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The Law of Churn: it is a mistake to promote stability, defend productivity and protect success since all products are fated to disappear rapidly. The goal of a well-made network seems to be to sustain a perpetual disequilibrium through a creative force of destruction and genesis. Adapted from “New Rules for the New Economy”, by Kevin Kelly, Wired magazine, United States, September 1997 |
More jobs are needed, but “nothing indicates
that the new flood of innovations will make work in general less tedious and alienating,”
says Bruno Trentin, former secretary-general of Italy’s General Labour Confederation
(CGIL). Trentin, who heads the CGIL’s projects committee, agrees that “fordism”–mass
production standardized with the help of a technological monopoly, is “dying”. But
he says that “taylorism”, the equivalent arrangement in the labour force, “where
all knowledge is in the hands of the decision-maker and the worker does not have
to think or know anything, is still going strong.“Behind all the talk and the public gestures, the old style of management continues. It can delegate some responsibility to workers but notably without recognizing their basic right to training and retraining, which is becoming a crucial part of any employment contract. So things are way behind here, and the big danger is that new technical forms of division of labour will arise.”
On the one hand will be “those with access to knowledge and ability to control the processes of learning,” and on the other “the excluded, who will be even more subordinate in the workplace and will be divided up and partitioned off, even in work which seems highly-skilled.
“A firm’s long-term interest is to improve the quality of its work force” so it can take advantage of technological possibilities, but, says Trentin, “in the short term, why invest in someone who is only staying six months in a job because of labour flexibility?” So “if we want an employment policy based on a level of education and knowledge which are being constantly renewed, we mustn’t count on market forces or the goodwill of companies.”
