Market Populism, Redux

This story from the NY Times basically rehashes what Tom Frank has been saying all along:

Not long ago, before the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other companies, workers often saw themselves as management's best buddies. Gone was the old, us-against-them mentality in which workers viewed C.E.O.'s as robber barons intent on squeezing them for every last dollar.

In its place was a new world in which workers, with their stock options and 401(k) plans loaded with company stock, saw themselves as allied with management, not opposed to it. Pointing to the dot-com phenomenon, management theorists talked of a New Economy paradigm in which workers would link arms with executives because they were just as eager as their bosses to maximize company profits and stock prices.

The notion of worker exploitation was largely forgotten, at least among white-collar and high-technology employees, because it seemed so Old Economy. Corporate executives fostered an egalitarian atmosphere by using the same cafeterias and parking lots as their subordinates. They embraced an inclusive vocabulary in which workers were partners, associates, even fellow entrepreneurs, and to make workers identify with them, managers rewarded their new partners with stock options, bonuses and discount stock purchase plans...

To this new species of investor-worker, unions seemed irrelevant. Unions made little headway as they sought to lure workers by promising the basic protections coveted in decades past, like health coverage and defined-benefit pensions. Union membership remained flat even as the 1990's boom created more than 15 million jobs. For many workers, the collective approach seemed anachronistic because they were confident that management would protect them or they could protect themselves...