None of these responses can be considered adequate to deal with the
problems associated with long-term structural unemployment.14 In order to
reduce human suffering, avoid probable unpleasant socio-political
consequences, protect the environment and provide a new framework for all
people to contribute positively to societal well-being, North American
society must sooner or later begin to design innovative, feasible ways to
address the basic changes that are occurring in employment patterns. It is
imperative now for decision makers to identify alternative approaches to
distributing paid employment, goods and services, and to examine both the
conditions for their implementation and their probable impacts with respect
to the goals of societal and environmental sustainability. A beginning
for this exercise is briefly suggested here.
Policy Approaches to Addressing Changing Patterns of Work
Reduction of Work Time. A wide range of policy proposals and some pilot
projects have focussed on reduction of individual work time as one way to
address a diminishing supply of traditional paid jobs Included are a
shorter work week, job sharing, earlier retirement and innovative mixes of
these ideas in conjunction with a basic annual income, sabbatical leave,
and some form of "time-bank" that would allow individuals to accumulate
waged time.15. Evaluations of these proposals for dealing with structural
unemployment suggest that shortening the work week by less than 5-10 hours
would not significantly lessen unemployment.16 Job sharing is feasible for
high-paying positions or if an individual divided time between two or more
shared jobs, and early retirement might open up new positions if enough
people were psychologically willing and financially able to cut short their
paid working years. But neither of these options seems possible to
implement on a mass basis in the foreseeable future.
In North America, two intensifying trends have been the movement
toward a significant increase in the proportion of new jobs that are
temporary and part-time and the widespread nature of overtime work,
including flouting by employers of the laws that regulate the use of
scheduled overtime.17 While employed people are working longer hours than
ever before, it is not clear how many new jobs would be created by
reduction of overtime work, and this is a key question. Studies suggest
that many employees would be willing to trade increased vacation,
sabbatical or retirement periods for less income18, but others undoubtedly
want the increased income from overtime. In attempting to evaluate policy
options in this area of reduced work time, a closer look at scheduled and
non-scheduled overtime in the United States and Canada would be
instructive.
In general, work-time reduction can be viewed as only one component
in a strategy to address structural unemployment. From a positive
perspective, temporary work-time reduction may have its uses in dealing
with temporary unemployment peaks. Certainly a flexible approach to hours
and other units of required work should be investigated further as a
component of a necessarily multi-faceted approach to structural
unemployment.
Redesigning Jobs and Workers' Roles. Two aspects of work currently seen to
be in need of redesign in North America are: 1) the nature of tasks and
decision-making processes in existing workplaces where, typically, people
are employed for wages to perform tasks in the service of organizational
goals and 2) the basic control and ownership structure of the organizations
in which work takes place. Skirting the obvious political minefield
constituted by this set of issues, it is useful to examine the proposals
and models for effecting redesign of work on both levels, in the context of
the ongoing 'technological revolution' and the perceived crisis in North
American ability to compete in terms of productivity on a global scale.
Re-design at both levels is directly relevant to long-term societal needs
for employment sharing and work that provides intrinsic satisfaction, as
discussed here.
With regard to the redesign of tasks and decision-making processes,
"worker participation" has traditionally been seen as a key concept for
effecting positive change19 while "scientific management" in its less
benign versions from Taylorism to electronic surveillance is regarded by
thoughtful analysts both in and out of industry as generally
counter-productive.20 There has long been evidence that "jobs which offer
variety and require the individual to exercise discretion over his work
activities lead to enhanced well-being and mental health."21 If this is
the case -- and few healthy employees would argue that it is not -- then
decision processes about job design and technological innovation must be
opened to the workers involved, both on moral grounds and because it is
very likely that greater productivity results from employee participation
in decisions relating to their work as well as from productivity bonuses,
profit-sharing and employee share-ownership plans.
The issue of employee ownership and/or management relates, of
course, to the second question of redesign mentioned above, that of the
basic control structure of organizations in which work takes place. Since
this touches on what can only be called deep ideology, it will not be
discussed in detail here. It is possible, however, that decisions about
who is allowed to work and how paid work might be shared among the largest
number of people might be perceived differently by workers with effective
control over community-based enterprises than by private sector
multi-nationals managers and shareholders. While this question remains
largely unaddressed, there are some useful recent compendia of detailed,
analytical case studies of alternative work organization such as
cooperative and community corporations.22 Needed now are studies of how
technological change might be handled in organizations with different types
of worker control over job re-design, and over decisions about job security
and long-term planning.23
Redefinition of Work. An extremely controversial question embedded in
discussions of changing patterns of employment is that of the extent to
which many forms of waged work, as we have known it, will and should be
phased out in a society where relatively few people are needed to develop
and activate the technologies required to provide most needed goods and
many services. Gorz suggests that such an "abolition" of traditional work
should ideally be tied to a guaranteed "social income". Instead of a dole
for the unemployed or as charity for the marginalized,
it becomes the right of each citizen to receive - distributed throughout
their life - the product of the minimum amount of socially necessary labour
which s/he has to provide in a lifetime.This amount is unlikely to exceed
20,000 hours in a lifetime by the end of the century; it would be much less
in an egalitarian society opting for a less competitive, more relaxed way
of life. Twenty thousand hours per lifetime represents 10 years' full-time
work, or 20 years part-time work, or -- a more likely choice -- 40 years of
intermittent work, part-time alternating with periods for holidays, or for
unpaid autonomous activity, community work, etc.24
Interestingly, Gorz argues for the standardization and
simplification of socially-necessary job tasks so that this work can be
easily traded or shared. If all necessary work required highly skilled
workers, this would "rule out the distribution and redistribution of a
diminishing amount of work among as many people as possible. And thus it
would tend to concentrate jobs and power in the hands of..the labour elite,
and to consolidate dualistic social stratification."25 This is, of course,
an audacious, arguably utopian, proposal for a redefinition of work, the
details and problems of which are addressed at length by its author, and
merit wider discussion and debate.
Failure to solicit and carefully examine such seemingly 'far-out'
ideas of how to manage societal transformation in the specific context of
radically changing patterns of work will limit our ability to identify
emergent issues and to address them effectively. From the standpoints of
equity and human development, if adequately waged, long-term , full-time
(30-40 hours per week) jobs can no longer be provided for all or the vast
majority of citizens, then creative redefinitions of work and of income are
required to allow people to find identity, self-esteem, social recognition
and intrinsic satisfaction in a variety of activities that are other than
paid jobs or may be in addition to a limited amount of allocated waged
work.
Surely there should be no excuse for allowing an unmitigated
societal slide into a situation where vast numbers of North American
citizens have no socially useful work to do, are unwillingly un- or
under-employed, and are trapped in a permanent, stigmatized,
economically-marginal or totally-dependent underclass where children face
ever-decreasing opportunities. Yet 'the deficit' is now routinely given as
governments' excuse for inaction and the imperative of 'competitiveness' is
the private sector's out. No society is sustainable that denies a
substantial portion of its members secure access to the basic goods,
services and human dignity that maintain wellbeing and permit full
participation in that society. North Americans need to find the ways, the
means and the will to deal with the changes that are upon us so as to
ensure that the basic needs of all can be met..
Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI). There is increasing interest in some form
of guaranteed annual income (GAI) as a necessary component of any plan to
address the economic trends under discussion. Hanna has provided a useful
discussion of "the possible alternatives to employment to redistribute
income in society, including various proposals for either a guaranteed
annual income, a negative income tax system, or having government as the
employer of last resort." He points out the many questions raised by these
proposals, including the perennial problem of political acceptability in a
society dependent on wage labour for its organization and value systems.26
But, as Wolfson argues with regard to Canada,
"The giveaway part of the [Canadian] income security system when it
provides benefits to the poor does so only with many strings
attached...while the 'take-away' part of the system taxes the well-to-do
with fewer strings attached, at lower marginal rates, and with more
generous definitions of income, family and the accounting system. When the
'give-away' part of the system is providing benefits to the middle class-or
well-to-do...there is less stigma and less formal parliamentary
accountability."27
Proposals for any version of a GAI raise fundamental questions of
fairness and tap into deep-rooted stereotypes and value conflicts about
dependency, worthiness and virtue. More open discussion of these questions
could, arguably, increase the political acceptability of GAI proposals. At
the least, it could bring debatable assumptions into the light for closer
examination.
The central point to consider in debating the merits and
workability of a guaranteed basic income program for North America is the
unfairness of withholding such support from increasing numbers of people
who are unemployed or underemployed through no fault of their own, because
adequate jobs for them do not exist. In a globalizing economy, the
introduction of new technologies in the workplace is but one major factor
in the gradual elimination of both 'good' and 'bad' jobs in the industrial
and service sectors. In the most challenging scenario, North Americans
will no longer be needed in great numbers to produce goods and provide
services. The discussions we have now, the choices we make now, will
determine what scenario emerges from this unprecedented situation.28
Retraining, better initial training and basic education,
job-sharing, reduced work weeks, and the like will all play a role in
easing us into a hopefully well-designed and thus positive new society.
But during this transition, the ownership and management structures of the
economy will remain largely in private hands, with maximum profits rather
than job creation the overriding interest; thus it is imperative that those
who see what is happening find ways to educate North Americans about the
changing patterns of employment and about why these changes require the
redefinition of "job", "employment", and "work". Without an explicit
effort to change public understanding and perception there will never be
social and political acceptance of an adequate GAI program designed to
provide such real options and alternatives as engaging in community
service, continuing education, innovative entrepreneurship, co-operative
ventures, and the like.29
The GAI concept is not a new one in either the U.S. or Canada, and
it has been critically evaluated in 'negative income tax' (NIT) pilot
programs in both countries.30 Whether the NIT or some other model drawn
from British or Continental research is taken as a starting point, serious
work should begin now to address the problems inherent in designing and
implementing equitable and effective North American GAI programs. The
potential human and political costs of failing to address emerging new
societal patterns are unacceptable.
Increased Self-Sufficiency. There has been a decade-long effort on the
part of both North American governments to urge citizens toward more
self-reliance and less dependence on the public purse. Arguably, however,
this represented more an ideological commitment to freeing the private
sector from the burdens of so-called "tax-and-spend" government social
policies than a move toward actually helping people go back to the land,
do more with less, build co-housing, cut back on consumerism, consider
import substitution, start cooperative businesses, or barter goods and
services in an informal economy. Nonetheless, faced with growing
unemployment and 'bad jobs' with low earnings and no security, people have
begun to engage in all of these activities. This web of initiatives adds
up to a grassroots strategy rather than a deliberate policy on anyone's
part. Yet in these scattered but increasingly linked efforts to become
more self-sufficient, many see the seeds and shapes of options for
post-industrial North Americans. While it is beyond the scope of this
article to explore the rapidly growing literature on these efforts, it is
encouraging to note that there is evidence of current grassroots
strategists having learned from both the mistakes and the successes of
those with similar inclinations in the 1960's.31
Conclusion
If the political bases of North American society are to be sustained, and
not give way to a chaotic search for ultimately authoritarian solutions,
the governments of the United States and Canada must plan realistically to
mitigate the negative effects of the high levels of structural unemployment
that technological change and a globalizing economy seem certain to produce
if present trends continue. And this will need to be accomplished while
steering their societies toward environmentally sustainable ways of living
and developing.
In open discussion and debate, North Americans must develop policy
initiatives that imaginatively address the challenges inherent in quite
plausible unpleasant scenarios of the future, rather than allow business
'gurus', traditional economists, and anxious academics to weaken our
political will as they argue about the accuracy of various 'predictions'
for the future.32 Sustainable development will become a dream of the past
if we do not now acknowledge the fundamental nature of the global economic
and social changes that are occurring, and of their impacts on work and
employment. Only if North Americans face these new realities can we
re-invent the human quest in ways that allow us to live in harmony with one
another and with our life-supporting biosphere.
