Editor's Page
Unemployment is Here to Stay
Frank Thomas Smith
Back in 1993 or 4, I was in Finland to participate in a meeting of the Social Development Association, a group of anthroposophically oriented development consultants. I don't remember the guest speaker's name, only that she was from Denmark and was a specialist in firing people. She didn't call it that of course – rather something like “humane employment termination” – but it amounted to the same thing. She was a consultant to Scandinavian firms which had to fire people, but wanted to do it in the most humane way possible. She gave us some psychologically valuable tips. For example: Don't say: You're fired pal, sorry. Here's a month's pay, go home and play with yourself (or words to that effect). Rather the boss should explain the financial – or robotic – situation and say that we still need you during the termination (pay) period, so please continue to come to the job until the fateful date. Of course you can take all the time you need to find another job – and we'll help you. The firm should have at least one person specializing in job hunting and resume preparation to assist with this process. The downsized person should realize that it's easier to find a new job while he's still employed. Things like that.
She (the firing consultant) had no fear of her specialty being superseded by events. She had an ace up her sleeve, and she gave it to us straight: Unemployment is here to stay. So add it to the list of inevitables: death, taxes and unemployment.
After having written the above, I saw the movie Up in the Air with George Clooney, about a guy who works for a company specializing in downsizing [firing] people. So you see, the specialty has become a lucrative niche. I was glad to read the Wikipedia review because the DVD I rented was a pirated copy which blurred out about fifteen minutes before the end, so I just now learned how it all turned out. Where I live, in a central province of Argentina, it is impossible to rent an original DVD. The copies are often of poor quality and peter out towards the end.
The cyclical crises built into the capitalist system is one causal element in the unemployment phenomenon, but economic crises pass, and – until recently – recovery leads to a recuperation of acceptable unemployment levels – 3 to 5% in the “advanced” industrial world. But the 2008-2010 economic crisis – which has more than the “normal” cyclical phenomenon as causality, namely the sub-prime mortgage rip-off – is now in the process of recuperation. Nevertheless, although output and consumption have increased, and the stock markets seems to have recovered, the unemployment rates remain at dangerously high levels: 10% in the U.S. and average in the Euro Zone overall, 20% in Spain and elsewhere. Rates in Latin America are considerably less than transparent, because governments tend to publish whatever rates they please, favorable to them of course; they have no reliable statistics anyway. They don't want to know. In Argentina gross unemployment is relieved somewhat in small communities by hiring local residents as municipal employees. If the mayor is a loyal party apparatchik (mostly Peronist), he will gets funds from the Province to pay the salaries. All those employees, who do little or nothing, are sure to vote “correctly”.
From the New York Times June 2, 2010: “Typically each year, large numbers of Americans leave their old jobs to find new ones. Unemployment rises during recessions mainly because companies hire fewer workers, not because they lay more people off. But this Great Recession has been different. Layoffs by mid-sized and large companies have surged while hiring has almost disappeared. These companies have used the sharp downturn as an opportunity to cull their payrolls for good — substituting labor-saving technologies and outsourcing to workers abroad or to contract workers here. This explains why almost half of America’s unemployed have been jobless for more than six months — a greater proportion than at any time since the Great Depression.”
It is said that technology offers new job opportunities, Yeah? Well, here's an article in the same day's Times in which HP announces it's laying off 9,000 employees: HP Downsizing The truth is that high tech eliminates more jobs than it provides. This is so obvious that it doesn't need telling.
Getting personal again: Way back in the sixties I worked for American Airlines at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. I was a ticketing and check-in agent with a nifty uniform. Eventually I became an acting Passenger Service Manager (PSM), which was a euphemism for trouble-shooting ticket agent. PSMs were paid slightly more, wore a cool pilot's cap and gave mishandled passengers the illusion that they were getting VIP treatment. My short term ambition was to be appointed permanent PSM – and from there to the next step up the managerial ladder.
One day IBM came around looking for volunteers to work with them for six months. American Airlines would continue to pay salaries and when the six months were over, the volunteers would return to their normal jobs – or, possibly, stay with IBM as programmers. IBM was developing the first airline computer program for airline reservations and American was destined to be the first victim. Logical: in order to develop a workable program you needed to know what was required, and only the people who would be working with it could know that. Only a few of us were interested. After all, why waste six months puttering around with some harebrained scheme that would never fly.
As it turned out, it wasn't harebrained after all. The few people from reservations and the airports who went with them never came back. You guessed it: they became highly paid programmers – before it was a recognized profession – specializing in airlines.
A short time later, American Airlines introduced the first computerized reservations system, and guess what: hundreds of so-called Reservation Agents were downsized, those who kept the flight records and whom we called by phone to get the info we needed. The only ones who remained were those who spoke by phone directly to passengers – and now even most of those have withered away; now the passengers get the information they need by pushing the right button or going online. Some supervisory reservations personnel were retained, however, and sent to the airports to take over supervisory positions. That was the end of my promotion ambitions, so I got out while the getting was still good – not from the airline business, but to a different aspect of it. (It's easier to find a new job while you're still employed. Remember that.)
Since then automation has advanced relentlessly in all aspects of economic activity, whether it be the production or service sectors.
"Devin Fidler, a former student [of Singularity University], is in the midst of securing funding for a company that will build a portable machine that squirts out a cement-like goop that allows builders to erect an entire house, layer by layer. Such technology could almost eliminate labor costs and bring better housing to low-income areas.” New York Times 6/12/10
Let's face it: human labor power is becoming, and to a large extent has already become superfluous. The unemployed will one day become the great masses of rebellion – possibly even violent rebellion, as is already happening in many parts of the under-developed World.
What to do? It depends on who, what and where you are. When it (downsizing) happens to you, take advantage of the end of wage slavery and change your life (recommended), like this downsized guy. But that's an individual solution and won't change the world. To accomplish that trick, try the Guaranteed Basic Income. This involves the separation of income from output, and transforms work from a financial necessity to voluntary activism. Sound weird? Right, I agree. But once you begin to think about it more, it becomes the only rational alternative to permanent unemployment.
Home
