"Employee Power" Has Evaporated

Hey, it's Mark and welcome back. Today's episode. We're talking about employee power and the evaporation of it. Stay put, don't move, put your head down, get back into the office and be seen. Don't rock the boat, just do anything to maintain your job. Right now, that's what the current news vibe is in the national press and, according to two Wall Street Journal articles which I'll put in the show notes so you can read about, this sounds like a complete 180-degree shift from just a year or two ago. Previously, employers were competing for employees and employees were job hopping for more pay and opportunities. We collectively witnessed this rise of true quote-unquote employee power in the job market. Employees were emboldened with a new sense of leverage against their employers and the power to force their employers to make compensation concessions, work remotely and gain other benefits previously unheard of. Now, I'm not referring to the unionization activity at any local Starbucks. I'm referring to the much larger national employee population, as unions only comprise 2% of all employees in the country. The next big recession never happened, aka the quiet landing. Unemployment is still below average as of July 2024.

According to economists interviewed in the above Wall Street Journal news stories that I just mentioned, the rise of employee power was a one-off event, unforeseen in a generation and was never anticipated to have any lasting impact. That was the part of the Wall Street Journal story that caused me to question why did employees lose their leverage on employers and lose momentum? I have a simple but long-winded answer, of course, one that I have been collecting in my head as I muscle through severance negotiation for employees, federal court mediations and litigate DEI reverse discrimination cases. For the past two to four years, a social political movement arose in the form of one pandemic, the arrival of a political and social unrest, followed by an unprecedented monetary policy that financially infused all employees and their employers, a stock market that blossomed to the surprise of many, bolstering the 401k pension accounts of today's era for the average employee. These events caused employees to question quote-unquote their purpose in the system and the motives of their employers, both good and bad. Younger employees led the charge to question the old school concept of working nine to five and started quiet quitting. Then everyone started quiet quitting. Yes, employees mattered for a time, albeit a short one. I was awestruck by the potential for a new movement unrelated to unionization.

At-will employees thumbed their noses at employers en masse with a degree of confidence unforeseen in a generation. There was an immediate bond between all employees and they unconsciously pushed their agenda on employers, starting at a startling speed. Employers were truly caught off guard and rebalancing on their heels the powers that be here they bind. Administration added steam to the engine in the form of outlawing forced arbitration and sexual harassment cases after the hashtag B2 event began to fizzle which it did when is it now? Began to fizzle which it did, where is it now? And initiated a rule banning non-compete agreements nationwide for all employees, effective September 4th 2024, if you didn't know, unless conservatives, aka the employers, stop them in the Eastern District of Texas and, by the way, there's currently a showdown between federal district courts in Texas. So the Trump appointee and Pennsylvania a Biden appointee, ironically On whether to enjoin or not to enjoin is the question. The FTC rule litigation was well-anticipated and should be a good show to watch. We're on the sidelines here. I am going to be writing a separate article on this topic and podcast probably in post soon, so you informed about what happens on September 4th 2024. The FTC rule is a big deal for employees and enhances employee power because now they need it.

Employers freaked out about social unrest and lied to employees and customers in the form of quote DEI marketing initiatives, because that's what they were and nothing more. Today, dei is mostly disbanded after the US Supreme Court gave a nod and wink to a zero-tolerance policy regarding race quotas in the employment sector and ending affirmative action in the public education realm. Move over DEI. There's another something coming up. It's called MEI. God love acronyms, merit, excellence and Intelligence is now taking over, and I'll be doing another article and episode about that of employee power that once was.

Is there some internal intercompany propaganda shared amongst employers to collectively chill employee power for the common good of companies and their shareholders? Could SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, be behind all of this? I can only imagine the quickening of anti-employee movement in the private equity space, because private equity companies are detached about employee relations in general. If you know what I mean, if you've ever worked with one. Is the loss of employee power related to corporate profits? Well, duh, yes, but I'm going to say there's much more to it. I'm going to say there's much more to it.

No one, no newspaper, no politician or management executive is explaining why employees have now lost their quote employee power, and I'm sure many employees would like to know why. In my opinion, the answer lies in the principles of negotiation, specifically employee leverage. Employees have lost their leverage and employers are refusing to bargain about wages. Remote working and hiring has stagnated. When you are negotiating employment-related issues, leverage is key to both sides. Leverage can come in a variety of ways, for instance, employee retention through wage concessions during the mass job migration, or allowed quitting. Leverage can also take the form of social justice issues like DEI, and can include an FTC rule banning non-compete agreements. The list is endless, but falls into what I have coined and I did trademark. This registered. It called Employee-nomics and there's a link in the show notes for you. It's about everything.

Employment, employee power has diminished because employers jumped at the first sign of the waning national economic employment data, as above Wall Street Journal articles indicate, and a return to pre-2019 employment in numbers, and put the brakes on wage increases, promotions, hiring and began a mass layoff of overstaffed companies, particularly at the management level staffed companies, particularly at the management level. Employers are tightly connected and successful in deleveraging employees, laying them off. In many cases, as far as my office is currently experiencing it, employees nationwide cannot coalesce to turn the momentum back into their corner, why Employers are well equipped to message among themselves via large K-Street lobby groups to form coalitions against employees because it benefits them economically. You will not read about this effect or this effort. It is entirely subversive. In contrast, employees nationwide have no coalition lobby groups to garner a consensus of the 133 million full-time employees nationwide. To garner a consensus of the 133 million full-time employees nationwide, the best employees can muster is in the form of a mechanism of shared information through social media and viral TikTok videos of employees getting shamefully terminated in real time and then employers you know what apologize like I'm sorry. I hope for a mass movement amongst employees where they collectively move with anonymity to push for more changes at work. The tools of change are present via the technology in our phones.

I was always impressed by the mass protests in Hong Kong before China neutered the nationalistic movement. Protesters used social media in ways that concealed their identities and cause flash mobs to come up and show up in public areas. Protesters used thousands of umbrellas to conceal their identities from the cameras of Big Brother. If that happened here and employees did not fear their exposure to their employers and amassed together, real change could take place. But to be successful, employees must believe in the real change impacting their income and overall well-being. It must be populist in nature and viral via social media. Employee power, or leverage, as called, would be their sheer numbers. This is our past, national history, after all, and the tactic was successful, leading to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We just need a spark, and it wasn't the spark that led to BLM something bigger than that.

So, unfortunately, I have to bring the bad news to you that employers are having the game up on you now, all employees. What can you do about it? I did think about that too. I want to share that with you. Get educated. Get educated about what's happening at work for yourself, protect yourself. Don't let people make mistakes for you. Learn about the rules of engagement. Learn what employment laws are about, for God's sakes. Learn what the employment at will rule is about, for God's sakes. Learn what the implement at will rule is. Many people don't know that rule. Push for change. Be a great employee. Try to seek more compensation because you're worth it. Do everything you possibly can as a team experience, but still have to be your self-advocate because any day you could be fired. That's how the outlaw rule works. I'm against it, I don't like it, but it's the current national mainstay of work default that everyone works in.

So get educated is the first part. Second, a spark. It's got to be something more than we've seen recently. I mean it's got to be something more than we've seen recently. I mean it's got to be something more than the pandemic have produced. It has to be something more than George Floyd getting murdered. It has to be something more than that that we all collectively shared. And I edited this podcast article. I took out something and maybe I'll bring it back in.

If you were around or alive when 9-11 happened, you saw something that was very unique. We all kind of felt the same way about the same thing. It's that level, that level of spark about a social issue that would bring everyone together to cause change. Is that going to happen here? Are employees going to amass and protest together on the mall in Washington and march together to Capitol Hill in very peaceful protest and not storm it? We don't know, but you can sure bet one important thing is going to happen Any glimpse of an employee movement, you'll be sure that employers are going to crack down really hard. Food for thought. So there you have it. Let's tell it as I see it have a great week.