In this colour, Gail.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Gail Stewart
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 10:13 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Modernizing the market economy
The Future of Work
Modernizing the Market Economy
1. Human relations
Draft 1.0. Comments would be appreciated.
1. Our future is deeply uncertain: plausible possibilities -- environmental,
social, economic, cultural -- range widely.
Some of these are less certain than others, and we do have quite a lot of
information about all of them that could make them considerably less uncertain.
A major problem is our inability to act on the information we have.
2. In such circumstances, each of us, in preparing for future work, might
best engage also in risk containment by acquiring and sustaining versatile
capabilities including skills in teamwork.
Teamwork seems to imply a perception of equality among team members. As a
private citizen, I can feel equal to a Cabinet Minister or CEO (perhaps
foolishly), but if I am working for them in their hierarchy, that can't be the
case.
3. A major a society-wide initiative may be desirable however to address an
existing risk -- the prevailing lag within the market economy in modernizing
its structures of human relationships.
IMHO, in work situations human relationships arise out of contractual
relationships, which in turn are dependent on power relationships. The best
working arrangement from the employees point of view is one in which he or she
must be treated fairly and respectfully because a binding contract says so.
With the decline of unions and the outsourcing of work the fair and respectful
treatment of employees is becoming less and less necessary.
4. The structures of human relationships in the economy have not kept pace
with the personal, social and political enfranchisement prevailing in the
surrounding society.
I believe relationships in the economy and surrounding society are going in
the same direction, and it's not a good one. Employers do not have the same
restrictions placed on them as they once had. In the surrounding society we
continue to vote but, more and more, voting has become the process of giving
power to a corporate entity known as a political party whose chief concern is
gaining and maintaining power and its own continuity.
5. This failure not only affects the economy, heightening discontent within
it, but adversely affects the broader matter of social and political stability
and flexibility
6. The lag also adversely affects the health and productivity of participants
at all levels in the economy and the productivity of the economy itself.
7. A major step toward the modernization of human relations was taken two
hundred years ago by the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, thanks to
William Wilberforce and others who led the campaign against the slave trade.
That was one step, but I believe that the union movement which, if I
recalled, gained much of its momentum during the latter part of the 19th
century and the earlier part of the 20th was a huge factor. Unitionization
became possible when large numbers of people were made to work in one place --
a factory -- and eventually recognized that they had the power to shut it down
if they felt they were treated unfairly.
8. A similar major step toward a modernization of human relations is
currently overdue: the abolition of employment, i.e., of situations where one
person works "for" rather than "with" another, each freely self-governing as
they already are in their capacity as citizens.
If I'm working for Microsoft, I can pretend I'm working with Bill Gates, but
the reality is that I'm working for him.
9. Many participants in the current market economy, perhaps as many as 25%,
already work as independent contractors including senior executives who, almost
universally, have already made this transition.
I worked as a consultant for a number of years. While I could feel
independent, two things always worried me: will the contractee be happy with
the work I'm doing? and will I get another contract? I never felt I was
working with someone, always for someone and without the protection that a
regular employee has.
10. Such emancipation is however more difficult and costly to achieve at the
individual personal or corporate level and might be more readily accomplished
through mutual society-wide agreement that the employment of one person by
another should end.
A very scary thought to young people out there looking for jobs.
11. This suggests that a campaign against the employment trade, toward
universal emancipation from employment, might be timely.
12. The abolition of employment could usefully be accompanied by public
policies supportive of the new working conditions, increasing their benefit to
the economy and to the participants involved.
13. The abolition of employment (and with it the roles of employer and
employee) and the resulting greater flexibility and dignity in the world of
work may be expected, over time, to change the perception of "work."
14. Commonly perceived today as a functional disutility, work may become a
social and personal practice, a developmental element in the lives of each of
us as we more entrepreneurially allocate our personal resources of time and
energy and skills.
The complexity of a society has a lot to do with it. In aboriginal societies
work was simple; men hunted and women preserved the game they shot. It was all
very cooperative because it didn't have to be different. In the bureaucracies
and companies I've worked in, I did a small part of something, someone did
another part of it, etc. etc. Some of the things for the Minister's
consideration or signature moved up and down through the ranks several times.
I don't see how much of the work we do could be organized non-hierachially.
15. Co-evolving within and among ourselves and with our social and natural
environment with greater human dignity than is now involved in being either an
"employer" or "employee" (both roles being now rather embarrassing, a sure sign
of their passing, their growing decadence), we will also better enabled to
develop our human capacities.
Complex work seems naturally to lead to organizational complexity. Whether
you stand out in that complexity depends on your ability to use it. I knew
some people in the public service who used it very well, others who used it
poorly. Though someone always stood in judgement of the work you did, I never
saw him/her as an "employer" but as someone who had his or her own
responsibilities to fulfill.
16. Similarly, our shared hopes may better prosper, for life, liberty and
happiness, peace, order and good government, etc., and our capacities to
function as citizens responsible for our own self-governance and for our
governments.
17. Who will step up to become today's Wilberforces: it will not be easy,
e.g., can the economy survive without employment, as it had to be argued it
could survive without slavery?
19. The path will be strewn with misunderstandings but, as William James
said, "First a new theory is attached as absurd; then it is admitted to be
true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that
its adversaries claim they themselves discovered it."
20. So it will be, I predict, with the notion of extending enfranchisement
through abolishing the "employment trade," i.e., abolishing the employment of
one person by another so that rather than being “worked for” or “working for”
another person or persons, we may more consistently work “with” each other and
have the personal and economic (and also environmental) benefits of doing so
and of conceiving of our work in this way.
Gail Stewart
Ottawa
August 20, 2007
I guess I'm not with you, Gail. The kinds of work we do requires complex,
hierarchical organization. In such organizations, there have to be
subordinates and superiors. This does not mean that they shouldn't treat each
other politely and humanely, but they have to know what their part of the
overall process is.
I also think that how people will be treated at work will continue to be
dependent on bargaining power. With globalization and the outsourcing of work,
bargaining power will likely erode. Not a good thing.
Ed
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