The Brave New World of Work

In the The Brave New World of Work, Ulrich Beck argues that the work society as we've known it is coming to an end. More and more people are ousted from their jobs by smart technologies. In the United States, all the but the highest-level workers are now unsure of their jobs and incomes. The idea of middle-class security is eroding, and so -- Beck believes they are related -- is worker enthusiasm for democratic practices like voting. Work here and in much of the West is increasingly resembling labor patterns in the Third World -- fluid, part-time, entrepeneurial, free-lance, self-directed. The idea of the "job for life" has disappeared, temporarily creating a political economy of insecurity. Down the road, he argues, this new kind of work society may actually be good for the world, creating a new kind of civil transnationalism, and enhancing our freedom and our civic lives. The Brave New World of Work author Ulrich Beck pages 202 publisher Polity Press rating 8/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-7456-2398-0 summary The end of the work society

Beck has written a surprising and provocative book about how working is changing radically under our very noses with little serious discussion in our media or political communities. We see stories all the time about employment rates, but most people have little or no sense of the radical changes affecting the nature of work.

Work has become unstable throughout the modern world, writes Beck, a professor of sociology at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. Skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, social and welfare safety nets eroded. Companies merge, collapse, form and reform, often at the expense of their workers.

Fear and economic insecurity prevail among the middle-class majority as well as the underclass, writes Beck. "The United States is the only advanced country where productivity has constantly risen over the past twenty years, while the income of most of its citizens (eight out of ten) has either stagnated or declined. The average weekly earnings of 80 per cent of Americans in gainful employment dropped by roughly 18 per cent between l973 and l995, he reports, from $315 to $258 a week. At the same time, the real income of top managers soared by 19 per cent in just ten years between 1979 and 1989.

As entire industries rise or fall, as firms expand, shrink, separate, "downsize" and restructure, employees at all but the highest levels must go to work each day without knowing whether they will have their jobs or for how long. The newly unstable work society leads to the erosion of the middle-class and in our collective interest in civics. According to Beck, decline in civic participation and voting is directly tied to the decline of work society, which he says is closely linked to worker attitudes about democracy.

Is this all bleak? No, according to Beck. Although the loss of work security creates a temporary loss of security and social capital, he believes that down the road, this individuality and freedom -- much of it empowered by the same technology that has eroded work security -- will create a new kind of global citizen, one who is better informed, more communicative and civically-involved than before. He foresees a more inclusive kind of transnational society, with less nationalism and provincialism. The alternative facing the world is either collapse or political self-renewal, and he foresees the latter.

It's an interesting look at a subject that will affect almost every single American whose lives are being shaped by powerful technological forces they sense but don't quite understand. Work is a critical subject, and technology is changing it. In Brave New World of Work Beck helps us understand how and gives us some sense of how the new workplace might affect our futures.

You can purchase Brave New World of Work at Fatbrain.

Comments

Work doesn't seem to be going away

[pheonix]

Much like the automation efforts of the past, I don't think work will go "away" per se. It will change. The jobs will be different.

We no longer need some guy to stand around for .25 an hour on an assembly line setting screws into mounts so the next guy at .40 an hour can screw them in. We do need someone to do routine maintenance and programming at 20 an hour on the machines that do the job.

I don't think we have in the past, or will in the future, see a dramatic decrease in jobs. What we will see is some jobs going away and some magically appearing.

Who had a job programming 50 years ago?

Whoa: let's see step B, please

[JWhitlock]

Katz say the book claims that the declining job security has lowered the motivation for the working and middle to participate in the political process. This makes sense to me - politics usually starts locally. If you don't think you will hold on to your job for long, why fight for the union? If you think you might have to move to find work, why get involved in the neighborhood association? If you have moved to find work, and you may have to move again, why get interested in local politics?

Then Katz says the author claims that this mobile, insecure worker will become politically aware at a world level, and we'll have a whole new class of involved citizens.

I don't see how you get there from here. Where's step B?

It seems that workers may become more familiar with the global sources of their labor problems, but without the avenue of local solutions, then I don't see these people becoming political agents. More likely, they will complain about global and national problems, but be unable to think of a way to solve those problems.

In other words, a bunch of complainers, rather than folks who take action. Remind you of any online communities you know?

Re:Tech workers in for rude surprises by 2015

[Chibi]

On top of that, get ready to be "Moore's law'd'" out of most other programming jobs you might be thinking of taking - by 2015 computers will be fast enough that point-and-drool paint-by-numbers tools will be available to rapidly and idiotically autogenerate most of the code you write today with no discernable performance loss.

And who's going to create these magical "point-and-drool" applications? Programmers. I've no doubt the job market will be very different in 2015 from it is today, I don't think it'll be quite as bleak as you are making it out to be.

Think about HTML. Initially, you had to write it all yourself. Then, WYSIWYG (point-and-drool) applications started coming out (FrontPage, Netscape Composer, Dreamweaver). These can make life easier for those that know HTML, and allow those that don't know it to create a web page. But it still took programmers to create the program.

Also, I think you are underestimating the difficulty of some applications. While new technology might make old skills obsolete, this will only create a need for new skills (which you'd better learn).