You’re Paid What You’re Worth
And Other Myths of the Modern Economy
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- 58,99 лв.
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- 58,99 лв.
Publisher Description
“This is the book to throw at your human resources director—not literally, of course—when any attempt is being made to bamboozle you about how decisions on pay have been made…It is a closely argued, thoroughly researched treatise on how we got here and how pay could be both fairer and more effective as a reward.”
—Stefan Stern, Financial World
“A flat-out revelation of a book by one of the nation’s top scholars of the labor market…required reading for anyone who cares about the future of work in America.”
—Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America
“Jake Rosenfeld pulls back the curtain on the multifaceted cultural, institutional, and market forces at play in wage-setting. This timely book illuminates the power dynamics and often arbitrary forces that have contributed to the egregious inequality in the U.S. labor market—and then lays out a clear blueprint for progressive change.”
—Thea Lee, President of the Economic Policy Institute
Job performance and where you work play a role in determining pay, but judgments of productivity and value are highly subjective. What makes a lawyer more valuable than a teacher? How do you measure the output of a police officer, a professor, or a reporter? Why, in the past few decades, did CEOs suddenly become hundreds of times more valuable than their employees? The answers lie not in objective criteria but in battles over interests and ideals.
Four dynamics are paramount: power, inertia, mimicry, and demands for equity. Power struggles legitimize pay for particular jobs, and organizational inertia makes that pay seem natural. Mimicry encourages employers to do what their peers are doing. And workers are on the lookout for practices that seem unfair. Jake Rosenfeld shows us how these dynamics play out in real-world settings, drawing on cutting-edge economics and original survey data, with an eye for compelling stories and revealing details.
You’re Paid What You’re Worth gets to the heart of that most basic of social questions: Who gets what and why?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington University sociology professor Rosenfeld (What Unions No Longer Do) debunks contemporary myths about work and wages in this illuminating account. Though most workers believe they're paid for their performance and would prefer to keep their salaries private, Rosenfeld writes, the reality is that individual performance is extremely difficult to measure and that wages increase, and become more equitable, when workers' compensation is made public. Rosenfeld also documents how increased focus on corporate shareholders in recent decades has exacerbated income inequality, and reveals that noncompete clauses, once restricted to highly competitive industries, covered 20% of American workers in 2014, including fast food employees, journalists, and hair stylists. High-paying blue-collar jobs may be gone for good, according to Rosenfeld, who cites evidence that U.S. manufacturing production has expanded by 80% since the 1980s, while "employment in goods-producing jobs... has fallen substantially." Rosenfeld's solutions include raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions and national pay standards (he cites Australia's "Modern Awards" system as a model), and reducing the share of corporate revenue that goes to CEOs and shareholders. The likelihood of achieving those goals remains somewhat murky, but Rosenfeld's wide-ranging research and lucid prose impress. The result is a well-informed and lay-friendly reconsideration of economic shibboleths.