univ of minnesota pr the jobless future sci-tech and the dogma of work jul 1994

[...]... rates of 2-4 workers per shift are possible."5 All of the contradictory tendencies involved in the restructuring of global capital and computer-mediated work seem to lead to the same conclusion for workers of all collars—that is, unemployment, underemployment, decreasingly skilled work, and relatively lower wages These sci-tech transformations of the labor process have disrupted the workplace and workers'... under pressure of dropping profit margins and a new ideology of corporate "downsizing," been abrogated For the corporate conglomerate, the particular nature and quality of the product no longer matter since the ultimate commodity, the one that subsumes and levels all others, is the designating language, the representing language in the terms of forms of credit That is to say, along with the technical... Knowledge Work longer discriminate between most categories of intellectual and manual labor With the introduction of computer-aided software programming (CASP), the work of perhaps the most glamorous of the technical professions associated with computer technology—programming—is irreversibly threatened Although the "real" job of creating new and basic approaches will go on, the ordinary occupation of computer... reductions in production and workforces In stark contrast to the 1980s hype of the invincibility of the Japanese, especially its effective corporatism, the early 1990s witnessed severe changes in the Japanese economic outlook For the first time since the early postwar years, many of the largest corporations such as Mitsubishi laid off thousands of workers, cut production, and began to transfer work to less-developed... and artists, laborers and clerical workers, today cuts across all occupations, including the professions Even the once buoyant "new" profession 15 The New Knowledge Work of computer programmer is already showing signs of age after barely a quarter of a century We argue that the shape of things to come as well as those already in existence signals the emerging proletarianization of work at every level... and professions—as forms of life is in crisis.5 If the tendencies of the economy and the culture point to the conclusion that work is no longer significant in the formation of the self, one of the crucial questions of our time is what, if anything, can replace it When layers of qualified—to say nothing of mass—labor are made redundant, obsolete, irrelevant, what, after five centuries during which work. .. decentralized production and brought on the shedding of whole sections of the largest corporations, 16 The New Knowledge Work have spelled the end of the paternalistic bureaucracy that emerged in many corporations in the wake of industrialization and, especially, the rise of the labor movement in the twentieth century Large corporations such as IBM and Kodak, for example, have reversed historic no-layoffs policies... destroyed many others Tens of thousands of workers once employed as retail clerks in "mom and pop" stores, albeit at low wages, are no longer needed In the wake of the growth of the giant supermarket chains and multilocation department store chains that dot the retail landscape, one of the major weapons of survival for owners of small clothing, hardware, and grocery stores is cutting labor costs by working... which the United States still enjoys an uncomforable lead are computer chips and software Japanese-made IBM clones have outdistanced the parent in the production and sales of personal computers And it has taken the alliance of Intel, the world's premier chip producer, and Microsoft, whose lead in software is quite wide, to fend off Japanese and European competition What is new is that after a century of. .. generation of technological change makes some work more complex and interesting and raises the level of training or qualification required by a (diminishing) fraction of intellectual and manual labor, for the overwhelming majority of workers, this process simplifies tasks or eliminates them, and thus eliminates the worker The specific character of computer-aided technologies is that they no 20 The New . alt="" THE JOBLESS FUTURE This page intentionally left blank The Jobless Future Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Copyright . Unions and the Future of Professional Work 202 8. A Taxonomy of Teacher Work 226 Part III. Beyond the Catastrophe 9. The Cultural Construction of Class: Knowledge and the Labor Process . Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 Part I. Technoscience and Joblessness 1. The New Knowledge Work 13 2. Technoculture and the Future of Work 57 3. The End of Skill? 81 4. The