay, guaranteed pensions, robust health benefits, and much more. Charting the Golden Age of the '50s and '60s; the turbulent years of the '70s and '80s; and the growth of downsizing, outsourcing, and instability in the modern era, Wartzman's narrative is a biography of the American Dream gone sideways.

Deeply researched and compelling, The End of Loyalty will make you rethink how Americans can begin to resurrect the middle class.

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile

The author’s narration falls just short of being too earnest—there’s enough pathos in the story itself. But his sincerity and command of his phrasing make this an excellent way to learn about why the traditional contract between workers and employers has changed. With his 15 years writing for the WALL STREET JOURNAL evident throughout, Wartzman explains that employees became disposable when stockholder value became more important than a corporation’s desire to contribute to society and maintain trust with its workers. He chronicles the changes as they played out in four iconic American companies, drawing enough colorful portraits along the way to make this story more human than ideological. The depth of his historical knowledge and the strength of his arguments for rebalancing the situation make this a compelling audio for good citizens and political junkies alike. T.W. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

03/20/2017
Wartzman, a senior advisor at the Drucker Institute, documents the deterioration of company-employee loyalty at some of America’s corporate giants in this insightful economic history. Identifying the “great American dream” as having a “good job”—a dream that’s increasingly precarious—he notes driving for Uber as a perfect example of many jobs in the U.S. today that involve no real, long-term commitment between employer and employee. He cites dismal statistics about many Americans being unprepared for retirement due to low pay, poor pension benefits, and increased medical costs, all while corporate earnings climb to historic highs. In order to understand how this came to pass, he examines four companies—General Electric, General Motors, Kodak, and Coca-Cola—over the past 70 years. He identifies a combination of factors as responsible for weakening the corporate social compact: globalization, company-wide spates of downsizing, ineffective unions, and more. Perhaps most significant is the elevation of shareholders over employees.This impeccably written treatise asserts that it’s imperative for Americans to “share our prosperity more broadly once again” and reinstitute a stronger social contract between corporate executives and the workers who make a company successful. Agent: Kris Dahl, ICM. (June)

From the Publisher

"Rick Wartzman is one of America's finest journalists and this book reminds us why. The End of Loyalty is the story of an idea-that companies and workers are bound not just by formal agreements, but by a deeper social contract. With a historian's sweep and a novelist's eye for detail, Wartzman shows how that contract unraveled and what its demise means for all of us. This is a book people will be reading for many years to understand the American experience."—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive, A Whole New Mind, and To Sell Is Human

"The End of Loyalty is the rich story of how the corporate bonds that were once essential to American life have fractured. It's a prescient book that helps explain the rise of Donald Trump and why so many people feel anger and an acute sense of loss."—Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times

"The End of Loyalty tells a story that needs to be told. Rick Wartzman vividly describes a world in which corporate leaders believed that good business meant generating value for their employees as well as their shareholders, an old-fashioned attitude whose time may come again. It's a great book."—Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of New America and author of Unfinished Business

"In a lucid economic history of the last seventy-five years, Rick Wartzman's The End of Loyalty convincingly argues that the economic angst and political turbulence of our moment are linked to the collapse of a corporate social contract that guided American economic life for much of the twentieth century. While Wartzman places much of the blame for this problem on business and a growing obsession with profit, he challenges all of us-liberals and conservatives, CEOs and union members-to imagine what a new social contract might look like."—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart and Why the Right Went Wrong

"A timely and urgent book. Meticulously written and impressively researched, Rick Wartzman's The End of Loyalty is a penetrating account of the end of the golden years of American capitalism and the unraveling of the social contract. This book will be required reading for anyone hoping to understand our current age of anxiety."—Greg Grandin, author of Kissinger's Shadow and Fordlandia

"Wartzman, a senior advisor at the Drucker Institute, documents the deterioration of company-employee loyalty at some of America's corporate giants in this insightful economic history...This impeccably written treatise asserts that it's imperative for Americans to 'share our prosperity more broadly once again' and reinstitute a stronger social contract between corporate executives and the workers who make a company successful."—Publishers Weekly

"Wartzman, senior advisor at the Drucker Institute, explores what could be the defining questions of the twenty-first century-where we were, where we are, and where we are headed in terms of jobs and the nature of corporate America in all its bitter reality. His research is excellent and even-handed... Essential reading for those who have ever worried about their jobs."—Booklist

"A sharp-edged examination of why large American employers shifted from loyalty to their workers to loyalty focused primarily on stockholders. Through deep reporting and anecdotal storytelling, former Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times writer and editor Wartzman delineates the often shameful evolution of policies by concentrating on four of the biggest corporations in the world: Coca-Cola, Kodak, General Motors, and General Electric... A lively history with relevance to every worker."—Kirkus

"The changing relationship between large American corporations and their workers in the 20th century provides the basis for this thoughtful and enlightening volume by Wartzman... Highly recommended for general readers and those interested in labor-management issues."—Library Journal

"A brilliant, rogue history of American business's transformation over the past 75 years."—Forbes

Library Journal

04/01/2017
The changing relationship between large American corporations and their workers in the 20th century provides the basis for this thoughtful and enlightening volume by Wartzman (senior advisor, Drucker Inst.). Focusing on four large corporations, including General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola, the author examines how both workers and employers mutually developed what he calls a "social contract" that by midcentury had provided a reliable, stable workforce for companies who by then were prospering as never before in the post-World War II economy. In return, workers gained security, solid wages, and excellent benefits. As Wartzman shows, this balance was reached with some difficulty in the years of large-scale unionization marked by often-bitter strikes during the Great Depression. This mutually beneficial relationship between workers and managers became strained within a decade. The remainder of the 20th century saw significant changes that weakened the positions of companies and their employees and virtually eliminated the mutually beneficial contract. Corporations faced technological change, new forms of competition, and restructuring. Workers experienced the effects of these forces in a way that distanced them from their employers and often eliminated their bargaining strength. VERDICT Highly recommended for general readers and those interested in labor-management issues.—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile

The author’s narration falls just short of being too earnest—there’s enough pathos in the story itself. But his sincerity and command of his phrasing make this an excellent way to learn about why the traditional contract between workers and employers has changed. With his 15 years writing for the WALL STREET JOURNAL evident throughout, Wartzman explains that employees became disposable when stockholder value became more important than a corporation’s desire to contribute to society and maintain trust with its workers. He chronicles the changes as they played out in four iconic American companies, drawing enough colorful portraits along the way to make this story more human than ideological. The depth of his historical knowledge and the strength of his arguments for rebalancing the situation make this a compelling audio for good citizens and political junkies alike. T.W. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-03-12
A sharp-edged examination of why large American employers shifted from loyalty to their workers to loyalty focused primarily on stockholders.Through deep reporting and anecdotal storytelling, former Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times writer and editor Wartzman (What Would Drucker Do Now?: Solutions to Today's Toughest Challenges from the Father of Modern Management, 2011, etc.), a senior adviser at the Drucker Institute, delineates the often shameful evolution of policies by concentrating on four of the biggest corporations in the world: Coca-Cola, Kodak, General Motors, and General Electric. The contrast between relatively beneficial employee-employer relations during the 1950s and today's lopsided relationship hangs over the lengthy narrative. The author pinpoints the rise and gradual decline of large labor unions within American industry as one of the major causes of employers cutting benefits for some workers and firing others. Wartzman wisely emphasizes how judges favoring corporate rights also played a significant role; he cites a 1998 federal appeals court ruling that, as an employee-oriented lawyer said, "decided that American industry no longer needed to keep its promises." Many of those broken promises involved reducing or eliminating pension funds and subsidized health insurance, leaving both current and retired employees desperate to find alternatives, often without success. In the meantime, high-level corporate executives increased their own pay and benefits, usually without objections from shareholders. At the close of the book, Wartzman devotes space to his well-informed opinion that the social contract between employers and employees may never be reconstructed, due to consistent emphasis on maximizing profits, the globalization of production, advances in technology, and the demise of counterbalancing labor unions. Wartzman suggests government intervention would be needed to repair the imbalances, including policies that could revive labor union organizing, make remaining benefits portable from job to job, crack down on wage theft by employers, and more.A lively history with relevance to every worker.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173574305
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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