Computerization changes the rules
Block, Fred L. & Judis, John B.
they will take inspiration and direction from the Bible. They will acknowledge both the complexity of the problems and the moral urgency Of addressing them; they will challenge but not condemn...
...Not only will we have to accept that income is no longer strictly dependent on work, but that such activities as raising children, going to school, painting a picture, and serving on a local utility board are as socially important and necessary as working on a farm or assembly line...
...Rather, they should aim to keep the batters' attention with a judicious mix of precision pitches...
...They mistake cause for effect...
...Both busi- nesses and unions make their major decisions privately and individually without reference to nationai well-being...
...Data Re- sources Inc...
...Loosen and finally remove the bit, and the economy and jobs will surge ahead...
...Sweden has provided generous paid maternity and paternity leave for its workers...
...Some analysts have argued that the rise in married women's participation in the labor force will decline, as large families and homemaking come back in vogue, but all 2-16 November 1984:593 private economy will buck wildly if simply left to its own devices, they have accepted the Republican view that deficits are the principal cause of America's ills...
...predicts that only one million new high tech jobs will be added in the 1980s...
...It may not even be desirable...
...9 First, an administration would have to sponsor legisla- tion to reduce the work week...
...If the balanced budget has been the Republicans' will o' the wisp, full employment has become so for progressive and left-wing Democrats...
...In Canada, groups of un- employed workers can win government grants for socially useful activities...
...The 1984 Democratic platform states that economic growth "means security, opportunity, and hope...
...The participation of married women and young people has been increasing, and is likely to continue increasing...
...One reason is that FRED L. BLOCK is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Origins of International Economic Disorder...
...The bishops, on the other hand, should not attempt to provide religious sanctions for a particular economic theory or program...
...In the next decade, the factory work force will decline by 20 to 25 percent, says Thomas G. Gunn, an expert on automated fac- tories for consultants Arthur D. Little...
...One inexpensively produced silicon chip, smaller than a fingernail, could perform twenty times as many calculations as the 18,000-tube ENIAC...
...The impact was also concealed by the increase in part-time workers...
...Both Reagan and Mondale do not understand that deficits are partly a byproduct of the government's attempt to cushion the economy from rising unemployment...
...By ignoring both the promise and the threat of automa- tion, we risk realizing only the threat -- widespread technolog- ical unemployment leading possibly to a deep recession, and even a depression...
...In West Germany, adults who have been displaced by technological change are eligible for three years of government-financed retraining...
...The same programs that in past eras increased jobs could decrease them...
...fast food chains, hotels, and motels), and by the slowness of American firms to respond to competi- tion from abroad...
...Other countries have already taken steps that implicitly recognize the transition to a post-industrial society...
...The unions have tried to slow the pace of change, while the companies have thwarted union attempts to adjust to change...
...2-16 November 1984:595...
...Both president Ronald Reagan and Vice President Walter Mondale have pledged that their programs will provide a job for anyone who wants one...
...After all, the bishops are no longer rookies...
...Office work will also be affected...
...Down the road from this plant will be a 600-foot factory for tempering steel bars that will be manned by only four workers...
...We created a new industrial order that horrified the Coolidge and Hoover Republicans, but that pro- vided the underpinning for thirty years of unparalleled prosper- ity...
...In the 1930s and 1940s, faced with the realization that the unregulated free market could create massive depressions, Americans changed their view of how government should relate to the economy...
...Viewed from this perspective, businesses will resist adjustments to the workweek as much as unions will resist the introduction of job-reducing automation...
...Waves of technological change have occurred before...
...Mondale's model applies best to the 1950s, when fiscal fine- tuning and a few well-directed subsidies kept the economy moving forward...
...Why, then, do the candidates persist in claiming that their programs will produce full employment...
...9 Third, an administration would have to sponsor a major new education program -- on the order of the G.I...
...Bill -- that would allow workers to keep pace throughout their lives with the growing velocity Of technological change...
...In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans face no less formidable a challenge...
...But unbeknownst to either Reagan or Mondale, the United States has entered a new economic era, dominated on one hand by fierce international competition, and on the other by a new computer technology that is revolutionizing the rules of the economic road...
...But the com- puter's impact on the American economy was muted not only by the delay in miniaturization but also by the Vietnam War, by the rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s of labor-intensive consumer services (e.g...
...We might make it to shore, but we also might capsize and drown...
...When the growth of the labor force is broken down into total hours of employment rather than the number of jobs, the decline in job growth becomes apparent...
...For instance, the Timken Corporation is building a new automated steel plant in Faircrest, Ohio, that will produce with 800 workers what it used to take 2,400 workers to produce...
...In working out this pastoral, the bishops have to work within a narrow strike zone...
...At a bare minimum, a new administration that wanted to come to terms with auto- marion would have to initiate three kinds of programs that are presently viewed as either utopian or counterproductive...
...and they will encourage a pragmatic, reformist spirit which ques- tions important aspects of the status quo without rejecting fundamental values of the American tradition...
...Reagan's model applies to the United States of the 1830s, when the Jacksonian Democrats fought the National Bank's restrictions on credit for westward expansion...
...But another reason is that both Mondale and Reagan are working with obsolete models of the economy that make it seem as if their programs will produce full employment...
...But anyone looking at the Reagan administration's record the worst recession since the Great Depression, and un- employment during a recovery that is on the same level as unemployment during past recessions -- or at the record of the last Democratic administration must recognize that full employment, as described by Reagan and Mondale, is at best an elusive goal...
...But these societies as well as ours balk at taking major steps toward a post-industrial order...
...While output is ex- pected to rise, as many as four million jobs will be lost...
...From 1960 to 1979, total annual employed hours increased by 2.9 percent a year, while from 1979 to July 1984 they increased less than 1 percent annually...
...With a few fiscal repairs and a full tank of gas --high octane government subsidies for ailing industries --it will speed along the high- way good as new...
...FAITH & ECONOMICS: DISTRIBUTING THE JOBS I Computerization changes the rules FRED L. BLOCKL_ , & IOHN B. IUDIS T HE DEBATE OVER economic policy in the 1984 election revolving around who has a secret plan to raise what --has been one of the least enlightening ever...
...Their aim should n& be to mow down the opposition with a Series of blazing fast balls with a lot of radical smoke on them...
...If the basic decisions about post-industrial change continue to be made privately in company board rooms and through industry-by-industry collective bargaining, then Americans will find themselves at the mercy of the swift current of change...
...It virtually eliminates the human contribution to its own production...
...The effect of computerization on jobs began to show up in Western Europe and Japan during the 1970s...
...But in 1971, the microcomputer was introduced...
...According to a study by consultants Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, computerization could eventually eliminate as many as 38 million office jobs in the U.S...
...B UT GOVERNMENT initiative is only one aspect of the ad- justment to a post.industrial society...
...To enjoy the promise of automation, we have to abandon our most deep-seated assumptions about life and work...
...While the regular Democrats were meeting last June to draft Mondaie's platform, a group of labor, women's, and civil rights leaders, convened by former United Auto Workers' President Douglas Fraser, were meet- ing a mile away to draft "new economic alternatives for full employment...
...At the same time, the labor force has been expanding annually at a faster rate than the economy creates full-time jobs...
...In the United States, long strikes and protracted negotiations have taken place over the introduction of automation into the printing industry, steel plants, loading docks, and auto and fire plants...
...The machinery operation, occupying 54,000 square feet, is supervised by a single contrbller, who watches the machines on a closed circuit TV...
...We can either ignore post-indus~al change and risk a spiral of, recession, or we can allow automation to improve our economic well-being by reshaping the way in which the gov- ernment and economy are organized and the way in which work, income, and leisure are distributed...
...Computerization drastically reduces the need for labor not only in manufacturing and agriculture, but also in sales and services...
...Walter Mondale sees the economy as a Chrysler Imperial idled at the side of the road...
...And in many Westexn European countries, there are provisions for flexible working hours, including measures that allow individuals to shift to half-time work without losing benefits or opportunities for advancement...
...The risks of inaction are even higher...
...According to a study by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the introduction of robots into automobile production will eliminate 50,000 auto work- ers' jobs, while adding only 3,000 to 5,000 new jobs...
...A Georgia Institute of Technology study estimates that by the year 2000, clerical employment in the banking industry will drop by 39 percent, and in the insurance industry by 27 percent...
...Fraser's group understood the necessity of supplementing the private sector with massive public initia- rive...
...full employment, like the balanced budget, has be, campaign shibboleth, an altar at which all candidates must worship, regardless of their intentions...
...American firms have begun to build the kind of virtually workerless factories that have become common in Japan...
...Take the issue of jobs...
...The greatest area of job growth will continue to be services --the job increases during the recent recovery have been entirely concentrated in the retail and wholesale trade, financial institu- tions, and other services, while employment in goods produc- tion has declined 5.5 percent from 1979 to the present...
...But as a result of computerization, economic Commonweal: 592 growth could mean fewer jobs --and greater insecurity and fear...
...It also reflects the way in which economic decisions are made...
...Such a delineation necessarily involves a critique of the more extreme expressions of individualism and self-reliance in our national culture...
...Americans have a choice, but it is not between Reagan's and Mondale's economics...
...It makes no sense for thousands of autoworkers to be working compulsory overtime while thousands of others are forced to accept the compulsory leisure of unemployment...
...JOHN B. JUDIS is a senior editor of In These Times...
...The major area in which they will most need to exert themselves so as to extend the American tradition is the clear delineation of the moral claims of the solidarity that binds us together as human beings sharing a common destiny under God...
...It is between an economics based on bygone models of industry and one that comes to terms with the post-industrial world of robotics and computer-aided de- sign...
...most likely, these measures, by reducing consumer demand, would cause greater unemployment...
...Beginning in the 1970s, computer- aided-manufacture, robotics, and office automation spread through Japan, the U.S., and Western Europe, and began to revolutionize the economic process...
...During the last recession, both the auto and fire companies forced their unions to give up reductions of the workweek that they had previously won...
...But the pace of change in the next decades will exceed that of the 1920s...
...The superficiality of the campaign has only hidden a deeper confu- sion in the candidates' economic assumptions...
...In the 1920s, through the introduction of electricity, assembly line production, and the tractor combine, farms and factories rapidly expanded their output, while reducing their total labor force...
...In the early 1960s, American trade unionists and intellectuals predicted that au- tomation would begin reducing American jobs...
...When the West German metal- workers' union proposed a thirty-five-hour work week, both government and business united against them, and West Ger- many endured its most bitter strike since 1945...
...In the October 8 debate, Reagan stated, "We're not going to rest, or not going to be happy, until every person in this country who wants a job has one...
...According to the UAW, the autoworkers' concessions cost workers at General Motors and Ford 15,000 jobs...
...But 1930s-style full employment will be impossible in the society computers are creating...
...It is not in their interest to do other- wise...
...But as automation is introduced into services --for instance, auto- mated bank tellers and automated medical testing --the growth of service employment should also begin to abate...
...Ronald Reagan views the economy as a stallion straining at the bit -- the bit being unnecessary government regulation and taxes...
...While the number of eighteen-year-olds entering the labor force will not increase as rapidly as it did during the 1970s (when the baby boom generation came of age), the percentage of Americans who are actually in the labor force, or who would like to be, will continue to rise...
...9 Second, an administration would not only have to ex- pand government social services, and public works, but also adopt a guaranteed annual income to provide economic se- curity -- without stigma -- for all Americans, and establish a floor beneath which consumer demand could not fall...
...But in the 1980s, the effects of computerization have begun to appear...
...The total number of hours that West German workers in the private sector spent on the job declined from 1965 to 1979...
...Fortune described this advanced Japanese plant for producing robots and computer- controlled machine tools: In Fanuc Ltd.'s cavernous, bumble bee yellow buildings .9 . . automatic machine cutters and robots typically toil unattended .through the night, with only subdued warning lights flashing as unmanned delivery carts weave through the eerie semi-darkness...
...By seeking to understand post-industrial change, we make it more likely that we will realize the prom-ise of automation --the dramatic reduction of the work week, and an increase in our opportunities for leisure, education, political participation, and artistic creation...
...They will almost certainly not put themselves in the position of endorsing one set of trade- offs and economic policies, nor will they take a condescending attitude toward those who actually have to make economic institutions work...
...they will challenge but not condemn conservative apologias for the way things are...
...American and Western European resistance to meeting the challenge of computer automation is not only based on out- moded views of government and the economy...
...T HEFIRST computer, ENIAC, built at the end of World War II, weighed thirty tons and was primarily used by the military...
...The rapid introduction of computer automa- tion has Changed the most basic assumptions of modern economic policy --the relationship between jobs and economic growth...
...According to Business Week, two million manufacturing jobs were permanently lost during the 1981-82 recession...
...Both Mondale and Reagan assume that producing more steel bars, washing machines, and hamburg- ers will create more jobs...
...As jobs are eliminated by automation, some new jobs are created, but not enough to make up for the loss...
...Mondale's current proposals --to raise taxes and reduce spending --would certainly not increase employment...
...From 1970 to 1982, the propor- tion of part-time workers in the total labor force increased by 57.9 percent...
...Even within the labor movement and women's and civil rights organizations, there is scant understanding of either the promise or threat of automation...
Vol. 111 • November 1984 • No. 19
