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The Brave New World of Work
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.
I think that if our schools trained people in how to work for themselves in the world of information, the new tech would support more people than it limits.
If it was "natural" for people to use self-published informational websites for much of their research, and to pay those people, then there would be lots more useful information on the Net and many more knowledgeable people supported by the Net.
It is our culture that trains us to use technologies in conservative ways -- as consumers or in support of traditional workplace methods-- rather than to create completely new information-centered industries.
Goat sex free since 2001
I was one of the 75,000 or so laid of by Lucent Technologies. I have witnessed first hand the processes described above, and let me tell you, it isn't pretty at all. I consider it a slap in the face the way things are occuring in this economy. Gone forever (it seems) are the days when people were respected for the work that was done, as opposed to the bottom line, cut-throat corporate world we are living in now. Looking out for number 1 used to not be my highest priority, being able to go home at night knowing I did a damned good job was. Boy how that has changed. I work for myself now, as an independant contractor, and life is much better. I have been burned once, and you will never see me burned again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Sent from your iPad.
Get ready to see your programming job get exported to India and China. Drop your mythical notions that all people in these countries know how to do is customer support.
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.
That said, middle class tech jobs will pay the bills nicely through 2010, after that I wouldn't get into programming for all of the tea in China, it will be a sucker's racket akin to the auto industry.
More and more people are ousted from their jobs by smart technologies.
Although I am no longer the fan of Robert Anton Wilson that I once was (despite the fact that I killed him), he spoke about this phenomenon in (IIRC) "Prometheus Rising". He felt that the increased automization of menial tasks would lead to a more educated society. Since all the "dumb jobs" would be taken over by computers, robots, etc., in order to survive people would have to educate themselves on tasks that cannot be performed by automatons.
This seems to be happening, at least to a degree, although there is another factor at work as well: cheap (nonunionized) international labor. There seems to be a point at which exploiting overseas workers is about as cheap as building a robot, sometimes cheaper.
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.
.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.
We no longer need some guy to stand around for
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?
The fact is (just as with Lake Woebegon), the vast majority of humans are average. They prefer stability and order to chaos and "opportunity". And the other fact is that in North America these orderly, stable, average people have built the civil society that we have today (Kabul anyone? Bagota? Jo'burg?) So now the cultural and economic elite is going to destroy any hope of economic stability to "improve opportunity".
Isn't there an old proverb that goes, "Be careful of what you wish for - you may receive it"?
sPh
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.
Well, this looks very promising, but statistics and experience in Europe show people actually do less back to society in the form of volunteer work, societies and non profit organisations. My guess is the free work base we have laid out actually means we like our work better, but have less time and enthousiasm to do something back.
More and more people need day care for their children, health care jobs (the typical jobs-for-life) are very unattractive at the moment in the netherlands and shortages of personell are high, and costs for non-profit organisations are rising with prices so they cannot keep up with it anymore.
My point is there is also a down-side. We haven't explored the effects of this since we are in the middle of it (at least, in Europe and the US). The good thing is the typical work-80h-a-week-til-death stereotype in the US is fading, just as it has done in Europe, although it was less present there IMO. The down side of all this future will certainly surprise us.
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?
I'm 30. I was one of the first people I know among my cohort to embrace the idea of becoming a mercenary for work. But over the last two years, more and more people my age, and younger are also taking that attitude: if the work doesn't suit me, I don't do it, ... and ... I decide the value of my work and my attitude and work ethic reflect that. Basically, salaried employees are slacking in response to perceived slights or injustices, or even based on what they think they are worth. Many of these things have existed among the "lazy" for many years, but they are becoming acceptable among the rank and file.
That said, I am very sad about this. To me, ideally work should be a way of serving humanity, not serving myself. I think that any job, position, industry, etc. can be looked at and done with an attitude of serving humanity. The problem seems to be that corporations are going in the exact opposite direction and the response is therefore mercenary. Corporations (stockholders) always, always end up winning as compared to their employees. The stockholders are perfect mercenaries of capital, and to me it was only a matter of time before that attitude was learned and reflected in the employees.
I haven't read this book, but I have read other similar works (e.g. Jeremy Rifkin has some stuff about this). It seems inevitable to me that in a capitalist environment this would happen. It also seems inevitable in a communist envionrment tho for different reasons. I personally think that we have to change the nature of our approach to education so that children grow up learning to serve humanity. Mind you, I'm sure lots of other people think that everyone becoming mercenary is a great thing...
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Well, sure they can... as corporate executives and marketing people. ;)
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
"The idea of middle-class security is eroding" and "fluid, part-time, entrepeneurial, free-lance, self-directed"
Let me see now, wasn't this how work used to be before the era of big corporation and manufacturing -- i.e.: The Industry Revolution?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Keep learning and diversify as much as you can. Be interested in the type of business you work for, even if it doesn't seem to apply to your job.
My employer (an insurance company) would rather have competent programmers who have a deep understanding of the insurance industry than brilliant programmers who aren't interested in the business.
There's no particular need for programmers here to have insurance certifications but the bosses take notice when you do.
... but until recently the majority of people doing IT jobs were insulated from them; I distinctly remeber a ./ discussion about the need for unions in the IT field. Most ppl seemed to think that since chances were good that the demand was higher that the workforce available unions didn't made any sense... after all, we were all part of the 'New Economy', we laught at principles made in the XIX century my a bearded german! Most ppl couldn't even graps the principle of conflict between workers and bosses... after all, if ppl want best conditions, why, the Company is going to suffer, and then they will be out of job! Crazy fools!.
Now the same thing that gave birth to this kind of distinctive thinking is coming back for revenge. With the demand/workforce balance changing, and since most ppl in IT were oh-so-damn-liberal in what regards to workers rights - after all, they didn't need to - they are suffering the *same thing* that most other workers in traditional fields have suffered for *centuries*.
It's all so new.... but only to the ones that had illusions about the true nature of the relations between a worker and the guys in charge.
It's so pitifull to see - and I know them first-hand - ppl that during the 90's laughed at other ppls problems and said that they were badly-paid, unemployed, etc, because they were lazy and unfit now being in the damn some situation they joked about then.
Transnacional society, better opportunities? You bet. Capital has no nacionality, never had, so it already know how to play that game. The mantra of "being able to work in what country I want" is not so great when there are thousands of ppl doing the exact thing you do for less money.
(oh, and yes, I'm marxist, just in case someone misses the point and 'acuses me' of such).
fsm