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?

In the 80s, on the Cosby Show, the Huxtable’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone was a realistic home for an OB/GYN (Heathcliff) and lawyer (Claire), especially because it pre-dated the New York housing boom of the last ten years. On the other hand, could a Florida undercover police officer, like Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, really afford to live on a boat and wear Italian suits and Espadrilles?

MSN has a nice article on the actual median salaries of television characters. It shows that Ugly Betty’s lead character’s position as an executive assistant has a real life median salary of $37,810. Knowingly, it note that she is probably making less than the median because she works “in a notoriously low-paying media niche (fashion magazines).” Of course, she does get the benefit of living at home and free swag for her sister and nephew.

On the other hand, newly announced Presidental canidate Fred Thompson plays New York DA Arthur Branch on Law & Order. They cite the current New York County DA makes $150,000 per year. The article doubts that he could afford an apartment in an upscale New York neighborhood where the average apartment goes for $1 million. Maybe he bought in the 80s like the Huxtables. (I realize that they are fictional characters… really.)

Although these comparisons seems amusing at best, these representations do have an effect on people’s (in particular young people) conceptualization of the workplace and reality. The event planning industry got a boost in employee interesting after the success of Sex in the City’s Samantha. Most people working in PR now need to explain that they generally don’t throw events and get their clients on Page Six.

The relationship between a job’s fictional representation and it’s real world daily activities has deeper issues that will be worth exploring in future posts.