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

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

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

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

by Rick Wartzman

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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.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize in current interestA best business book of the year in economics, Strategy+Business

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781586489151
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication date: 05/30/2017
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
File size: 15 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Rick Wartzman is director of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society at the Drucker Institute, a part of Claremont Graduate University. He also writes about the world of work for Fortune magazine online. Before joining the Drucker Institute in 2007 as its founding executive director, Rick worked for two decades as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. While business editor of the Times, he helped shape a three-part series on Wal-Mart's impact on the economy and society, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Part I The Golden Age

1 The Scramble for 58 Million Jobs 11

2 Take This job and Love It 43

3 The Making of Industrial Peace 73

4 Smug Nation 105

5 Strains Beneath the Surface 129

Part II Turbulent Times

6 White Male Wanted 161

7 The Unraveling 191

8 Going Backward 227

Part III The Era of Shareholder Supremacy

9 Living and Dying by the Numbers 257

10 The Betrayal 289

11 The New Face of Capitalism 329

Acknowledgments 365

A Note on Citations and Sourcing 367

Bibliography 369

Credits and Permissions 393

Index 395

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