In class, we have been discussing contemporary issues with the current workplace and we have been examining how working conditions in the future may be impacted with current trends in working.
One contemporary issue is that there are many corporations today that trash the environment. According to a United Nations study on the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies, firms would lose over one third of their profits if they were forced to pay for use, loss, and damage of environment. The first speaker, Oliver Libby, revealed to us that the reason for this is that, in the United States, stakeholder value is the highest priority. To protect this, corporations will engage in unethical behaviors. Such unethical behaviors include underpaying workers and trashing the environment. However, that speaker had also revealed that this situation will fail to last because with the coming of new businesses that are environmentally responsible and a new generation of environmentally-aware people, businesses cannot afford to be environmentally irresponsible or unethical in any way. Otherwise, people may not be willing to invest in such companies. As that speaker had said, “Would you rather invest in a company that makes lots of money but trashes the environment or in a company that makes a little less money but is environmentally responsible?” This question was directed at the future of New York and it is clear that the answer leans overwhelmingly toward the latter option. Our last speaker, Debera Johnson, echoed the comments of the first speaker during her talk.
Another issue that needs to be addressed in the topic of work is the growing trend towards temporary jobs, especially with regard to adjunct professors. Today, part-time instructors account for over half of all faculty at the nation’s public and private institutions for higher education. My current differential equations (a 300 level course) professor is an adjunct professor making about $3,000 per semester. This is a horrible financial situation because it is questionable as to whether or not he will even be able to sustain himself and it is clear that he is being paid below minimum wage. This is a horrendous problem that needs to be addressed. According to Prof. Binz Scharf, the reason for this rising trend in hiring adjunct professors is that universities recognize that a tenured professor is a multimillion dollar investment. A tenured professor cannot be removed from office and is consistently paid, with increasing pay with seniority. It is no question, then, that some form of social innovation is needed to address this problem. Something needs to change in the current structure of academic employment to improve this dismal situation. This is also of personal interest to me because I have plans for working in the university setting someday.
Two contemporary issues in work that I feel deserve a good deal of attention is the current corporate structure and how it leads to unethical business practices as well as the current trend of employing adjunct professors at universities, who are underpaid and treated as second-class academic citizens.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/18/worlds-top-firms-environmental-damage
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-04-16/growing-reliance-adjunct-professors
http://www.academia.edu/2100902/The_Work_of_the_University_The_Adjunct_Phenomenon
I like both problems that you present. When it comes to corporations trashing the environment, you said that people will naturally want to buy from companies that don’t trash the environment as opposed to those that do. I agree with this, but I think that advertising will be a real problem here. Often times companies can get away with looking environmentally friendly through advertising. They may say that their products are made using recycled goods, but it may only be a small percentage of the product, which doesn’t help much, and there may be other aspects of manufacture that are far more harmful to the environment, but are simply not mentioned. The other issue is that companies that save money by not being environmentally responsible can use that money to make their products appear more effective and more appealing than more environmentally responsible competitors. The simple solution might be to have the government keep watch of companies and set strict regulations, but corruption can occur within the government as well. Therefore, it seems tackling this problem will involve not just trying to get companies to be environmentally responsible, but also making sure that corruption and advertising don’t allow companies to slip through the cracks.