Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part nine (last part) by Michael Shanks

Each of these proposals britles with difficulties, and none can be recommended without a great deal of further study. What is depressing, however, is that (at least as far as I am aware) they are really not being adequately studied in any country today. I would be very happy indeed to be proved wrong on that point.

A fourth solution which is, very naturally, beeing advanced in many quarters to the problem of unemployment is work sharing. Here I believe we have to separate two elements. A deliberate policy of dividing the available work between more people seems to me to have very limited scope for resolving our present problems, if only because of the increasing costs it would involve - unless, which seems very unlikely, those sharing jobs are prepared to accept a commensurate (corresponding in size or degree) reduction in wages.

On the other hand there is obvious scope for taking people out of the workforce by earlier retirement, or by prolonigng pre-work training - provided it is recognised that by so doing we are merely shifting the incidence of joblessness between age groups (for which there may well be sound reasons). In other words, this is a palliative not a solution.

In any event, it seems inevitable that as we move through the 1980s there will be progressive reductions in the working week, with earlier retirement, longer holidays (including quite possibly mid-career sabbaticals) and restrictions on overtime. Whether this will create significantly more jobs is open to question, but that it will improve the general quality of life is very probable. The problem for employers will be to see that the reduction in hours does not push up unit costs excessively.

So far as can be judged from rather inadequate records, normal working hours in the mid-nineteenth century averaged around 65-70 hours per week. From then until 1939 there was a steady reduction to around 40-45 hours. Normally one would have expected the trend to continue downwards. But the demand for labour in the post-war boom arrested the trend, and average hours woked did not start to fall again until the early 1970s. Since then they have been dropping slowly but steadily, so that today average hours worked in industry throughout the Western world are probably around 38-40 (allowing for overtime an short-time).

My guess is that by 1990 this fiugre will have fallen to around 32-34 hours, and effectively we will move from a five day to a four day working week. This will have a number of radical effects on society. It will greatly increase the scope for "moonlighting", enabling people if they wish to hold down two jobs; it will greatly boost the hidden economy, in which the second job will normally be worked. At the same time it will create major opportunities for new leisure industries to be developed, and one's guess is that the leisure sector (including, hopefully, expanded education and training) will be among the most buoyant growth areas of the post mannufacturing economy. Whatever else it is, the world of the 1990s is likely to be one in which work plays a smaller part in the totality of people's lives, and leisure a greater part, than today. Hopefully, also, the present sharp divisions in our lives between work and leisure will become more blurred, as work becomes less aruous and disciplined and leisure more purposeful and creative (for those who wish it to be).

So the prospect for mankind in the post-manufacturing era is one of challenge and opportunity. The risks are obvious, the opportunities immense. But in order tor grasp the opportunity, society has to become much better at coping with change -which will be occurring at an ever accelerating rate. We have to make our institutions, particularly our political institutions, much more creative and much more flexible. The present widespread disaffection regarding our institutions -the pervasive view that "small is beautiful" and "big is ugly" - is not necessarily the most appropriate set of attitudes for approaching the post-manufacturing era. We cannot exist without institutions, and if our present institutions are thought to be incapable of dealing with today's problems - let alone tomorrow's - that is an ominous sign. Our institutions cannot be ignored. They have to be reformed. We cannot sit back, as some advocates of the post-industrial society have suggested, and wait for technology to resolve our present tensions and lead us complacently towards a golden, affluent future. Technology has not solved society's problems so far. For every problem it has solved it has tended to create a new one. Why should the future be any different?

Technology, in short, is a tool to be used, not a magic wand to be waved. In the end society will be what we want it to be and are prepared to make it. The solutions in the end rest, as they always have done, with us. In this sense tomorrow's Garden of Eden will be no different from that described in Gensis. It will be up to us to give the story a happier ending.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part eight by Michael Shanks

On the answer to this psychological question will also depend much of the future of important sectors of the service economy such as retailing, catering and the theatre. With the development of viewdata it will be possible, if we wish, to do virtually all our shopping by telephone, without actually having to go shopping at all. In this case the shop could simply become a warehouse with a delivery service. Equally, with home video equipment and with the enhanced cooking facilities which development of domestic computers will bring, one will be able to have all one's entertainment and all one's meals at home without any fuss, if one so wishes.

Will we so wish it? One can easily envisage a future in which those above a certain threshold of affluence become increasingly self-sufficient hermits (a person living in solitude), earning their living in conducting their lives without having to leave their electronically protected houses-cum-offices. It is a technologically possible future, but not exactly an inspiring one. It would also of course have catastrophic effects on employment in service sector such as retailing.

That is one risk arising from the technological possibilities opening up in postmanufacturing society - a psychologically debilitating (weak and infirm (not mentally strong)) retreat into affluent introversion. But it is not, in my view, the biggest risk. Much more serious potentially is the danger implied by the phrase used in the last paragraph, "those above a certain threshold of affluence". It is plain that, over the whole of Western Europe, an increasing proportion of the working class is acquiring middle class standards and middle class life styles. Despite the fluctuations of the business cycle, average real living standards are rising slowly and inexorably, so that by the end of the century the kind of average living standard now found in Scandinavia will be general over the whole of Western Europe, while the scandinavians and other trend-setters will have moved much higher.

But these standards will not apply to everybody. In all Western countries there will probably be a substantial minority who, for one reason or another, cannot find a place in the post-manufacturing economy. As the real cost of labour rises, more and more of the least skilled jobs become uneconomic; they either become automated, or they cease to be done at all. As the amount of captial per worker increases, the cost of employing unequalified workers - who cannot operate, or who might actually damage, the very complex and expensive machinery at their disposal - becomes prohibitive.

So one very disagreeable feature of post-manufacturing society could well be the existence of a sub-class of excluded men and women, more or less permanently unemployed. Being a minority these people would not command the political muscle which the industrial working class has enjoyed in post-war Europe. A declining trade union movement is unlikely to give them the support which their counterparts have tended to enjoy hitherto. The risk that they would become permanently disaffected, a focus of increasing crime and violence, is a real one.

This is perhaps the biggest danger for the West from the present recession. If substantial unemployment among the present under 25s persists for several years -and all the signs are that it will - we may find a whole generation of our young people have lost, or never had the chance to acquire, the habit of regular work. The sub-class of unemployables could in these circumstances become an alarming large one, such as would pose major problems of absorption and containment for society. Other factors also make the prospect still more dangerous. All large Wetern countries now contain substantial minorities of immigrants who are not fully integrated into the community, who tend to have high rates of unemployment and access usually only to the least attractive jobs. These people are likely to form the hard core of a depressed sub-class increasingly at odds with the rest of society. Moreover, as the pattern of income distribution starts to move from a pyramidal to a diamond-shaped structure -as is now happening generally in the West - the political pressure for equalisation is starting to diminish, and income and wealth differentials are widening. In the areas of advanced technology workers with the appropriate skills placed to secure high wage differentials. Thus the natural inequalities within society could widen dangerously.

The withdrawal of the State, and the retreat from the principle of the comprehensive welfare state, pose further problems. Previously the State has provided employment for many of the least skilled. It has also of course supplemented the incomes of the poor, and provided them with services they could not buy on the market. It has been on the whole a rather inefficient provider of these services, but if it withdraws from them it is not clear that anybody else will provide them. Deprivation may be more limited than in the past, but it may equally be more acute for those it affects.

At the same time, the increasing internationalisation of business will make it very difficult for any individual country to pursue policies of income distribution, or social justice, which are markedly at variance with its neighbours. Business will tend to migrate to those countries where it has to shoulder the fewest social burdens - other things equal - and as technology advances it will become progressively easier so to do.

Thus there are a number of factors which, unchecked, will tend to make a post-manufacturing society more socially unequal, and therefore more divisive, than hitherto. We cannot therefore afford to be complacent. As already indicated, there are no firm bases for projecting how large a proportion of the population in the long term the sub-class of the excluded will comprise. But that it will exist is virtually certain, and we cannot afford to ignore it.

We have to tackle the matter now, before unemployment becomes too deeply embedded in our culture. I believe, therefore, that we should now be looking very seriously at such issues as:

1. Can local communities take up the slack ( characterized by a lack of work or ) left by the retreat of the State, to see that vacuum of socially needed work and the employment needs of the local jobless are filled?
2. In order to do this, and to inculcate the habit of work among the young, should we be considering schemes for compulsory community service and work experience for young people - a form of non-military national service?
3. Should we not be examining with greater urgency than we are the case for easing the present link between contribution and reward, in other words between work and income (deeply embedded as it is in the Protestant work ethic), so that income is more closely related to need, via such schemes as negative income tax, which the increasing sophistication of computers now makes more possible than ever before?

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part seven by Michael Shanks

One can paint an idyllic picture of industry in the post-manufacturing society, and many writers have done so. Unfortunatley there are enough negative aspects to puncture the euphoria, and some daunting question marks. But before coming to these, let me mention two other major implications of the application of computer technology. They concern the role fo woman, and the future of trade unions.

Mention has already been made of the remarkable changes in the perception by woman of their role, and the expansion of their aspirations, as a result of improved methods of contraception. Female participation in the labour force has increased sharply in recent years, and with it female demands for better job opportunities and better access to training and promotion. It is perhaps surprising that despite the recession and the rise in male unemployment, there has been very little evidence of a male backlash against these aspirations.

Industry will therefore increasingly adjust its working patterns to suit the requirements of woman, who will play an even-bigger part in it as we move into the post-manufacturing society. If one looks at the present pattern of female employment, it tends to fall into two distinct blocks. One the one hand, woman are heavily concentrated in a group of activities where the future prospects are particularly bleak: labour-intensive industries like clothng and textiles, and in service occupations most vulnerable to office automation (clerks and shorthand typists). Woman are also heavily concentrated in the retail trade, which we shall mention below.

Thus the first sweep of the computer revolution could have serious effects on female employment. On the other hand, woman are strongly placed in some of the fastest-growing sectors - in teaching, communications, and more recently in the computer industry itself. We may expect to see increased pressure for job opportunities to be provided for women in these expanding sectors of the economy, particularly if this can be done on the basis of working from home on a flexitime system.

It is clear that the kind of "return to cottage industry" type of working pattern sketched out above offers considerable attractions to woman, in that it enables them to combine home life and work. This means that there will be great social pressures in this direction. But of course this option will only be available to woman with adequate qualifications. More effort will need to be directed towards re-training woman who have left the labour force to rear a family, an wish to reenter work once the family is reared.

This is a particular instance of a much more general problem. The need for retraining to enable employees to cope with the very rapid technological changes which will be experienced in the post-manufacturing society will be a continuing challenge. The old concept that one learns a skill at the start of one's working life which one then practices throughout one's career has little relevance in a world where, in Professor Stonier's words, "changes are taking place at an exponential rate rather than a linear one". In future we must all expect to have to change jobs several times in our working life, to learn new skills continuously, if we are to cope with the accelerating pace of change.

At present society is ill-adapted to this emerging pattern. There is a serious mismatch between what the education system in most Western countries is geared up to provide, and what the world of work demands. We have to improve this relationship, by introducing greater flexibility on both sides. We have to strenghten the vocational (occupation or employment) training aspect of education, and adapt it more closely to the changing needs of industry. We have to increase the work experience element in schooling, and bridge the present yawning gap between school and life. We also have to ensure that career patterns in business are sufficiently flexible to enable people, as they feel the need, to take "sabbatical leave" to update their skills and re-charge their intellectual batteries, without detriment to their careers.

One option which merits serious consideration is to make business enterprises themselves, under suitable supervision, awarders of qualifications. The idea that the firm can be a teacher is one which is only beginning to become respectable, and it naturally arouses hostility in parts of th educational profession. But if we are to bridge the gap between work and education, and if experience in doing a job is to be properly recognised, there is much to be said for making the enterpris itself the teaching organisation in sutiable cases.

The needs of woman in this respect are thus a particular example of a more general theme. Nevertheless, they have a special relevance in another context. Only woman can bear children. One result of the contraceptive pill and the change in female attitudes and aspirations resulting from it has been a sharp decline in the birth rate in most, thought not all, Western countries. It is true that the labour force in most of these countries will continue rising until the late 1980s as a result of the early post-war "baby boom". But it will start to tail off quite sharply as we move into the 1990s, and if present trends continue it is safe to predict that Western Europe will start to become seriously concerned about its dwindling population, and the prospect of fewer and fewer youngsters having to support a growing army of dependents.

Future trends in the birth rate are quiet extraordinarily difficult to frecast, depending as they do largely on changes in attitudes and life styles which defy analysis. But it would be rash to assume that the birth rate will turn round of itself. It would be wiser to consider what kind of inducements would persuade woman to want to have more children. The most obvious incentive would be to make it easier for woman to combine a career with child-rearing.

The computer revolution could have a profound impact on the scope and importance of trade unions. During the 1970s in Europe, thougt not in North America, trade unionism gained very considerably in power, influence and numbers. Aided by sympathetic governments, trade unions secured legislation in most European countries which would guaranteed employees a high degree of job security. It became both difficult and very expensive to make workers redundant. Health and safety regulations at work were made stricter and more comprehensive, more generous arrangements for sick pay were secured, and woman workers won equality of pay for equal work and (at least in principle) equal opportunities for training and promotion. In a numbe rof countries workers won seats on the boards of directors as a statutory right, and in almost all the powers and scope of works councils (elected representatives of employees on the shop floor) were enhanced.

Thus industrial democracy took a major step forward in most Western European countries during the 1970s. At the same time, of course, European governments and industries faced continual pressure for higher real wages and shorter working hours. As a result European wages increased substantially compared to those in North America and the Third World. Moreover, as a result of job security provisions labour became essentially a fixed rather than a variable cost item, at least in large firms.

From the workers' point of view, many of these gains seem to be proving counterproductive. The higher cost of labour has undoubtedly acted as a stimulus for the introduction of labour-saving automation, and has also deterred firms from expanding in Europe as much as they would otherwise have done. There has been a marked tendency for multinational investment to migrate from Europe to North America. The high cost of dismissing workers has made large firms reluctant to take them on if alternatives can be found. Thus the job security of those at work has, at least in part, been paid for by very high unemployment among the young, who have not had the opportunity of acquiring secure status at work. In almost every Europen country the under-25 age group has by far the highest percentage unemployed. Another reason for this fact has been trade union pressure to reduce the differentials between fully trained workers and young workers still under training. Since apprentice labour is no longer particularly cheap, it is less attractive to employers.

Thus the constraints applied by labour to large firms have led, and will lead increasingly in the 1980s, to a shift in numbers employed from large to small firms. Where possible, large firms now prefer to sub-contract work to small firms, which do not suffer the same constraints, rather than take one extra workers themselves. As large firms become more bureaucratised and more politicised, entrepreneurship is reviving at the level of small enterprises on whom the large ones increasingly rely. The principle of "small is beautiful" applies here too.

Entrepreneurship is indeed coming back into fashion. It accords with the spirit of the times, the prevailing distrust of large scale which we have already noted. It responds to the needs of large scale industry, encrusted by the restraints imposed on it by governments and collective bargaining. It is a natural reaction to the excessive taxation which the expansion of the State in the early 1970s necessitated. So we see in most European countries - particularly in Italy, but also in the UK, Germany, France and Scandinavia - a vigorous growth of the so-called "informal" or "hidden" or "black" economy, where work is being performed and income is earned by individuals or groups which are not recorded in the official statistics and not available to the tax collector.

The swing to small scale enterprise is encouraged by other factors too - notably the reviving taste for craftsmanship, the reaction against mass produced consumer products, the growing desire for individuality and self-expression among the peoples of the West. Until recently there were two powerful forces pulling int eh other direction. One, as we have seen, was technology, which before the age of the computer put a heavy premium on large scale. But, as we have seen, this is now changing. Perhaps the most significant change of all between the 1970s and the 1980s will prove to have been the fact that technology now begins positively to favour decentralisation and small scale rather than the opposite. When technology and public aspirations and values are pulling in the same direction, it is a powerful combination.

The second factor which has worked against the pressure to decentralise has been the tendency for governments, faced with the horrors of "stagflation", to try to enlist the support of trade unions and employer organisations in governmental decision making. During the 1970s most European countries moved a long way down the road to the corporate state, with increasing power and influence devolved to the central decision-making authorities in the trade unions and employer organisations. In some countries - West Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, The Netherlands - the system worked reasonably well. In onter - Italy, Ireland, UK - it was less successful. But in almost every case the experiment was working against the grain of public opinion, and at the cost of a certain rigidity and bureaucratisiation of industrial policy, which as the decade wore on became less and less acceptable.

Now there is growing evidence that, at least in some European countries, the importance of the trade unions is declinig as inflation recedes and unemployment rises. Trade unions are on the whole not popular bodies. The rise in unemployment reduces their bargaining power, and their numbers. It forces them back onto the defensive. As we have seen, trade unions operate much more successfully in large organisations than in small entrepreneurial ones, where personal contacts between the individual workers and his or her boss are much closer. The kind of decentralised pattern of working life indicated above is likely to prove an inhospitable climate for trade unions. Part of the undinding of the dichotomies created by the Industrial Revolution, which we are postulating as characteristic of post-manufacturing society, is a decline in the overall influence of trade unions - thought they will undoubteldy remain very important in certain sectors of the economy (particularly I suspect, in the public sector).

Of course, the pattern will vary from country to country. As so often in recent years, among European countries it is the UK where the pendulum seems to be swinging most violently, towards and now away from the corporate state. In countries with a more stable political structure, such as Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries, the trend is less marked; but I suspect that in varying degrees it will apply over most of Western Europe.

The 1980s, therfore, will see a move back towards small units, operating in much pleasant environments than the old manufacturing industries today, with fewer constraints, closer personal links between managers and employeess, and with very large amounts of capital installed per worker. The opportunities for job satisifaction should be much greater than has been the case for the average worker hitherto.

Utopia? What are the snags (unexpected or hidden obstacles and drawbacks) and the risks? The first, which has been little studied up to now, concerns human nature. Working with computers has one huge drawback; for intelligent people - and intelligence is needed to be a computer programmer, still more an analyst - it can be extremely boring. That is one reason why, even today, there is an acute shortage of computer software operators. In some ways working alone with a computer in a laboratory, or supervising a bunch of robots in a hygienic control room, can be even more boring than the most repetitive work on a moving production line. On the production line one can at least talk to one's neighbours. Much of the work required in the age of information technology is mentally but not physically fatiguing - and above all, lonely.

Industrial psychologists thus have a complex set of problems to address in the postmanufacturing age. Will it be necessary to maintain the factory and the office, not as a functional necessity - all communication can if necessary be carried out without physical contact, via the telephone and the closed-circuit TV - but as a psychological requirement, to cater (satisfy) for the human need for contact with one's fellow beings?

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part six by Michael Shanks

The first question, then, which arises is the likely impact on employment of the new technologies. The leading technology of the 1980s is likely to continue to be, as it undoubtedly is today, information technology based on the computer and the silicon chip. As with all new technological innovations, it is easier at first glance to see what jobs will be lost through its application than what jobs will be gained. Thus on the one hand, computer-based automation on the shop floor (primarily through the substituion of robots for humans) is plainly going increasingly to replace men and woman by machines in the actual manufacture of goods. The production lines of the future, at least in Western society, will be manned by robots and not by people. Similarly, in the offices of the future the recording and trasmitting of information, hitherto performed by an army of clerks and typists, will in future be increasingly electronically handled and processed. Office automation will also have major impact on the operations and staffing of banks and insurance companies.

On the other hand, as with earlier innovations, the long term effect could well be to create more jobs than are lost. Analysis of the impact of past innovations on jobs suggests, unexcitingly, that it is impossible to establish any general correlation between innovation and the total number of jobs. Some innovations have on balance destroyed jobs; others have on balance created jobs; in others teh effect is indeterminable. It is never easy to isolate the impact of the innovation from other events (e.g. the movement of the business cycle). But perhaps the most significant effect of innovation is to remove bottlenecks to growth (bottlenecks which perhaps had not previously been identified as such). To quote one example, it has been calculated that had automatic telephone dialling not been invented, the entire working population of the UK would now have to be employed as telephone operators. The example is a neat one. Automatic dialling is an innovation which does not, on the face of it, create a new industry. In this respect it is not like the invention, say, of plastics or of bio-technology (which we will be discussing below). It is a straightforward subsitution of capital for labour. Yet its major long term effect has not been to destroy jobs but to enable the market it serves, and indirectly the economy as a whole, to expand much faster and further than would otherwise have been possible.

Undoubtedly similar effects will come form other aspets of the computer revolution: for example, the transmission of information via viewdata and the development of intelligent terminals linked to a main-frame computer in the office and the home. The nature and location of jobs will change, and the skills rquired. We will address these matters later. The point I wish to make at this stage is that there is no way, so far as I am aware, of determinng whether the total number of jobs available (leaving aside other factors) will increase or diminish as a result of the computer and the related impact of information technology (or telematics, informatics or whatever other name is used). In default of any firm evidence, one can only rely on intuition. My intuition tells me that, while the short term effect may well be negative, the longer term overall effect will be positive.

But of course the computer and its offshoots are not the only manifestation of technological innovation in the post-manufacturing society. Indeed, by the end of the decade they may no longer appear the most dramatic or important in their impact. By then the leading new technology could very well be bio-technology or the synthesising of life, including genetic engineering. The implications of biotechnology for society are perhaps even more radical, and certainly potentially more dangerous, than those of the micro-processor. It is not our intention to explore these here; but rather to make the point that, from the point of view of jobs, the implications of bio-technology are likely to be more obviously benign than those of the computer revolution. For bio-technology will essentially create new industries rather than alter the inputs to existing ones.

The same is true of the other leading areas of new technology in the 1980s, so far as they can be identified today. These include the development of new sources of energy - without which economic activity is likely to encounter major bottlenecks inhibiting further growth in the 1990s; the rapidly improving understanding of the Earth through plate tectonics, the sue of satellites and other means; and the development of materials science through molecular electronics and the like. In all these cases the impact on overall employment should be unambiguously beneficial.

The other point which has to be made at this stage is that forecasting the application of new inventions is a hazardous exercise. The most significant impact of an invention is usually one which has not been forseen by its inventors, its advocates or its critics. A note of humility is therefore appropriate at this stage of the argument.

Taking account of all these uncertainties, I conclude that the best judgement one can make at this point in time is that the overall impact of new technology on total employment in the post-manufacturing society will be at worst neutral, more probably bening.

I now turn to the effect of social factors. Will the social pressures discussed above continue to operate in the post-manufacturing society, and if so what will be their impact on overall levels of employment?

First, to repeat, there is very little evidence from opinion surveys that the distrust of business and government, the desire for more environmental protection and protection of the consumer which characterised the 1970s are likely to diminish in the 1980s. Insofar as these pressures impact on overall employment, their effect is more negative than positive, in that they tend to deter new investment. However, their impact varies from industry to industry.

For example, social resistance is liable to slow down - for good or ill - the introduction of bio-technologies and the spread of nuclear energy. On the other hand, computer technology is likely to make industry less environmentally vulnerable. Computers do not pollute. Information technology is essentially a "clean" industry. It can operate in attractive surroundings, and can offer its employees and the communities within which it operates a pleasant and stimulating environment. An industrial revolution based on knowledge rather than on coal and steel is clearly one which imposes fewer external costs on society.

It has another, even greater advantage. At the very beginning of this pamphlet I referred to the alienating effects which the technology of the first industrial revolution imposed on its participants because of its requirement for very large scale operations to achieve maximum efficiency. The technology of the first industrial revolution emphatically was on the side of the big battalions. As we have seen, society and public opinion increasingly are not.

This dichotomy (contrast between two things) can to a large extend be resolved in the knowledge-based second industrial revolution. Computer technology facilitates small scale decentralised operations. At the extreme the computer can turn the home into an information centre, so that if we want to we can revert in large sections of our economy to the kind of pre-industrial working pattern described at the very beginning of this pamphlet. In other words, by using the link between the telophone and the TV screen, by installing viewdata systems and word processors in the home, with intellignet terminals, we can return if we so wish to the pattern of cottage industry, with virtually all the operations of the office decentralised to the home, the workers communicating with each other by telephone and closed-circuit television. They can, of course, work on a flexitime basis. The need for large concentrations of office workers disappears. Commuting to work can become an option rather than a necessity, and operatives can to a very large extent choose their place of work.

At the factory itself the function of humans will increasingly be the control the operations of robots, so that the numbers who need to work there will be greatly reduced and the conditions in which they work can be greatly improved.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part five by Michael Shanks

This gap between expectations and achievement in the Western society is one of the main problems confronting us as we move into the post-manufacturing era. There is little evidence that the gap is narrowing. Undoubtedly there has been some reduction in expectations as the world has moved from boom into recession. Unemployment is clearly modifying wage demands. Student unrest has largely disappeared as a social force with the rise in unemployment for the under 25s (the worst affected age group in virtually all countries). It could of course return with redoubled force if we fail to solve the problem of youth unemployment.

But, as expectations decline, so does the ability of the productive machine to meet them. If you cannot satisfy expecations when real output is growing at 3 or 4% a year, it requires a major change in attitudes to satisfy them when real output is static or declining. Opinion research indicates that with the exception of student unrest, there has been no discernible reduction in the strength of the social attitudes which played their part in disrupting the boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And, as we have moved through the 1970s, one set of attitudes has emerged in survey after survey in country after country - a deepening disrespet and contempt for authority in all its guises. This is a point of enourmous significance to which we shall return later in our analysis of post-manufacturing society.

However, the point I wish to make now is the impact of all these forces on government. Governments in all Western countries came under increasing pressure from the late 1960s on. Social expectations increased while inflation and recession weakened industrial performance. The first reaction of most governments - most notably in the case of the UK, Italy and The Netherlands - was to expand the public sector to offset the decline in the private sector and to respond to the increased demands of society. As a result the proportion of the total population employed in the public sector, and the proportion of total national income taken by the State grew progressively as "stagflation" (persistent high inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in a country's economy) worsened.

The result was, of course, to burden the private sector, and the taxpayer, still more - without in fact satisfying the public demand for improved services. From the mid-1970s, therefore, government in all major Western countries has been contracting, both as an employer and as a provider of services. This retreat of government from earlier commitment is a painful and difficult process. Nevertheless it seems an inevitable trend as we move into the 1980s. The turnaround has been most marked in the US and the UK, but in contrast to a decade ago it is evident everywhere.

This turnaround has two major effects. First, it means that one major source of employment in the service sector is declining. Second, it means that services formerly provided, with varying degrees of adequacy, by the State are either going to revert to private enterprise in the 1980s or are not going to be provided at all.

I hope the foregoing analysis explains, albeit sketchily, why the 1980s - the first decade in which Western society can be said to have fully entered its "post manufacturing" phase - is likely to be a decade of under-employment. But is this a necessary condition of the post-manufacturing society, or merely an unfortunate and temporary coincidence?

This is the next major question I wish to address. in order to do so, it is first necessary to define in rather more detail the main characteristics of post-manufacturing society. The following definition is drawn from an article by Professor Tom Stonier in a recent publication by the Henley Centre for Forecasting in London. Stonier describes as the main characteristics of what he calls "the post-industrial economy":

"1. It is primarily a service economy rather than a manufacturing one with the knowledge industry predominating.
2. It is a credit-based economy, characterised by a flow of credit information rather than by large transactions involving money or gold.
3. It is primarily transnational rather than national
4. changes are taking place at an exponential rate rather than a linear one.
5. It is characterised by unprecedented affluence both at the private individual level and in the public sector."

Whether or not these are the most noteworthy characteristics is something that could be argued about a great length. Other writers have cited slightly different elements. But for our purposes this is probably as good a list as any. The question I have to pursue is what the implications of a society whith these characteristics are likely to be for employment and for work. I take them in that order, though obviously the two are inter-related. I assume that, in accordance with Kondratieff's theory, irrespective of the speed of movement down the post-manufacturing road, the level of economic activity and therefore of employment will generally be less in the 1980s than in either the 1970s or the 1990s. In other words, we can anticipate some recovery in employment and in the general level of business activity, taking account of the fluctuations of the business cycle, during the 1990s (assuming, of course, no major outburst of hostilities and no major breakdown in law and order). That much economists can tell us. What they cannot tell us is the precise extent of that recovery - whether, for example, it will be enough to restore the kind of employment levels that we experienced in the heyday of the post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part four by Michael Shanks

Another factor worth mentioning at this stage is the dramatic change now taking place in many Western countries with regard to public sector employment. The early 1970s saw a major increase in the public sector in many Western countries, notably the USA, UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. The reason for this increase were complex. In the period from the mid-1960s on, the Western world underwent what amounted almost to a social revolution. New pressure groups - consumerist, environmentalist, minority rights, groups for racial and sex equality, student unrest, worker participation and industrial democracy - came to exercise an increasing influence on society and on political life. In the USA these movements acquire a considerable fillip from the widespread protest against the Vietnam war. In France there was the remarkable if short lived student-and-worker uprising against the Gaullist regime in May 1968. In Western Europe as a whole, but particularly in the UK and Italy, there was increasing trade union militancy at the end of the 1960s, leading to wage-induced inflationary pressures. Elsewhere in Western Europe the trade unions concentrated on penetrating the power structure of industry through participation in the decision-making processes of management. Only in the US did the trade union movement become less powerful in the 1970s.

This complex of new social pressures - which helps to form the backcloth to the emerging post-manufacturing society - can be ascribed, I believe, to two main factors: rising expectations and an increasing disrespect for authority, permeating throughout Western (thought not, in the second instance, Japanese) society. Why? A number of elements played their part. I would like to identify what seems to me to be some of the major ones - not necessarily in order of importance.

1. Declining belief in and acceptance of traditional religion - partly resulting from the intellectual demolition of Christian ideology through the discoveries of Charles Darwin and his followers gradually seeping down through the community. Scientific humanism gives no credence to the existence of an after life which will redress the injustices of this life; it therefor tends to make one less tolerant of imperfections on Earth. By encouraging a questioning attitude of dogma, it also tends to remove one of the traditional buttresses (a projecting support) to establish authority in society.

2. The pervasive effect of the mass media in widening people's horizons and increasing their expectations. The use of the media as a marketing tool of great persuasiveness and effet meant that exporsure to the media increased people's discontents.

3. Similarly, the great expansion of education - especially higher education - which took place in all Western countries in the 1950s and 1960s, increased expectations and at the same time led to a much greater questioning of authority, whether it be of government, church, education itself, trade union or business.

4. The invention of the contraceptive pill has had, and will continue to have, a farreaching impact on society by its enlargement of the options open to woman. It has clearly done much more than anything else to enable woman to overcome the constraints placed upon them by society in ordering their life styles. As such, its effect on life styles and values, on social normes, on family life and on the so-called "permissive society" has been pervasive. We shall return to this point later when we come to examine likely working patterns in post-manufacturing society.

5. The increased movement of people in the post-war era has also done much to enlarge expectations, especially among the poorer sections of the population.

6. It is no accident that the social explosion took place towards the end of the longest period of sustained full employment and economic growth in world history, when people had come to assume that the boom would go on for ever, and that full employment and rising living standards could be taken for granted.

The combined result of these and other factors was that by the start of the 1970s expectations where outrunning by a substantial margin the ability of society to meet them. This gap between expectation and achievement had both a materialist aspect and a qualitative one. On the one hand the increases in wages and salaries demanded far exceeded the feasible increases in production; the resulting gap could only be bridged by price rises, reducing the real value of the income increases won and thus generating fresh demands. Europe had already started to slip down the inflationary chute before OPEC gave it a final shove. On the other hand, demands for improvements in the quality of life - often at the expense of productive efficiency - further widened the gap between the demands of society and the ability of the productive machines to meet them.

(Two examples. The hostility of environmentalists to nuclear power stations in a number of European countries adds to energy costs and thereby reduces industrial productivity. In the USA it is argued that one of the main reasons for the decline in productivity growth in recent years has been the diversion of a significant part of the national's capital investment into measures to improve the industrial environment at the behest of regulatory bodies of one kind or another. Of course these examples do not imply that opponents of nuclear power or US regulatory agencies are wrong - merely that you cannot expect to have your cake and eat it.)

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part three by Michael Shanks

We are now plainly in a sixth phase, where for the time being at least there is not enough demand to ensure full employment and investment opportunities are insufficent to prevent captial saturation. Kondratieff disciples would say that this was inevitable, that we are now in a period equivalent to that of 1873-1893, and that a major recovery in world trade and economic activity is unlikely before the 1990s. The OPEC price explosion of 1973 may have delivered the final coup de grace to the post-war boom, but its demise was inevitable anyway, as the forces which gave it its initial impetus began to run down.

In fact both unemployment and inflation were starting to grow in most Western countries from the mid-1960s, and by the start of the 1970s inflation had become a significant problem in many countries. The boom was starting to run out of steam before the oil producing countries put the boot in. According to this view, there is not much we can do to restore economic activity until the natural process of digestion has worked its way through the system, and new factors - the accumulating impact of new technology, the need to renew run-down capital, perhaps the emergence of major new markets in China and South East Asia - provide a base for lift-off around the end of the decade. Until then, while the shorter term cycles will provide fluctuations around the base level of activity, the upturns will be inadequate to restore full employment and the downturns will be severe.

However, the remarkable coincidence of dating - OPEC's emergence coinciding with the centenary of the stock market crash which ended the railway boom - should not lead us to suppose that we are living through a straight re-run of the 1880s. In many ways the dilemma facing policy-makers is much more complex now than then. This is the first time in world history that economic depression has gone hand in hand with infation. This fact makes it very unlikely that governments will be prepared to undertake Keynesian-type reflation (expand the output by government stimulus) to boost activity, for fear that reflation will stimulate inflation faster than it will restore jobs. The fight against inflation has also pushed up interest rates throughout the world, thus further deterring new investment.

The other significant feature of the 1980s is that the "stagflation" is taking place against a packcloth of rapid technological innovation, and intense competition in manufacturing from the newly industrialised countries in East and South East Asia and elsewhere. This competition is pushing Western Europe and the USA - and, to a lesser but significant extent, Japan -even faster down the road to a service-based, post-manufacturing society.

To some extent, of course, this was what happened in the 1930s - and it is perhaps to the 1930s rather than teh 1880s that we should look for parallels to our present situation. (There are in fact more people out of work today in the UK - the worsthit of any major Western economy by the present recession - than at any time in the 1930s). In the 1930s, as today, increasing international competition in stagnant world markets led to rapid erosion of traditional industries -coal, textiles, heavy engineering; while the products of new technology - automobiles, aircraft, electronics, cinema - enjoyed the same kind of boom conditions as we associate today with the energy industries and computer software. Periods of recession do not slow down the process of economic change; rather they accelerate it. History does not suggest that technological innovation comes to a grinding halt in harsh economic conditions. What happens rather is that the life cycle of industries, from vigorous youth to declining senility, is accelerated. That is what we are witnessing today.

Of course, governments try to arrest the process by artificial means. In the 1930s the favoured process was the imposition of restrictions on imports, and the encouragement of cartels in threatened industries. So far we have avoided the same kind of headlong retreat into cartels and autarchy in the present recession, and the evidence of the long term harm which it engendered in the inter-war era is probably sufficiently strong to enable us to continue to resist the temptation. But a milder version of the same policy is being followed in industries like steel (the EEC's "Davignon plan"), shipbuilding, textiles and automobiles, with "voluntary" restrictions on imports and "orderly marketing" arrangements to cushion the shock of competition and recession. Such arrangements on the whole do little good, but not too much harm. The run-down of traditional industries continues, though at a slightly less frightening pace.

The point that I am seeking to make is this. At the present time in Western Europe and North America we are living through a number of inter-related developments and it is important that we should separate them out in our minds if we are to make sense of where we are going. The most important long term trend is to move away from a manufacturing-based economy to one based on services, and particularly on knowlegdge-based activities. This trend is being accelerated by the erosion of our traditional manufacturing base resulting from stagnant world markets (the Kondratieff effect) and increasing Third World competition. The trend itself owes a great deal to the developments of technology, in two respects: the creation of new service industries on the one hand (see below), and the elimination of jobs in manufacturing - and, it must be said, in many of the service industries as well - by increased productivity through automation in one form or another.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society – part two by Michael Shanks

I prefer to describe the new society now emerging in the Western world as "post-manufacturing society", since its most obvious feature is the shift in the balance of the workforce out of manufacturing into services. Just as farm mechanisation and more efficient husbandry - crop rotation, irrigation, fertilisers - starting in the mid-eighteenth century meant that a small minority of the labour force could eventually supply all the food needed by the community, so automation and increasing industrial efficiency are rapidly reducing the numbers of people needed to satisfy the world market for manufactured goods. Just as manufacturing expanded to emloy the agricultural labour surplus two centuries ago, so today people are moving in large numbers out of manufacturing into the service industries - into banking and insurance, retailing, catering and hotels, public utilities and communications, education and leisure, and perhaps above all into the public services outside the market economy.

One of the major questions facing the Western world in the 1980s is whether the service sector can expand fast enough to absorb all those now surplus to the needs of agriculture and manufacturing. Although the service sector now employs more than half the total labour force of most Western countries, there is nevertheless a growing problem of unemployment. The likelihood is that manufacturing unemployment will continue to rise during the 1980s. We need to understand why this should be so.

If we review the history of Western capitalism from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day, we see that economic development has been characterised by cyclical fluctuations - of three kinds. There are the short term (two to three years) fluctuations of commodities, determined by time lags between supply and demand; there are the major business cycles (seven to eight years before the Second World War, now typically four to five years in duration) which occur in all industrialised economies, and which spring essentially from fluctuations in demand for capital - and to a lesser extent consumer - goods. But over and above these cycles there are longer term fluctuations, lasting typically for twenty or twentyfive years, know as the Kondratieff cycle after the distinguished Russian economist of the 1920s who perished in one of Stalin's labour camps.

Until recently economist were divided on the question of the validity of the Kondratieff cycle, but developments since the Second World War have greatly strenghtened the case for its existence. Kondratieff's case is that capitalist development proceeds in major spurts, driven largely by technological changes which create new markets for capital saturation, while it digests as it were the effects of the previous boom. Thus, if one goes back to the London Great Exhibition of 1851, which was also the launching-pad for the great railway boom, one can identify six subsequent periods of alternating rapid and slow economic advance. During the periods of rapid growth, booms were long and pronounced, recessions short and shallow; during the periods of stagnation, the reverse was true.

The six "Kontratieff periods" since 1851 have been:
1. 1851-73. The era of the railway boom, leading to the opening-up of large tracts of North and South America, with rapid industrialisation in Western Europe; discoveries of gold and precious metals in North America and Australasia were also significant.
2. 1873-93. The end of the railway boom in 1873 ushered in a period of slower growth and capital saturation until the mid-1890s.
3. 1893-1914. The "belle epoque" which led up to the First World War was another period of fast growth, characterised by the heyday of imperialism, the "scramble for Africa", the opening-up of Japan, China and South East Asia, a new round of gold and precious metal discoveries in South Africa and the Western part of North America, and the beginning of industrialisation in European Russia.
4 1918-1939. The end of the Second World War ushered in the greatest and most prolonged economic boom the world has ever seen. With the benefit of hindsight, one can assign as one of the main causes cheap energy in the pre-OPEC era. Other factors included major technological advances, a rapid increase in world population, reconstruction after the war and catching up with the run-down in investment during the pre-war slump, greatly improved communications, and the elimination of many of the artificial barriers for trade created during the 1930s, producing an explosion in world trade.

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society - part one by Michael Shanks

Work and Employment in Post-Manufacturing Society

Two centuries ago, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the workforce lived at or within walking distance of their place of work. Most were self-employed or members of what we would now call "autonomous working groups". They worked what we would now call "flexitime", clocking on being unknown if only because very few people had clocks or kenw how to use them. Work was part of the normal pattern of life, its rhythms and disciplines being not very distinct from those of leisure and the family. Thogh there was considerable unemployment, unemployment in the formal sense we know today barely existed. Social discipline was exercised largely by and through the church, and by the needs of survival.

Today, the Information Revolution, in the process of invading every aspect of more and more people's time and life, evaporates in ever faster and bigger innovation cycles. Driven by enormouse public investment in Research and Development of ICT products and costtaking procurement measurs it constitutes the fastest growing sector in the economy in most of the industrialized countries since the '80s. Leaving the flagships of the european economic recovery plan, coal and steel based manufacturing industries and agriculture behind, it serves as the major catalyst for economic growth throughout the western world. With very little public involvement in its direction of development.

The Industrial Revolution, which shifted the main balance of the workforce from agriculture into manufacturing, was the result of two parallel technological drives. Technological changes in farming led to dramatic rises of productivity, thus throwing up a surplus of erstwhile peasants whose labour was no longer needed on the land. These people migrated into the towns of cities, where fortunately another series of technological innovations was simultaneously creating a demand for labour in the new manufacturing industries arising from mechanisation and the steam engine.

Industrial technology, until very recently, has consistently operated to increase the size of operations, by facilitating economies of large scale. In so doing it has not only created the range of artefacts which has tranformed the world. It has also imposed social changes in the industrial workforce which have been hardly less revolutionary in their implications. To ensure that installed capital operates profitably, workers have had to accept an externally-imposed discipline which was not required in pre-industrial communities, and which has increasingly diverged from the conditions of life outside the factory. They tyranny of the stop-watch and of the moving assembly line - the subordination of man to the machine - has been the price for improved material living standard. The gulf between work and leisure, between work and the family, between working life and social life, has widened dramatically. At the same time, as the average size of productive unit has increased, the gulf between bosses and workers, and between capital and labour, has widened. Increasing remoteness, plus the intrinsic boredom of much industrial work, and the growing tension between the imposed discipline of factory life contrasted with the growing democratisation of society - and increasing standard of education and awareness - have led to the widespread phenomenon of alienation and bitterness on the shop floor, and the growth of a rival focus for employee loyalty in the shape of trade unions. The tensions and conflicts of industrial life have spilt over into society, with the decline of traditional religion and the takeover of large areas of the trade union movement by various forms of Marxist socialism.

All these phenomena, which have come to loom so large in Western society, derive more than anything else from the scale of operations dictated by the technologies of the ninetheenth and the first half of the twentieth century - technologies epitomised (a perfect example) by the assembly lines of Detroit, Birmingham or the Ruhrgebiet. So long as Western economies were essentially manufacturing-based and so long as technology favoured large scale operations, there was little that could be done to prevent the personal friction, the frustration and the alienation to which they gave rise; or so at least conventional wisdom maintained. Attempts to return to the pastoral innocence of the pre-industrial era were not on the whole very impressive or widely followed.

However, since the Second World War, and particularly since the beginning of the 1960s, we have begun to see remarkable changes in the pattern of Western society - changes in the pattern of social life, the distribution of the workforce, and in the thrust and direction of technology. Some writers have characterised what has been happening since the 1950s as the emergence of "post-industrial society", as different from the society created by the Industrial Revolution as that society was from its predecessor.

Work, Europe and Utopia – part ten by Henri Brugmans

10 Provisional Conclusions

Concluding this paper, it is clear that the "crisis" of the present time is not one of relatively short duration, to be struggled through as best we can. On the contrary, the persistence, in particular, of endemic unemployment which promises to remain with us for a long time, illustrates the gravity of the evils which confront us. It is more a matter of a cultural change, one of those historical transformations in which both the basic concepts and the organisational structures are challenged. We have sought to throw light on certain particular aspects, but we must admit that, in none of these areas, do we yet find ourselves faced with a genuine revival, or a bold attempt to tackle the roots of the problems. This absence of "leadership" which arises is all the more dangerous for our regime, our way of life, precisely because democracy cannot prosper without a sense of authority, without the certainty of being directed towards fixed goals. Where this need for effective authority is not satisfied there is the risk of nurturing desires for totalitarian dictatorship, of whatever political persuasion. It is relatively unimportant whether the new sensibility arises in one particular area or another. What is essential is that public opinion has a sense of clarity on the part of its leaders and will to achieve certain objectives = and that it feels itself affected, and is called upon to make its own contribution. In effect, democracy is not solely control of rulers by the people and their representatives; it is also policy clearly defined in terms of clear principles.

But if our society is afflicted with indecision, it is not a matter of one or another national society in particular. Certainly in one country the situation appears a little different than in another. One country has strenghts and weaknesses unknown to another. But on the whole all of us outside state-controlled Europe, in other words in the West, are in the same boat. The European Economic Community is the halting and provisional expression of this irreversible truth.

The E.E.C. had, in the beginning, two complementary objectives. In the first place it had to break down frontiers and customs barriers between member states. This task was called "negative integration"; it was accomplished after a fashion and in record time - even if the national governments continue to obstruct the process. But the second task, much more difficult to achieve, that of so-called "positive integration" - to achieve together what one could no longer do well in isolation - has scarcely been begun. Only agriculture was by virtue of the Treaty of Rome to become a community responsibility. But the broad policy which ought to have gone along with it has been engulfed in quarrels over prices, subsidies and production quotas. The result has been a state of affairs which greatly benefits the large producers, but hardly permits smaller ones to lead a decent life. In other sectors - industry, transport, finance - nothing or very little has been achieved in the way of introducing a common European administration.

It is thus for good reason that some people criticise the community for remaining "liberal" and for having removed the barriers which hindered commerce without having introduced the planning which would be necessary to give shape to a new solidarity. But these critics have been wrong to conclude from their findings that it is necessary to fall back upon "national solutions".

The areas that suffer most from the absence of "leadership" are above all regional policy and, of particular concern to us here, social policy.

Undoubtedly, one could not say that nothing has been done. Italian migrant workers in another community country know something about this. The Treaty of Rome has enabled them to benefit immediately, in Germany or elsewhere, from all the social security legislation the enjoyment of which up until then was reserved for nationals. In addition, a certain harmonisation has been possible, generally in the direction of improvement. Workers from the less favoured countries and employers of more generous countries, had a common interest in raising the standards to the level of the best.

Nevertheless, no attempt has been made to outline the features of another type of society, specifically European in being at the one time different from Soviet state-control and American liberalism. On the other hand, employers have grasped much more quickly and more vigorously than the trade union movement, the opportunities and risks which European interation offered them. Certainly, there is a mass of workers organised at a European level, but up to now, it has scarcely defined a clear and convincing policy. It has really been more a case of an office which played a useful role in following events, rather than being boldly progressive. But this undoubtedly is no more than a beginning.

In conclusion, the existence of a federal union of Europe is scarcely justified if it does not lead to new forms of social organisation. Europeans do not aspire towards unity for its own sake, but towards the possibility of coming nearer to greater human justice. And further, they are beginning to understand, still vaguely, that all the promises which have been made to them in this respect are, as long as they remain within national frontiers, nothing more than electioneering demagogy. In short, there will be no Europe without a plan for the future. But there will be no plan for the future realisable unless adequate continental space is available.

In effect, (what we have been saying unceasingly (=continuously) in the course of this paper): the reconstruction of our structures is inconceivable in a single country, because every country infatuated (inspired with an intense but short lived passion) with progress always risks endangering its competitive position. If it is to embark upon reconstruction and break out of its lethargy, Europe must act as a whole. Undoubtedly, small-scale experiments will still be necessary and Roosevelt was right to say, as he once did, that every state of the Union was a laboratory in the matter of its own legislation. But when it comes to applying the results of this experimentation the costs are such that they must be assumed collectively. The European Community constitues the smallest workable unit in this respect.

In short the existence of national states hungry for absolute power condemns us nowadays to impotence, and constitutes a major barrier on the way to progress. It is possible that even Europe is not suffieciently large of an entity; perhaps we should be thinking instead of the O.E.C.D. countries, which also include North America and Japan. Jean-Francois Deniau was right to point out in Europe without Power that there will never be a purely "European" economy: we will always have to pay the utmost attention to the Dollar and the Yen.

This being the case, the concept of a "national economy" is, a forteriori, meaningless. But if Europe's originality is not to be found in the economic realm, it is certainly outstanding in the cultural. If Eurpe is anything it is a unique civilisation, and this uniqueness is most apparent in its social structure. Some essential industrial technology is the same everywhere, but workers' aspirations are very different in Osaka and Pittsburgh from what they are in Essen or the suburbs of Paris.

This European civilisation is possibly no better than the others. But, undoubtedly, it has a role to play in a world seeking to bring about some form of international agreement, involving Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., the United States, Black Africa, the Arab countries, Latin America, South-East Asia. Within each of these land masses, there will be different degrees of private- and public ownership, but everywhere there will be problems which demand immediate attention. In the future, no one would tolerate the disgrace of famine and the injustice of entire peoples exploited by more powerful forces. Europe could take the lead in this debate, but cannot hope to do so as long as nationalism among European states remains the governing law.

A vision such as this of a world finally peaceful and united could not have come to the Euroepans of the 1930s. No one, in fact, ever dreamt of it. Despite the terrible poverty of the unemployed at that time the crisis then remained relatively limited. It did not yet involve the whole world and was of relatively short duration. There was soon an upturn of the business cycle and the new Keynesian policy of deficit spending could produce spectacular results, much to the amazement of classical economists. In 1933, Hitler, having come to power, had already the good fortune of an assured economic revival, and war preparations did the rest. In the United Staes, Roosevelt made some lasting innovations by setting up a social security system which, although subsequently modified, was never abolished.

Today it is a different story. Keynesian economics produces nothing but inflation. The slight recovery, tentatively announced every so often, does not reduce the enormous number of unemployed in Europe. It is a collective reappraisal that is needed from Europeans, lest (with the intension of preventing) otherwise they slide gently towards the gilded (false brilliance) poverty of civilisations which have lost the chance of recovery.

It is far from certain whether Europeans, exhausted by their wars and their failures, will have nough energy to embark upon such an undertaking. All that can be said for sure is a renaissance will never be achieved without a plausible utopia, without the "leap in the dark" which Robert Schuman was brave enough to inaugurate, in his declaration of 9 May 1950. They were then talking about coal and steel, which were still thought to be the basis of the modern economy. But, at the end of the day, those pioneers were not simply interested in these particular products but in giving a boost to the European ideal.

It is in this spirit that this paper has been written. It cotains no ready-made solutions, but is intended to make the reader reflect upon the problems that face us in the future.

Work, Europe and Utopia – part nine by Henri Brugmans

9. Reduction in working hours

One of the main demands of the working class movement in the years before the 1914-1918 War was that "the eight hour day". A sort of "mystique" even grew up around this issue: "eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep, eight hours to live as a free man". The idea of the First of May, which started in America, had as its aim to base an international spectacle upon this issue. In spite of strong resistance from employers, who often produced alarming statistics, the goal was achieved almost everywhere, during the '20s. Under the influence of Albert Thomas, the Inernational Labour Office concentrated a good deal of its time on this particularly popular reform.

During the recession of the '30s an even more radical diminution of working hours was proposed as a means of combatting unemployment. It is true it was relatively less popular in Europe, but in America the architects of the New Deal held out great hopes for it. The line of argument moreover was simple: to divide what work was available between a larger number of workers. Moreover it was thought that this reform would not be too costly, because by proceeding in this way substantial savings could be made in the payment of unemployment benefits. However, the results did not come up to these expectations.

The present "crisis" has rekindled this debate. We shall make a few general observations.

The first argument is already familiar to the reader, having already been stated elsewhere in this paper, that the scope of national action is particularly limited here. In any country where trade union pressure led to the introduction by legislation of the 36 hour week, for example, they would necessarily find costs of production increasing and consequently export opportunities diminishing. It is thus necessary to think at least in continental, and, preferably , in global terms. At least the European Economic Community offers a framework of progress, which the United Nations is far from doing. On top of which, one can hope that this is an area where Europeans will play a progressive social role. It is moreover conceivable that to safeguard such progress, it will one day be necessary to instigate (bring about or initiate) anti-dumping measures, a practice which is, on the whole, always deplorable, even thought necessary in certain limited circumstances, Again, this is a two-edged sword which must be used sparingly, since protectionism of any sort always provokes retaliation. Whatever the circumstances, however, an exclusively national demand in this area becomes worthless. The employers will always be right in claiming that foreign competition prevents them from taking the initiative.

Next, it would be very dangerous to base this demand upon an idelogy opposed to work, ne which is redesigned from the very beginning to a fatalistic (the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable) acceptance of servitude: earning your daily bread is always, inevitably, "hard labour", while leisure alone gives man a possibility of realizing his potential. Certainly, Jean Fourastie could speak of a human existence in which professional work was limited to "40.000 hours" according to his calculation. But this number of hours, though reduced, remains so considerable that the time should not be filled with monotony and drudgery (dull work). Besides, the quality of leisure time is conditioned to a large extend by the impact of the job. This requires less physical effort than it once did, but it makes other demands on the nervous system, the impact of which cannot be ignored.

The direction, briefly, in which it seems we should proceed in this respect is as follows. The essence of what we are aiming at is not to be found in a systmatic dimunition (reducing the sice, extend or importance of something) of the quantity of work, but rather in a humanisation of our technology. In other words, the time is ripe for a "controlled technology", the principal criterion of which would be the elimination of unhealty industrial processes - that is to say, those prejudicial to the physical and mental well being of the work force - in favour of methods at the same time economic in their consumption of raw materials and showing respect towards the person. Possibly, this is too much to ask at the one time, but it is the price Europe must pay if it wishes to give the world a model of a humanistic economy stated briefly, technological innovation is neither an imperative of progress to be passively accepted, nro a neutral product of science.

The person who most effectively opened up this groudn was Schumacher, first in his best-known work SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, then, perhaps even more succesfully, in GOOD WORK. According to him, no one wishes to work more than is necessary, given the present state of technological development. However, nor does anyone want to submit to the drudgery of a type of industrial work devoid of all personal satisfaction, because of deafening noise, permanent noxious smells, monotony which - for certain types of people anyway - leads to a gradual deadening of the finest human faculties. Yet only occasionally have technologists taken account of the living conditions of those for whom they design their machines. A code of conduct needs to be outlined in this respect.

Lastly, if the reduction of working hours is perhps less important than the humanisation of working conditions, it may nevertheless have a certain importance in the fight against unemployment. On condition, however, that wages are sufficiently fair that so-called "moonlighting"is no longer an economic necessity and becomes, in consequence, a social evil to fight against. there again, European legislation is a high priority. But, of course, it will not be sufficient. What we also need to ensure is that the control of the new technology, spoken of above, involves equally opting for labour rather than capital intensive activities. That is already an imperative for Third World countries, where labour is plentiful and cheap. It is also so for the traditional industrial nations. In the present situaiton, in which profit is the main and often only criterion, it is too tempting to keep on replacing human labour with that of machines, to such an extent that, finally, society finds itself burdened with a "reserve army" of labour, that is both numerous and permanent. Hence we are obiged to draw up a list of three imperatives: the needs to be met, the labour forces available, and the machines able to offer on the market at the one time an economically attractive product, an acceptable type of work, and reasonable levels of capital investment. A directed technology must find a balance between these three factors.

Work, Europe and Utopia – part eight by Henri Brugmans

8. Industrial Democracy

We come to the question of "participation", a word belonging as much to the vocabulary of Gaullism as to German trade unionism ("Mitbestimmung"). But it is passionately challenged by the majority of French trade unionists and, partly, also by a section of the British labour movement.

They speak of "autogestion" or of "workers' control". Are these systems irrecoilable? Is it always that the legal drafting of the articles for a "European company" runs up against the fact that the law imposes, in Germany, a type of "participation" which elsewhere the employers refuse? It has therefore been impossible to achieve the integration of teh continent, officially supported by all, because of a conflict of doctrine, the "Mitbestimmung" going too far for some people and not far enough for others. Here again, is an area the Centre would find it necessary to explore.

Finally, and whatever formula wins the day, one factor remains certain: no form of worker "participation" will be fruitful without a solid grounding in working class culture and a sense of civic responsibility. Managing an enterprise is not a task which is achieved solely by virtue of dogmatic principles. In order for the operation to be a success conditions have to be satisified such as the ability to read an annual report and balance sheet and to discern within it the broad outlines of a policy being followed, and the ability to discover the hidden intentions of a budget. Hence the need for a specialised training to be given to those who will carry responsibility in the enterprise.

But the idea of "responsibility" suggests not only technical know-how, but also a sense of the common interest. A polarisation of classes, within a Board of Directors, with each class considering the other their natural enemy, would destroy the whole project. There again, whetever the system of ownership, it remains true that the "boss", the "manager" - even if elected by the workforce - will have different preoccupations from the representatives of the employees. It makes no difference whether the director is a state employee or the representative of a family: his desire to see the factory prosper in its own right is not necessarily shared by those who happen to work there, but could equally well work elsewhere. It is certainly so, then, that there is a difference of approach. But if this should harden into a permanent conflict the sense of common good (despite everything) will be lost. One will no longer be on speaking terms. Each will be deaf to the other's point of view, increasing rather than eliminating alienation.

Nevertheless, this "common good" exists and can be discerned. There are issues on which "management" and workers are not necessarily irreconcilably divided: the struggle against noise, against job monotony, or against unhealthy working conditions. Even the drive for profit does not inevitably or single-mindedly tend towards tougher exploitation of the labour force. In conclusion: one of two things. Either, there is no common ground between management and workers (it matters little whether this management is "nationalised" or even freely elected) - and thus, it is useless to discuss forms of "participation" or "self-determination". Or, this basis for understanding does exist, but in that case it is necessary to define it, in order for it to contribute to the removal of alienation.

Two problems remain. In the first place, experiments carried out in Yugoslavia in this area have shown that radical "self-determination" risks engendering (cause or give rise to) a real "firm loyalty", likely to conflict with the policies for the administration of regional territories and national and international planning. Here again it will thus be a matter of finding a balance, which will be constantly shifting; there is, in short, a whole collection of problems for the Centre to stoyd.

Secondly, it is true that, everywhere, these different forms of "participation" always began with discussions on social questions; not until later were economic issues raised. Often the employers even believed that all they needed to do was to slot trade unionists who were on the board of management into the first category that came to mind: "give them responsibility for recreational activities, for example, that will give them something to chew on, and we will be left in peace to do the real work, that is to say, the managing."

That was a far cry from the "deproletarisation" which should be the real objective. Further grievances (cause for complaint or protest) quickly emerged, and so the doctrine of the German trade unions was still relevant: "It is neither healthy, nor normal, nor acceptable, that the workers should be citizens with full rights in the State, but only second class citizens ("Untertane") in the firm." There is a whole area to be expored here. These problems, moreover, are particularly acute in the case of firms which belong to a vast "multinational" enterprise. In this respect it is obvious that the traditional demand for "nationalisation" is totally inadequate. One cannot nationalise something that is no longer national. Are we expected to make Philips-Eindhoven a municipal firm? However, it is clear that possibilities for "participation" within these organisations remain even more limited than elsewhere, because management decisions are taken, not solely with respect to Eindhoven, but for a group of plants, scattered across the world. In these circumstances, any dialogue between management and workers could only be a sham (a thing that is not what it is purported to be).

It is here, in fact, that the problem of social control of multinationals arises. Certainly one can see to it that at one level and another workers' delegates participate in the life of the firm. But they will remain isolated and weak as long as they cannot also find support from responsible political authorities which, logically, ought to be federal, continental or intercontinental.

In a word, confronted with "big business", which was established without anyone specifically consenting to it, but which is nevertheless necessary because it is modern, "big labour" must organise itself, as it has done already in the chemical industry. But "big government" must complete the picture, which will only then be fully democratic from the grass roots upwards. I am thinking in particular, but not exclusively, of the problems posed by the potential of contemporary technology: in what framework and to what end should it be used and should it all be used?

Work, Europe and Utopia – part seven by Henri Brugmans

7. Working Conditions

An old French revolutionary song proclaims that they had chased out the kings and won a set of new rights but when it came to work they were still labouring under a penal (punishable by law) system. Anyone who has experienced a working class environment knows how much this complaint reflects a general feeling.

For a long time the working class movement cherished the illusion that everything would change once business ceased (come to an end) to be private property and came under public ownerhsip.

But it has had to change its tune. At the present time a large number of factories are in the hands of a respective states. In certain countries, such as Austria, more so than elsewhere, but the change has occurred almost everywhere.
But this transfer of ownership, once thought to represent a climate of complete indifference. Who can now discern (distinguish, percieve, recognize) any essential difference between privately-owned Citroen and nationalised Renault? The former firm would be unable to take any important step without consulting the Minister, while the Managing Director of the latter spends his time conducting his business in exactly the same way as he would if he were accountable to a meeting of shareholders. Nothing resembles a state-owned factory more than a so-called "private" factory, and conditions of work are not essentially different in the "capitalist" West and the "socialist" East. There must be some lesson for us to learn from this disconcerting uniformity.

During the 1930s, Henri de Man, then Professor at the Frankfurt Worker's Institute, conducted an enquiry into "job satisfaction". In so doing he produced a seminal work. He too, in his Marxist youth, had believed that the true social problem was that of ownership and that once workers were working not to enrich a society with wealthy, but for "the community", they would go to their jobs each morning with intense satisfaction. His research led him to doubt whether this was true. The feeling of "alienation" was an unquestionable fact, but nationalisation would not put an end to it. The real problem would be rather what George Friedmann went on later to describe, in the phrase "fragmentation of work":that is to say, the dividing-up of tasks which prevented the worker from achieving a result he would call his own from his efforts.

In the inter-war years, a third writer considered the question. But n contrast to de Man and Friedmann this writer was a genuine worker who had experienced factory life, in France and with Ford in Detroit: his name was Hyacinthe Dubreuil. For him, the solution was to rediscover within the enterprise team spirit (The Team and the Ball was in fact the title of one of his work), in other words, creating a limited group responsible for a specific task. In this scheme even a gigantic enterprise should be organised along federal lines, from the grass roots upwards, or rather like the model of the ciculation of blood - the higher echelons would find their original direction by means of initiatives from below, and then would often receive corrections and redirections from below.

In America Dubreuil experienced Taylorism. In principle he was not opposed to a rational organisation of human work. But equally he understood that a scientific system geared exclusively towards productivity - and, at the end of the day, the profit of the employer - must of necessity lead to an overexploitation of the work force. "Rationalisation" ought certainly to occur, but who was better able to implement it than the employees themelves, for whom the work was their daily life? And "rationaisation" had also to mean gaining for all interested parties the maximum amount of satisfaction, that is to say of freedom in the organisation of work. To force human beings to work as if one was dealing with robots, was not an inevitable demand of technical progress, but simply a bad method, ignoring an essential factor.

Hyacinthe Dubreuil's lot was that of many pioneers: he was scarcely listened to and even had abuse heaped upon him. However, here and there, people are beginning to put into practice some of his principles. Often, moreover, without even knowing his name. THis was notably the case with Volvo in Sweden, where it is evident that this sort of decentralisation not only was not harmful to productivity, but on the contrary, contributed to its increase. No doubt an increase equally occurred in profit, but what is wrong with that, if this increased profit indicated a more healthy enterprise?

There exists currently in France a Hyacinthe Dubreuil Association carrying out research into the practical applications of the insights of this former metal-worker. The Centre would do well to make contact with htis organisation and to bring together, and classify, all the data already available in htis area. Regrettably, much time has been lost in this area due to the excessive and fruitless fascination with the problem of ownership which has for too long dominated the thoughts of so many who claim to be socialists. It is true that Marx had already pointed to the division of labour as one of the sources of the alienation of the proletariat, but it is unfortunately true that his followers scarcely take up this point. The time is now ripe (developed to the point of readiness for harvesting and eating) for it to be systematically explored. If the end must be to deproletise the working class, this undoubtedly is at least one of the ways to be considered.

On the question of deproletarisation a former German worker and trade unionist, George Leber, who later became Minister of Transport, and then Minister of Defence, proposed yet another approach which, besides, in no way contradicts the one which we have just mentioned. What he suggested was a gradual particiaption of employees in both management and ownership of the enterprise. Undoubtedly the basic capital will remain in the hands of the original shareholders, but as this capital increases as a result of economic success, that is to say, through the contribution of all, a progressively more equal distribution of shares ought to follow. Capital ought to cease to be exclusively "them" and become to a great extend "us".

This project was not greeted with spontaneous enthusiasm by the German working class movement. Did it not tend to link the worker too much to the enterprise, and did the enterprise not, consequently, tend to become a quasi-totalitarian "social environment"? It is an open question and a new one, almost unknown in the debates that used to take place. It is a matter of measuring the implications and the potential.

Work, Europe and Utopia – part six by Henri Brugmans

6. Composition of the labour force

Re-reading Engels on The Condition of the Working Class in England - or the first volume of CAPITAL - produces the impression that the labour force described there is quite homogeneous. broadly speaking, it can be summed up with the words "proletariat" and "exploitation". It is a cohesive socail group. But social history has taken a step forward since then. Many things have considerably improved; the metal worker of today is no longer one of "the damned of the earth", a "starveling" (an undernourished or emaciated person or animal). On the other hand, we have witnessed, especially since the last war, the emergence of a sub-proletariat, which in Germany has been graced with the fine name of "Gastarbeiter", "guest worker". These people are most often saddled with the work that involves the greatest drudgery, filth or danger, and they live in the most underprivileged parts of town, not that anyone has put them there by force - they aren't "ghettos" in the true sense of the word - but they have gone there to be close to their compatriots.

It is a relatively new phenomenon but one which is likely to persist. It is not restricted to any one industrial country in particular, even if, in France one sees especially North Africans and in Germany above all Turks and Yugoslavs, while in Britain immigrants from the "blacks" commonwealth take advantage of ex-colonial status. But, because of some absurd instinct, each nation experiments with "its" immigrants as if "its" case was unique. It is at least true that the European Economic Community has commissioned a series of studies on what education should be provided for the children of these more or less permanent foreigners and that the Churches have made an effort to create reception centres. That is not much, when one considers that we are dealing with a tragedy involving hundreds of millions of men, women and children, throughout Europe.

In this area, it is necessary to take a stand against two equally sterile, if contradictory, attitudes.

On the one hand, the presence of a more or less homogeneous foreign group always risks arousing racist reactions, even in countries not traditionally prone to this. The phenomenon can be compared to that of Blacks in the United States, and it is always the poor whites who display the greatest hostility: what else have they to be proud of but the colour of their skin? To associate oneself with htese movements is unworthy of an honourable man. The Queen of the Netherlands gave a timely reminder of this to her subjects on the occasion of some deplorable (deserving strong condemnation) racist incidents.

But on the other hand, it is not sufficient to protest against the mistrust, vilification (speak or write about in an abusively disparaging manner) and violence which occurs in this area. It is also necessary to ask oneself if the presence of this sub-proletariat constitutes a necessity that will become permanent and whether this is a matter for rejoicing. For it would be justifiable to conclude that the situation is profoundly unhealthy.

First and foremost for the interested parties themselves: undoubtedly they earn, here, much better salaries than they would get at home. But for just that reason many of them have no other thought but to accept miserable living conditions in order to be able to send more money "home". Certainly, this is a source of wealth for their country of origin and a useful adjustment to the balance of payments. But obtained at how great a social cost!? In short, it is difficult to tolerate being more or less permanently uprooted.

But major difficulties also emerge for the "host" countries. Undboubtedly, it is too easy - in fact false - to say that sending the aliens home will immediately create jobs for the nationals. But it remains no less so that it is offensive to see that national workers are always exempt from a certain category of work. Unemployment hits the human being at the deepest level of his dignity and someone who becomes accustomed to it has suffered a total moral breakdown. In conclusion: for all interested parties, the current situation becomes intolerable. We must look for solutions.

On the one hand, if certain countries, especially in the South and around the Mediterranean, send a surplus of "human resources" to other countries, it is because they are suffering from chronic under-development. Those, therefore, who get worked up about the presence of the "Gastarbeiter" in our towns, ought to show an exceptional interest in everything concerning the development of these poor regions. They ought especially to insist categorically on the necessity of a European regional policy - because we know only too well to what extent such a policy has been overlooked, in the midst of a community organisation too one-sidely in favour of free trade and cautious about radical measures.

One the other hand, is it established (as many people claim) that the workers of the "rich" countries recoil(suddenly spring or flinch back in fear, horror, or disgust) from unskilled work, preferring to be unemployed than (for example) sweeping the street? We do not know the answer. But if such a state of affairs has come to pass - and it remains to be proved - this would be a serious sign of decadence, against which it would be necessary to react. A possible response to this might be a period of compulsory work for everyone, young people of both sexes. The example of the People's Republic of China ought to be studied in this respect, but in any case, we cannot allow things to go on like this.

However, the appearance of so many foreigners in the labour market does not constitue the only profound change in the structure of our labour force. The entry of women into economic life produced another upheaval.

This phenomenon begann in the course of the First World War: especially the armament factories. But the way had been opened, and now the economic, social and finally cultural emancipation of woman constitutes a reality which could not be reversed.
It is not a matter of discrediting "the housewife" but of admitting that an entirely new category of person has entered into the process of production. Here again, we find two contrary and equally negative attitudes: one dreaming of a return to the past ("send woman back to the home and there will be no more unemployment"...) and the other believing that the whole phenomenon will proceed without difficulty without the woman taking anybody's place. The Centre ought to discredit these two errors, by dismissing them both out of court and above all, searching for solutions both for the long term and for the transition period.
It is necessary, here, to strike a balance between the free choice of the citizens and the demands of a society in the process of change. In this context, comparisons are of utmost importance. In the U.S.S.R., the medical profession consists largely of woman: why not? But then, it is necessary that the male students of medicine know this in advance. On the other hand, the Western traveller is often shocked to see that, in "socialist" countries, the heaviest work, such as road building, is consigned to women, often elderly. Is this emancipation or progress? one can ask the question, even without going so far as resorting to a numerus clausus.
In another connection, let us have no illusions: when a woman works, it is rarely because she has chosen work as a means of human fulfilment. All too often, it is a mater, for her, of increasing a family income which, without her participation, would be too meagre. Spiritual need often takes second place to material necessity. Once again, then it will be necessary here to prepare measures of planned sociology, in which personal fulfilment would be the rule. We shall return to this later.

Finally, the question of youth employment arises. We know the old refrain: one is unemployed because employers refuse to take on untrained apprentices; while this training on the whole can only be acquired "on the job". In this area, considerable steps forward have already been made, especially in producing a closer match between industrial needs and school curricula. Here again, we have come a long way from the 1930s, when this problem of educational harmonisation was scarcely perceived. In this respect, the Scandinavian countries in particular have much to teach us, but national introversion has rarely allowed a sufficeint diffusion of the results achieved, whether they be negative or positive. the Centre ought, therefore, also to play a role in debate and in opening the way to free exchange of knowledge.