Transcript Work

Work
WORK
CHANGE
&
IT
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Predictions
The 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.]
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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].
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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]
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ISC Day in the Job……
www.benefitscanada.com/Content/ 2002/03-02/insights.html
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[Heaven & Hell, M Harrison]
 Heaven
 My father’s generation
had a working life of
100,000 hours……p3
 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
1BA6 Computers and Society
 Hell
 All technology is a Faustian
bargain: It giveth and it taketh
away…p 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
pleases…p19
 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
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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
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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.
=> Social problems and
urbanisation!
1BA6 Computers and Society
http://www.operationoutreach-econed.org/images/indrev.jpg
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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?
1BA6 Computers and Society
http://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/images/1lifeexp.jpg
US Figures
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Longterm Labour Trends
Tangible services
(Tertiary)
(Labour Absorbing)
Agriculture
(Primary)
Information services
Manufacturing
(Quaternary)
(Secondary)
(Labour Displacing)
Pre-industrial
Industrial
Post-industrial
Post-service
(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.
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Networks & Time
Send One Page of Text
Chicago to New York
Time
Speed
Cost
Hours
Miles/Hour
$
Pre-Railroad
252
3.37
0.25
Railroad
48
17.7
0.03
Telegraph
0.083
10,240
7.5
New York
Chicago 850 miles
Data Communications 0.002 447,000 0.31
(Costs expressed in actual dollars i.e., no inflation adjustment)
[The Corporation of the 90s’. P72, M. Scott Morton]
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Jobless Growth
200
 “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.
191
175
OECD
149
150
125
100
1975
1990
Employment
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120
2000
GDP
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Irish Figures – CSO.IE
 Live register http://www.eirestat.cso.ie/diska/LRAA401.html
 GNP
http://www.cso.ie/principalstats/pristat5.html#gdp
 GDP
http://www.cso.ie/principalstats/pristat5.html#income
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Hours Worked and Pay Industrial
Average
Hours Worked
Hourly Pay
Year Skilled
Unskilled Skilled
Unskilled
1991
46.1
46.9
5.4
4.3
1992
47.1
47.1
5.99
4.99
1993
45.9
46.3
6.4
5.17
1994
46.3
47
6.7
5.56
1995
46.3
46.8
7.07
5.83
1996
46.4
47.3
7.4
6.07
1997
46.8
47.8
8.33
6.33
1998
46
46.4
9.24
6.76
1999
46
46.8 10.03
7.4
2000
46.4
47.2
11
8.7
%Change -0.2
0.6 103.7
102.3
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%Difference
26
20
24
21
21
22
32
37
36
26
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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/
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The Shamrock Organisational Model
[Handy 89]
Core
Professional
Employees
Contract
Work
(Out
sourced)
1BA6 Computers and Society
Part Time
(Seasonally Adjusted)
Employees
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Globalisation
Core
Professional
Employees
Contract
Work
(Out
sourced)
1BA6 Computers and Society
Network
Part Time
(Seasonally Adjusted)
Employees
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Globalization
 Tele-commuting or tele-working.
 Working form home.
 Customers, competitors and employees are global rather than local.
 Early Irish examples: Kenny’s 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]
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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]
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Bigger Picture
Economics
Globalisation
Demographics
CHANGE
Technology
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.
1BA6 Computers and Society
Down Sizing
Politics
Work p- 24
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!
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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.
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