Re: BLS Daily Report -- frictional U and political suppression

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Once one gets beyond the quips of a Conference Board wag, one finds a
residue of "so-call frictional employment", to the extent that "Even in
the nation's burgeoning high-tech hubs, thousands of well-educated people
are out of work."

Following the excerpt from the BLS, I have appended a discussion paper
written by Franz Segbers for a conference on Faith Communities and Social
Movements: Facing Globalization. Segbers' first two theses don't
necessarily contradict Ken Goldstein's glib assurance that "as long as you
are breathing and ambulatory, you can find a job." Instead they raise
questions about what kind of a job, under what conditions and for what
pay?

Submerged at the end of thesis nine in Segbers' paper is a provocative
claim that I would like to bring forward and highlight:

"If work were to be redistributed, then the paradigm of capital could be
shattered. For this reason, the possibility of workers experiencing a
sense of emancipation through a reduction of working hours has been
politically suppressed."

I have said as much many times myself. I also happen to have documented
key episodes in the history of this suppression. But I continue to wonder
why I can't seem to get Pen-l interested in a sustained discussion of this
political suppression, as it has been transmitted through the discourse of
economics.
___________________________________________
>From the BLS Daily:

__The U.S. unemployment rate is 4 percent, near a 30-year low.  For college
graduates, it is now less than 2 percent, says Ken Goldstein of the
Conference Board, who quips that "as long as you are breathing and
ambulatory, you can find a job."  With the economy registering a net gain of
about 200,000 jobs a month during this expansion, it would seem that there
aren't many good excuses for being jobless.  Yet, even a good economy spawns
a degree of so-called frictional unemployment, as workers enter the job
force for the first time or voluntarily leave one position to search for
another.  Even in the nation's burgeoning high-tech hubs, thousands of
well-educated people are out of work.  Corporate acquisitions and
restructuring take a particular toll on the highest paid and the most
experienced.  According to Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, a Chicago-based
outplacement firm, employers announced 670,000 job cuts in 1999, up from
615,000 in 1993, when the firm began keeping track.  Companies'
fast-shifting needs have decimated the professional networks of some
white-collar workers who find themselves jobless and have made others less
eager to take personal risks.  "They have to be willing to relocate, to go
into retraining, or to take a pay cut," says Jerome Watters, an economist
with the Bureau of Labor Statistics [Dallas].  "It can be very difficult."
...   (Robert Tomsho in Wall Street Journal, page A1).
__The 4 percent U.S. unemployment rate reflects the circumstances of 5.6
million people over age 16, says The Wall Street Journal (page A12).  The
largest group, by occupation, are 1.5 million people who previously held
technical, sales, or administrative support jobs.  About 1.2 million of the
unemployed are operators, fabricators, and laborers.  But the jobless pool
also includes 681,000 managers and professional specialty workers.
Education presents a different breakdown.  More than half a million of the
unemployed people 25 or older are college graduates, and close to a million
more have had some college courses.  At the other end of the spectrum, about
765,000 lack high school diplomas. To be counted by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, people must have looked for a job during the previous 4-week
period and be available for work. ...  About 44 percent had either lost
their jobs or completed temporary jobs, while 37.5 percent were resuming
their search after being out of the job market for longer than 4 weeks.
More than 6 percent were just entering the job market.  More than 12 percent
said they had left jobs voluntarily. ...  Besides the unemployed, there are
about 3.4 million part-time workers who say they can't find full-time jobs.
The historically low jobless rate would rise to about 7.3 percent if it
included these people and so-called marginally attached workers who are no
longer searching for work on a regular basis, says Steve Hipple, an
economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Good times have failed to raise the incomes of the one-third of adults who
haven't gone beyond high school, says Louis Uchitelle in The New York Times
(July 23, "Week in Review," page 1). ...  A steady third of adults 25 and
older have only finished high school  -- and that percentage does not seem
likely to come down soon for a host of reasons. ...  Half of the nation's
jobs are classified by the Labor Department [BLS] as not requiring a college
education.  Yet for many employers, high school diplomas are simply not
enough. ...  Higher level jobs for the college educated are among the
fastest growing, the Labor Department reports -- those for computer
analysts, engineers, upper level executives, and secondary-school teachers.
But lower-paying jobs that require only high school training are also among
the fastest growing -- jobs for retail sales people, cashiers, truck
drivers, office clerks, and home health care aides.  Despite this demand,
the wages of people with only a high school diploma -- rather solid in the
days of unionized blue-collar factory work -- have fallen steadily behind
for 20 years, making college seem the only route to the $20.58 an hour that
college graduates earned, on average, last year, according to the Economic
Policy Institute.  By comparison, the high school educated averaged only
$11.83; adjusted for inflation, the earnings gap has risen nearly 70 percent
since 1980. ...  "The deterioration of unions and the minimum wage probably
explains up to one-third of the increase in the earnings gap in the past 20
years," says a labor economist with the Urban League. ...

------------------------------------------
A preconference discussion paper by Franz Segbers for a colloquium on
Work and Employment at the conference on Faith Communities and Social
Movements: Facing Globalization:


> ONE CAN SEE ALREADY THE FUTURE OF EUROPE, BY TAKING A LOOK AT THE
> SOUTH: PRECARIOUS WORK IN THE NORTH AND INFORMAL WORK IN THE SOUTH ARE
> RAPIDLY INCREASING.
>
>  1. Throughout the world jobs are disappearing. This is due to more
> rational methods of organisation of work and new technologies.
>
>  2. There is, however, an increase in one particular kind of job: informal
> and precarious jobs.
>
>  3. In the South, the pattern of informal work is well established. That
> is: work for which no contract of employment is given, where there is no
> protection against dismissal, and where there is no national insurance
> scheme (i.e. no pension contributions or health insurance). The number of
> women in this sector is particularly high. According to estimates of the
> ILO (International Labour Organisation), already over 50% of those in
> employment in Latin America work in the informal sector, and the
> proportion is increasing.
>
>  4. In the North, there are two main thrusts in the attempt to reduce
> unemployment; economic growth and precarious work. Precarious work means
> low wages, little security of employment, in fact with no benefit from the
> achievements of trades unions and social movements. The winners of
> rationalisation and globalisation let the losers work for them in personal
> service. In the North, global capitalism is turning the clock back. The
> society in which the wealthy employ servants is returning. The
> job-creation wonder in the USA is actually just a remarkable
> transformation of the unemployed poor into the working poor. 1.2 million
> women work in German homes for whom no pension or health contributions are
> paid. 90% of all new jobs in East Germany are not formal jobs with proper
> terms of service.
>
>  5. This trend of the ever increasing informal sector and precarious work
> is not the result of bad or wrong political policies, but it is an
> integral part of the neoliberal projects of deregulation and
> flexibility. The neoliberal globalisation project praises the attacks on
> the welfare state and the erosion of social benefits as advantages for
> national economies. Those societies and economies which still benefit from
> the social achievements that have been won through hard struggle over the
> last 150 years are seen as disadvantaging national economies. In the North
> these achievements are being negated by being labelled as privileges, in
> the East and the South they have been given no chance to develop.
>
>  6. Fundamentally, trade union organisations in the global North and the
> global South are for those who are in a conventional, secure workplace and
> whose working conditions have been properly negotiated.
>
>  7. The membership of the trade unions is in decline, whilst the informal
> sector grows. There is a connection between the dramatic increase in
> informal and precarious work and the decline in the membership of the
> trade unions.
>
>  Globalisation is destroying the ability of workers to be an organised
> counter-force, so that they now have to accept as individuals the
> conditions they find in the sector of informal and precarious work. The
> organised counter-force, which always opposed the accumulation of wealth
> by the employers, is being weakened. Trades unions can no longer speak on
> behalf of all workers.
>
>  8. There is a danger that, in the future, the trade unions will act only
> on behalf of a worker-elite. In this way, they lose their legitimacy in
> society as a whole. Workers in the informal and precarious sectors feel
> that the trade unions are not interested in them and do not represent
> them. Consequently, they have absolutely no protection and stand merely as
> individuals against the power of the system.
>
>  9. There is a cultural, political and economic hegemony of capital in
> this time of globalisation. The campaign of the workers movements since
> the beginning of industrialisation, based on rationalisation in the
> workplace and technological development, for a reduction in working hours
> and a redistribution of work has been interrupted. The organised worker
> movement has been weakened world-wide, and so is in no position to see
> through the campaign for the reduction of working hours. The reduction of
> working hours has not only the possibility of distributing more widely
> ever fewer jobs, but it is also about emancipation: the liberation from
> working for somebody else, and reclaiming one's own time for living, which
> up to now has had to be devoted to the production process. If work were to
> be redistributed, then the paradigm of capital could be shattered. For
> this reason, the possibility of workers experiencing a sense of
> emancipation through a reduction of working hours has been politically
> suppressed.
>
>  10. The purpose of technology and economic efficiency is to benefit
> humanity. At present they are unfairly shared out: the paradigm of
> globalisation sets in motion a downward spiral regarding insecure
> jobs. Living time which, up to now, has had to be devoted to work in order
> to survive, and through that work to produce the goods that are required
> for living, must be re-owned. Objectively, the conditions are there, in
> the North, the East and the South.
>
>  11. Without a reduction in working hours, millions more would be out of
> work. One could say that those in paid work in the developed industrial
> countries, compared with their great grandparents, are engaged in
> part-time jobs and still earn a lot more money. The redistribution of work
> and redistribution of incomes go together. They can admittedly only keep
> this connection, if the power relationships are redistributed.
>
>  QUESTIONS WHICH MUST BE ASKED IN PURSUING THESE ISSUES:
>
>  1. To what pictures of a good life and just society can we refer in the
> Biblical tradition in our struggle to reclaim ownership of our time?
>
>  2. What changes are necessary in the alienating production process, so
> that the destructive logic of technology and the efficiency of the market
> economy can be used for a humane project of creating just work for all?
>
>  3. The utopia presented in the Bible is not the abolition of work, but
> rather the abolition of soul-destroying work, as in Egypt. How could value
> be given to activity, work and the search for meaning in life?
>
>  4. It is not so much the workers that must be more flexible, but rather
> the working conditions set by the employers. Who or what is master?
>
>
>

Temps Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant