10'5 EMPLOYMENT AND WORK IN AN AGE OF CYBERTECHNOLOGY

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10.5 EMPLOYMENT AND WORK IN AN AGE OF
CYBERTECHNOLOGY
Vanessa Humphries
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How Work Has Been Transformed In The Age of
Cybertechnology

• Job displacement and automation
• Robotics and expert systems (ES)
• Remote work and virtual organizations

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Some of the social problems associated with
automation and job displacement

• The reduction of people in factory and assembly
  jobs
• Long term unemployment or permanent job loss
• Lack of marketable job skills

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Some of the social issues associated with robotics

• Workers who generally felt connected to their
  labor lose their sense of pride and craftsmanship
• The effect of de-skilling or alienation occurs
  when work becomes automated, and workers skills
  are transferred to machines

Danger, Will Robinson!!!
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Some of the social issues associated with expert
systems (ES)

• ES technology poses a similar threat to
  professional workers by allowing knowledge, in
  the form of knowledge-related skills, to be
  extracted from experts and then implanted into
  computer software

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Some of the social issues affecting virtual
organizations and remote work.
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What kind of commitment can employees expect from
their employers.
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• Interpersonal relationships which develop in a
  physical workplace when workers interact with
  each other and managers is now threatened by
  virtual organizations
• Richard Spinello (1977), points out that
  virtual organizations may feel less obligated to
  provide their employees with benefits or other
  workplace amenities.

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• Remote workers might be deprived of career
  advancement and promotions
• Companies who are out-sourcing jobs to foreign
  countries

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The special implications that remote work, or
telework, has for disabled employees

• Ben Fairweather (1998), acknowledges that remote
  has provided opportunities to some disabled
  workers who otherwise would be denied access to
  jobs.

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Fairweathers concern is that the practice of
remote work might provide employers with a
convenient scheme for keeping disabled workers
out of the physical workplace, and he finds that
troubling for three reasons
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It effects worker autonomy. It denies those
disabled workers who could work either remotely
or in a conventional workplace setting the choice
of determining where they will work.
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The practice of remote work can be used to hide
disabled workers, keeping them out of sight and
away from the physical workplace.
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Remote work provides employers with a convenient
excuse not to make the physical workplace
compatible with current ADA (American
Disabilities Act) guidelines and requirements.