I don't know how the social contract between employees/employers gets rebuilt..feels like it needs to though
The only social contract that is guaranteed is the one written into law. That's why we have government, but the problem is that the government is (for a while now) captive to / bought by large corporations, not responsive to employees/workers/voters.
Whatever principled social contract you may have thought large corporations upheld was smoke and mirrors. It just worked for enough of the right kind of person for a while.
My point is that the so called "social contract" has never been upheld by large corporations - it may have seemed that way at times but it was mostly self serving marketing, not anything that would influence their treatment of employees vs their shareholders and executives.
Furthermore I'm arguing that we shouldn't rely on them to uphold it. If we have a belief in what is universally fair or just (i.e minimum wages, no child labor, no slavery), we should encode it in law, not hope corporations find their conscience to renew the social contract.
Beyond that, "social contracts" benefit the powerful and have a tendency to turn a blind eye to the worst off. Does the "social contract" require me to be a white, college educated male to secure worker protections? If you need a clear example of this, consider the relationship between citizens and police in the United States, and how blind the majority has been to how fundamentally broken the "social contract" around policing has been for minorities. That's what a handshake-society looks like.
Granted having both might be nice, but relying on a social contract is like relying on a benevolent dictator. It's great until it's not.
But if you have a very diverse society that operates on tribalism, then you need a strong rule of law with strong checks and bounds to weed out tribalism, but this doesn't come for free as policing and lawyering the behavior of all members of society to check if they aren't discriminating each other over immutable characteristics, is gonna costs the government and companies operating in this environment a lot of money, so you're gonna have higher operating costs. Which is why it's so much cheaper for US companies to hire in places like central europe where your payroll expense are mostly ICs and you don't need auxiliary armies of diversity consultants like in the US.
Basic labor regulation around hiring/firing has nothing to do with diversity. It has everything to do with basic labor regulation around hiring/firing. Sure, regulation is expensive. There's no special reason the United States can't foot that bill and every other Western European economy can.
What on earth do diversity consultants have to do with prohibiting opportunistic layoffs to maximize short-term profits?
I was talking about white collar labor, not factory work, but yes, that also applies there as well.
>Basic labor regulation around hiring/firing has nothing to do with diversity.
It does when some poor performers you want to fire are part of a minority protected group and can sue you even if you're not firing them because they're minorities but because they're bad at their job, it's gonna cost you extra to avoid fake discriminatory lawsuits. Then hiring abroad becomes a better idea.
>every other Western European economy can.
Because in places like central europe you don't need them so you save money on payroll, as there's no bitching over "diversity", every worker is the same so there's no chance of "i've been discriminated because of my skin color, I'm gonna sue you for millions"
Change starts with regulation. That's how every other advanced economy handles it.
It's really not that complicated. It's the same situation as healthcare. You shouldn't rely on the free market to do anything other than maximize short term profits.
Personally, I'm in favor of regulations and stiff penalties for employers who break them.