While median wages for two-parent families have increased 23 percent since 1976, evidence suggests that this increase is not the result of rising wages but of additional hours worked outside of the home. For example, in 2009, the average two-parent family worked 26 percent more hours than in 1975, with families now working about 3500 hours, on average, compared to 2800 hours. The 26 percent increase in hours worked mainly reflects increases in women working. In fact, among two-parent families with median earnings, the hours of men were relatively constant over time, while hours worked by women more than doubled from 1975 to 2009.
Longer Hours, Not Higher Wages, Have Driven Modest Earnings Growth for Most American Households
American households are working longer hours—hours they used to have for other activities such as leisure or family time. These longer hours are the main reason why household earnings increased over the last 35 years. Between 1979 and 2007, annual earnings of most households (those between the 20th and 80th percentiles of earnings) increased by 15.2 percent, rising to just under $60,000 by 2007. During this period, the average hourly wages of these households grew $1.05 per hour, while annual hours rose by 289 hours.
How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce
Internally, however, Walmart considered the group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they’re called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the “home office,” as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
.. OUR Walmart made its claims public in June 2011, when 97 employees and their supporters arrived in Bentonville with a 12-point declaration that asked for wages and benefits sufficient to ensure that no worker would have to rely on government assistance. They also called for dependable schedules, expanded health-care coverage, and the freedom to speak up without facing retaliation. In the parking lot, they presented the document to Casey and asked to speak with her inside.
.. Lockheed Martin is one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. Although it’s best known for making fighter jets and missile systems, it also has an information technology division that offers cybersecurity and data analytics services. Tucked into that is a little-known operation called LM Wisdom, which has been around since 2011. LM Wisdom is described on Lockheed’s website as a tool “that monitors and analyzes rapidly changing open source intelligence data … [that] has the power to incite organized movements, riots and sway political outcomes.”
.. Employers can send people to open meetings or rallies or demonstrations. But there’s little labor law regarding companies’ monitoring of their employees’ own social media accounts.
.. Williamson, the former Walmart associate who became an OUR Walmart organizer, knew she was being monitored in Bentonville. “I sent a couple of fake tweets about where we would be or what we were doing. I don’t know if it worked,” she says. “I wonder how people feel about Walmart wasting money by hiring Lockheed Martin to read my tweets.
“After My Very First Night, I Knew I Would Never Drive a Taxi Again”
Now, when I stopped seeing the world through a cab driver’s eyes, I immediately recognized that this was a better system; not just for the passengers, but for me too.
For one, there would be no more mind-numbing waiting around to go to work. In fact, I often got my first ride as I pulled out of my driveway. No longer did I have to apologize for, or worry about, a dirty, smelly, mechanically unsound vehicle. This was my car; it was clean, everything worked as it should, and people were far more likely to treat it that way. If they didn’t, they knew they’d be charged for the cleaning, or for the repairs. There was accountability now, which kept everyone on their best behavior, even me. My passengers were inquisitive, not standoffish, nor suspicious of every turn that I made, and they usually felt more like friends than customers. Best of all, it was fun.
.. There are currently 1,900 taxicabs operating in San Francisco, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Meanwhile, last January, Uber claimed to have over 11,000 active drivers in the city — 11,000!
.. Another area in which Lyft and Uber had surpassed the taxi model was efficiency. Immediately, I found that they almost always kept me busy.
.. Something else I liked was that the rideshare model was color blind. It would be near impossible for a customer to be passed over due to their race, ethnicity, or sexuality — at least not without repercussions.