Learning how to get along.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had an article entitled, “ Working on your Marriage — at work. It describes how a growing number companies offer marriage training (which apperently is different from counseling) because they believe that marriage problems cause losses of productivity.
It’s strange too see the movement back to Henry Ford’s ideas of welfare capitalism that an employers have a responsibility with their workers maintain a “healthy” home life. Some companies have adapted healthy policies which include anti-smoking initiatives which actually test for smoking in their employees. No one argues that encouraging healthy relationships are good. Quitting smoking is a good thing as well. Of course, privacy alarm bells should be ringing with this shift. The article also notes, that many companies want to avoid potential discrimination of unmarried employees.
However, the bigger, more fundamental question that is posed, is why are more social responsibilities being moved to the jurisdiction of the workplace? We can clearly see that having health insurance tied to one’s job has proven to be flawed. Everyone from the unemployed to the aspiring entrepreneur who cannot leave her day job to the US auto industry which cannot afford to pay for their retirees’ health care sees the limitations to the current status quo.
Why then, should we be moving towards a systems where more social / health programs tied to a job? Why should the motivation for these kinds of programs be more productivity for their employer?
