White collar factories are overworked, underpaid office jobs with high stress and little job security. Competition for jobs and wages has led to longer workdays and increased stress, affecting mental and physical health. The banking, communications, and high-tech industries are particularly susceptible. The rise of technology and big business has led to the emergence of white collar factories.
White collar factories are office jobs that are overworked, underpaid, too much stress, and not enough security for their workers. They are based on the combined idea of anxiety, rigor and downsizing in blue-collar jobs, and hectic workdays and low factory wages. The term was popularized by Jill Andresky Fraser in her 2001 book, White Collar Sweatshops: The Deterioration of Work and Its Rewards in Corporate America.
Andresky shows that reduced benefit packages, hostile takeovers, mergers, contingency workers, company takeovers, longer work days, and cost cutting have all contributed to the emergence of an overworked workforce. She cites Citigroup, Disney and IBM as examples of white collar factories and blames many federal regulatory changes for these transformations among the upper working class in many places.
With the emergence of large competitive companies, there has been an increase in competition for jobs and wages. This has led to an increased workload for employees who are unsure of their job security. Not knowing where their future lies within a corporation, employees at white collar sweatshops find themselves pulling longer days, more weekends and harder shifts. They reduce downtime, increase productivity and continue to work from laptops after shifts are over.
This competitive increase in work-related tasks, coupled with a decrease in free time, sleep or family time, leads to a high level of stress in white collar factories. This stress takes a toll on their mental and physical health, making it even more difficult for many employees to step up to task. According to the author, more Americans are working between 49 and 60 hours a week than ever before, and the rise of pagers, cell phones and laptops has increased workday anxiety more than ever before.
The banking, communications, and high-tech industries are especially susceptible to white-collar factories. Industries like these often have high turnover and stress-inducing rankings, rankings, and statistics. The economic boom of the 1990s, according to the author, left the white-collar workers who manage these industries and went straight to the top of companies. Perks and bonuses were sacrificed for the white-collar factory worker, while obsolete wages and lower wages became the norm.
Fraser, a financial reporter, blamed the rise of white-collar factories on the 24-hour on-call, diminishing pension plans and a boss’s ability to reach an employee at any time via email. She cites situations hostile to Intel employees and bosses and says the culture of white-collar work has changed unalterably in an era of big money and big business. Change has led to white-collar factories and the stress, risk and insecurity that go with them.
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