MIT's Paul Osterman on Disposable Workers and a New Employment Crisis

MIT Sloan Professor Emeritus Paul Osterman discusses his book Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment, based on a nationally representative survey of 6,000 workers finding that approximately 35% of the US workforce is now employed with no employer intention of retention, across four categories including lower-wage contractors, high-earning contractors such as travel nurses, freelancers and marginal W-2 workers on no career track, and why benefit avoidance, wage suppression and a documented corporate disrespect for frontline workers are driving the shift — alongside his finding that union presence is one of the most important structural responses available.