Work

1
Work

• WORK
• CHANGE
• IT

2
PredictionsThe Future Of Work

• Many of us are now free to work anywhere.we are
  free to escape our offices and the cities in
  which our offices are located.
• Visions of Heaven Hell p8-9.
• Life is now horribly confusing. We are mixing up
  home and work, and work is no longer secure.
• C. Handy quoted in the Irish Times Oct 2,
  1996.

3
The Future Of Work

• . . there is no country and no people, I think,
  who can look forward to the age of leisure and
  abundance without a dread. It is a fearful
  problem for the ordinary person, with no special
  talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no
  longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in
  the beloved conventions of a traditional society
  . . .
• Keynes (1930)
• Workers of the world, be warned. The future
  will have fewer middle-class jobs to offer.
  Lifetime careers will be rare. Retraining will be
  constant.
• Newsweek cover page, June 14 1993.

4
ISC

• The Information Society will give birth to a
  second renaissance in Europe in general and in
  Ireland in particular.
• We will witness an unprecedented wave of
  entrepreneurial activity...
• (knowledge is)...the only sustainable
  competitive advantage in the Information
  Society.
• The Social Partners will work together to manage
  the transition towards new working and learning
  paradigms.
• Information Society Steering Committee Report
• http//www.isc.ie/summary.htm

5
ISC Day in the Job

• www.benefitscanada.com/Content/
  2002/03-02/insights.html

6
Heaven Hell, M Harrison

• Hell
• All technology is a Faustian bargain It giveth
  and it taketh awayp 17
• a contract worker may be someone struggling to
  pay a mortgage and make ends meet in a technology
  assisted global market place which picks them up
  and drops them as it pleasesp19
• There are more telephones in Tokyo.p19
• So the inequities in our society and the cruelty
  that exist in the way our species deals with
  itself are likely to continue.p19

• Heaven
• My fathers generation had a working life of
  100,000 hoursp3
• The creative information workplace is not the
  industrial workplace turning out widgets.. p9
• I feel excited about the world my grandchildren
  will live in . p13
• Technology is neutral. We decide what to bring
  into being and what to do with it. p13

7
Questions

• Why are these people saying these thinks?
• What has IT got do with it?
• What of previous upheavals?

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Previous Technologies Change
http//www.aros.net/zxorb/pc-industrial.jpg
9
Industrial Revolution Social Change

• Land declined as the chief source of wealth.
• Output increased faster than labour input.
• Work centralized in factory units.
• The beginning of a massive population move from
  the country side to urban areas.gt Social
  problems and urbanisation!

http//www.operationoutreach-econed.org/images/ind
rev.jpg
10
ASIDE Life Expectancy

• In 18th century French villages the median age of
  marriage was higher than the median age of death.
• The average life expectancy was one third of
  ours!
• Role of technology in changing this?

http//www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/images/1lifeexp.jp
g US Figures
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Longterm Labour Trends
Tangible services
(Tertiary)
(Labour Absorbing)
Agriculture (Primary)
Manufacturing (Secondary)
(Labour Displacing)
(Source Sleepers, Wake! Barry Jones)
From a Pre-Industrial to a Post-Service Society
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The Four Sectors

• Primary Extractive comprises the production of
  basic materials, agriculture, forestry,
  fishing, mining, oil extraction etc.
• Secondary Manufacturing and construction
• Tertiary Tangible economic services such as
  transport, maintenance services, heating, plus
  the supply of goods and services not primarily
  information based
• Quaternary All services which are primarily
  information based such as banking, legal
  accounting services, publishing etc.

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The role of IT

• IT enables or speeds up work in 3 ways.
• Automation
• Robots, factories etc.
• Data processing
• Databases, word processing, etc. etc.
• Information transfer
• Electronic commerce, the internet, file transfer
  etc. etc.
• It also does away with certain types of job while
  creating new areas of work.
• Web design maintenance etc. is a new work area.
• Manufacturing typewriters is an obsolete
  business.

14
Networks Time
Send One Page of Text Chicago to New York
(Costs expressed in actual dollars i.e., no
inflation adjustment)
The Corporation of the 90s. P72, M. Scott
Morton
15
Jobless Growth

• Since 1975, employment growth has consistently
  lagged behind output growth, and this gap is
  likely to widen in the 1990s........We are
  beginning to witness a new phenomenon - jobless
  growth.UNDP 1993 Human Development Report.

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Irish Figures CSO.IE

• Live register - http//www.eirestat.cso.ie/diska/L
  RAA401.html
• GNP
• http//www.cso.ie/principalstats/pristat5.htmlgdp
  
• GDP
• http//www.cso.ie/principalstats/pristat5.htmlinc
  ome

17
Hours Worked and Pay Industrial
18
Downsizing in the USA

• 40 of workers have a college education.
• 70-80 of incomes have been stagnant since
  1975.The remainder have increased.
• Selective automation used to introduce
  inequalities across all strata of the work place.
• UPS packers and drivers earned 8-12 per hour in
  1982. Today the packers earn the same while
  drivers earn 20-25 per hour.
• Drivers are skilled, packers are not.
• Louis Uchitelle, NY Times, Downsizing America
• Between 1982 and 1985 the workforce at General
  Motors shrank from 400,000 to 100,000. Turnover
  rose! The lost jobs were NOT on the factory
  floor!
• Handy 89

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Outsourcing
http//www.houston.oao.com/
20
The Shamrock Organisational ModelHandy 89
21
Globalisation
Core Professional Employees
Network
Contract Work (Out sourced)
Part Time (Seasonally Adjusted) Employees
22
Globalization

• Tele-commuting or tele-working.
• Working form home.
• Customers, competitors and employees are global
  rather than local.
• Early Irish examples Kennys bookshop in Galway
  claims department for a New York insurance
  company in Kerry.
• High profile examples call centers in Dublin
• Production can shift.
• Kindle plans to move key work to India! A
  leading Irish-run banking software company plans
  to move much of its development work from Dublin
  to Bangalore, India, in a shift partly driven by
  the higher cost of engineers here. Irish Times
  Monday, October 19, 1998 www.ireland.com

23
Globalisation

• We are undergoing the deepest rearrangement of
  global power since the birth of the industrial
  revolution,
• A. Toffler (author of Future Shock ) quoted in
  the I.Times Dec 6, 1993.
• "Given the amazing communications facilities
  available around the globe," Greenspan told the
  United States Congress recently, "trades can be
  initiated from almost any location Any direct US
  regulation restricting their flexibility will
  doubtless induce the more aggressive funds to
  emigrate from under our jurisdiction.Think
  about that statement for a minute," Michael
  Elliot, wrote in Newsweek. "The most experienced
  financial regulator in the world's most advanced
  economy just said that he can't control a few
  hundred bond traders and mathematicians living
  (for the moment) in Greenwich, Connecticut. To
  the question "Who's in control of the global
  economy?" we now have an answer. Nobody. Quoted
  in Nua Thinking www.nua.ie

24
Bigger Picture

• It is not just a question of weighing up the
• number of jobs created against the number
• destroyed. There is a lot more going on.

25
Current Irish Government Thinking

• Enterprise Strategy Group Report
• Published on 7 July 2004
• http//www.forfas.ie/esg/index.html

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Summary

• Information technology is fueling dramatic
  changes in the way work is organised and carried
  out.
• The closest previous upheaval was during the
  Industrial Revolution since when things have not
  been quite the same!

27
SOURCES

• Kling 96 Computerization and Controversy
  Values Conflicts and Social Choices. R. Kling
  (ed.) Academic Press. 1996. ARTS 301.24 N64
• Jones 90 Sleepers Wake! - Technology the
  Future of Work. B. Jones. Oxford University
  Press, 1990. S-LEN 600 N01.
• Handy 89 The Age Of Unreason. C. Handy. Arrow
  Business Books, 1989, PB-130-147 (See also
  other books by Handy).
• C4 95 Heaven and Hell. M. Harrison, Channel
  Four Television, 1995, PL-241-603.
• CSO The Central Statistics Office - www.cso.ie
• Irish Times The Irish Times - www.ireland.com
• Rosenberg 97 The Social Impact of Computers. R.
  Rosenberg, Academic Press, 1997. S-LEN 500.4
  N22.