Changing Contours of Work. Stephen Sweet
to exert control through the development of a collective culture of standards and expectations. The work of skilled programmers in this environment is truly a team effort and requires considerable coordination of tasks that require varying levels of skill and control. In this environment, workers are often paid quite handsomely for their efforts. On the surface, it looks like a model example of optimistic predictions about what work can become.
Questions have been raised, however, about how real these “craft communities” actually are. The high-technology industry may have its share of start-ups and small, “nimble” companies, but it also is increasingly dominated by corporate giants: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Cisco all were among the sixty largest companies in the United States in 2014. As we discuss further later in this book, some elements of life in the Silicon Valley and other high-tech strongholds appear more enslaving than liberating. For example, high-technology workers experience both external and internal pressures to labor twelve- to fourteen-hour days and sacrifice their lives for their jobs (a reality satirized in Dave Eggers’s novel, The Circle). The project teams that form and reform within high-tech companies are subject to intense performance pressures and tight deadlines; the resulting managerial demands and coworker pressures push workers to put in long hours. The reality that one’s job may last only as long as the current project, and the hope that a show of commitment will lead one to be invited to join the next project, add to the external pressure (O’Riain 2007). But some of the pressure to work long hours is internal, as many high-tech workers embrace a sense of commitment to a culture in which the willingness to work long hours is taken for granted and normal (Harris and Junglas 2013, Shih 2004). It is paradoxical that a work environment that offers control also tightens the chains of work, resulting in workers laboring far longer hours than those preferred by most individuals.
Technological Change and a Jobless Future?
Perhaps the most extreme interpretation of the nature of work in the new economy is the view that rapid technological change is now threatening to produce an economy in which paid work itself is under threat. The robots and automated systems that have significantly reduced the size of the labor force in manufacturing have been followed by computers, artificial intelligence, and other technologies that can perform many of the tasks now performed by service workers and professionals. As a result, this view concludes, there is a real possibility that the postindustrial, “service” economy will turn into a jobless economy in which fewer and fewer Americans will be employed at all.
The idea that technology can replace workers and threaten jobs is hardly a new one. Indeed, as we have already noted, labor-saving technologies were central to the rise of mass production and the changes in manufacturing associated with the heyday of the industrial economy. In the very early days of the Industrial Revolution, employers introduced new mechanized technologies that changed and even eliminated the jobs of many skilled textile workers (Thompson 1963). Workers reacted in anger and concern, fearing their livelihoods were threatened. Some even targeted the machines by trying to break them, a movement which in England came to be known as “Luddism.” The term Luddite continues to be used to this day to describe people who resist new technologies and fear its consequences for their well-being (Hobsbawm 1964).3
The derision with which Luddites are typically greeted reflects, in part, the fact that previous predictions that technology would eliminate work turned out to be incorrect. Clearly, early manufacturing work was changed as machines replaced hand labor, but jobs emerged in other sectors of the economy and more than compensated for any jobs that were lost. Similarly, mass production technologies reduced the number of workers needed to manufacture a given number of products, but the rise of postindustrial work created huge numbers of employment opportunities in the growing service sector. Technological change, in other words, has in the past eliminated certain jobs but also created others.
Some observers of the new economy, however, claim that what is happening now is different. They base this claim on two arguments. First, the pace of technological change is allegedly much faster than it ever was in the past, making it impossible for the economy to keep up with the rapid elimination of jobs by machines. Second, technological change in the past tended to eliminate physical labor and tasks that required relatively little skill or education; jobs that required intellectual skills or involved social interaction were largely unaffected by technology. Now, however, computerization has made it possible for machines to replace these types of work, threatening jobs that were previously largely immune to the effects of technological change (Ford 2016).
We can all think of changes that seem to fit this argument. Consider how often we interact with machines in settings where, not so long ago, we would be interacting with a paid worker. Most of us bank online and or use the ATM to withdraw cash (if we use cash at all), meaning that the traditional bank teller’s role is less and less in demand. When we phone an organization to get help or answers to a question, more often than not, our question is answered not by a person but by technology that, using a synthesized voice, moves us through a complex set of choices, and is able to ask us questions to find out what we want (despite the challenges mentioned above). Spectacular acts of showmanship, such as the IBM Watson computer that defeated the best Jeopardy players of all time, or chess-playing computers that defeat world-champion grandmasters, demonstrate that new technologies can perform even the most sophisticated of tasks, making it seem possible that we may all be replaced one day by machines. Economic forecasters estimate that huge numbers of jobs, both in the United States and globally, will be eliminated by automation in the next decades and that almost half of American jobs are threatened by automation by 2033 (Greenhouse 2019).
But, should we believe the view that there is something fundamentally new about contemporary technological change and that, this time, it really will lead to an overall decline of work opportunities? First, the motivation underlying the introduction of technical change is not new at all—as in the old economy, new technologies are introduced today to save on labor costs, reduce dependence on hard-to-find employees, and/or to make it easier to manage operations by replacing potentially resistant employees with compliant machinery. Further, while it is true that automation has displaced workers in some industries and occupations, there is clear evidence that, as in the past, it is producing labor demand in others, either by creating new jobs (e.g., in coding or data analysis) or by lowering prices, which stimulates demand for those cheaper products and creates employment in the sectors that produce them. There is, in fact, no real evidence that unemployment has increased in periods when automation accelerated, and some even argue that the pace of contemporary automation has been greatly exaggerated (Mishel and Bivens 2017).
The effects of technologies depend on how societies respond to innovation. In the United States, workers often fear technological change because they are often left on their own to cope with the job loss it may cause. Swedes, in contrast, are largely positive about robots and automation. They see it as making their economy more competitive and are much more likely to embrace it than are Americans. The difference lies in the fact that Swedes feel they share in the economic gains of automation—they receive generous benefits if they are laid off, and there is effective retraining of workers for alternative employment (Goodman 2017).
In short, while the new economy definitely is marked by rapid technological change that is affecting types of work that were not affected in the past, there is a very real sense in which this is not really new. As in the old economy, technology destroys some jobs and creates others, and we are faced with the same choices about how best to deal with the disruptive effects on workers and their livelihoods.
Rigid Jobs or Flexible Jobs?
In the old economy, workers were commonly expected to be physically present at their workstations and to structure their time commitments in accordance with rigid daytime/full-time schedules. Perhaps the most iconic characteristic of the old, manufacturing-centered economy, was the factory, an innovation designed to concentrate workers in one place, make it possible to take advantage of large-scale technology, and maximize employers’ ability to monitor and control the workforce (Freeman 2018). As work began to shift from manufacturing to services, the basic principles of the factory were transferred to the modern office, in which large