I recently read an interesting report entitled: "Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power" that illustrates some dimensions of todays workforce that you may find interesting in understanding the complex dynamics of today's global workforce.
While the sales of the Top 200 corporations are the equivalent of 27.5% of world
economic activity, these firms employ only a tiny fraction of the
world's workers. In 1999, they employed a combined total of 22,682,166
workers, which is 0.78% of the world's workforce.
Between 1983 and 1999, the number of people employed by Top 200 firms grew 14.4%, an increase that is dwarfed by the firms' 362.4%
profit growth over this period.
Corporate analysts may see the dramatic
increase in the ratio between profits and employees as a positive sign
of increased efficiency. The growing gap between profits and payrolls
is at least partly the result of technological changes that has allowed
firms to produce more with less people. Automation is not always a
negative development, especially in the case of jobs that are dangerous
or otherwise undesirable.
However, another factor is the trend towards
outsourcing, particularly among large industrial firms, but also increasingly evident in other skilled areas including engineering. By shifting
more and more of their production to contractors, companies can
distance themselves from potential charges of labor rights abuses and
other illegal behavior and keep labor costs low by forcing contractors
to compete for business with an ever smaller number of giant
purchasers.
The giant firms also have more freedom to hire and fire
contractors to meet shifting demand. U.S. corporations have been at the
forefront of this trend. Add this to domestic "at will employment" policies in many states, employees feel justifiably uneasy about their long-term stability.
Chrysler (formerly known as DaimlerChrsyler since the merger with Daimler
Benz), for example, purchases almost all of its parts, from brakes to
seats, from suppliers. Hewlett-Packard relies on 10 different
contractors and IBM relies on 8 to make their products.
In recent
years, Japanese electronics firms, including Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu,
and Sony, have also begun to outsource.
Still, Americans may be less concerned about the growing gap between
profits and employees because of the country's record low unemployment
rate.
What is often ignored in the mainstream media is the fact that
unemployment problems remain prevalent elsewhere in the world,
including in many countries where the Top 200 firms are enjoying strong
profits.
In the European Union, the 1999 unemployment rate
was 10 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in the United States. The
International Labor Organization estimates that one billion people
worldwide are unemployed or underemployed.
Joblessness around the
world hurts the United States because it reduces the capacity of
consumers in
other countries to purchase U.S. products and can lead to social
instability that has international ramifications.
It is also harder to draw a bead on how the top firms are structuring their workforces. There is much information that U.S. firms are not required to reveal to the American public:
a breakdown of their employees by country
locations of overseas facilities or contractors
wage rates paid at overseas facilities
layoffs and the reasons for layoffs
A full 5 percent of the Top 200s' combined workforce is comprised of
Wal-Mart employees. The discount retail giant's workforce has
skyrocketed from 62,000 in 1983 to 1,140,000 in 1999, making it the
largest private employer in the world.
The next largest,
DaimlerChrysler, has a workforce of 466,938 (less than half the size of
Wal-Mart's). Think about how any change in these statistics affects the jobs reports that come out of Washington.
Although Wal-Mart is indeed providing many new jobs, the
company is notorious for its strategy of employing armies of workers on
a part-time basis to avoid paying benefits.
The firm is also adamantly
anti-union. In March, Wal-Mart announced it was closing the meat
department in 180 stores two weeks after the meat cutters at one Texas
store voted to form a union the first successful organizing drive at
an American Wal-Mart.
At a time when workers are increasingly uneasy about job stability and coming to the realization that often the fate of the American worker is not considered in corporate decisions, it has to make you wonder if it is a surprise that young workers coming into the workforce are exceedingly skeptical about a long-term commitment to any employer.
Can't we do better?
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