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Four
Perspectives on the Future of Work
by Joseph Coates
Work life, after
family life, is the second most nearly universal characteristic of our
lives. Yet little research attention and study is paid to it. Social
pressures influence our choice or nonchoice of a career path. The people
in our family, social, and neighborhood environments influence our vision
of what work is about and what work is open to us. Opportunities and
constraints shape our choices, often in unconscious or invisible ways.
Although there is a steady increase in the amount of scientific research
about work, it is still tiny, considering the importance of work to
individuals and to society as a whole. Knowledge about work is too often
ad hoc, narrow, circumscribed, and merely anecdotal. We have gotten
along fairly well in that situation, but the future immediately ahead
of us presents new serious problems in the choice of careers, the management
of work, the organization of work, and the various social controls over
work.
Why is so little known? Customary practices, social issues, and other
limitations shape academic research. A primary source of the funds for
research comes directly or indirectly from the business community, which
consciously or unconsciously exerts pressure on the nature of those
explorations. Many studies exist and are reported in numerous journals
about management, but relatively few studies are done or reported anywhere
about work from the workers’ point of view. Government reports
include data about work, but are weak on interpretation mostly because
of ideological constraints, political timidity, or simple past practices.
Recognizing those asymmetries and gaps in knowledge, it is nevertheless
worthwhile to look to the future.
This article considers four snapshots of informed opinion and judgment
about the unfolding work situation.
NEW WORKPLACE HAZARDS
Every occupation has its hazards and risks. High costs are involved
for individual victims, employers, and society as a whole, as the hazards
and risks at work lead to injuries, lost time, and crippled or impaired
lives. The highly prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM), the sister
organization to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy
of Engineering, has given us a look at these issues in Safe Work
in the 21st Century.
1 Its emphasis is on education and training
needs of occupational safety and health personnel over the next decades.
The Institute of Medicine’s report is obviously useful to the medical
education community. The report gives the expected kinds of figures
on death and injuries—16,000 U.S. workers are injured on the job
every day, over 6 million a year. Every day, 20 people die as a result
of jobrelated injuries, over 7,000 a year. The IOM report cites the
difficulty in estimating occupational illness, reporting 860,000 cases
in 1992 and 60,000 related deaths annually. The economic costs of job-related
injuries ($145 billion) and illnesses ($26 billion) are higher than
those for AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease, ranking up there with those
for cancer and circulatory diseases.
The IOM report recognizes trends influencing the composition of the
workforce—notably, increased numbers of women, minorities, immigrants,
and disabled people. Also the workforce is aging, While the number of
workers under age 18 is also increasing. These trends have both obvious
and more subtle implications for the issue at handthe IOM’s responsibility
to look at the adequacies of current training and the adjustments needed
in the occupational safety and health (OSH) workforce. The IOM approach
looks at the four traditional professions within OSH—occupational
safety, industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, and occupational
health nursing—and adds new fields, such as ergonomics, employeeassistance
professionals, and occupational heath physiology. The report also identifies
changes in the organization of work:
First, new hazards
could potentially emerge, both through the introduction of new technologies
and through the performance of work in a more dispersed or virtual organization.
Second, businesses are becoming smaller and “flatter” (i.e.,
fewer levels of management) and are redefining Me content of work and
the nature of the employment relationship. They ore under pressure to
compete for talent, innovate, provide exceptional quality, and bring
products and services to market quickly at competitive prices.
The effects of these business developments on workers include demands
for new skills and continuous learning, expanded job scopes, an accelerated
work pace, and the need to deal with changing workplaces. Workers also
face uncertainty in employment relationships, increased interaction
with both customers and coworkers, and more involvement with information
and communication technologies.
Further, societal developments like the increasing numbers of single
parents, dualcareer households, and aged dependents challenge workers
to manage multiple and competing interests in their work and home lives.
2
It ends with a curious conclusion, “These factors are a major source
of time conflict and carry the potential for causing dysfunction
and distress in America’s workforce and workplace” [emphasis
added]. This is a weak statement in view of the limitless writing about
stress in the general press. It seems to me to be a terribly misplaced
conclusion, since research shows a big, if not the biggest, cause of
lost time at work has to do with mental problems, everything from stress
to frank psychoses.
In general, the report seems to be squeezing into old categories the
changes it correctly identifies in the workforce and problems in the
increasingly flexible white-collar information workforce. The report
fails to break away from the traditional structure and concentrates
on surface improvement. It avoids a deep analysis of what is really
needed in terms of preparing OSH personnel to deal with changing problems
and circumstances. The report is weak with regard to the psychological
issues of health and safety connected with work. There is not even conjecture
about their costs. Yet those costs are available from other studies.
The IOM report strongly emphasizes the increasing fluidity of the workforce
and the shoving of increasing responsibility onto the worker. The report
found that this is not a good trend for the worker, but the report is
weak on innovative approaches and the specifics of what might be done
and the cost and benefits to whom. On the trend toward roundtheclock
operations, not just in manufacturing but in the service sector and
in finance, the report is mute. Yet an increasing body of knowledge
tells us that badly managed shift work leads to accidents and can be
extremely disruptive for workers.
In summary, the report is a solid piece of work that touches all the
right bases but lacks freshness of insight. The consequences of the
relative shift in the nature of work and how it should affect the educational
training of OSH workers is neglected. The report is chokingly dry because
of the lack of data and illustrations one would hope to find on specific
classes of injury, illness, diseases, and disorders connected to the
workplace. It does not include information on government employers (federal,
state, and local) and whether there are any special problems or opportunities
therefor instance, whether government could adopt particularly effective
measures to manage the health and safety of its workplace, becoming
a test bed and then a model for business workplace reform.
The report neglects cultural differences, such as attitudes of machismo
or unfamiliarity with machinery and devices; these differences can lead
to substantial problems that are not necessarily noticeable to an untrained
supervisor. The report also overlooks any question connected with the
operation of U.S. business outside the United States, yet that is an
increasingly important element in the world of work.
The report lacks lessons that might be adapted from the experience of
other advanced nations, such as Sweden, Norway, Japan, Germany, and
the United Kingdom. It would also have been useful to have the report
highlight some outstanding successful examples of business or corporate
health programs that are or could become models for widespread adoption
and staffing. Perhaps any shortfall results from providing a narrow,
rather than expansive, answer to the question askedwhat are the educational
needs and changing roles of occupational safety and health professionals?
THE FUTURE OF ORGANIZED
LABOR
A central feature of a truly demographic society, and very much the
case in the United States, is that you are impotent unless you are organized.
The impotence comes from the inability to grab the attention of public
officials, pressure them, and cope with the powerful forces already
organized around points of view and objectives different from your own.
Therefore, in understanding the future of work, we must consider the
future of labor organizations and the changes they will and must undergo.
Labor unions are a too restricted category, because other forms of organization
that are not unions may come about or become important. For example,
the American Association of University Professors is not a union, but
it is a mouthpiece and advocate for academics. Professional associations
such as the American Chemical Society, the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
are oldline membership organizations. They have to be attentive to the
concerns of their members, and theydo a good job on the strictly technical
needs of members by reporting and publishing research and sponsoring
professional meetings. They are relatively weak but may become stronger
under membership pressure to represent their professionals’ needs
and concerns as workers.
Let’s look at two perspectives on the future of organized labor.
The first is by Paul Clark, an associate professor of labor studies
and industrial relations at Penn State University who wrote the book
Building More Effective Unions.3 The second
book is Arthur B. Shostak’s CyberUnion: Empowering Labor through
Computer Technology.4 Shostak is a professor
of sociology at Drexel University and a futurist with a longtime career
interest in work and the labor force.
A Strategic Approach to
Meeting Member Needs
Why are labor unions a faltering, if not failing, social institution?
They obviously offer the benefit of meeting a wide range of needs of
the general and specialized workforce. Numerous reasons for their decline
have been put forward. One that I find especially attractive has to
do with the flaws within the institution itself. American labor in its
heyday, from the latter part of the 19th century through the mid-20th
century, dealt to a large extent with immigrant workersrelatively uneducated
workers who migrated from a rural to an urban context and were often
socially at sea.
Labor unions succeeded by having bold leaders and a hierarchical structure
that spoke down to them. While acting on behalf of the workers, those
who rose to leadership continued to operate in that hierarchical, topdown,
commandandcontrol model.
But society has changed, creating a betterschooled workforce, whose
education is further increased by television, radio, film, and news
from newspapers and magazines. Democracy has spread in U.S. society
since World War II to an unprecedented degree, yet the oldline unions
still operate on the hierarchical model. For example, I find it more
difficult to get access to a head of a labor union than to a CEO of
a Fortune 500 company.
Ironically, in the early days, the labor unions, having no organizational
model as a precedent, adopted the model of the organizations that they
were confronting, namely big business. The model has not been updated.
Union leadership became a parody of life in the business world in the
early to middle decades of the 20th century. Top labor leaders sit in
a large offices isolated from the daytoday activities of the union Isolation
from the ordinary members reflects and reinforces a distrust of the
knowledge and judgment of those members. In any hierarchical organization,
isolation also creates fear of being ousted from office and distrust
of the reliability and intentions of the levels below.
Let me illustrate these points from my own experience. Being a futurist,
I am concerned with a wide range of organizations, forces, and trends.
In setting up my futures business, I committed myself to giving away
my services a day a week to what I thought to be worthwhile causes,
or significant opportunities to make a difference where there was not
already a commitment to the future. In that spirit, I approached one
of the labor unions that is purported to be among the most liberal,
open, and innovative. I could not talk to the top guy, but I spoke to
someone approximately two levels down, explained that I thought futurizing
unions could be useful, and that I was willing to make a oneday presentation
to the leadership or any other group within the union that seemed appropriate.
After some dickering and hemming and hawing and making it clear that
it was all free, we seemed to home in on a time and a place. As that
date came closer, I then was told that I first had to submit a full
draft of everything that I would say. That curious kind of constraint
illustrated the union leadership’s fear of the unfamiliar and lack
of confidence in the audience’s ability to size up what they hear
and make their own judgments. We came to a parting of the ways on that.
Another more interesting example of the problems of the hierarchical
structure with its intrinsic distrust of subordinates was an invitation
to talk to a different labor union to a meeting of the organizers, obviously
one of the most important groups in any union. I’d gone through
my talk and moved into Q&A. The Q’s were extremely interesting,
and the A’s I was giving, I thought, were stimulating. Then two
burly men approached me from the rear, flanking me on each side, and
announced that my time was up.
Although two anecdotes can’t be definitive, they do reinforce the
idea that there has been something fundamentally wrong in the orientation
of union leadership to its members and especially to the new generation
of workers. Paul Clark’s Building More Effective Unions
is right in the spirit of that diagnosis. His credentials are impeccable.
He is an associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations
at Pennsylvania State University. He has worked with unions and has
written books on the labor union.
Clark’s objective is to introduce the labor union community to
behavioral science knowledge relevant to the primary issues, to “build
a stronger labor movement by increasing the level of members’ commitment
to and participation in their union.”5 The
book is well written, clear, and straightforward, and for this reader,
it repeatedly evokes the feeling “Why was this book ever written?”
The material is so obvious, simple, straightforward, and commonsensical
that it is hard to believe that the lessons drawn from behavioral science
research are not already second nature to union leadership. However,
one has to recognize that Clark knows what he is talking about. He is
bringing to the labor movement and its leadership knowledge that has
apparently eluded them in practice, or that for some bizarre reasons
they never knew, or because of customary policies and practices, they
have lost the connection between that knowledge and their objectives.
Anyone who has engaged in any kind of social intercourse with groups
would know implicitly and practice explicitly Clark’s findings.
That Clark can present the obvious so earnestly just highlights the
giant steps that organized labor has to take to bring themselves into
resonance with the changing mental, social, and intellectual makeup
of the people that they do or would serve. For example, he points out
that “Organizing is the life blood of the labor union.” He
identifies five points that are critical to organizations’ acquiring
and retaining members.6 The key points are as
follows:
• Attitudes toward unions in general, and toward the specific union
that is organizing the workers, play a critical role in the unionization
decision.
• The employee’s perception of the union’s effectiveness
may be the pivotal individual factor, or in the “fulcrum”
of the unionization process.
• Union tactics and strategies play a very significant role in
determining the outcome of organizing elections.
• Unions should consider why many employees choose not to vote
in union elections.
• Voters in decertification elections are influenced by many of
the same factors that influence an individual’s vote in a certification
election.
What could be more obvious? Contrary to the myth that organizers should
rouse up the emotions of the worker, research shows that to vote for
a union is by and large a rational and instrumental decision, not one
primarily emotional. Research also shows that in many cases only a small
fraction of the total workforce will participate in the elections to
determine whether or not to form a union. Ironically the tendency is,
as more workers participate, the likelihood of unionizing decreases.
It is well known from research that workers are not necessarily antagonistic
to the employer. Promoting that image can be selfdefeating for unionization.
“Job dissatisfaction plays a role in stimulating an initial interest
in unionization,” Clark writes.7 Employers
have two strategies to cope with employees’ desire for unionization.
“Considerable research confirms that when an employer creates a
hostile environment through such overt actions as intimidation, harassment,
surveillance, and discharge union support is often reduced,” Clark
writes.8 On the other hand, the desire to unionize
is also mitigated when the employer begins to adopt some of the measures
that the union has raised as an issue, for example, when the employer
becomes more participatory. This creates a challenge for the union.
Clark has suggestions for what to do. Work on the fact that family attitudes
toward unions have an important influence on the attitude of the worker.
Clark makes a key point that expectations toward union effectiveness
are of primary importance in setting up the union shop. In the longer
term, however, there has to be a shift in general attitudes toward building
unions’ image. Particularly important is the involvement of family
members, peers, media, and schools. The lessons sound like those common
to most public interest groups today.
Clark’s chapter on unionmember orientation and socialization highlights
the limitations on the topdown approach. He concludes that first impressions
are extremely important in shaping an individual’s attitude toward
any organization. In a union, positive formal or informal orientation
and socialization is essential. Orientation programs are effective if
they influence the attitudes of new members. Information is important,
particularly as a part of the socialization programs. He also points
out the desirability of building commitment among groups too often ignored:
parttime and temporary employees.
The book deals with activities such as political actions, grievance
procedures, information communications strategies, image building, culture,
and leadership. His advice on political action is particularly interesting,
because often 2540 percent of the membership disagrees with the political
position of the top leadership of the union. Clark’s recommendation
is to turn to the workers to find out what their most important issues
are. Of course, one has to establish in the members’ minds that
the candidate being supported by the union is likely to facilitate or
deliver desired outcomes to the members.
Clark strongly urges unions to move into strategic planning. In the
1980s, only 25 percent of North American unions engaged in such planning.
By 1993, it was up to 40 percent in the United States, and it is probably
still rising. A more strategic approach is a needed to complement union’s
traditional reactivity with more proactivity.
For business, Clark’s prescription is unclear in detail, but clear
in implications: More sophisticated and longerrange commitments on the
part of unions might make them more evenhanded and balanced on the issues
they deal with and less focused on shortterm stick points and grievances.
Strategic thinking on both sides could lend to more recognition of mutual
interests and cooperation. On the business side might be the recognition
that busting unions may have value in the short term, but for the long
term, embracing unions could be an important part of the business world
in the future. U.S. business is slowly recognizing that those groups
outside its responsibilities are increasingly important to its futurepublic
interest groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), state and local
officials, and international bodies. What should be recognized as part
of those ranks are the organizations now and in the future that represent
the issues, needs, and concerns of their workers.
Clark does not write in any significant way about unions moving in new
directions, toward new kinds of members, or toward the unionization
of middle managers, whatever the legal obstacles may be currently. The
unionization of professionals, scientists, and engineers may be a bright
new day for unions, as those groups recognize that all too often top
management does not see them as affiliated with top management in spite
of their wearing shirts, ties, and suit jackets, but rather sees them
as workers. Perhaps strategic planning on both sides could end their
hot and cold wars and assaults on each other. This is not 1880, but
the beginning of the 21st century.
Using Technology Effectively
A radically different but complementary view of the future of unions
is found in Arthur B. Shostak’s CyberUnion: Empowering Labor
through Computer Technology. Because Shostak is a longtime friend,
I feel I must restrain my boundless enthusiasm for this outstanding,
seminal, provocative, and simulating work. Shostak is primarily a professor
of sociology at Drexel University. He is a wellknown polymathic futurist
with a 45year commitment to learning about, studying, teaching, and
training in the U.S. organized labor movement. Among other things, he
is a professor at the National Labor Relations College at the AFLCIO
George Meany Center for Labor Studies, in Silver Spring, Maryland, and
has held that position for over a quarter century. He is also the director
of the Drexel Center for Employment Futures, a universitybased think
tank devoted to exploring the frontiers of tomorrow’s world of
work.
Before turning to the substance of his work, the innovations in presentation
are themselves noteworthy and merit wider adoption. Most of the chapters
end with the usual reading list, but that is complemented by the identification
of cyber sources. At the end of the volume are separate pithy guides
to print and cyber sources. Many of the chapters conclude with a supplementary
reading, usually by a union member describing some activity directly
relevant to the substance of the chapter. The chapters close with a
section the author calls “Reality Check,” which looks at the
plausibility of what was discussed, particularly in his advocacy chapters.
Shostak’s style is literate and easy to understand; his enthusiasm
shows itself in virtually every paragraph.
As a general principle, the introduction of any new technology is by
substitution. The new technology does what is already done but does
it better, cheaper, faster, more reliably, at higher quality, or better
by some other microeconomic measure. We see this occurring, for example,
in businesses, hospitals, schools, and labor unions. The first things
information technologies do is take care of the backoffice work, the
accounts, billing, and record keeping. It is usually years to decades
before computerrelated information technologies begin to be used with
regard to the substance of the enterprise. Hospitals, for example, for
decades recorded and rendered your bills with the aid of computers.
But only in the last five or six years have computers become a significant
part of the delivery of hospital health care. Only in the past few years
have schools begun to take the computer seriously as a teaching aid
and are still not yet fully aware of its emerging centrality in teaching.
Shostak reports similar earlystage computer use in labor unions—computers
are having little influence on the larger issues.
The central chapters of the book deal with three levels in the use of
computers in labor unions. The first he calls “Cyber Naught,”
which amounts to paving over the cow path (i.e., nothing of any significance
is done). The second level, “Cyber Drift,” has the introduction
of computers partial and going nowhere. His third category is “Cyber
Gain,” which involves a more systematic, broadsweeping use of infotech.
His killer comment is that “Cyber Gain organizations do not deal
with the future as much as they streamline the past. Only a far more
ambitious use of informatics in general, and computers in particular,
will really do the job.”9
The FIST Program
The centerpiece of his advocacy and analysis is “CyberUnion,”
recognizing that in CyberUnion technology, use will always revolve around
putting members rather than officers first, and putting democracy (rights
and responsibilities) center stage. Accordingly, he says that a CyberUnion
will:
• Employ computerbased tools to regularly survey members, both
actual and potential, to learn in depth their needs and wants, their
dreams and nightmares.
• Employ computerbased tools to survey members to learn preferences
and priorities regarding major questions confronting the organization.
Every effort will be made to improve member participation in union policy
making.
• Employ computerbased tools to keep members abreast of relevant
developments and to learn of such from the rank and file. The union’s
or local’s cyberspace home pages will be updated weekly, and email
of real merit will flow often between officers and the rank and file.
• Make officers and staffers accessible to members via email, and
promise personal responses within 72 hours of a message’s receipt.
• Update its infotech infrastructure regularly. It will take pride
both in being at the cutting edge and in making a special effort to
take the membership there with it.10
The core of the CyberUnion concept is the need to make a FIST full of
new tools:
• F for futuristics, a perspective;
• I for innovations, a cuttingedge tool;
• S for services, ties that matter; and
• T for traditions, a vision, and a commitment.”11
Shostak believes that union members are ready for this, but the leadership
is lagging.
According to a 1999 AFLCIO study, 57 percent of working unionists have
a home computer, and “for many of them, Web surfing is a genuinely
popular enterprise.12
His chapter 7, on futuristics, makes the point that most union activities
involve some implicit concern about the future. What is missing is the
awareness that there is an enterprise he calls futuristics, what I prefer
to call future studies, which has tools and techniques to formalize
and regularize activities to make those looks to the future more productive.
His own experience, reported in a reading attached to chapter 7, is
particularly telling. He has been teaching, as noted above, at the Meany
Center for years, most recently adding to his schedule a course specifically
on the future. He defines the program and its teaching components. In
order to make it click, he had to adopt techniques specific to the people
who take the course.
Trends and Change Agents
It would be interesting to find a comparable piece of work on futurizing
corporations in the United States. To the best of my knowledge, nothing
like that has ever been done, although some of my own writing has touched
on how to futurize a business. With regard to innovation, Shostak sees
the CyberUnion as a learning culture, placing high value on creativity
and schooling. The computer will be important in all of those activities,
the Internet, wearable computers, intelligent agents, and numerous other
tools so familiar to the business community will open up planning to
unions.
His chapter on services deals with promoting ties, that is, linkages,
and again he writes about many of the capabilities such as hightouch
learning centers, the use of laptops, skillupgrading centers, coordination
assistance, and reaching out as ways of fitting the traditional facetoface
environment of the union through the extensive, explicit use of modern
technology.
The fourth letter of FIST, which stands for tradition, is directed at
promoting roots. There are proposed virtual labor museums, the cyberspace
calendar, edutainment, the provision of referrals, and again schooling.
What it all amounts to, as different from even the best of the Cyber
Gain unions, is a total orientation to the future and the development
of the other three elements of FIST.
Shostak is a great advocate and enthusiast for women’s roles in
unions. He sees in them the new proactivisms he advocates. Women will
be particularly valuable in two regards: as strategic aids in the computerization
of organized labor and as guides to the reduction of sexism in labor.
A chapter on change agents outside the United States highlights the
need for better international growth, coordination, and planning among
labor organizations. Many countries now have broad enough Internet bases
to make that practical. The United States at the time of Shostak’s
writing in 1998 had 203 online citizens per thousand. In the top ten
countries, the numbers ranged from 244 in Finland to 46 in Germany.
Unions are recognizing that labor issues are global in the same way
that business issues are global, hence labor’s lessons are transferable
and their strength will lie in recognition of joint interests and intense
international cooperation. A brief bit of data to suggest the significance
of the issue is that in 1994, the last year for which data was available,
593 union activists somewhere around the globe were killed for their
prolabor work. Nearly 2,000 were injured. Nearly 70,000 were fired.13
Shostak’s strong feelings are expressed in a quote from the same
page: ‘There is no adequate instrument to check the worst excesses
of transnational corporations.”
The progress that he writes about is not easy to achieve, but achievable.
He sums it up nicely:
All the more reason
to seek resolution soon of five significant challenges the use of computers
poses for Organized tabor, namely, finding the right ways to subsidize
access, to relate to union democracy, to protect against technological
tyranny, to establish high standards, and to promote visionaiding possibilities
in computer use. All five pose hold choices, though choosing is made
a little easier when FIST realities are brought to mind. CyberUnions
will be stronger and finer for working through these choices, for to
paraphrase the poet E. E. Cummings [sic], always the wise answer who
asks a wiser question yet.14
The substantive
issues of the future are not discussed in detail by Shostak. The issues
are primarily used to highlight the needs for his FIST program. It is
worth noting some of those future issues. There is no discussion of
the misuse of computerized information. There is no discussion of the
use of computers and other information technologies as weapons in global
managementlabor disputes. In the heydays of the industrial unions, it
was common to put guards around manufacturing plants to prevent intrusion
and protect property. That hardly fits a world of whitecollar workers,
where information technology dominates. The tools of information technology
may become part of any new labormanagement conflict. If a more positive
relationship between management and labor does not evolve quickly, then
wiping out information, cancellation of accounts receivable, the creation
of false messages, and the broad area of hacking will inevitably become
new tools of conflict.
The most significant issue over the next 25 or more years is the consequences
of increased productivity from automation both in factories and
in other bluecollar and whitecollar jobs, leading to a situation in
which 70 percent or less of the available workforce can accomplish all
the work that is needed to meet national and global markets. The big
issue then will be, what should be the policies of management and labor
with regard to the total workforce? The worst and most destructive way
to approach that problem would be a “toughluck” response on
the part of management. A sound strategic plan is needed, developed
jointly by organized management and organized labor. We already have
precursors of the problem in Europe where unemployment plus underemployment
have over the last decade or more frequently run to 15 percent or 16
percent. While information technology. may be the source of the problems,
it may also be the path for joint discussion and effective public policy
conclusions and recommendations.
THE IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL
ECONOMY
A quite different view of the future of work is Robert Reich’s
book, Future of Success.15 Reich’s
credentials are outstanding. He is a university professor at Brandeis.
He had been secretary of labor under President Clinton. He has written
eight books and is a frequent columnist in the New Yorker, Atlantic,
New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
He is a savant and a stylist.
Having been secretary of labor, one could expect that he would have
comprehensive, deep feelings for the labor force as a whole, and having
retired from government, would be able to offer a pot full of attractive
fresh and engaging proposals for public policy to remedy any of the
failures or shortfalls in work in the United States. Quite the contrary.
Reich has a great deal to say, but his concentration is around a single
topic: namely, the consequences of information technology and rising
aspirations— aggravating and accelerating what he takes to be a
natural and apparently universal tendency to constantly look for “the
better deal.” In his diagnosis, most of the often discussed difficulties
in society associated with business and industry come out of the pressures
of the consumer for the evernew. That in turn puts competitive pressures
on corporations and in turn pushes them to severe measures driving for
higher productivity by fewer and fewer workers.
Throughout the book, the chant is that the source of all of these problems
is “You,” that is, the ordinary citizen, and that these
trends are unstoppable. The industrial and business process continues
to make people more and more uncertain about their future and less and
less clear as to where, how, and when they will be paid or how stable
their income is. Therefore it puts them in the position of diminished
to zero loyalty to any employer and in readiness to jump at the earliest
promising opportunity.
One of the most important side effects of this systemic uncertainty
and anxiety is that U.S. workers work harder than they ever did, or
at least harder than they did three decades ago. He equates more time
at work with harder work. Americans work harder than equivalent people
in other advanced nations for example, 350 more hours per year than
the Japanese do. His argument continues that if you are doing well you
have to continue your hustle, and you see yourself in fact or in your
mind either on the fast track or not. You are under constant pressure
to maintain contact with your customers, clients, and all of those who
have given you the position that you have. You no longer are in a paternal
large organization where you can move up the ranks by seniority and
increasing competence. You must constantly promote yourself.
Operating across all the elements of society, schools, housing, community
location, and even colleges and universities are powerful sorting processes
in which the best and the brightest are continually pushing for more
association with people like themselves, thereby further promoting a
wider rift in society between those who are making it and those who
are not. How does one deal with the question of getting out from under
these terrible pressures and achieving a better balance in one’s
life? A chapter on personal choice is almost laughable, in that Reich
apparently doesn’t believe that any of the things that he discusses
will generally work. But if you get a kick out of them, give them a
try. He writes, for example, about evaluating what is truly important
to oneself and then acting on that. He discusses managing your time
better and he even takes a nod (and then a swipe) at voluntary simplicity,
which he characterizes as not so simple.
Having dismissed those personal approaches, he then moves to his recommendations
for public choice. They are relatively tired concepts that have been
kicked around for decades. The chapter, as far as I judge, is almost
free of fresh, innovative, creative, and plausible ideas that get to
the core of the matter. Having made the point throughout the book that
we are responsible, he notes that “the emergence of the global
hightech economy seems largely out of anyone’s hands,”16
but he goes on to suggest some of the choices that have to be made.
What are missing are any statements beyond goals. He suggests nothing
about how those goals might become important enough to be introduced
into legislatures, or forced into business practices.
Regrettably, Reich’s book is not written about or to all U.S. workers.
It is written about and to the top two quintiles, the top 40 percent
of families by income, taking only brief views of the conditions of
the lower quintiles. The terrible shape, in terms of income, of the
lowest quintile and continual drop of the secondlowest quintile’s
income is noted. The middle quintile at best is stagnant. Most of the
problems that he discusses are in the framework of the fourth and fifth
quintile—the very well off to the obscenely prosperous. The lessons
that he offers and the personal actions that he recommends are not available
to the bottom two quintiles. It is almost as if the author were not
aware that half of the population is to the left side of the IQ curve,
aside from any disabilities that they may have connected with poor education,
limited choices, and timidity about risk taking coming out of lifelong
experience.
Most people I know who have any feelings about Microsoft as a company
through the use of their products are somewhere between moderately and
severely critical of their products and their policy of changing products
as a way to draw you in to buying each new wave of their modified programs.
Microsoft is making better use of what was so successful in the car
industry—the annual style change. The firm is inattentive to the
actual use and user of their programs. In Reich’s model, that is
our responsibility to do something about. There is nothing that I can
conceive of that citizens like me can do to change the practices and
behavior of Microsoft. Reich’s waggling of the accusative finger
at us is so far off the mark as to be an insult to the reader.
Returning to his chapter on public choices, he has several suggestions
in the form of goals. First, in order to cushion people against sudden
economic shock, we should guarantee a minimal decent income. Employee
benefits should be made fully portable and there should be community
insurance. He says we need a transaction tax at a low level, perhaps
at 0.1 percent. Trade laws should be amended to provide greater relief
from sudden surges in imports. The second goal is to widen the circle
of prosperity. He pushes the usual stuff, promoting human capital through
education. He has one innovative notionthat at age 18 each of us should
receive a financial “nest egg” of, say, $60,000 to use as
we see fit. His third goal, giving caring attention to those in need,
includes taking kindergarten more seriously and requiring businesses
to be more flexible about work hours. His fourth goal is to reverse
the sorting mechanism in society. He proposes local property taxes and
a national educational trust fund, school vouchers proportional to family
needs, and housingassistance vouchers enabling poor families to afford
to live in higherincome communities.
The recommendations may have some value, but they are all tired blood,
symptomatic of intellectual anemia. There is nothing systemic here by
way of policy analysis resulting in a range of choices that could be
put before the public. He presents no time horizons of 5, 25, or 50
years for his proposals.
I’m amazed at how the author can say so much and say it so well,
and yet be so wrongheaded in his conclusions and recommendations. I
could be entirely wrong. Being a frequent public speaker, I have learned
that, in speaking, one of the most dangerous rhetorical devices that
one can usebecause it is most likely to misfireis irony. It would be
nice to think that Robert Reich has put together a work running 289
pages intended to be totally ironic.
The book is a rich mine of information and research reports over a broad
range of topics and is well worth reading for that information alone.
Incidentally we who are responsible for all the problems of society
that he mentions do as we do for one reason, to enjoy the benefits of
new technologies and the associated positive effects.
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS FOR
BUSINESS
From the four books discussed, the future pattern of work and its issues
is mixed and unclear. What is emerging are substantial deviations from
past beliefs, concepts, relationships, and issues. For example, Safe
Work in the 21st Century suggests the following to me:
• The costs and the sources of lost time relating to health and
safety should be identified to indicate where further professionals’
assistance will be needed. This may be beyond the scope of individual
companies. It could well be undertaken by business associations or by
human resources organizations.
• With regard to the changing workforce pattern, what the specific
issues are that immigrants, women, and minorities bring to the workplace
with regard to health and safety should be explored and inventoried
globally.
• The psychological consequences of stress as a source of reduced
efficiency, poor attitude, frank illness, and lost time merit a closer
look by business.
Clark’s work suggests that as unions become more sophisticated
in building their membership, cooperation to alter customary hostilities
between business and unions should grow and even flourish. Shortterm
success in union busting or decertification or interference with certification
are the worst forms of businessworker behavior, in my opinion.
Lessons from NGOs, public interest groups, government, community activist
groups, and others suggest that unions fall into the same category in
which openness and cooperation have a high payoff. In any case Clark’s
work clearly suggests that unions will be increasingly, not less, sophisticated
than such organizations in identifying issues and needs and in promoting
them.
From Shostak’s work, it is clear that there are big gaps in unions’
orientation toward the future. As strategic planning grows and becomes
more long range, visions of both business and labor may find high value
in joint planning and more cooperative attitudes in managing their futures.
Organized labor around the world will see a pressing need for cooperation
in order to achieve some parity in confronting multinationals and local
businesses, which in many parts of the world are more outrageously exploitative
of labor than in Europe and America in the 19th century. The opportunities
are to encourage, not resist, doing what is right.
Reich’s book has many implicit implications for business opportunities.
Maybe loyalty is not entirely lost. Employers ought to learn to promote
loyalty by responding to the stick points and the changing anxieties
that business practices create:
• An employer should look at the extent to which 45to55hour work
weeks are really productive, and whether internal changes in meetings
and paperwork could allow people to concentrate more on their tasks.
• Members of top management should be coached to alter their own
tendencies to micromanage, which creates waves of excessive work among
subordinates.
• Perhaps the best counsel for top management is to cut meetings
by threequarters and spend more time in strategic thinking and trend
analysis.
• Discourage work beyond 40 hours by giving more forced attention
to efficient work time and work life.
• Look more for personal rewards and avoid the rewards that promote
destructive work patterns.
• Enforce vacation and holiday time.
• Set policies on the use of the Internet and other interpersonal
communications outside of standard work hours.
• Stabilize the situation for the premiere employees so that they
will be eager to stay and they will develop more loyalty to the organization.
The most important implication for business from all four books is twofold.
First, pay more attention to what is going on, and second, pay more
attention to the emerging and longerterm future.
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NOTES
1. Institute of Medicine. (2001). Safe work in the 21st century. Washington,
DC: Author.
2. Id., 7.
3. Clark, P. (2000). Building more effective unions. Ithaca, NY Cornell
University Press.
4. Shostak, A.G. (1999). CyberUnion: Empowering labor through computer
technology. Armonk, NY. M.E. Sharpe.
5. Clark, 1.
6. Id., 32.
7. Id., 39.
8. Id.
9. Shostak, 95.
10. Id., 113.
11. Id., 114.
12. Id.
13. Id., 209.
14. Id., 220.
15. Reich, R. (2001). Future of success. New York: Alfred Knopf.
16. Id., 234.
This
article appears in the Spring, 2002 issue
of Employment Relations Today
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