Most of the available statistical indicators are clearly much too aggregative to serve as reliable indexes of worker discontent. Statistical series such as productivity and labor turnover were designed for quite different purposes. Much more disaggregation of the data, and supplementary research, is needed before we can reliably isolate the influence of specific causal factors. And we are still in the early stages of development of meaningful indexes of job satisfaction and of absenteeism. It is quite possible, therefore, that the available measures separately and in combination are too crude and insensitive to detect any new emerging social force.
In part, however, the explanation lies in the model of worker aspirations and behavior postulated by the social psychologists. Their point of departure is a hierarchical ordering of human needs, which, as outlined by Abraham Maslow, begins with satisfaction of basic material wants, such as food and shelter, and ascends to higher order needs, such as "self esteem" and "self actualization." An alternative formulation by Herzberg is couched in terms of "extrinsic" and "intrinsic" job factors. Extrinsic factors, such as poor pay, inadequate benefits, or poor physical working conditions may lead to job dissatisfaction, while true satisfaction depends upon the intrinsic nature of the job, its work content, and its inherent challenge and interest. But both models lead to the inference that, as the general wage level increases and physical working conditions improve, the emphasis shifts from strictly economic issues to demands for improvement in the nature of work itself.
It is difficult to challenge this scale of aspirations in the abstract. In fact, numerous surveys indicate that when workers are asked what aspects of work are most important to them, "interesting work" often heads the list, particularly among the more educated or more affluent segments of the population. Given this apparent scale of values and the rising "affluence" of American workers, why then have most workers not overtly attempted to change the contents of their work? For example, has the continued concentration of organized labor on "bread and butter" issues, rather than "quality of work," simply reflected a lack of sensitivity on the part of union leaders to the real needs of their members or has it in fact reflected the priorities of their rank and file members?
As a broad generalization, we believe that the latter assumption corresponds much closer to reality. One fallacy in the Maslow Herzberg model of worker aspirations, as a guide to behavior, lies in its inherently static premises. Even though individual earnings and family incomes have increased steadily over the decades, the great majority of American workers certainly do not consider themselves as "affluent," when they relate their spendable income to their spending needs, for what they now consider an acceptable standard of living. As Christopher Jencks has recently pointed out, this escalation of living standards "is not just a matter of 'rising expectations' or of people's needing to 'keep up with the Joneses' " but is due in part to the fact that with changes in our mode of life, such goods as an automobile, a telephone, or packaged foods have become an integral part of our cost of living of participating in our social system. Thus, when hard choices have to be made between a monotonous job in a regimented environment, which pays relatively well and which offers job security, and a poorer paying, less secure but more "satisfying" job, most workers particularly those with family commitments are still not in a position to make the trade off in favor of meeting their "intrinsic" needs.
Moreover, most workers and most union leaders tend to be highly skeptical of the real potential of "job enrichment" as a practicable means of improving their work environment. This skepticism results from earlier experiences when worker participation, profit sharing, and similar approaches were instituted by some firms as an alternative to pay increases or as a means of staving off unionization. This point of view has recently been colorfully expressed by William W. Winpisinger, general vice president of the International Association of Machinists:
If you want to enrich the job, enrich the pay check. The better the wage, the greater the job satisfaction. There is no better cure for the blue collar blues.
Prestige rankings of various civilian occupations, based on a number of surveys, have failed to reveal any consistent preference for autonomous, self directed employment, in comparison with more regimented, but better paying and more secure occupations. Office machine operators and bookkeepers rate higher than small independent farmers in these rankings. Assembly line workers outrank taxi drivers, in popular esteem. And as we have previously noted, many millions of married women have moved from household work, which though unpaid has the virtue of being self directed, into the more regimented world of gainful employment.
The foregoing comments are clearly not designed to imply that "all is well" with the quality of work in America or that, as a nation, we can afford to be complacent about some of the danger signals which have been brought to our attention. The fact that over 10 per cent of employed workers express general dissatisfaction with their jobs, that many more are dissatisfied with specific aspects of their work situation, and that these proportions are much higher for youth, for women, and for minorities, is a challenge to management, unions, and the government to pursue corrective actions.
However, if our interpretation of the recent labor market behavior and attitudes of American workers is valid, it does imply a different set of criteria for measuring quality of jobs and a different set of priorities for improvement of the quality of work. Our premise is that workers have no difficulty in distinguishing between the "good" and the "bad" jobs in our economy. The least desirable jobs, typically, are inferior both in terms of pay and related benefits and in terms of the intrinsic nature of the work itself. Included in this category are most domestic service and hired farm labor jobs and a large proportion of the 20 million jobs occupied by workers in the private nonfarm economy which, according to a recent BLS survey, paid less than $2.50 per hour in April 1970. Numerous unskilled or semiskilled jobs paying somewhat higher wages can also be included in this category because of the oppressive nature of the work and lack of advancement opportunities.
It has been possible for employers to recruit an adequate supply of workers for most of these low level jobs because of the continued existence of a large pool of workers who have had no effective labor market choices. Included in this pool are a disproportionate number of minority members, teen aged youth, women, and recent immigrants who share common handicaps of limited skill, limited work experience, restricted mobility, and various forms of institutionalized discrimination. These categories of workers constitute a relatively large share of the 5 million "visibly" unemployed workers and probably represent an even larger proportion of the "invisible" unemployed not included in our statistics of active job seekers. So long as this reservoir of low wage labor is available, employers have little incentive to increase the pay or to enhance the quality of these jobs.
The most potent strategy for improving the quality of these jobs and/or reducing their relative numbers is by reducing the size of this reserve pool of workers. It is no coincidence that the most significant progress in improving the relative status of low range workers in this country has been made during periods of acute wartime labor shortage, such as during World War II. It is no coincidence, either, that employer initiatives for experimentation with work redesign abroad have been most evident in countries such as Sweden and West Germany, which have managed their economies with much lower ratios of peacetime unemployment than in the United States and have been initiated in precisely those industries, such as the automobile industry, which have most acutely felt a labor shortage situation.
The most important single set of measures which can contribute to improvements of quality of work in America are, thus, those designed to increase the quantity of work in America. This requires a much more positive national commitment to a maximum employment policy even, if need be, at the cost of a somewhat higher level of acceptable inflation. In turn, a climate of sustained high employment can make possible more effective implementation of specific manpower and labor market policies designed to upgrade the status of workers in low level jobs and to promote equality of employment opportunity. It may, in fact, bring us closer to the era of the "post subsistence" economy when those jobs which do not meet minimum economic and psychological standards will be effectively ruled out from the labor market competition.
