2024-11-11
34 分钟Zeynep Ton believes that low-wage work (in childcare, customer service, assembly lines and other essential industries) is front-line work — and that pay should be adjusted accordingly. She makes the case that fair and competitive compensation for front-line workers is a better business model, with a nearly endless list of benefits for people and society at large. Listen in to learn how higher pay leads to higher productivity, better services, and happier people everywhere.
TED Audio Collective.
You're listening to how to Be a Better Human.
I'm your host, Chris Duffy.
We talk a lot on this podcast about what it means to improve your life and the world around you.
But you know, one of the most obvious things you could do that would make your life better and give you time, money and mental space to improve the world at large would be to have a good job, or even just to not have a terrible job.
Today's guest, Zeynep Tan, studies what makes work good, what makes it satisfying, dignified and fair.
She's a professor, a researcher, and the president of the Good Jobs Institute.
And here's a clip from her TED Talk where she's explaining what too often work actually looks like these days.
Take Janet, a full time hourly manager at a retail chain.
Even as a manager, her low income didn't pay the bills for her and her son, so she had to have a second job.
But she couldn't hold on to her second job because her work schedule changed all the time.
One day she might work from 5pm to 9pm the next morning her shift might start at 5am Just imagine her life and imagine how little time she had with her son.
My life is always in a turmoil, janet told me.
She couldn't sleep.
Amazingly, though, she still cared so much about doing a good job at work.
But even there, she failed in front of her customers all the time.
One day, she said to me, customers were yelling at her because the checkout line was too long.
Some walked off, leaving their full baskets.
The line was too long because there weren't enough workers at the store and so many of the workers who were there were new, so they were slow and made a lot of mistakes.
They put the wrong product on the wrong shelf or left the expired milk in the fridge.