Fix Income and Job Inequality? Let's take a look at the service industry!

Been thinking about a couple things lately. First, income inequality. It's the worst it's been since 1928. That's a little scary, considering what happened in 1929. Considering what happened in 2008 and how we haven't yet recovered from it, really. And the fact that nowadays, FDR's New Deal would get killed by paid Russian trolls on the right and milquetoast pleas to a decades out of date economic model on the left.

Let's get a few things straight: manufacturing and coal jobs are dying, and good riddance. They weren't particularly good jobs, anyway. Repetitive motion injuries are a thing. In fact they may be a contributing factor in opioid addiction.

So what industry is growing? The service industry. Now imagine if you will, a candidate, on either side of the aisle, coming out in their campaign and saying, "service workers, you do a fantastic job for America. I want to make your lives and those of your families better. What would you need?"

I have trouble of imagining it. But let's think about it.

The death of the labor union has set back the collective bargaining that helped keep those manufacturing jobs at competitive pay rates. But again, I'm not sure how well that kind of model would work for low-tier service workers. Considering that means, essentially, call center employees. A strike would be a joke. Call centers account for high turn over rates in their business models, anyway, because their turn over rates are so high.

What about a co-op model? I don't know. Co-ops seem designed around agriculture and manufacturing, industries already on the decline, where a small group of generalists has developed. In addition to front line workers, service industries require an awful lot of specialists to keep things running smoothly. You would need very robust in-house training and re-training programs to make a call center co-op work.

Why is there a resistance or lack of interest into looking at this seriously? Probably because we have a cultural expectation that low-tier jobs like that are "starter" jobs or "temporary" jobs. But there's another problem: because of the pay and benefit degradation, people are staying in the workforce longer. This means its harder (if not downright impossible), for lower-tier workers to move-up, even if they're otherwise qualified and interested in moving up.

So do you know anyone willing to take a long hard look at the service industry? Do you have any ideas on how to improve the lot of the people working in it? Leave a comment.