Having a job used to provide helpful benefits and a path to a stable life. Increasingly, it no longer does. So it’s time to rethink how we support and reward our workforce.
The way we work today would be unrecognizable to the union bosses and corporate leaders of the past. When the United Auto Workers and General Motors signed the “Treaty of Detroit” in 1950—the most influential labor contract of the 20th century—a job was something you did full-time for your whole life for a single company, and the arrangement came with generous health, unemployment, and pension benefits (not to mention guaranteed wage increases). Workers had to give up their independence and turn up at the same place every day at the same hours, but they were rewarded with a ticket to middle-class comfort.
