Part 7 (1/2)

It must be said that many of Microsoft's high-tech freelancers are hardly defenseless victims of Bill Gates's payroll concoctions, but are freelancers by choice. Like many contractors, the ”software gypsies,” as high-tech freelancers are sometimes called, have made a conscious decision to put independence and mobility before inst.i.tutional loyalty and security. Some of them are even what Tom Peters likes to call a ”Brand Called You.”

Tom Peters's latest management-guru idea is that just as companies must reach branding nirvana by learning to let go of manufacturing and employment, so must individual workers empower themselves by abandoning the idea of being employees. According to this logic, if we are to be successful in the new economy, all of us must self-incorporate into our very own brand-a Brand Called You. Success in the job market will only come when we retrofit ourselves as consultants and service providers, identify our own Brand You equities and lease ourselves out to targeted projects that will in turn increase our individual portfolio of ”braggables.” ”I call the approach Me Inc.,” Peters writes. ”You're Chairperson/CEO/Entrepreneur-in-Chief of your own professional service firm.”56 Faith Popcorn, the management guru who came to prominence with her 1991 best-seller, Faith Popcorn, the management guru who came to prominence with her 1991 best-seller, The Popcorn Report The Popcorn Report, goes so far as to recommend that we change our names to better ”click” with our carefully designed and marketed brand image. She She did-her name used to be Faith Plotkin. did-her name used to be Faith Plotkin.

Even more than Popcorn or Peters, however, it is a man named Daniel H. Pink who is the dean at Brand You U. Pink has seen the growth in temporary and contract work, as well as the rise in self-employment, and has declared the arrival of ”Free Agent Nation.” Not only is he writing a book by that t.i.tle, but Pink himself is a proud patriot of the nation. After quitting a prestigious White House job as Al Gore's chief speechwriter, Pink went on a journey in search of fellow ”free agents”: people who had chosen a life of contracts and freelance gigs over bosses and benefits. What he found, as he relayed in a cover article in Fast Company Fast Company, was the sixties. The citizens of Pink's nation are marketing consultants, headhunters, copywriters and software designers who are all striving to achieve a Zen-like balance of work and personal life. They practice their yoga positions and play with their dogs in their wired home offices, while earning more money-by jumping from one contract to the next-than they did when they were tied to one company and paid a fixed salary. ”This is the summer of love revisited, man!” we hear from Bo Rinald, an agent representing a thousand freelance software developers in Silicon Valley.57 For Pink's free agents, the end of jobs is the baby-boomer dream come true: free-market capitalism without neckties; dropped out of the corporate world in body but plugged-in in spirit. Everyone knows that you can't be a cog in the machine if you work from your living room.... For Pink's free agents, the end of jobs is the baby-boomer dream come true: free-market capitalism without neckties; dropped out of the corporate world in body but plugged-in in spirit. Everyone knows that you can't be a cog in the machine if you work from your living room....

A younger-and, of course, hipper-version of Free Agent Nation was articulated in a special work issue of Details Details magazine. For Gen-Xers with MBAs, the future of work is apparently filled with stunningly profitable s...o...b..arding businesses, video-game companies and cool-hunting firms. ”Opportunity Rocks!” crowed the headline of an article that laid out the future of work as a nonstop party of extreme self-employment: ”Life without jobs, work without bosses, money without salaries, lives without limits.” magazine. For Gen-Xers with MBAs, the future of work is apparently filled with stunningly profitable s...o...b..arding businesses, video-game companies and cool-hunting firms. ”Opportunity Rocks!” crowed the headline of an article that laid out the future of work as a nonstop party of extreme self-employment: ”Life without jobs, work without bosses, money without salaries, lives without limits.”58 According to the writer, Rob Lieber, ”The time of considering yourself an 'employee' has pa.s.sed. Now it's time to start thinking of yourself as a service provider, hiring out your skills and services to the highest, or most interesting, bidder.” According to the writer, Rob Lieber, ”The time of considering yourself an 'employee' has pa.s.sed. Now it's time to start thinking of yourself as a service provider, hiring out your skills and services to the highest, or most interesting, bidder.”59 I admit to being lured by the sirens of free agency myself. About four years ago, I quit my job as a magazine editor to go freelance, and like Pink I've never looked back. Of course I love the fact that no one boss controls my every working hour (that privilege is now spread around to dozens of people), that I'm not subject to the arbitrary edicts of petty managers and, most important, that I can work in my pajamas if I feel like it. I know from firsthand experience that freelance life can indeed mean freedom, just as part time, for others, can live up to its promise of genuine flexibility. Pink has a point when he says of free agency, ”This is a legitimate way to work-it isn't some poor laid-off slob struggling to find his way back to the corporate bosom.”60 However, there's a problem when it's people like Pink-or other freelance writers overly euphoric about working in their pajamas-who hold themselves up as living proof that divestment from corporate employment is a win-win formula. And it does seem as if most of the major articles about the joys of freelancing have been written by successful freelance writers under the impression that they themselves represent the millions of contractors, temps, freelancers, part-timers and the self-employed. But writing, because of its solitary nature and low overhead, is one of the very few professions that are genuinely compatible with homework, and study after study shows that it is absurd to equate the experience of being a freelance journalist, or having your own advertising company, with that of being a temp secretary at Microsoft or a contract factory worker in Cavite. On the whole, casualization pans out as the worst of both worlds: monotonous work at lower wages, with no benefits or security, and even less control over scheduling. However, there's a problem when it's people like Pink-or other freelance writers overly euphoric about working in their pajamas-who hold themselves up as living proof that divestment from corporate employment is a win-win formula. And it does seem as if most of the major articles about the joys of freelancing have been written by successful freelance writers under the impression that they themselves represent the millions of contractors, temps, freelancers, part-timers and the self-employed. But writing, because of its solitary nature and low overhead, is one of the very few professions that are genuinely compatible with homework, and study after study shows that it is absurd to equate the experience of being a freelance journalist, or having your own advertising company, with that of being a temp secretary at Microsoft or a contract factory worker in Cavite. On the whole, casualization pans out as the worst of both worlds: monotonous work at lower wages, with no benefits or security, and even less control over scheduling.

The bottom line is that the advantages and drawbacks of contract and contingency work have a simple correlation to the cla.s.s of the individuals doing the work: the higher up they are on the income scale, the more chance they have to leverage their comings and goings. The further down they are, the more vulnerable they are to being yanked around and bargained even lower. The top 20 percent of wage earners tend to more or less maintain their high wages whether they are in full-time jobs or on freelance contracts. But according to a 1997 U.S. study, 52 percent of women in nonstandard work arrangements are being paid ”poverty-level wages”-compared with only 27.6 percent in the full-time female worker population being paid those low wages. In other words, most nonstandard workers aren't members of Free Agent Nation. According to the study, ”58.2 percent are in the lowest quality work arrangements-jobs with substantial pay penalties and few benefits relative to full-time standard workers.” (see Table 10.7 Table 10.7)61 Furthermore, the real wages of temp workers in the U.S. actually went down, on average, by 14.7 percent between 1989 and 1994. Furthermore, the real wages of temp workers in the U.S. actually went down, on average, by 14.7 percent between 1989 and 1994.62 In Canada, nonpermanent jobs pay one-third less than permanent jobs, and 30 percent of nonpermanent employees work irregular hours. In Canada, nonpermanent jobs pay one-third less than permanent jobs, and 30 percent of nonpermanent employees work irregular hours.63 Clearly, temping puts the most vulnerable workforce further at risk, and no matter what Clearly, temping puts the most vulnerable workforce further at risk, and no matter what Details Details says, it doesn't rock. says, it doesn't rock.

Moreover, there is a direct cause-and-effect relations.h.i.+p between the free agents skipping and hopping on the top rungs of the corporate ladder, and the agents hanging off the bottom who have been ”freed” of such pesky burdens as security and benefits. n.o.body is more liberated, after all, than the CEOs themselves, who, like Nike's cabal of uber-athletes, have formed their own Dream Team to be traded back and forth between companies whenever some star power is needed to boost Wall Street morale. Temp CEOs, as writer Clive Thompson calls them, now shuttle from multinational to multinational, staying for an average term of only five years, collecting multimillion-dollar incentive packages on the way in, and multimillion-dollar golden handshakes on the way out.64 ”Companies are changing executives like baseball managers,” says John Challenger, executive vice president of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. ”The replacement will typically arrive like a SWAT team and sweep out the old and restaff with his or her own people.” ”Companies are changing executives like baseball managers,” says John Challenger, executive vice president of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. ”The replacement will typically arrive like a SWAT team and sweep out the old and restaff with his or her own people.”65 When ”Chainsaw” Al Dunlap was appointed CEO of Sunbeam in July 1996, Scott Graham, an a.n.a.lyst at Oppenheimer & Co., commented, ”This is like the Lakers signing Shaquille O'Neal.” When ”Chainsaw” Al Dunlap was appointed CEO of Sunbeam in July 1996, Scott Graham, an a.n.a.lyst at Oppenheimer & Co., commented, ”This is like the Lakers signing Shaquille O'Neal.”66 The two extreme poles of workplace transience-represented by the contractor in Cavite afraid of flying factories, and the temp CEO unveiling restructuring plans in New York-work together like a global seesaw. Since the CEO superstars earn their reputation on Wall Street through such kamikaze missions as auctioning off their company's entire manufacturing base or initiating a grandiose merger that will save millions of dollars in job duplication, the more mobile the CEOs become, the more unstable the position of the broader workforce will be. As Daniel Pink points out, the word ”freelance” is derived from the age when mercenary soldiers rented themselves-and their lances-out for battle. ”The free lancers roamed from a.s.signment to a.s.signment-killing people for money.”67 Granted it's a little dramatic, but it's not a half-bad job description for today's free-agent executives. In fact, it is the precise reason CEO salaries skyrocketed during the years that layoffs were at their most ruthless. Ira T. Kay, author of Granted it's a little dramatic, but it's not a half-bad job description for today's free-agent executives. In fact, it is the precise reason CEO salaries skyrocketed during the years that layoffs were at their most ruthless. Ira T. Kay, author of CEO Pay and Shareholder Value CEO Pay and Shareholder Value, knows why. Writing in The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal, Kay points out that the exorbitant salaries American companies have taken to paying their CEOs is a ”crucial factor making the U.S. economy the most compet.i.tive in the world” because without juicy bonuses company heads would have ”no economic incentive to face up to difficult management decisions, such as layoffs.” In other words, as satirist Wayne Grytting retorted, we are ”supporting those executive bonuses so we can get...fired.”68 It's a fair enough equation, particularly in the U.S. According to the AFL-CIO, ”the CEOs of the 30 companies with the largest announced layoffs saw their salaries, bonuses, and long-term compensation increase by 67.3 percent.”69 The man responsible for the most layoffs in 1997-Eastman Kodak CEO George Fisher, who cut 20,100 jobs-received an options grant that same year estimated to be worth $60 million. The man responsible for the most layoffs in 1997-Eastman Kodak CEO George Fisher, who cut 20,100 jobs-received an options grant that same year estimated to be worth $60 million.70 And the highest-paid man in the world in 1997 was Sanford Wiell, who earned $230 million as head of the Travelers Group. The first thing Wiell did in 1998 was announce that Travelers would merge with Citicorp, a move that, while sending stock prices soaring, is expected to throw thousands out of work. In the same spirit, John Smith, the General Motors chairman implementing those 82,000 job cuts discussed in the last chapter, received a $2.54 million bonus in 1997 that was tied to the company's record earnings. And the highest-paid man in the world in 1997 was Sanford Wiell, who earned $230 million as head of the Travelers Group. The first thing Wiell did in 1998 was announce that Travelers would merge with Citicorp, a move that, while sending stock prices soaring, is expected to throw thousands out of work. In the same spirit, John Smith, the General Motors chairman implementing those 82,000 job cuts discussed in the last chapter, received a $2.54 million bonus in 1997 that was tied to the company's record earnings.71 There are many others in the business community who, unlike Ira T. Kay, are appalled by the amounts executives have been paying themselves in recent years. In Business Week Business Week, Jennifer Reingold writes with some disgust, ”Good, bad, or indifferent, virtually anyone who spent time in the corner office of a large public company in 1997 saw his or her net worth rise by at least several million.”72 For Reingold, the injustice lies in the fact that CEOs are able to collect raises and bonuses even when their company's stock price drops and shareholders take a hit. For instance, Ray Irani, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, collected $101 million in compensation in 1997, the same year that the company lost $390 million. For Reingold, the injustice lies in the fact that CEOs are able to collect raises and bonuses even when their company's stock price drops and shareholders take a hit. For instance, Ray Irani, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, collected $101 million in compensation in 1997, the same year that the company lost $390 million.

This camp of market watchers has been pus.h.i.+ng for CEO remuneration to be directly linked to stock performance; in other words, ”You make us rich, you get a healthy cut. But if we take a hit, then you take one too.” Though this system protects stockholders from the greed of ineffective executives, it actually puts ordinary workers at even greater risk, by creating direct incentives for the quick and dirty layoffs that are always sure to rally stock prices and bring on the bonuses. For instance, at Caterpillar-the model of the incentive-driven corporation-executives get paid in stocks that have consistently been inflated by ma.s.sive plant closures and worker wage rollbacks. What is emerging out of this growing trend of tying executive pay to stock performance is a corporate culture so damaged that workers must often be fired or shortchanged for the boss to get paid.

This last point raises the most interesting question of all, I think, about the long-term effect of the brand-name multinationals' divestment of the jobs business. From Starbucks to Microsoft, from Caterpillar to Citibank, the correlation between profit and job growth is in the process of being severed. As Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, says, ”Workers can work harder, their employers can be more successful, but-and downsizing and outsourcing are only one example-the link between overall economic success and the guaranteed sharing in that success is weaker than ever before.”73 We know what this means in the short term: record profits, giddy shareholders and no seats left in business cla.s.s. But what does it mean in the slightly longer term? What of the workers who fell off the payroll, whose bosses are voices on the phone at employment agencies, who lost their reason to take pride in their company's good fortune? Is it possible that the corporate sector, by fleeing from jobs, is unwittingly pouring fuel on the fire of its own opposition movement? We know what this means in the short term: record profits, giddy shareholders and no seats left in business cla.s.s. But what does it mean in the slightly longer term? What of the workers who fell off the payroll, whose bosses are voices on the phone at employment agencies, who lost their reason to take pride in their company's good fortune? Is it possible that the corporate sector, by fleeing from jobs, is unwittingly pouring fuel on the fire of its own opposition movement?

Bill Gates, Microsoft President and CEO, gets pied. Biotic Baking Brigade strikes again. Economist Milton Friedman, architect of the global corporate takeover, gets his just deserts.

Chapter Eleven.

Breeding Disloyalty What Goes Around, Comes Around In our manufacturing, administrative, and distribution facilities, we have a specific philosophy-cameras keep honest people honest.

-Leo Myers, safety and security systems engineer for Mattel, explains the company's enthusiastic use of video surveillance on its global workforce, 1990 When I dropped out of university in 1993, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of my friends who had jobs. ”The Recession,” we repeated to one another over and over again, through years of jobless summers, through listless decisions to slog it out in grad school, through periods of cutbacks to our universities, through miserable stretches when parents were out of work. Just as we would later blame El Nino for everything from droughts to floods, the Recession was an economic bad weather system that had sucked up all the jobs as if they were Missouri trailer parks.

When the jobs disappeared, we understood that it was a result of the tough economic times that seemed to be affecting everyone (though perhaps not everyone equally) from company presidents facing bankruptcy to ax-wielding politicians-everybody, men and women, old and young, in all walks of life and work, right on down to me and my middle-cla.s.s friends and our halfhearted job searches. The s.h.i.+ft from the Recession to the cutthroat global economy happened so suddenly I feel as if I was sick that day and missed the whole thing-as with Grade 10 algebra, I will forever be playing catch-up. All I know is that one minute we were all in the Recession together. The next, a new strain of business leader was rising like a phoenix from the ashes-suit freshly pressed, enthusiasm pumped-announcing the arrival of a new golden age. But as we have seen in the last two chapters, when the jobs came back (if the jobs came back), they came back changed. For the workers in the contract factories of the export processing zones, and for the legions of temps, part-timers, contract and service-sector workers in industrialized countries, the modern employer has begun to look like a one-night stand who has the audacity to expect monogamy after a meaningless encounter. And many of them even got it for a while. Running scared from years of layoffs and gloomy economic projections, most of us did swallow the rhetoric that we should be happy picking up whatever pay stubs were scattered our way. There is mounting evidence, however, that workplace transience is finally eroding our collective faith, not only in individual corporations but in the very principle of trickle-down economics. the jobs came back), they came back changed. For the workers in the contract factories of the export processing zones, and for the legions of temps, part-timers, contract and service-sector workers in industrialized countries, the modern employer has begun to look like a one-night stand who has the audacity to expect monogamy after a meaningless encounter. And many of them even got it for a while. Running scared from years of layoffs and gloomy economic projections, most of us did swallow the rhetoric that we should be happy picking up whatever pay stubs were scattered our way. There is mounting evidence, however, that workplace transience is finally eroding our collective faith, not only in individual corporations but in the very principle of trickle-down economics.

Soaring profits and growth rates, as well as the mind-boggling salaries and bonuses that CEOs of large corporations pay themselves, have radically changed the conditions under which workers originally came to accept lower wages and diminished security, leaving many feeling that they've been had. Nowhere was this s.h.i.+ft in att.i.tude more apparent than in the public's sympathy for the striking United Parcel Service workers in 1997. Though Americans are notorious for their lack of sympathy for labor strikes, the plight of UPS part-timers struck a chord. Polls found that 55 percent of Americans supported the UPS workers, and only 27 percent sided with the company. Keffo, the editor of a bitter zine for temporary workers, summed up the public sentiment: ”Day after day, [people] read and heard how great the economy is and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize well, duh, if UPS is doing so well, why can't they pay their workers more, or hire part timers as full timers, or keep their grubby fingers out of their workers' pension fund. So in a hilarious twist of fate, all the 'good' economic news works against UPS in favour of the Teamsters.”1 Realizing that it had become a lightning rod for a broader malaise, UPS agreed to convert 10,000 part-time jobs to full-time jobs at twice the hourly pay, and increased pay for part-timers by 35 percent over five years. In explaining the concessions, UPS vice chairman John W. Alden said the company never foresaw its workers becoming symbols of the rage against the New Economy. ”If I had known that it was going to go from negotiating for UPS to negotiating for part-time America, we would've approached it differently.”2 From Job Creators to Wealth Creators As we have seen, it has only been in the past three or four years that corporations have stopped hiding layoffs and restructuring behind the rhetoric of necessity and begun to speak openly and unapologetically about their aversion to hiring people and, in extreme cases, their total exodus from the employment business. Multinationals that once boasted of their role as ”engines of job growth”-and used it as leverage to extract all kinds of government support-now prefer to identify themselves as engines of ”economic growth.” It's a subtle difference, but not if you happen to be looking for work. Corporations are indeed ”growing” the economy, but they are doing it, as we have seen, through layoffs, mergers, consolidation and outsourcing-in other words, through job debas.e.m.e.nt and job loss. And as the economy grows, the percentage of people directly employed by the world's largest corporations is actually decreasing. Transnational corporations, which control more than 33 percent of the world's productive a.s.sets, account for only 5 percent of the world's direct employment.3 And although the total a.s.sets of the world's one hundred largest corporations increased by 288 percent between 1990 and 1997, the number of people those corporations employed grew by less than 9 percent during that same period of tremendous growth. And although the total a.s.sets of the world's one hundred largest corporations increased by 288 percent between 1990 and 1997, the number of people those corporations employed grew by less than 9 percent during that same period of tremendous growth.4 The most striking figure is the most recent: in 1998, despite the stellar performance of the U.S. economy and despite the record low unemployment rate, U.S. corporations eliminated 677,000 permanent jobs-more job cuts than in any other year this decade. One in nine of those cuts came in the aftermath of mergers; many others came from the manufacturing sector. As the low U.S unemployment rate suggests, two-thirds of the companies that eliminated jobs created new ones and laid-off workers found alternative employment relatively quickly.5 But what those dramatic job cuts demonstrate is that a stable, reliable relations.h.i.+p between workers and their corporate employers has little or nothing to do with either the unemployment rate or the relative health of the economy. People are experiencing less stability even in the very best of economic times-in fact, these good economic times may be flowing, at least in part, from that loss of stability. But what those dramatic job cuts demonstrate is that a stable, reliable relations.h.i.+p between workers and their corporate employers has little or nothing to do with either the unemployment rate or the relative health of the economy. People are experiencing less stability even in the very best of economic times-in fact, these good economic times may be flowing, at least in part, from that loss of stability.

Job creation as part of the corporate mission, particularly the creation of full-time, decently paid, stable jobs, appears to have taken a back seat in many major corporations, regardless of company profits. (See related tables related tables.) Rather than being one component of a healthy operation, labor is increasingly treated by the corporate sector as an unavoidable burden, like paying income tax; or an expensive nuisance, like not being allowed to dump toxic waste into lakes. Politicians may say that jobs are their priority, but the stock market responds cheerfully every time ma.s.s layoffs are announced, and sinks gloomily whenever it looks as if workers might get a raise. Whatever bizarre route we took to get here, an unmistakable message now emanates from our free markets: good jobs are bad for business, bad for ”the economy” and should be avoided at all cost. Although this equation has undeniably reaped record profits in the short term, it may well prove to be a strategic miscalculation on the part of our captains of industry. By discarding their self-identification as job creators, companies leave themselves open to a kind of backlash that can come only from a population that knows that the smooth sailing of the economy is of little demonstrable benefit to them. (See Tables 11.111.4 Tables 11.111.4.) According to the 1997 report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), ”Rising inequalities pose a serious threat of a political backlash against globalization, one that is as likely to come from the North as well as from the South.... The 1920s and 1930s provide a stark, and disturbing, reminder of just how quickly faith in markets and economic openness can be overwhelmed by political events.”6 With the effects of the Asian and Russian economic crises in full swing, a UN report on ”human development” issued the following year was even more severe: noting the growing disparities between rich and poor, James Gustave Speth, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said, ”The numbers are shockingly high, amid the affluence. Progress must be more evenly distributed.” With the effects of the Asian and Russian economic crises in full swing, a UN report on ”human development” issued the following year was even more severe: noting the growing disparities between rich and poor, James Gustave Speth, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said, ”The numbers are shockingly high, amid the affluence. Progress must be more evenly distributed.”7 You hear this kind of talk more and more these days. Ominous warnings about a simmering antiglobalization backlash cast a shadow over the usual euphoria of the annual gathering of corporate and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland. The business press is littered with more uneasy forecasts, such as the one in Business Week Business Week that noted, ”The sight of bulging corporate coffers co-existing with a continuous stagnation in Americans' living standards could become politically untenable.” that noted, ”The sight of bulging corporate coffers co-existing with a continuous stagnation in Americans' living standards could become politically untenable.”8 And that's America, which has a record low unemployment rate. The situation becomes even less comfortable in Canada, where unemployment is at 8.3 percent, and in European Union countries that are stuck with an average unemployment rate of 11.5 percent. (see And that's America, which has a record low unemployment rate. The situation becomes even less comfortable in Canada, where unemployment is at 8.3 percent, and in European Union countries that are stuck with an average unemployment rate of 11.5 percent. (see Table 11.5 Table 11.5.) At a speech delivered to the Business Council on National Issues, Ted Newall, chief executive officer of Nova Corp. in Calgary, Alberta, called the fact that more than 20 percent of Canadians live below the poverty line a ”time bomb that is just waiting to go off.” Indeed, a little side industry has developed of CEOs falling over each other to proclaim themselves ethical clairvoyants: they write books about the new ”stockholder society,” publicly berate their peers at luncheon addresses for their lack of scruples and announce that the time has come for corporate leaders to address the growing economic disparities. Trouble is, they can't agree on who is going to go first.

The fear that the poor will storm the barricades is as old as the castle moat, particularly during periods of great economic prosperity accompanied by inequitable distribution of wealth. Bertrand Russell writes that the Victorian elite in England were so consumed by paranoia that the working cla.s.s would revolt against their ”appalling poverty” that ”at the time of Peterloo many large country houses kept artillery in readiness, lest they should be attacked by the mob. My maternal grandfather, who died in 1869, while wandering in his mind during his last illness, heard a loud noise in the street and thought it was the revolution breaking out, showing that at least unconsciously, the thought of revolution had remained with him throughout long prosperous years.”9 A friend of mine whose family lives in India says her Punjabi aunt is so afraid of an insurrection of her own household staff that she keeps the kitchen knives locked up, leaving the servants to chop vegetables with sharpened sticks. It's not so different from the growing numbers of Americans moving into gated communities because the suburbs no longer provide adequate protection from the perceived urban threat.

Despite the widening gulf between rich and poor consistently reported by the UN and despite the much-discussed disappearance of the middle cla.s.s in the West, the attack on jobs and income levels is probably not the most serious corporate offense we face as global citizens: it is, in theory, not irreversible. Far worse, in the long term, are the crimes committed by corporations against the natural environment, the food supply and indigenous peoples and cultures. Nevertheless, the erosion of a commitment to steady employment is the single most significant factor contributing to a climate of anti-corporate militancy and it is this that has made the markets most vulnerable to widespread ”social unrest,” to quote The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal.10 Table 11.1 Total a.s.sets of Top 100 Transnational Corporations, 1980 and 1995 Source: Transnational Corporations in World Development: Third Survey (UN: 1983); Transnational Corporations in World Development: Trends and Prospects (UN: 1988); World Investment Reports (UN: 1993, 1994, 1997).

Table 11.2 Direct Employment in Top 100 Transnational Corporations, 1980 and 1995 Source: Transnational Corporations in World Development: Third Survey (UN: 1983); Transnational Corporations in World Development: Trends and Prospects (UN: 1988); World Investment Reports (UN: 1993, 1994, 1997).

Table 11.3 Growth of Employment through Temp Agencies in Europe and U.S., 1988 and 1996 Source: International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses (CIETT); Countries included: U.K., France, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Denmark and the U.S.

Table 11.4 Average Number of People Employed Daily through U.S. Temp Agencies, 1970 and 1998 Source: Bruce Steinberg, ”Temporary Help Annual Update for 1997,” Contemporary Times Contemporary Times, Spring 1998; Timothy W. Brogan, ”Staffing Services Annual Update” (1999), National a.s.sociation of Temporary and Staffing Services.

When corporations are perceived as functioning vehicles of wealth distribution-effectively trickling down jobs and tax revenue-they at least provide the bedrock for the often Faustian bargains by which citizens offer loyalty to corporate priorities in exchange for a reliable paycheck. In the past, job creation served as a kind of corporate suit of armor, s.h.i.+elding companies from the wrath that might otherwise have been directed their way as a result of environmental or human-rights abuses.

Nowhere was this armor more protective than in the ”jobs vs. the environment” debates of the late eighties and early nineties, when progressive movements were sharply divided, for example, between those who supported the rights of loggers and those who wanted to protect old-growth forests. In British Columbia, activists were people who came in by bus from the city while loggers loyally stood by the multinational corporations that had anch.o.r.ed their communities for generations. This kind of division is becoming less clear for many partic.i.p.ants, as corporations begin to lose their natural allies among blue-collar workers who have been disenfranchised by callously executed layoffs, sudden mill closures and constant company threats to move offsh.o.r.e.

Today, it's hard to find a contented company town, where citizens do not feel they have in some way been betrayed by the local corporate sector. And rather than dividing communities into factions, corporations are increasingly serving as the common thread by which labor, environmental and human-rights violations can be st.i.tched together into a single political ideology. After a while it becomes apparent that the unsustainable search for profits that, for example, leads to the clear-cutting of old-growth forests is the same philosophy that devastates logging towns by moving the mills to Indonesia. John Jordan, a British anarchist environmentalist, puts it this way: ”Transnationals are affecting democracy, work, communities, culture and the biosphere. Inadvertently, they have helped us see the whole problem as one system, to connect every issue to every other issue, to not look at one problem in isolation.”

This simmering backlash is about more than personal grievances. Even if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who has landed a good job and has never been laid off, everyone has heard the warnings-if not for themselves, then for their children or their parents or their friends. We live in a culture of job insecurity, and the messages of self-sufficiency have reached every one of us. In North America, the back end of an eighteen-wheeler heading for Mexico, workers weeping at the factory gate, the boarded-up windows of a hollowed-out factory town and people sleeping in doorways and on sidewalks have been among the most powerful economic images of our time: metaphors, seared into the collective consciousness, for an economy that consistently and unapologetically puts profits before people.

That message has perhaps been received most vividly by the generation that came of age since the recession hit in the early nineties. Almost without exception, they mapped out their life plan while listening to a chorus of voices telling them to lower their expectations, to rely on no one for their success. If they wanted a job with General Motors, Nike or General Electric, or indeed anywhere in the corporate sector, the message was the same: count on no one. Just in case they weren't paying attention, it was reinforced by high-school guidance counselors holding seminars on how to become ”Me Inc.,” by nightly newscasts filled with stories about how pension funds will soon be empty and by companies like Prudential Insurance urging us all to ”Be your own rock.” At university campuses across North America, orientation-week events-the time when students are first introduced to campus life-are now sponsored by mutual-fund companies, which use the opportunity to prod incoming students to start saving for their retirement before they've even picked a major.

All this has had its effects. According to the bible of demographic marketing, The Yankelovich Report The Yankelovich Report, the belief in the need to be self-reliant has increased by one-third with every generation-from the ”Matures” (born 19091945), to ”Boomers” (born 19461964) to ”Xers” (defined loosely and somewhat inaccurately as everyone born between 1965 and the present). ”Over two-thirds of Xers agree that, 'I have to take whatever I can get in this world because no one is going to give me anything.' Far fewer Boomers and Matures agree-only half and one-third, respectively,” the report states.11 The New York advertising firm DMB&B found similar att.i.tudes in its study of global teens. ”From a lengthy battery of att.i.tudinal items, the one that teens most agree with worldwide is: 'It's up to me to get what I want out of life.'” Nine out of ten young Americans polled agreed with this sentiment of total self-reliance. The New York advertising firm DMB&B found similar att.i.tudes in its study of global teens. ”From a lengthy battery of att.i.tudinal items, the one that teens most agree with worldwide is: 'It's up to me to get what I want out of life.'” Nine out of ten young Americans polled agreed with this sentiment of total self-reliance.12 This s.h.i.+ft in att.i.tude has translated into a serious boom for the mutual-fund industry. Young people, it seems, are buying more RSPs than ever before. ”Why is Generation X more focused on the need to save?” wonders a reporter in Business Week Business Week. ”Much of it has to do with self-reliance. They believe they'll succeed only on their own initiative and have little confidence that either Social Security or traditional employer pensions will be around to support them in retirement.”13 In fact, if you believe the business press, the only impact this spirit of self-reliance will have is the spearheading of a new wave of cutthroat entrepreneurial initiatives as the kids who can't count on anyone look out for Number One. In fact, if you believe the business press, the only impact this spirit of self-reliance will have is the spearheading of a new wave of cutthroat entrepreneurial initiatives as the kids who can't count on anyone look out for Number One.

There is no question that many young people have compensated for the fact that they don't trust politicians or corporations by adopting the social-Darwinist values of the system that engendered their insecurity: they will be greedier, tougher, more focused. They will Just Do It. But what of those who didn't go the MBA route, who don't want to be the next Bill Gates or Richard Branson? Why should they stay invested in the economic goals of corporations that have so actively divested them? What is the incentive to be loyal to a sector that has bombarded them, for their entire adult life, with a single message: Don't count on us?