Melanie Milanich:
>We now function with a "just in time" mentality of contract work,
>temporary, part-time, no benefits, no security. And this has been extended
>to areas of work that are not technological , nursing now has record
numbers
>of contract, "just in time" positions, as well as warehouse shipping or
>inventories, etc. Also unions are being busted all over when there are
>no longer employees, but "contract" self-employed people.
>Technology has not just eliminated "jobs" but has globalized the work
force,
>outsourcing whole branches, departments, processes. The last GM strike was
>partly over this outsourcing. Technology has made it easier to move many
of
>our jobs to Mexico, the US south, India, Indonesia. While technically it
>created "jobs" there in the new found capital market, it really replaced
more
>subsistence, non-market work.
This doesn't sound like the end of work, but an increasing amount of work
dedicated to trying to get the work. It's like the consulting business.
You spend a lot of time preparing bids on jobs, sometimes more time than you
spend on doing the job. And the more people bidding, the lower your chances
and the less worthwhile it becomes. The consultant used to be the
smooth-talking guy in the pinstriped suit. Now increasingly he looks like
the red-eyed anarchist about to throw a bomb.
The question this raises is that of new sources of countervailing power.
Unions are in retreat, probably because their power was based on production
taking place in a single location and in a regular sequence so that it could
be interrupted by a strike. That is not so easy to do now that production
can be shifted to many different locations and sequences can be changed.
Governments seem to have bought into business a little too far to be an
effective source of countervailing power. As labour becomes fragmented and
unions lose their teeth, power shifts. Governments are only too well aware
of where it is moving to.
Some time ago there was some discussion on this list of using the internet
as a means of generating countervailing power. Somehow, I don't think so.
You get the same kind of babble on the internet as you get at the local
donut shop. So, what are we to do? How do we move to a new paradigm for
labour?
Ed Weick
