The Conference Board’s survey of US job satisfaction hit an all time low. 45%, the lowest number since the survey began in 1987.

There is some surprise that, even as workplace safety and things like vacation days have increased, this number had trended downward:

“[That] could spell trouble for the overall engagement of U.S. employees and ultimately employee productivity,” she [Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board] added.

The report notes that job satisfaction has steadily declined over the years despite big improvements in the work environment, such as a reduction of workplace hazards and an increase in vacation days.

Simply put, we are at the point where the fetishism of management for screwing with their workers may start hitting the bottom line.

This is basic primate behavior: People know that that upper management’s wages have gone up by more than 10 times, while their wages have stagnated.

The National Geographic noted this over 15 years ago:

Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says
Sean Markey
National Geographic News
September 17, 2003

If you expect equal pay for equal work, you’re not the only species to have a sense of fair play. Blame evolution.

Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) have found that the highly social, cooperative species native to South America show a sense of fairness, the first time such behavior has been documented in a species other than humans.

The question of whether human aversion to unfair treatment—now shown by other primates—is an evolved behavior or the result of the cultural influence of large social institutions like religion, governments, and schools, in the case of humans, has intrigued scientists in recent years.

The new finding suggests evolution may have something to do with it. It also highlights questions about the economic and evolutionary nature of cooperation and its relationship to a species’ sense of fairness, while adding yet another chapter to our understanding of primates.

……………