
Issue No 1		19 February 1999

Guest Report

Stephen Long on Work, Time and Other Catastrophes

By Stephen Long - Australian Financial Review

"Work", Studs Terkel wrote in 1972, "is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."


	AFR's Stephen Long

The words of this great American oral historian still resonate today, but the Monday through Friday reference dates them. Much has changed in the quarter century or so since Terkel's classic book Working documented, in their own words, the daily lives of more than 130 people from all manner of occupations. But perhaps nothing more so than working time.

The transformation of working time stands alongside the rise of the global economy and the IT revolution as one of the hallmarks of our age. It separates the generations, placing a gap between the experience of those who worked full-time in one career and their children, who confront a world where job opportunities are increasingly casual, contingent and short-term. A world where, writes the sociologist Richard Sennett, a young American with at least two years of college can expect to change jobs at least 11 times in the course of working, and change his or her skills-base at least three times ... It is the time dimension of the new capitalism, rather than hi-tech data transmission, global stock markets or free trade, that most directly affects people's emotional lives.

There are multiple dimensions to the way contemporary capitalism is re-organising time, and working time especially. Sennett argues that the linear narratives that give meaning to peoples' lives are collapsing as the vertical march through the corridors of one or two institutions towards retirement is replaced by constant change. Common standards of time for work and leisure are withering as society adapts to the needs of the 24-hour economy and demands for labour flexibility. Little more than a third of the workforce now put in a standard week of 30-44 hours performed in daytime in Australia, while equal proportions work part-time or in excess of standard hours. Workaholism is becoming compulsory for many Australians, while hundreds of thousands of others languish without work or churn between casual jobs and unemployment. According to research by economists Yvonne Dunlop and Peter Sheehan, the total number of people working standard hours grew by just 3.5 per cent between 1978 and 1995, while the number working 45-48 hours a week increased by 80 per cent, the mumber working 49-59 hours by 142 per cent and the number working 60 hours or more rose by a massive by 206 per cent.

Even the nature of time itself is being transformed as technologies render communication instantaneous, creating what the sociologist Manuel Castells calls timeless time. The possibilities opened up by this change are amazing. It has freed many people from the tyranny of distance and given the fortunate more autonomy and control over when, where and how they work. Some physicists even believe that information can now travel faster than the speed of life, making time travel at least theoretically possible. But timeless time has also made the world a more volatile and scary place. Split-second financial transactions plunge and surge the value of currencies, decimating national economies. Real time monitoring of workers via remote computers has created new forms of labour oppression. Sue Fernie of the London School of Economics says the use of information technology to monitor workers in call centres has realised Jeremy Bentham's 200-year-old vision of the perfect prison, the Panopticon, used by French philosopher Michel Foucault as a metaphor for the future workplace. In the workplace/prison, power is invisible and unverifiable, and workers are seen but unseeing, the object of information never the subject of communication, alone, perfectly individualised and constantly visible.

The most obvious consequence of the re-organisation of working time has been a massive rise in insecurity. People feel a sense of anxiety in a world where jobs lack tenure and management has abdicated responsibility for providing ongoing employment. At the centre of the new economic system ... is the rotating worker write Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson in their book The Age of Insecurity, forever in danger of being revolved out into the market to be replaced by cheaper labour from outside. The internal market, the process whereby employees live in a state of constant competition against each other and against external contractors, is the final development in the transformation fo work from a sort of quasi-tenancy from which the employee could be evicted only on payment of redundancy money into a fleeting, transitory experience, infused with terror at the prospect of it ending, akin to a teenage love affair.

The lasting and damaging consequence of the change may be an erosion of morality. A booming trade in self-help books advises people that selfishness is the way to survive in the new world of work. In a world where employers no longer offer job security, William Bridges counsels people to create You & Co. or Me Inc.. Professor John Kotter of the Harvard Business School counsels the young to work on the outside rather than the inside of organisations and says institutional loyalty is a trap. Trust, loyalty and mutual commitment are being eaten away, Sennett argues in his new book The Corrosion of Character: the personal consequences of work under the new capitalism, in a world where the dominant ethos is "no long term'. The breakdown in trust and loyalty works both ways. While managements' demand that the workforce be flexibile and dispensible to suit their needs, most have not yet come to grips with the fact that it is also breeding a more flexible and dispensable attitude from employees towards employees, argues Sally Zanetic. Put self-interest first because your future lies in transforming yourself into a product to be marketed is the pervasive message. Everyone must be an entrepreneur. In a sense, it is the ultimate triumph of capitalism.

But at what cost? Can the values of rampant individualism be confined to work relationships? Transposed to the family realm, Sennett argues, "no long term' means keep moving, don't commit yourself and don't sacrifice...This conflict between family and work poses some questions about adult experience itself. How can long-term purpose be pursued in a short-term society? How can durable social relations be sustained? How can a human being develop a narrative of identity and life history in a society composed of episodes and fragments?

Ordinary people worry deeply about these questions. The consequences of the transformation of working time impact deeply on people in their daily lives. During a career spanning 13 years in journalism, the articles I have written on working time issues have drawn more feedback than any others. Last year, I wrote in my weekly column that one of the biggest issues confronting society was the divide between the overworked, the underworked and the out of work. This issue rarely makes the news pages because its army of victims lacks a collective voice, I wrote. But it is the source of a host of problems, from the deriorating balance between work and family life to the rising inequality that threatens social cohesion. Many people responded by email. Their stories were moving.

Wrote one woman: My husband is 51. He has been unemployed for over four years. My daughter is one of those who are often called to work (unpaid) during weekends and public holidays. About two years ago, she was sent to Singapore to fix a problem for a client. There she spent the entire Easter holiday trying to solve the problem, even to the extent of a stretch of more than 24 hours. In fact, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Last Sunday she was sent to NZ. Before she left, she had to spend Saturday studying relevant materials. No wonder she is often stressed. She used to be a happy and cheerful child. Not any more. Her medical bill last year exceeded $1,000.

Is the damage that Hurricane Mitch brought to Central America more severe than the current trend of overworked, underworked and out of work? I wonder. The differences, perhaps, are that one is a natural disaster and the other is human made, and one is fast and swift while the other is slow and chronic.

The union movement is right to campaign around the issues of working time. Let's hope it can make some small difference.

Further reading: Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: the personal consequenes of work under the new capitalism (Norton: 1998).

Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Volumes 1-3) (Blackwell: 1998).

ACIRRT, Australia at Work: Just Managing (Prentice Hall: 1998).

Dan Elliott and Larry Atkinson, The Age of Insecurity (Verso: 1998).

STEPHEN LONG is work relations editor at The Australian Financial Review, and has been a specialist writer on work, industrial relations and equity issues for seven years. His writes a weekly column on working life issue, Work Relations, which appears each Wednesday in the Financial Review.

View entire issue - print all of the articles!

Issue 1 contents

Interview: Michael Costa
The new Labor Council secretary explains factions, frictions and how to save the union movement.

Unions: Getting Under The Skin
The cash-in-transit industry - known for it's vulnerability to violence and theft - comes under scrutiny as the industry moves to a new "soft skin" operation

History: Remembering the Labor Press
Workers Online is just the latest in a long tradition of publishing by working people and their organisations.

Review: Powderfinger's Political Power Pop
We look at a band who still reckon they can mix music with a bit social commentary.

Campaign Diary: Hartcher Chokes On His Own Uglies
No-one would have been more surprised by last week�s announcement of the Coalition industrial relations policy than its spokesman on the issue, Chris Hartcher.

» The Overworked - We're Sick, Anti-Social and Sexually Frustrated

» Geeks Blow Up

» The Greatest Act on Earth

» Museum of Contemporary Art calls time

» MEAA Goes Country!