Weekly interest and loan rates | Northwest stock contest 2003 Tax tips | Consumer affairs | Home values

Job Market
Workplace grumbles, anxieties have grown

By Stacey Hirsh
The Baltimore Sun

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

But in recent years, real-life tales of worker disgust and job frustration have poured into Adams' electronic mailbox and provide fresh fodder for the strip as jaw-dropping as any fictional cartoon.

There was the e-mail he received about a worker who was asked to contribute to his own farewell party. Another was from someone who relocated for a new position, only to discover that the post didn't exist. He was then offered a worse job.

"I think people were blaming themselves if there was anything wrong in their life" years ago, Adams said in a recent interview. "Now people are more likely to blame their management."

More help for job seekers Our NWclassifieds job site provides additional Job Market content, as well as tools to help you land the position you want: · Job listings · Submit resume · E-mail alerts · Salary Center · Featured employers

In various surveys, workers are registering the highest levels of job dissatisfaction in years.

With job creation plodding along and corporate America unsettled by mergers and technological change, workers say they feel more unease and face fewer options to move around.

Pay-raise growth is slow, health-care costs are up and headlines about executive greed fuel frustration. Companies, meanwhile, uncertain of reports of the economy's comeback, have been hesitant to hire. The added work often falls on the shoulders of employees who remain.

The anger and annoyance have helped to fuel lottery sales and become punch lines for TV commercials and new country music.

A current hit by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett, "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere," justifies a midday escape to happy hour — a modern-day descendant of Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It," the 1970s anthem to worker disgust.

The Internet is a font of outlets for such discontent. One site, www.ihatemyjob.com, includes jokes about management and awkward work situations.

In a recent Conference Board survey of 5,000 U.S. households, fewer than half of respondents described themselves as satisfied with their jobs. That was the highest percentage of disgruntled workers since 1995 in the survey by the New York-based business research group.

More disgruntlement in the survey: Fifty-six percent said they are unhappy with their employer's bonus plan, and 46 percent were dissatisfied with their company's promotion policy. On the plus side: Fifty-six percent said they like their co-workers, and 58 percent are OK with their daily commute.

Bill Cunnane, founder of Boyce Cunnane, a Baltimore firm that recruits tax professionals, said several of his potential clients feared changing jobs, uncertain of what may await them behind the proverbial door No. 2.

"You can hear it in their voice," he said. "They want to make a move, but don't know whether this is the right time."

A sense of job permanence and solid pay has eroded with the shift from manufacturing to a service economy, dominated by low-paying jobs at stores and fast-food chains.

Anxiety has been compounded by anger over the division of riches: Top executives average more than 500 times what average workers earn per year, far greater than the 40-times multiple between top and bottom pay three decades ago.

"I think what you've seen in the last 15 to 20 years is just an avarice that we haven't seen since the late 1800s," said Charles Craver, a labor-law professor. "It's almost as if the robber barons have come back into vogue."

Workers are learning to manage their current situations — good or bad, said John Challenger, chief executive of the Chicago international outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray and Christmas. That could mean going back to school to build skills or becoming an in-house expert in their field.

"People are having to come to terms with the fact that they have to find a way to be happy with what they've got now a little bit more," Challenger said. "Come to grips with that, come to terms with that, rather than feeling that the grass is going to be greener if they move or keep moving up."

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company