I'm not sure about "sympathy" here, I guess the question is individual options and broader social changes. The argument was, as you point out, that the car workers could retrain (or their kids could be trained) for higher valued jobs as the lower level jobs were transferred out. The current discussion is I think, not really about the low to middle skill jobs (or maybe we are defining these differently) but rather things like engineering, financial research, insurance underwriting, even legal and accounting.
Yes, there are many more anguished articles and op-eds about these sorts of jobs in the WSJ and NYT than about car-workers' jobs, and they give full play to some exceptional stories about very high-skill jobs going abroad. (There was one the other day of a lung consultant who emigrated to Israel but carries on diagnosing for American hospitals/health companies via the Web.) It is still the case, as I wrote before, that 95% of the jobs going abroad are low- to middle-skill .)
Some are seeing it as the ultimate colonialist revenge, the European colonialists forced their colonies to speak their languages and adopt their cultural/legal/financial systems, which they did with such skill and tenacity that now they are able to export these skills back to the "mother country" in the form of skilled services.
Your case about the Formula car designers is interesting of course, and probably correct but I suspect that the 700,000 or so lost automotive jobs are not really replaceable by 700,000 jobs anywhere near equivalent to Forumla One designers or even the car manufacturing jobs in Luton or Dagenham.
Yes, these people are now doing jobs in B&Q stores (do-it-yourself) and the like at lower wages than previously. But they've got more security now because these sorts of service jobs are never going to go abroad. Previously, the car-workers were earning two, three or even four times the average wage. Now, I'm not complaining about that, but the same strong unions that forced management into paying these sorts of wages were also strong enough to resist systematic improvements to efficiency. And, once again, I saw that, too. I suspect (though I have no data) that the steel-workers of the US are also extremely highly paid compared with the average worker job.
I'm recalling having a lot of trouble at the time (7 or 8 years ago) envisaging what an economy without any of the jobs which are exportable would look like and I'm having the same difficulty now. Two elements of it however are clear, the layers upon layers of fairly labour intensive (if low priced) "security" (have you been to a US airport recently) and similarly low priced jobs in "personal services"... read nannies, lawn care workers, home help for the elderly and so on. Since the former are occupied for the most part by the lower end of the employment chain and the latter (in the US at least by undocumented workers) it isn't really clear to me where those 5000 (to be multiplied by say 400 over the next 5 years at current estimates) unemployed IBM (and other middle level managers, technical staff, software designers, engineers) are going to be finding employment for themselves or steering their kids towards. The drive towards social/economic polarization and the winner takes all economy seems to have suddenly moved down and out of the realm of corporate CEO's and sports and entertainment figures and into mainstreet suburban America.
I can't see it either. I've just been reading Roger Bootle ("Money for Nothing", Nicholas Brealey 2003) and he rhapsodises about all the above service jobs for almost a whole chapter without realising that he is talking about a new class-riven society which is reminiscent of the Medieval Ages -- as you're saying above.
Once again (as far as I'm concerned, anyway) we're coming down to the problem that most people in the last 50 years (in England, anyway, and probably in America, too, from what I'm reading about it) are insufficently educated. They're trapped by this, and they're also trapped by job protectionism by the professional middle-classes. The big quandary I have is that I can't decide whether there is a genuine meritocratic divide going on or whether we need a total reform of state education system.
KH
Thanks Ray,
MG
- -----Original Message-----
- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
- Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 2:42 AM
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: NYTimes.com Article: Bracing for the Blow
- Mike,
- I feel less sympathy for IBM workers than steel workers if their jobs go overseas because the former are far better educated and ought to be able to be more flexible in finding other work.
- But none of this alters the fact that if you want to protect these jobs then the rest of the consuming public will have to pay more for their products than otherwise. The latest protection for the steel industry hurt the car-workers far more than the steel-workers gained. If you were to show the real costs of protection then the public wouldn't support it.
- It should be remembered that 95% of the jobs that are going to China and India are not leading-edge jobs but are fairly pedestrian of low- to middle-skills. These countries have a lot of catching up to do in quite ordinary industries for the next 20 years. However, the US is (or should be) at the leading edge in these sectors and maintaining their edge. In England we must have lost at least 750,000 car worker jobs to Asia in the last 30 years. But these were mainly low-skill jobs (I know, because I worked in the automotive industry for many years). Instead, our best auto engineers are now involved with advanced car design, advanced car production methods (particularly at Warwick University) and most Grand Prix racing cars are designed and built here. OK. maybe only 20-50,000 jobs are involved now but they're higher-grade by far and probably earn at least as much foreign exchange as 750,000 car workers would have earned if they'd remained. Meanwhile the ex-car workers have got other jobs. That's the way it goes and there's nothing really new that's happening today than has happened for 150 years past.
- But I'll grant you that things *have* begun to change radically since FW started. I think we're seeing the end of the Consumer Goods era. There are now no goods as powerful (in terms of investment stimulation) as the car and the TV were in the last century. The present, and no doubt continuing, rash of electronic gadgets have very low profit margins (if any, in the case of mobile phones) and they're not going to stimulate anything significant by themselves. But I think there's a a new service economic looming (though not based on present-day metropolises) as energy prices rise -- and more likely to occur in America than anywhere else, I guess.
- KSH
- At 21:30 26/12/2003 +0800, you wrote:
- Shades of Futurework past...
- As I recall this is where I came into/onto Futurework about 7 years or
- so ago, at this time of year I think it was... And at that time I/we
- were talking about the longer term implications of computerization of
- intelligent work... Things rather went awry with this discussions a
- couple of years later when we were all overtaken by the DotCom euphoria,
- but now those predictions/discussions have gone from
- stargazing/naysaying Futureworkers to the editorial pages of the NYT.
- One interesting thing about this, it seems to me, is that while reality
- has rather caught up with prognostication, things seem to have if
- anything rather declined in terms of offering solutions/visions... In
- the article below, there seems to be no sense of any possible
- alternative to the McDonalds-ization of the (real) Middle Class, (not
- the American style "Middle Class" called that because the US press and
- politicians can't bear to refer to folks as "Working Class")... No
- unions, no politicians with any clout or ideas, no alternative vision of
- how things could be different... Bad news...
- Anyone remember the discussions of the Leisure Society, the Society of
- Abundance, production for use not production for exchange... With the
- seemingly inexorable rise of China and now India, we are probably
- getting closer in possibility to those visions than we ever have been,
- but politically ever more distant...
- And even though 7 or 8 years ago the future (which is now) was clearly
- visible to anyone who cared to look, quite frankly at least for me, the
- future even 2 or 3 years out seems incredibly murky and unpredictable
- these days.
- MG
- -----Original Message-----
- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 7:59 PM
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Bracing for the Blow
- Bracing for the Blow
- December 26, 2003
- By BOB HERBERT
- I.B.M. has sent a holiday chill through its American
- employees with its plans to ship thousands of high-paying white-collar
- jobs overseas to lower-paid foreign workers.
- "People are upset and angry," said Arnie Marchetti, a 37-year-old
- computer technician at I.B.M.'s Southbury, Conn., office whose wife gave
- birth to their first child in August.
- The company has not made any announcements, and the
- employees do not know who will be affected, or when. The uncertainty
- about whose jobs may be sent to India or China, the two main countries
- in the current plans, has raised workers' anxiety in some cases to an
- excruciating level.
- "I understand that this is a lightning rod issue in the industry," an
- I.B.M. spokesman told me this week. "It's a lightning rod issue to
- people in our company, I suppose. But I don't think anybody expects us
- to issue blanket statements to the work force about projections."
- Referring to employees who may be affected by the plans, he said, "We
- deal with them as they need to know."
- "Offshoring" and "outsourcing" are two of the favored euphemisms for
- shipping work overseas. I.B.M. prefers the term "global sourcing."
- Whatever you call it, the expansion of this practice from manufacturing
- to the higher-paying technical and white-collar levels is the latest big
- threat to employment in the U.S.
- Years ago, when concern was being expressed about the
- shipment of factory jobs to places with slave wages,
- hideous working conditions and even prison labor,
- proponents said there was nothing to worry about. Exporting
- labor-intensive jobs would make U.S. companies more competitive, leading
- to increased growth and employment, and higher living standards. They
- advised U.S. workers to adjust, to become better educated and skillful
- enough to thrive in a new world of employment, where technology and the
- ability to process information were crucial components.
- Well, the workers whose jobs are now threatened at I.B.M.
- and similar companies across the U.S. are well educated and absolute
- whizzes at processing information. But they are nevertheless in danger
- of following the well-trodden path of their factory brethren to
- lower-wage work, or the unemployment line.
- The Wall Street Journal reported last week that I.B.M. had
- told its managers to plan on moving as many as 4,730 jobs
- from the U.S. The I.B.M. spokesman told me he was sure that figure was
- too high, but added that no one had complained to The Journal about the
- number. He said he didn't know how many American jobs would be lost.
- I.B.M. officials are skittish to the point of paranoia on
- this matter, which has powerful social and political implications.
- Pulling the plug on factory workers is one thing. A frontal assault on
- the livelihood of solidly middle-class Americans - some of whom may be
- required to train the foreign workers who will replace them - is
- something else.
- James Sciales was the first of the company spokesmen to
- respond to my inquiries this week. He was reluctant to even tell me his
- name and nervously refused to answer any questions. Another spokesman
- was willing to talk but asked that I not refer to him by name.
- In a recorded conference call reported by The Times last summer, a pair
- of I.B.M. officials told colleagues around the world that the company
- needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar jobs overseas.
- They acknowledged the danger of a political backlash, but said it was
- essential to step up the practice.
- "Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," said
- Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations.
- The outsourcing of good jobs has been under way for years,
- and there is no dispute that the practice is speeding up. "Anything that
- is not nailed to the floor is being considered for outsourcing," said
- Thea Lee, the chief international economist for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
- Most of the millions of white-collar workers who could be affected by
- this phenomenon over the next several years are clueless as to what they
- can do about it. They do not have organized representation in the
- workplace. And government policies overwhelmingly favor the
- corporations. Like the employees at I.B.M. whose holiday cheer has been
- dampened by uncertainty, these hard-working men and women and their
- families have little protection against the powerful forces of the
- global economy.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/opinion/26HERB.html?ex=1073439939&ei=1
- &en=c09de5c3fe756a17
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- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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