>From: "vivian Hutchinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:07:51 +1200
>X-Distribution: Moderate
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Subject: The Jobs Letter No.99 (14 May 1999)
>Reply-to: "The Jobs Letter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Priority: normal
>
>T H E J O B S L E T T E R 0 9 9
>-------------------------------------
>a subscriber-based letter
>published in New Zealand 14 May 1999
>
>edited by Vivian Hutchinson for the Jobs Research Trust
>P.O.Box 428, New Plymouth, New Zealand
>phone 06-753-4434 fax 06-759-4648
>Internet address -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>I N T H I S I S S U E
>-----------------------------
>STATISTICS
>BRUCE JESSON
>OZ APPRENTICESHIPS
>HOW IS YOUR RESTRUCTURING GOING?
>FROM JOB TO PROFESSION
>
>T H E J O B S L E T T E R
>an essential information and media watch
>on jobs, employment, unemployment, the future of work,
>and related economic and education issues.
>
>
>HOW IS YOUR RESTRUCTURING GOING?
>* How's your re-structuring going? Is there a major business
>or government department in NZ that hasn't been re-structured,
>downsized or 're-engineered' (often repeatedly) in the last 15
>years?
>Has there been any studies undertaken as to how the goals of the
>re-structuring and downsizing were measuring up after the fact?
>
>* In the US, estimates of the numbers of American workers
>who have been 'downsized' from jobs in the major corporates, from
>1980 to 1995, vary from a low count of 13m people, to as high as
>39m.
>
>In the early 1990s, the American Management Association
>conducted studies of firms which had engaged seriously in
>downsizing. The AMA found that repeated downsizings produce
>"lower profits and declining worker productivity..." Another study
>by the Wyatt Companies found that "less than half the companies
>achieved their expense reduction goals; fewer than one-third
>increased their profitability and less than one third increased their
>productivity..."
>
>* Richard Sennett, in his recent book "The Corrosion of
>Character" writes that because managerial ideology presents the
>drive for re-structuring as a matter of achieving greater efficiency,
>we need to ask whether such institutional change has succeeded in
>its goals.
>
>Sennett: "It became clear to many business leaders by the mid-
>1990s that only in the highly paid fantasy life of consultants can a
>large organisation define a new business plan, trim staff and 're-
>engineer' itself to suit, then steam forward to realise the new design.
>
>"Many, even most, re-engineering efforts fail largely because
>institutions become dysfunctional during the people-squeezing
>process: the morale and motivation of workers drop sharply in the
>various plays of downsizing. Surviving workers wait for the next
>blow of the axe rather than exulting in competitive victory over those
>who are fired...
>
>"Institutional changes, instead of following the path of the
>guided arrow, head in different and often conflicting directions:
>business plans are discarded and revised; expected benefits turn
>out to be ephemeral; the organisation loses direction, a profitable
>operating unit is suddenly sold, for example, yet a few years later
>the parent company tries to get back the business in which it knew
>how to make money before it sought to reinvent itself..."
>
>* Sennett says that because institutional re-structurings signal
>to the finance markets that change is "for real", the stock prices of
>institutions in the course of re-organisation often rises, as though
>"any changes are better than continuing on as before..."According
>to the markets, the disruption of organisations becomes profitable.
>
>Sennett: "While the disruption may not be justifiable in terms of
>productivity, the short-term returns to stockholders provide a strong
>incentive to the powers of chaos disguised by that seemingly
>reassuring word 're-engineering'. Perfectly viable businesses are
>gutted or abandoned, capable employees are set adrift rather than
>rewarded, simply because the organisation must prove to the
>market that it is capable of change..."
>
>FROM JOB TO PROFESSION
>by Andrew Kimbrell
>
>* The word job in English originally meant a criminal or
>demeaning action. (We retain this meaning when we call a bank
>robbery a "bank job.") After the industrial revolution took hold in
>18th-century England, the first generations of factory workers felt
>that wage work was humiliating and undignified. Angry about being
>driven from their traditional work on the land or in crafts, they
>applied the word job to factory labour as a way of expressing their
>disgust.
>
>* Even today many of us avoid the word job, preferring more
>upscale terms like occupation or career to describe what we do for
>40-plus hours each week. Yet the older meaning of these words
>also reveals something about the nature of work.
>
>Occupation originally meant to seize or capture. (It is still used in
>this sense when, for instance, we speak of the German occupation
>of France during World War II.) What an apt description of how jobs
>take over our lives, subjecting us to the demands of outside rulers.
>The original meaning of career fits well with the role we play in the
>speeded-up global economic rat race. In the 19th century, career
>meant "racing course" or "rapid and unrestrained" activity.
>
>* In searching for ways to put meaning back into our work, we
>might want to revive the term vocation (from the Latin for "voice" or
>"calling"). Today, however, "having a vocation" or "answering a
>calling" usually means embarking upon a religious life--an
>unfortunate narrowing of the concept.
>
>We all deserve to be involved in work to which we have been
>called by our passions and beliefs. Following a vocation can lead to
>a profession--literally, a "public declaration" of what we believe and
>who we are. A profession is what our work should be, but so rarely
>is ...
>
>LOW UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOW INFLATION
>* The buoyant US economy seems to have put into question
>the assumption that low unemployment results in high inflation.
>Modern economists have worked on the assumption that an
>unemployment rate of below 6% would cause wages to rise, fueling
>inflation. However, in the US, unemployment is now at 4.2%, the
>lowest in 29 years and inflation is also at a low level. The Federal
>Reserve Bank chairman Alan Greenspan attributes this to increased
>worker productivity through industrial investment in technology.
>Greenspan tells international bankers that the threat to inflation now
>is the overvalued American stock market.
>
>
>WORLD POVERTY REPORT
>* World poverty is escalating and the gap between rich and
>poor is increasing at an alarming rate, according to the World Bank's
>1999 World Development Indicator. The report says there are 900
>million people living in the first world and 4.9 billion in the third
>world. 1.5 billion people, or one quarter of all the people on earth
>live on less than $US1/day. Life expectancy has deteriorated by 10
>years in sub-Saharan Africa. In the years from 1989 to 1995, the
>number of people living in poverty in the former Soviet Union has
>risen from 14 million to 147 million. The report calls for reform of
>the global financial system.
>
>TOBIN TAX GAINS GROUND
>* You'll be hearing more about this: the Tobin tax. There has
>been an international call for governments to enact a small tax on
>international financial transactions in an effort to discourage
>currency speculation, and to promote longer-term security of
>investment in local markets and jobs.
>
>The campaign for a tax on currency speculation is based on the
>work of James Tobin, a Nobel laureate in economics based at Yale
>University. Its purpose is to discourage volatile short-term trading
>and the destabilizing effect this has on national currencies. The
>proposal is similar to the Financial Transactions Tax which local
>economist John Lepper originally suggested to the Alliance Party as
>an alternative to GST.
>
>Speculative transactions under the Tobin proposal would be
>taxed at a tiny percent of volume (0.1%-0.5%), once per transaction.
>Non-speculative transactions would be exempt, (currently about 10-
>15% of the daily volume). The tax would discourage the most
>volatile overnight or short-term currency trades, while leaving longer-
>term investments barely effected. Dangerous currency volatility
>would therefore be reduced, and national macroeconomic
>autonomy restored. Economic studies on the Tobin proposals
>predict that billions in revenue, potentially as much as $300 - $600
>billion per year, could be generated by the tax.
>
>* The Canadian House of Commons last month passed a
>motion supporting the introduction of the Tobin tax. Finland, which
>has just elected a new government, plans to be the first EU country
>to include a Tobin tax in its economic programme. There is also a
>growing international alliance of economists and community
>activists (http://www.tobintax.org) who are promoting the concept
>of the tax around the world.
>
>
>
>
>C R E D I T S
>-------------------
>
>Editor -- Vivian Hutchinson
>Associates - Rodger Smith, Dave Owens and Jo Howard
>Secretary - Shirley Vickery
>
>ISSN No. 1172-6695
>
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>ends
>------
>
>The Jobs Letter
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