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

Written by:
Rick Wartzman
Narrated by:
Rick Wartzman

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
4
Narrator
1
Release Date
May 2017
Duration
14 hours 41 minutes
Summary
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
Reviews
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Michal V.

While reading this book, I was intrigued, engaged, surprised, and even shocked. It describes the evolution of employee-employer relations since 1930 on an example of several large enterprises. It\'s not only about what has happened. It is about the reasons and the dynamic of the changes across the multiple dimensions of the environment. I learned that in the beginning the interdependence between employer and employees prevailed. Employees have had long-term, even lifetime employment and security. Wages allowed for a good life, and the surplus enabled the entire cities and areas to grow and flourish. However, the technology innovations, changes in society, wars, or the rise of shareholder capitalism increased tensions to which companies responded. Sadly, in many small steps they dismantled job security, and layoffs became the new norm. Medical insurance was cut or canceled, and pensions were outsourced to the government or abolished. With the assistance of the government or its ill tax and other policies, jobs were transferred abroad. Entire industries disappeared. \r\n\r\nI did not know about some historical events – dirty strategies to eliminate women from the labor market after WWII, obstructions to employ minorities, gaining competitive advantage or price reduction through elimination of the medical insurance, pension funds, etc. I learned about the role of unions and why management even today fears unionization at their premise. \r\n\r\nI am from an agile managerial movement. All agile strongly depends on trust, so relationships among employees and employers are essential for any organization in the knowledge and creative economy. I ask myself how can we enable the trust in the corporation, which has a long legacy of wrongdoing against its employees. \r\n\r\nI will include this book in my Agile Recruiter workshop as recommended reading. I will also highly recommend it to anyone in HR or in charge of human capital retention. The book is engaging. It took me some time to adjust to the voice of the narrator.\r\n

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