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The show is on a CTV specialty cable channel and
the segment airs at 7:40 p.m. Eastern time this evening.
A House of Cards
The way we work in North America is a HOUSE OF
CARDS and most of us know it at some level or other. When I tell people about
the research I do on shorter work time one of the comments I frequently hear is
"Oh, that’s such a sensible idea -- IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN."
As a culture, we seem to be transfixed by the
notion that the house of cards cannot fall and the sensible solution cannot be
enacted. Why?
-- Social policy in North America is highly
leveraged by a fixation on "labour force attachment"
(unemployment insurance, pensions, health premiums,
paid holidays and vacations)
This means that although amount of benefit is only
loosely tied to labour output, eligibility for benefit is highly restricted and
biased against irregular labour force attachment (part time, on call, contract
"self-employment")
The way that governments finance social benefit
programs creates financial incentives for employers to either overwork employees
or marginalize them in benefit-lite, contigent work.
Eligibility for out-of-work benefits, such as EI
and social assistance, are, of course, increasingly restricted by job search
requirements. The rhetoric of 'personal responsibility' cuts against the grain
both of the original philosophy of social insurance and the bald fact that
government anti-inflation policy for decades has relied on deliberately
maintaining a certain level of unemployment. The
-- Job creation has become the new sorcerer’s
apprentice
People used to be afraid that machines, then
automation, then computers would destroy jobs. "Oh no," the economists reassured
us, "in the long run technology creates more jobs than it destroys."
Unfortunately, the economists were both right and irrelevant. In order to create
those jobs, jobs, jobs an ever greater proportion of our previously non-economic
life and world has to be handed over to economic activity.
As Keynes said in the long run we’re all dead. The
steady encroachment of economic values into all aspects of our lives will see to
that.
A substantial proportion of work being done in
North America can only be described as zero-sum 'gate-keeping', 'enabling'
'enticing' and 'healing'. The gate keeper’s job is to keep you out. The
enabler’s job is to get you in. You can see that the two work somewhat at cross
purposes. Similarly, the enticer’s job is to whittle away at your self-esteem so
that you’ll buy something you don’t need. The healer’s job is to tell you you’re
O.K. even if you can't afford that new digi-vice.
So-called education is the biggest industry in the
world. That industry defines itself increasingly by its role in preparing people
for the labour force. Ironically, the less effectively it actually performs that
function, the more in demand its services are (and the less can education
spending be "wasted" on frills like arts and philosophy, except to the extent
that those activities are professionalized) and the more actual work is created
within the industry.
Job training and placement are undoubtedly the
biggest make work projects going. The dirty secret is that for the most part
such training and placement does little more than place restrictions on job
entry and then "train" people to overcome them.
A further large amount of productive work goes into
supplying the core unproductive services. So even this productive work is
ultimately unproductive.
-- Unemployment has become the leading leisure
activity in North America
There are more varieties of unemployment today than
the standard definition of being out of work and seeking employment. Many people
are underemployed, which means that either some of their skills are not utilized
or that for some of their time they are, in effect, unemployed. Many people who
have full-time jobs are idle and bored during their non-employment hours because
they have nothing better to do. During their free time they vegetate rather than
recreate.
One consequence of this is that having more free
time has little appeal for those whose free time is already unfulfilling.
Another is the segregation of non-work social (and asocial) life along lines
drawn by employment. Those who are looking for work have fewer opportunities to
casually mix with the regularly employed and thus are denied social exposure
that could make looking for work unnecessary.
-- One thing a House of Cards is not:
flexible.
What we see instead is the need for greater adaptability from the parts precisely because the whole is so brittle. In a past life contracting on government social policy research, by far the greatest requirement for ‘flexibility’ from the work force came from the monolithic inflexibility of calendars generated by the divinely ordained fiscal year. Private industry too has their fiscal periods, their product development, retooling, marketing and launch cycles. One might compare these timelines to inalterable natural phenomena like the tides or the seasons. But the irony is that these artificial fiscal tides are in many instances less forgiving than nature, even when they don’t have to be. -- Don't exhale, it'll all fall down!
It does indeed sometimes seem that the four-day
workweek (or less) will never happen because "it makes too much sense."
Appearances can be deceptive. The four-day week is not happening now because our
current work arrangements are too brittle to withstand any fundamental change.
This is not a sign of strength or durability. In Houston for years people
described the Enron corporation as a house of cards. As Mimi Schwartz reported
in the Texas Observer, "It was usually said with a knowing
and bemused shake of the head, as if the speaker was used to being ignored." The Enron Corporation used to rank #7 on the
Fortune 500. It's stock, trading at $80 a share last January can now be had for
67 cents. But what intrigues me is that the company also ranked #24 in the
Fortune 100 best employers to work for. It had a remarkably low employee
turnover rate of 4%. It was -- or appeared to be -- "a good place to
work."
That was before their retirement savings accounts
were wiped out. Today?
The other night, KPRC-TV hosted an
Enron special -- "Boom to Bust" it was
called -- that featured several employees who had been fired that day. Dressed in the company's signature khakis and jeans, the assembled appeared shell-shocked and contrite. "I learned a good lesson in ethics," one beefy young man assured the viewers. A few well-meaning job counselors joined the show, and Becky Collums, a motherly type with a business called CC Staffing, brought up the cliche about doors closing and windows opening: "People can look at this as an opportunity to recreate themselves," she urged sweetly. Just a few months ago, she would have been laughed out of the Enron building. These refugees gave her their full attention. "Doors closing and windows opening"? Presumably Ms.
Collums was thinking of fresh air and "windows of opportunity". The image that
comes to my mind, though, is of people jumping out the windows of a burning
high-rise.
Tom Walker |
