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Work

Work. WORK CHANGE & IT. 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.

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Work

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  1. Work WORK CHANGE & IT

  2. PredictionsThe 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.]

  3. 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].

  4. 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]

  5. ISC Day in the Job…… www.benefitscanada.com/Content/ 2002/03-02/insights.html

  6. [Heaven & Hell, M Harrison] 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 • 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

  7. Questions • Why are these people saying these thinks? • What has IT got do with it? • What of previous upheavals?

  8. Previous Technologies & Change http://www.aros.net/~zxorb/pc-industrial.jpg

  9. 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! http://www.operationoutreach-econed.org/images/indrev.jpg

  10. 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? http://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/images/1lifeexp.jpg US Figures

  11. Longterm Labour Trends Information services (Quaternary) Pre-industrial Industrial Post-industrial Post-service Tangible services (Tertiary) (Labour Absorbing) Agriculture (Primary) Manufacturing (Secondary) (Labour Displacing) (Source: Sleepers, Wake! Barry Jones) From a Pre-Industrial to a Post-Service Society

  12. 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 asbanking, legal & accounting services, publishing etc.

  13. 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.

  14. Networks & Time New York Chicago 850 miles Send One Page of Text Chicago to New York (Costs expressed in actual dollars i.e., no inflation adjustment) [The Corporation of the 90s’. P72, M. Scott Morton]

  15. Jobless Growth • “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.

  16. 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

  17. Hours Worked and Pay Industrial

  18. 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]

  19. Outsourcing http://www.houston.oao.com/

  20. The Shamrock Organisational Model[Handy 89] Core Professional Employees Contract Work (Out sourced) Part Time (Seasonally Adjusted) Employees

  21. Globalisation Core Professional Employees Network Contract Work (Out sourced) Part Time (Seasonally Adjusted) Employees

  22. 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]

  23. 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]

  24. Bigger Picture Economics Demographics Globalisation CHANGE Technology Politics Down Sizing 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.

  25. Current Irish Government Thinking Enterprise Strategy Group Report Published on 7 July 2004 http://www.forfas.ie/esg/index.html

  26. 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!

  27. 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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