Work in America: Report of a Special Task Force to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare ©1973
The New American Workplace ©2006
They are wrong. In 2006, the most promising fact we are able to document is the existence of high-involvement, high-wage, high-profit companies in almost every industry--for example, Southwest Airlines, Nucor Corp., W.L. Gore & Associates, Xilinx Inc., Harley-Davidson Inc., UPS, Costco Wholesale Corp., and Alcoa Inc., to cite just a few. These are productive and growing companies that have lower labor costs overall than their low-wage competitors. Because these companies involve their workers in decision making, reward them fairly for their efforts, and provide them with good training and career opportunities, their employees reciprocate the favor in terms of much higher productivity than workers in comparable low-wage companies. As executives at Starbucks explain, they are able to offer unusually high benefits to their employees not because they charge a premium for their product, but because their productive, customer-sensitive employees allow the company to realize a premium for the products and services they offer.
The bottom line: All the evidence shows that workers who participate in decision making, training, profit sharing, and stock ownership are so much more productive than workers who don't enjoy these working conditions that they pay for their own higher salaries and benefits. They also work to keep jobs in America.
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
