What happened to long-term employment? The role of worker power and environmental turbulence in explaining declines in worker tenure

摘要

It is observed that in the last thirty years there is significant decline in the average duration of employment relationships. The changes are particularly felt with a decrease in the proportion of workers with long term employment and an increase of employees moving within the last year. It is implied that declines in tenure are primarily because workers are increasingly moving between jobs using external labor markets. Mobility through external labor markets have several consequences such as workers' access to pay and opportunity, slow wage growth among young workers, altering racial earnings disparities, etc. The present research work attempts to understand the relationship between consequences of changing worker tenure and mobility and the duration of employment relationships. Based on a longitudinal data of thirty years from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the research work tries to understand declines in worker tenure. A theoretical framework is developed to understand changes in tenure and two sets of changes in organizations' environments viz., declining union strength, and increased foreign competition and technological changes are explored. The proposed explanations are also tested on different industries. The analysis has particularly focused on men aged 30-65 and the results demonstrated that societal power plays in shaping changes to the employment relationship and workers' careers. (90 refs.)