A Slightly Different Take

[BoeingBoy]

The Future Of Work
Flexible, creative, and good with people? You should do fine in tomorrow's job market

No low-wage worker in Shanghai, New Delhi, or Dublin will ever take Mark Ryan's job. No software will ever do what he does, either. That's because Ryan, 48, manages people -- specifically, 100 technicians who serve half a million customers of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ ) out of an office in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. A telephone lineman before moving up the corporate ladder, Ryan is earning a master's degree at Verizon's expense in organizational management, where he's studying topics like conflict resolution.

Article

Jim

 

[jimntx]

Well, yes. Management and supervision always have found a way to protect their own jobs. But, if those technicians are all located in one place, then their work is probably done remotely. If a Verizon customer in Texas can be provided service from a suburb of Los Angeles, then that customer can be provided service from a suburb of New Delhi. The wonders of modern communications technology.

Only if those technicians are field workers--like a "lineman for the county"--are their jobs non-exportable.

I have a friend who is a Manager in the IT department of a major oil company. The group she "manages" works in Mumbai (Bombay) India. And, she doesn't even get to travel to "review the troops." Everything is done by email & telephone.

Actually, the job situation is worse than it looks. The anemic job creation in February--21,000 jobs nationwide--was actually worse than just the number. Every single one of those 21,000 jobs were government jobs. The U.S. private sector did not create a single new job in February, 2004. An historical first!

 

[sentrido]

http://www.theonion.com/onion3808/bush_cal...n_business.html

 

[airlineorphan]

article claims:

No low-wage worker in Shanghai, New Delhi, or Dublin will ever take Mark Ryan's job. No software will ever do what he does, either. That's because Ryan, 48, manages people --

Jim,

First thanks for posting this. I realize you are trying to balance the doom and gloom of a certain concessions cheerleader.

And though I believe fighting back is the correct approach to the thieving ways of Siegel and crew, I think this article paints a bit too rosy a picture.

The fact is that even jobs like Mark Ryans can evaporate because they rest upon the fate of the people he manages. If the 100 technicians he manages get kicked to the curb in favor of other opportunities the Almighty Marketplace offers elsewhere on the global assembly line, then Mark Ryan will very likely lose his job.

All those service sector jobs out there depend upon the circulation of capital that results from core production industries, whether here or elsewhere in the global production chain. So it is a myth that such service jobs have any more stability than the production jobs that they ultimately derive from.

What will be interesting to watch will be what happens when Indian call centers start getting organized by the very militant trade unions in India. Probably the first step by management will be to start shipping those jobs on down the chain to China, where enormous resources are being devoted to training a sizeable pool of English speakers.

Of course, there is also the development of a fairly rowdy independent labor movement in China as well these days, so the Magicians of the Almighty Marketplace will probably run into less than textbook situations no matter where they go.

Of course for us, the point should never be, "I guess we should just consider ourselves lucky to have a job, so Mr. Siegel, here you go, whatever you want...." Instead it should be alarm at how far things have sunk for the people who actually do the work in our society and initiative to hold the line against corporate raiding of our paychecks and livelihoods.

In solidarity,
Airlineorphan

P.S. Sentrido, great Onion link. I remember a cartoon in which a politician is bragging before a banquet that he has created 1.5 million jobs. The waiter standing behind him is thinking, "Yeah, and I've got 3 of them!"

 

[sentrido]

I wanted to post the one where the Bush reelection campaign created 3000 new jobs, but I couldnt fint it.

 

[pitguy]

Look in India.

 

[airlineorphan]

Of course, Sentrido, the Onion story titled "IBM Liberates 8000 Wage Slaves" was pretty much on the money! Sadly The Onion didn't archive that one.....

-Airlineorphan

 

[mweiss]

The safe areas of employment in the US:

1) Face-to-face service sector (e.g., restaurant wait staff)
2) Location-specific skilled service sector (e.g., automobile mechanics)
3) Intellectual property creation (e.g., movie script writers, patent-based entrepreneurs)
4) Government
5) Managers of the above three categories

That's pretty much it. 1, 2, and 5 are safe simply because they cannot be done remotely. 3 is safe because it is the one remaining industry that can be done remotely, but that the US continues to maintain a competitive advantage over other countries. 4 is safe for both legal reasons and location-specific reasons (e.g., someone in India can't fix the potholes in your town).

Am I happy that it's coming to this? Nope. But I'll tell ya what, I'm doing everything I can to ensure I'm covered by at least one of those five categories.

 

[Winglet]

1) Face-to-face service sector (e.g., restaurant wait staff)
2) Location-specific skilled service sector (e.g., automobile mechanics)

If you're Mr. Bush and Mr. Vicente Fox, you lower the wages on those jobs so low that no self-respecting American can afford to take them, then you say "HEY, WE HAVE A LABOR SHORTAGE!!", then open the floodgates of Mexican nationals that will come here, work for peanuts, live 20 to a house.

 

[airlineorphan]

Mweiss!
Don't forget union-busting lawyers! I suspect they have pretty secure employment for the next little while.

-Airlineorphan

 

[mweiss]

Actually, I should have been more descriptive in the "location-specific skilled service" category. Lawyers, and many in the medical profession, are most certainly part of this group.

 

[ITRADE]

The safe areas of employment in the US:

1) Face-to-face service sector (e.g., restaurant wait staff)
2) Location-specific skilled service sector (e.g., automobile mechanics)
3) Intellectual property creation (e.g., movie script writers, patent-based entrepreneurs)
4) Government
5) Managers of the above three categories

Doctors, lawyers, brokers?

Construction?

Engineers?

 

[mweiss]

Some engineers. Plenty of them can work remotely, which means India.

 

[airlineorphan]

ITRADE submitted:

Doctors, lawyers, brokers?

Construction?

Engineers?

Lawyers, in general, would need to licensed in the country they are practicing in, though lots of international commerce law can be done elsewhere.

Except for high end brokerage, a lot of that could easily be outsourced somewhere, especially for riffraff clients (like me).

According to an Indian labor activist whose talk I recently attended, the British health system is actually experimenting with a system of transporting some patients to hospitals in India. (I'm not making this up!)

Construction? In parts of the southwest, large components of construction is being prefabbed in Mexico, shipped to the construction sites and put together.

Engineering can definitely be outsourced.

None of this outsourcing works without kinks. Some of the computer companies that sited source code writing in Bangalore are finding that cultural differences are getting in the way. Lack of knowledge of the U.S. expectation that computer networks would include messaging as an option is an example I recently read about.

Pretty much no one but the very tippy-top of the corporate pyramid is in a secure position in the new global economy. I agree with mweiss on one thing. It's good to diversify ones job options, but ultimately, individual solutions will only get you so far, and they will certainly leave many many people behind. What's needed is the kind of solutions that come from mass movement activism, solidarity (amongst coworkers here and also internationally--cuz outsourcing ain't gonna stop until the workers in Bangalore and China start raising some major ruckus).

Looking out for number one may make sense on the surface, but in the end it blinds us to the bigger problems and to the broader opportunities to solve problems by working together.

-Airlineorphan

 

[mweiss]

According to an Indian labor activist whose talk I recently attended, the British health system is actually experimenting with a system of transporting some patients to hospitals in India. (I'm not making this up!)

Yup. I've heard about that as well. It requires a huge differential in labor cost to make that feasible, though, so I'd be surprised if that ever makes it to mainstream.

Construction? In parts of the southwest, large components of construction is being prefabbed in Mexico, shipped to the construction sites and put together.

Yup. But ultimately, the prefab parts still have to be put together on site. Gotta have some local folks for that.

Engineering can definitely be outsourced.

Except for, say, building inspectors and the like. Some of it just has to be done onsite.

None of this outsourcing works without kinks.

True, but those are typically short-term issues. As they become better educated, those kinks get worked out.

Looking out for number one may make sense on the surface, but in the end it blinds us to the bigger problems and to the broader opportunities to solve problems by working together.

Couldn't agree with you more. I don't think that it's a zero-sum game, though. I'm not only looking out for myself, but I'm also trying to find some solutions that can help address this very real issue.

The more I look at it, the less it looks like protectionism is the answer. If anything, quite the opposite is true. A WTO-like organization with some real teeth could make things a great deal more realistically competitive (such as preventing the instances where stuff is moved offshore to escape environmental regulations). Being in a global economy without commensurate global regulation is no better than being in a national economy without national regulation. You still end up with businesses gaining the revenue while society pays the costs. Ultimately, the goal of regulation on business must be focused on ensuring that businesses make money solely by adding value, not stealing value from someone else and taking the profit.