"Great Resignation" or "Great Dissatisfaction" of workers worldwide?

According to Klots, at the end of the pandemic, four main trends will be combined

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The US example shows that a new landscape in the global economy includes increased demands on workers who do not seem willing to accept any working conditions.

The "Great Resignation" is a prime example of how a phrase, metaphor, or analogy goes beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry and becomes part of a wider public debate.

This expression was proposed by an American professor of organizational psychology, Anthony Klots in the spring of 2021 and was formulated as a description of a wave of resignations of employees from their positions at the end of the pandemic. According to Klots, at the end of the pandemic, four main trends will be combined.

The four basic trends

The first is that people who sought it before the pandemic but were forced by it to change their plans will start resigning, which they can do now that the economy is doing better.

The second is that many "front-line" workers are now on the verge of exhaustion and this may push them to resign and claim better jobs.

The third trend has to do with how people have been able to better reflect on their individual identities and how they view their future, including how they view their work present and future.

The fourth trend concerns people who, after so many months of teleworking, have developed new perceptions and views on how to define a job that meets their expectations and may not want to return to the previous regime.

Data from the American labor market

Shortly afterwards, data on the US labor market appeared to justify Klots's prediction. In July 2021, just over four million workers resigned, a number for the US economy. The redundancies reached 4,27 million in the United States in August and 4,43 million in September. At the same time at the end of September the jobs offered were also at very high levels, at 10,4 million or 6,6%.

An analysis by Visier's Ian Cook showed that the highest redundancy rates occur among employees between the ages of 30 and 45, with an average increase of 20% between 2020 and 2021. Greater insecurity and lower supply "Introductory" positions reduces the resignation rates in employees aged 20-25 years, while at the age of over 45 slightly higher resignation rates were observed.

Similarly, a Gallup poll in March found that 48% of the US working population was either looking for work or looking for better employment opportunities. This in fact shows a very high rate of dissatisfaction with the situation in the workplace.

Value issue or labor market dynamics?

Some have argued that the concept of "Great Resignation" fails to fully identify the dynamics of the phenomenon, as it simply identifies it with trends in the labor market, when in fact it reflects a more general shift in the way work is treated.

The fact that people prefer to make career choices that refer to a downward movement in the scale of professional success, or prefer greater flexibility and self-determination from higher earnings, or simply prefer to live for a while with the money they have saved during the pandemic, all of this reflects a more comprehensive re-prioritization and a new set of values ​​around work.

In any case, the reassessment of values ​​and priorities after such a traumatic experience as the pandemic was rather expected. Faced with loss and existential danger, people felt the need to rethink what makes sense both at work and in life as a whole.

Essentially, we have a process where attitudes, perceptions and "subjectivities" emerge that are quite different from those we have had for decades, where the pursuit of professional development and success as self-realization have been the existential horizon of many employees.

The moment of valuing what "work" meant

One could reasonably argue that all this has to do with the fact that the previous condition in the workplace was far from being ideal.

On the one hand, in the lower positions of the labor market, whose real importance we realized in the pandemic, job insecurity, poor working conditions, extended working hours and low wages were the norm.

It was the phenomenon of "working poor" being forced to work constantly just to survive in an environment where social protection was often seen as an unnecessary cost.

On the other hand, the middle and upper classes were dominated by the constant pressure for results, the competition, the treatment of camaraderie as an outdated notion, the logic that work must not only be the center of existence but also directly or indirectly occupy almost its entirety. time.

This led to more and more employees feeling devalued, meaningless and often burnout. Things were getting worse by trends like e.g. the indebtedness of households or - especially in the US - the indebtedness of graduates who had to quickly find vocational rehabilitation to enable them to repay the exorbitant loans they took out to cover their tuition.

The "Great Resignation" and the "Great Strike"

In the US, data from researchers monitoring labor strikes show that the number of strikes increased in 2021. They may not have involved as many workers as the 2018 or 2019 strikes, which often involved large and very large teachers' unions, but they were more in number. Even more important is the fact that the strikes increased, which did not concern either the education sector or the health sector, but mainly the private business sector of the economy.

In any case, conditions in the American labor market were not the best before the pandemic. Two-thirds of low-wage workers and half of those at the bottom 25% of the pay scale, a total of about 13 million workers were not even entitled to paid sick leave and more than 31 million people under 65 had no health insurance.

A Gallup survey of the US and Canada pandemics during the 2020 pandemic found that 57% of workers felt stressed, 48% worried and 22% angry, asking questions about how they felt. for much of the day. "

At the same time, of course, inequalities were rising: the number of American billionaires increased from 614 in March 2020 to 745 in October 2021, and their total wealth increased from $ 2.947 billion to $ 5019 billion over the same period. In the second quarter of 2021, corporate non-financial profits increased by 70%, reaching a record $ 1,8 trillion.

All this, combined with low unemployment and the demand for labor, makes sense to fuel greater assertiveness, although this has to do not only with economic terms but also with ideological shifts.

However, it is indicative that the positive opinions about the unions in the USA have now reached the highest point since 1965. According to a Gallup survey, they are at 68%, well above the historical low of 48% in 2009, the day after the economic crisis.

In 1965 it was 71% and in 1953 as in 1957 it was at 75%, but then it was the time of the powerful unions that had been able to negotiate collective agreements which ensured significant improvement especially among the industrial workers in sectors such as the automobile industry.

Source: Financial Postman