Re: [Futurework] The world of work

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Charles,      I believe you should think a little more about this.   Let's consider some of what you are discussing:        ------------------------------------------- Charles you said on  Saturday, February 01, 2003 6:22 PM   Thanks to those who replied to my post on the future of work.   I will comment separately on each reply.   Ray Harrell said, among other things:  Today, we do not have to work in order for society to survive except for the "idle hands" myth and the "Gold Star" for merit myth that actually gives away cash in order to keep the population happy.       This is actually not true.  It is true that most of us in the developed world do very little to directly ensure our survival (ie provide food etc) - we have become heavily dependent on an industrial infrastructure to do that for us (and no doubt enjoy a better lifestyle as a result). ---------------------------------------------   If I may take a little side trip around that block in the road since we very rarely arrive at anything resembling reason without understanding the context in which things happen.   First of all the highest money making sector in NYCity is the Financial Sector.    Since they work directly with money and money is their product one should not be surprised by such a thing.     They also are one of the sectors that can drop a third of their work force when they need to cut back.    But surprisingly they don't necessarily cut back on the amount of work being done.     With a 2/3 size workforce they still handle the same amount of product as before.    How can they do that?    Was that original 1/3 necessary to begin with?    Why did they hire them in the first place?    What kind of hiring was it to begin with?    Was it a virtual or AGILE job structure where they were hired by the job?    No.    They were regular full time employees.   What about the use of temp personnel?    A few years back Sony corporation had almost its entire upper office non-management employees manned by temporary personnel with no required company loyalty and when they finished a job they just released them.      Today, as far as I can tell, they have gone back to the other structure because?     People are more comfortable with permanent personnel.    Permanent personnel are more familiar with the systems, more efficient, etc.   To some extent that is true but much of the work being required of that permanent personnel didn't require any of that kind of depth.     And when the company needed to cut back they simply dropped those people whose only reason for existence in the company was some kind of company comfort.      My contention Charles is that there is a social reason that is a subconsciously implied that flows throughout the work psychology that has very little grounding in business reality but a very important reason in the way a society and its workers see themselves.    There is also an intent that flows from the upper collaboration of managers, the super wealthy funders and the executive government.   This is about identity in my opinion as well as deliberate programs.   Otherwise why does Sally's proposal for a guaranteed annual income strike most people just a little more plausibly than they would approve of Cherokee or Aboriginal  land policies?    Let me go to the second highest producing sector in NYCity.    Now NYCity is the fashion capital of America and a world Capital.    It is the retail head of America's stores with stores like Saks,  Bloomingdales and even Macy's leading the way across America's clothing image of themselves.    But retail clothing is not the second leading industry.       How about Technology?    We are not silicone valley but this is a powerful world technology center but technology is not the second leading industry either.     There are big aircraft industries on Long Island as well as Space Technology and especially "Timing Industries" that service NASA and the National observatory.     But they are not the second leading industry either.      The Nuclear Power Industry provides a lot of money as well as the other energy industries for a region that has more people than many of the world's countries but they are not the second leading industry either.    NYCity Hospitals are some of the best in the world and educate 15% of the nation's Doctors and Nurses and NYCity Schools and Universities educate hundreds of thousands of advanced students a year and the NYCity public schools has one million students annually not counting the private schools but they aren't the second leading industry either.     Public Transportation is such that you could seat many of the nation's largest cities in the NYCity subway and bus system without bothering the cabs and limosines.    But they aren't the second leading industry in NYCity either.   Let's cut to the chase.    The second largest industry in New York City is Tourism, Arts and Entertainment.    How much a year?    Well let me say that when this country, the US of A, is arguing over the size of the NATIONAL Endowment of the Arts,  New York City is funding a Department of Cultural Affairs that is almost as much as the rest of the country combined.   The Arts, Tourism and Entertainment Industry brings in 14 Billion dollars a year to the city of New York.   For every NY dollar invested in the Arts, Tourism and Entertainment Industry eleven dollars are stimulated.    Also, it is non-polluting,   renewable and develops a better citizen, at least on the high, less capitalist end.    But the Arts are as far away from the hiring practices of the Financial Sector as one can get and still be in the same country and the same economic system.      You see Charles, I know that there is another reason behind hiring all of those unnecessary personnel because in the Arts it ALMOST never happens.    You don't hire an extra soprano unless she is in the musical score.     WAIT! I can hear it now.   What about Yanni or Zubin and all of those thousands of violins for the three tubby tenors concerts?     You're right, you got me.    THAT is like Smith Barney and the Financial Sector.     Concerts played in stadiums for hundreds of thousands can afford a little fat and they get it.    But in the Arts and Entertainment Sector you are most likely to get outstanding technology with six or seven performers on the stage playing for thousands of spectators.    Even if you charged $25 a ticket and they charge a great deal more, you can still make a fortune with such a small labor force and so much automation which is tax deductable as a business expense.      It's hard to find anything as productive as a "Stones" concert.     Everybody makes money.    Why do you think the Beatles had to retire?    Where in the world would they spend all of that money?    Small in Popular Entertainment makes lots of money.       But most of the Diamond Tiaras of the Art world are not small labor forces.    And they don't allow all of that technology to make all of those chorusmembers redundant as well as the Stage personnel.     In a symphony or a Broadway Show, you cannot downsize a member required by the Art,  period.    * No padding and no skimping.    This was the business model that Peter Drucker said would eventually have to be the business model of the future for the world and he may be right, but if he is then we are in for some drastic changes.       *Note here.   I am not talking about amatuer choruses which can be as big as they wish.    But even there the size dictates how much art will go on based upon the agility of the number.    Professional Artists and Musicians are hired by the job by and large.    NYCity has three full time orchestras.    One Symphony and two house orchestras to service the Metropolitan and the New York State Theater.    Every other secular Instrumental musician is free lance.    They go from job to job.    Some instrumentalists play a concert in the morning, a Broadway show in the afternoon and a totally different one in the evening.       America graduates around 25,000 musicians from her conservatories, schools and Universities every year.   About 2% make a full time living performing.    That Charles is efficiency.   No waste whatsoever, in the industry, and a lousy pay scale with chorus members making less that $15,000 a year, dancers even less and instrumentalists who get in the Union making a living but working a schedule that other professions would consider worthy only of the obsessed and for much less money.   A Capitalist's dream and a Union official's nightmare.    The finest orchestra in America has a salary that is above $100,000 but they are stars in their business.    Consider a comparable lawyer, doctor, scientist or a Senator.   They all make a better salary than our best of the best instrumentalists.    It is that keeping of the salaries low, keeping an efficient  "necessary only"  labor force with no waste as well as an unlimited expert labor supply,  that is something that even the most angry Cost Cutting CEO (Mad Al Dunlop for example)  would envy.   That makes the Arts so productive in New York City.    Or does it?       In point of fact they aren't.   In spite of all of this efficiency and lack of waste,  excess labor,  only the Popular Artists and Movies make a profit.    The Pop Artists are small ensembles with technology (remember?).     Movies are expensive but once made can be reproduced for pennies and sold for anywhere from ten to hundreds of dollars a piece.    Not bad.    The movies are a consistantly better deal than the arts are for NYCity.    Remember the 11 to 1 dollar investment that I mentioned earlier.    Also the Arts have all of these extra things that they stimulate as well.     Expensive clothes, good restaurants and all of the other "fine things" in life that go along with Opera Tickets of $250 a seat.      So at least the Metropolitan makes a profit right?   Nope.   There is not a single opera house in North America that makes more than 60% of its income in sales.     All the rest?  they have to "fundraise" or translate "beg" from people who will make them play ONLY  what they enjoy, so the purpose of the arts as a developer of spirit, soul and identity is subverted and the Metropolitan Opera is a colony of Milan.       So Charles, what does all this mean?    Inefficiency is encouraged in big bloated companies only to be "downsized" every so often in order to ........you name it.    Whatever excuse they can come up with at the time.      On the other hand, efficiency with only the necessary labor force, unlimited labor, etc.  is not able to make a profit or even more than 60% of their income from sales.    The system doesn't work.   You can make all kinds of stories about toilet workers that make time or quality the value which gives you a larger or smaller workforce but the one thing about all of these is that these workforces that you posit are interchangeable.    That is not what is happening in the high tech industries that are the future of work in the world.    These industries need people who are expert and who, like Beethoven's flute player, can handle stress and deliver on cue.      My contention is that your comments are for the past not the future.     I agree with Sally Lerner  and Peter Drucker that the future will be more like the Symphony Orchestra in its labor needs but unlike the symphony the corporations will, through automation, dark factories that work constantly with small staffs etc.,   make a lot of money with expenses only for upkeep that would never equal the cost of a human.     So as Kit Sims Taylor's paper published on this list a few years ago made very clear (The Brief Reign of the Knowledge Worker, Information Technology and Technological Unemployment)  there are going to be about 40% fewer jobs than there are people who need them.    That is still not as bad as the Arts which has 98% more expert workers than available jobs but it is interesting that the job market will hire people at about the level that the Opera Companies can sell tickets.    Remember ticket sales were 60%.    Maybe there's some kind of formula here that I'm not capable of filling out.    Perhaps you could explain why both the future workforce and the Arts organizations have a "shortfall" of 40%.      Finally: All of this was put on hold during the Clinton Administration.    That was Clinton's genius that he seemed to get this point so what he did was create thousands of jobs that went nowhere.    They called it "service sector" jobs.    But essentially he made a deal with Wall Street that he would provide government stimulus for investment if they would provide jobs.    With Bush, Wall Street reverted to its Creative Greed and broke the contract but that is another story.    Its been both sad and disgusting to watch Democrat Wall Street Guru Larry Cramer revert along with the rest.   The one who hasn't thus far is Krugman which may mean hope but I'm not convinced.        Clinton joined the Reagonites who broke the sixties affluent drug explorations with a big recession and making everyone work.   That was also the point of Clinton's workfare program.   No Idle hands.    That was Reagan and Clinton and also Bush.   But Clinton used employment and merit to redistribute wealth.    Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have made the same point in protesting the Bush tax cuts.      This may not be the Australian world Charles.    But it is the world that I have seen evolving and it is not just my ideas.        ---------------------------------------------     However, there is still work which needs to be done.  In our ancestors days virtually all the work which needed to be done was directly related to the bottom level of Maslow's hierarchy.  We have liberated most of us from this, but there is still work which is needed to be done - or we will revert to the lifestyles of our ancestors.   --------------------------------------------   I never said that work didn't need to be done.   I just commented upon the strategy and tactics that are coming out of the modern company and their interactions with government.    -------------------------------------------   Even Ray can't sing and write poetry if he is perpetually hungry.  And he can't inspire his students if they are all out catching tonight's dinner.   -----------------------------------------   That is the problem with Art in America.    With such a small job force and the producers being compromised by the need to fundraise,   American serious composition has largely died.     I am giving a month long festival for the composer Ned Rorem on his 80th Birthday but he is an anomaly.     What composer we will get to be the next composer for the American Master Arts Festival Biennial in two years is a problem    There are many but most of them spend most of their work teaching and don't write much.     Rorem has ten operas,  400 songs, symphonies, concertos, string quartets, choral  and other chamber music.   He has done it through sheer force of will.    I don't know anyone else who would premiere a master song cycle on the death of his lover less than six months after his death.    But you are largely correct.    And that is why America is the world's third largest country and has an Arts program that can't compete with countries that are smaller than many of America's States.     American performers will immigrate in a moment if Austria calls.     We make our living here because we have won in the competition and have the best products but this is way beyond your example.   I've fed students and given over a million dollars in scholarships and grants in the past 25 years.  If I had not done it I would have had no material to work with.    Artists must often purchase the material before they can work with it.     ---------------------------------------------------   So, the nature of the work which needs to be done has changed (throughout history in fact - one Australian author - Jim Penman describes it as civilising) - but there is still more which needs to be done (needs in the literal sense of that word - needs or society can't function) than people to do it.   -------------------------------------------------   There are genuine needs for work but I don't agree that the strategies that come out of mass production and "economies of scale" are the tactics for solving those needs.   Not here anyway.    As I said above.   They've failed.     Its time for new models.   And geniuses to come up with them.   --------------------------------------------------   Hence, we do need to work.  Not just to keep us busy between hangovers but to make our world work.   ------------------------------------------------   You may need to work for pay but that is not why Reagan needed you to work.    He needed to stop you from "Turning on, Tuning in and Dropping out."    That is also why the Republicans and Clinton collaborated on a workfare program that brought less money and less time with one's children (than welfare)  but more social acceptance and less social abuse from the upper class and their puppy media.    -----------------------------------------------   Unfortunately, our 'job' systems simply haven't kept pace with the changing world of work and hence we don't have mechanisms for recognising, and exchanging, the value which is done in the work we do.   -------------------------------------------------   I would agree with that.     Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. 200 West 70th Street,  Suite 6-C New York City, 10023 212 724 2398 [EMAIL PROTECTED]   "A Magic Circle Repertory Company in every city of 100,000 across America."