[GKD] ICT and Jobs (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 08 Jul 99 20:34:04 From: Roberto Verzola [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [GKD] ICT and Jobs [***Moderator's note: Members may recall that in August 1998, we posted a summary of the ICT-JOBS Working Group discussion, which EDC and ILO hosted in May-July 1998, and which had over 700 members. The article below is another excellent summary of the ICT-JOBS discussion, with a somewhat different emphasis.***] Philippine Journal October 9, 1998 Second opinion ICT: job creator or destroyer? by Roberto S. Verzola Are information and communications technologies (ICTs) a net creator or destroyer of jobs? This was the topic which more than a dozen scholars, consultants and union officials debated in an online conference sponsored by the International Labor Organization (ILO) from May to July this year. It is both As can be expected, the discussants all acknowledged that ICT was both a creator and a destroyer of jobs. That machines and computers are taking over work previously done by human beings was something nobody denied. All agreed that ICT was destroying some types of jobs. But all likewise acknowledged that ICT introduced new ways of doing things, creating in the process new types of work which did not exist before. Despite very strong opinions expressed by both sides, however, they could not agree which role dominated. A job creator Some discussants asserted that ICTs create new goods and services as well as new market opportunities and income sources. Thus, they stimulate general economic activity, which translates into more jobs. The new ICTs, they said, are no different in their effects from the industrial revolution, which enhanced our productivity and improved our living standards. Historical records since the 19th century, they added, showed that productivity, output and jobs have all risen together. Today, the argument goes, ICTs help businesses save money, which these businesses then invest elsewhere, creating new jobs. There is even a shortage of skilled ICT workers. ... and a job destroyer Other discussants claimed that ICTs are selective in their positive impact, and that they lead to unemployment elsewhere. When bosses introduce machines and computers, some workers invariably get fired. In many workplaces today, machines and computers are taking the place of human beings, who are then left to fend off for themselves. A 1994 study by the Communications Workers of America, for instance, showed net job losses due to ICT over a 10-year period. Not even statistics, however, could settle the issue. As one participant noted, the available studies today are confined mostly to Northern countries and a few Asian and Latin American NICs. The present data are too ambiguous for a definite conclusion, and one can find data to support either position. It is also difficult to capture in statistics the effects of ICTs on the informal economy which in many countries, is a big part of the whole economy. Some insights emerged in the discussions which can help us better understand the impacts of ICT on labor. Work-at-a-distance, manage-at-a-distance ICTs facilitate work-at-a-distance. This could led to the increasing use of teleworking, to which many workers react ambivalently. It is true that teleworking provides new opportunies for women in the home, for instance, or entrepreneurs in remote villages. But teleworking also breaks up labor cohesiveness and weakens unions; furthermore, it tends to exclude the teleworker from traditional social security and other job benefits. ICTs also provide management with new options in designing work processes and the workplace. They can ask their workers to work at home, or they can gather previously decentralized functions like decision-making and put them all in one central unit, decentralizing some functions and centralizing others, in whatever mix they find most advantageous to the company. Jobs: from large to small firms ICT has also made the virtual firm possible, an enterprise that outsources much of its requirements and relies on ICT to hold the organization together. Much has been made of the advantages of the virtual firm -- flexibility, efficiency, and competitiveness. Outsourcing also tends to transfer jobs from large companies -- which become virtual firms -- to smaller companies. What is a dream to corporations is a nightmare to labor unions; small firms are more difficult to unionize and tend to violate labor laws more often. One effect of outsourcing is labor contractualization. Who decides? The key, it seems, lies in the decision-making that leads to ICT use. Invariably, it is management which decides when to introduce and when not to introduce ICT into the workplace.
AFRO-NETS The UNAIDS Report (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 08:01:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Pazvakavambwa [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: AFRO-NETS The UNAIDS Report The UNAIDS Report --- Colleagues, The UNAIDS Report is out. It is available on the UNAIDS web site in pdf format for viewing or downloading: http://www.unaids.org/ In my attempt to whet your appetite to the report, I have reproduced the preface of the report from the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Dr. Peter Piot, verbatim. -- Preface to The UNAIDS Report by Peter Piot Executive Director Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS We live at a turning point in human history. AIDS spotlights all that is strong and weak in humanity: our vulnerability and fears, as well as our strength and compassion, especially for those more vulnerable, less able, or poorer than ourselves. There is still no cure and no vaccine for AIDS. In 1998, 16 000 individuals were infected with HIV every day, and by year's end over 33 million people, a number that exceeds the entire population of Canada, were living with HIV although we estimate that nine-tenths of them are unaware of their infection. Most people with HIV or AIDS have no access to medication, even to relieve their pain and suffering. More than 12 million adults and children have already lost their lives to the disease. These deaths will not be the last there is worse to come. Every year AIDS takes new directions: India and South Africa, both relatively untouched only a few years ago, now have among the fastest-growing epidemics in the world. New AIDS epidemics are emerging with frightening speed in Eastern and Central Europe. And sub-Saharan Africa remains the hardest-hit region in the world. Globally, young people those who must build the bridges, create national wealth and conduct the research of the future experience half of all new HIV infections. In many parts of the world, AIDS is the single greatest threat to economic, social and human development. Even in countries where one adult in ten or as many as one adult in four is infected, a conspiracy of shame and silence surrounds AIDS. People who are known to have HIV often suffer rejection and discrimination. This stigma makes the AIDS challenge special. By the same token, people living with HIV have a special role to play in helping society to acknowledge and tackle the epidemic. In the face of these enormous and frightening challenges, the strength to fight back comes from pooling our resources and working together. Founded just three years ago, in 1996, UNAIDS is an innovative joint programme that brings together the expertise and efforts of its seven Cosponsors UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNDCP, UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank. Each of them has increased action against HIV/AIDS in its own sphere and is actively contributing to the UNAIDS response. The UNAIDS Secretariat and Cosponsors can point to an expanding roster of advances based on partnership with one another and with governments and civil society around the world. For the first time in this epidemic, we can see progress on several fronts: * In the developing world, strong prevention programmes are stabilizing HIV rates in Brazil and Senegal and have turned around major epidemics in Thailand and Uganda. Alongside these nationwide success stories, there are innumerable community-level successes on all continents. * Political commitment has surged in several countries confronting major epidemics, from Brazil to South Africa, from India to Cambodia. * New partnerships have been forged with mainstream youth organizations, religious groups, the corporate sector and global entertainment media. * Pilot projects for preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV are starting up in eleven countries, following the demonstration that a short course of antiretroviral therapy can dramatically improve an HIV-infected woman's chances of having a healthy baby. * The first HIV vaccine efficacy trial began in the USA, followed in March 1999 by the first such trial in a developing country, Thailand. Every day, we must balance our fears about AIDS against the certain knowledge that human action can make a difference. This report outlines the challenges that all of us face, and illustrates the difference that individuals and organizations can make by working together. It is my privilege to share with you, in this report, highlights of what our partnerships have achieved thus far. -- Dr. Brian Pazvakavambwa AFRO-NETS Co-Moderator UNAIDS Geneva Tel: +41-22-7914742 Fax: +41-22-7914741 Personal WWW: http://www.bpazva.8m.com/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. Mail administrative requests to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. For additional assistance, send mail to: `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.
short article on pop. devel.
http://www.uexpress.com/ups/opinion/column/gg/text/1999/06/gg9906011832.html POPULATION GROWTH IS PIVOTAL ISSUE IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT by Georgie Anne Geyer WASHINGTON -- It's not working. For years, people who were against family planning could argue, and hope, and pretend, and weave tales about the glories of open grasslands in Kazakhstan as an answer to the world's population problem -- and some people listened. But now, in a sudden rush of new information about both population pressures and the Earth's sheer sustainability, we can clearly see how foolishly self-destructive that approach has been and continues to be. (snip)
Re: VIPs
I don't think historical persons are as important as the historical circumstances they had a chance to exploit. A particular epoch manages to produce the particular scientist/polititian/philosopher to use the available information creatively or destructively - depending on the circumstances. They just add the individual variant to the given event. E.g. Germany lost one war, became strong again and still wanted share from the economic domination of the markets. The democratic left has been defeated - probably due to the victory of the undemocratic Stalin in the USSR - so the ruling class was too weak to rule, but the working class too weak to take over - such void is usually filled with totalitarian rule. Happened to be Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain. Stalinism is a variation on this theme. The leader of the IMF is powerless without the support of the financial interests that make up that body. Don't hold your breath waiting for a basic income policy to be initiated from IMF leadership... Eva Thomas: Your paragragph has sat in my E Mail - it seems like forerver. Why? I have been toying with the significant man theory - though it could be a woman. How often, for better or worse, is one person able to direct and influence the lives of millions of people? Think of Pol Pot or Slobovan Milosvic or Hitler. What would our world history have been like if they had just got cancer? By the same token, how have the economies of the world been changed Keynes, Friedman, Adam Smith and a significant book that grabs the times and changes our course. What about others that didn't make it over the hump, Louis Reil, Fremont who could have been President instead of Abraham Lincoln. Or Hiliare Belloc's book, The Servile State. On one level, it seems that events progress from some sort of logical planning and yet, often from a back play of history, it can be seen that a significant person changed the whole directions of country's and its ideals. Nelson Mandella is a good example - 27 years in prison and yet somehow, against all odds he becomes a leader and continues to hold the highest ideals. What is my point - I don't know. It's the anomaly of it that intrigues and frustrates me. The original post led to a comment that the World Bank is changing, not from internal policy discussions, not from direction from the United States or United Nations, but because one man occupies the office that was previously held by someone else. What happens when Alan Greenspan has a health problem, does the world veer and devolve into economic chaos or does the next Central Banker create the reality of a Basic Income and change our world forever. It often seems like whoever is appointed or elected does not even telegrapgh the changes they instigate and yet, all of sudden their thoughts operate somehow to make world shaking changes. If anyone has any books to refer, I would be interested in their titles. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde [EMAIL PROTECTED]
