The End of Work

by Jeremy Rifkin G.P. Putnam's Sons New York, 1995 Price $24.95

Success of Technology: Global Unemployment Is Here to Stay

In his new book, The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin tells us much that we already know. There are no longer enough good jobs to go around, and their number is rapidly diminishing.

Downsizing and rightsizing are now generally understood words, meaning that the large blue chip companies, the transnational companies, are terminating employees by the millions while productivity and profits soar. The reduction in workers is also taking place in the government sector as defense winds down and computers replace people.

The elimination of jobs is taking place in all industrial societies -- including the Asian Pacific fringe nations. The International Labor Organization, based in Switzerland, estimates that globally 800 million people are now permanently unemployed or underemployed.

Rifkin attributes most of the decline in jobs to technology. Machines matched with computers coupled to data banks now dominate what we call the Information Age. It is inevitable, Rifkin writes, that the rush to a jobless society will continue at an even more rapid pace in the next century. Blue collar and white collar, labor and management, market sector, service sector and government sector will all experience the loss of jobs.

OPTIONS: JOBS OR PRISONS

Rifkin takes a close look at the options a new jobless society will have. Either we descend into warring factions pitting the wealthy elite against the jobless poor, or we translate the enormous productivity gains in to a society with more time for recreation and leisure.

Rifkin asks whether society can continue in its traditional market dominated economy where investors claim the spoils resulting from productivity, or shall those gains, paid for by society, be shared in a new social economy? In the United States, the trend towards an economy dominated by transnational corporations, has already worked havoc in the workplace. The correlation between unemployment and crime is still not accepted by political leadership. But with each uptick in statistics of structural unemployment, crime advances apace.

Crime is deeply rooted in the anger and despair of people who can't find work in the world's richest economy.

Rifkin suggests several ways to cope with the adverse effects of technology. EUROPE HAS SHORTER WORK WEEK

It is time, he says, to cut the work-week to 30 hours. In Europe, England, France and Germany are working towards a shorter workweek. A 30-hour week, with expensive penalties for overtime, will create several million more jobs.

Shorter hours and little or no reduction in income will allow for more quality time for family and social activities. A responsive minimum wage, one that allows employees to fill their basic needs, should be the law of the land.

As a side note, Rifkin reminds us that the U.S. Congress once sent the President a bill to reduce the workweek to 32 hours. President Franklin Roosevelt declined to sign the bill but agreed to sign the Wagner Act (1995) giving working people the guaranteed right to organize into unions for collective bargaining purposes. Roosevelt said later that he was mistaken in not affirming the shorter work week.

THIRD SECTOR: PAY VOLUNTEERS

But Rifkin identifies a sector beyond market and government. The Third Sector. It is this sector that can and must put people to work as jobs disappear in the first two sectors. Begin with the thousands of volunteer groups already existing in most nations. Americans are especially disposed to volunteer time and effort to good causes. Much that gets done socially in America must be credited to volunteers.

Here in Alachua County, thousands of citizens belong voluntarily to business groups, church groups, charitable organizations, environmental associations and to government advisory councils. All work as best they can to advance the well-being of the local society.

It is these volunteer groups that Rifkin would infuse with money and coordination. Unemployed workers would be called upon to help in the restoration of infrastructure, in the improvement of their own neighborhoods. The jobless would be paid a "social wage," enough money to support a family. The Third Sector would help improve schools, hospitals, recreation facilities, theaters. Tutors and counselors would help keep children in school.

GOVERNMENT COULD SAVE

Where would the money come from to fund the activities of the Third Sector? Part of it from savings made in the reduction of government gifts to the transnationals. In 1994, the U.S. government gave over $100 billion in subsidies and tax abatement to some of the world's largest transnationals. Most adults would will be working, although for shorter hours. They would be given tax credits for their volunteer activity. And they would help in the development of work for the unemployed. Rifkin suggests that additional and sufficient funds would come from a value added tax, a consumption tax. Income taxes would be phased out. People would save more and spend less. The dismantling of a burgeoning welfare bureaucracy would add to revenues over time. Savings would be utilized for investment in ventures of the new social contract.

A new, socially oriented economy determined more by the Third Sector with emphasis on local needs with volunteers working together would be a strengthening feature of democracy.

SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION?

Rifkin is hopeful that job canceling technologies and the enriching possibilities of leaps in productivity will save the nation and the world from approaching class warfare, pervasive crime, and a grim global depression.

"We are entering a new age of global markets and automated production," Rifkin writes. "The road to a near-workerless economy is within sight. Whether that road leads to a safe haven or a terrible abyss will depend on how well civilization prepares for the post-market era that will follow the Third Industrial Revolution. "The end of work could also signal the beginning of a great social transformation, a rebirth of the human spirit."

Rifkin's vision of a new society requires a cultural adjustment few Americans are ready to make today. Present trends indicate a determination to build more prisons and to hire more police. Transnational corporations are quite unlikely to relinquish their pervasive control of global money, materials and labor pools.

Aside from these impediments to a social economy, the relentless growth of global population and the surging numbers of economic refugees inundating the industrial nations adds immeasurably to the difficulties faced by visionaries, no matter how convincing their arguments.

But Rifkin's book is certain to enliven debate about the future course of civilization in a world turned topsy turvy by the implacable elimination of jobs. For that reason alone, his book deserves careful review. -- Bill Edwards