Downsizing America’s Workforce

Jeremy Rifkin. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 336 pp. $15.95

Reviewed by Janet E. Hill

Hardly a week goes by without the news reporting on the downsizing of America’s workforce. Jeremy Rifkin’s The End of Work is a serious analysis of our current economic and employment situation and how many of our social ills may be traced to the changing nature of work. Mr. Rifkin provides compelling evidence of how these changes impact nearly every aspect of American life, from the increasing number of young black men in prison, to the degeneration of the family, as mothers of young children are required, by economic necessity, to join the work force.

It comes as no surprise that factory work is becoming increasingly computerized and technical. Conventional wisdom has been “that new technologies boost productivity, lower the costs of production, and increase the supply of cheap goods, which, in turn stimulates purchasing power, expands markets, and generates more jobs.” This, Mr. Rifkin calls trickle-down technology. The corollary of the theory is that even if workers are displaced by new technologies, the problem of unemployment will eventually resolve itself as new jobs are created in the information age. The flaw in this corollary is that while new jobs are being created by the information revolution, such jobs require highly educated, skilled workers, yet the persons who have been displaced are typically unskilled factory workers or middle managers lacking transferable job skills for the new job market.

Mr. Rifkin debunks the myth that the service economy will pick up the slack by employing large numbers of unskilled workers. He points out that, “Computer that can understand speech, read script, and perform tasks previously carries out by human beings foreshadow a new era in which service industries come increasingly under the domain of automation.” Examples included automatic teller machines replacing bank tellers, electronic shopping replacing the retail employee, and automated warehouses making wholesalers redundant.

Furthermore, the quality of jobs has decreased. Even thought jobs have been newly created and unemployment approaches a 10-year low, nearly 60 percent of newly created jobs are part-time and, for the most part, in low-wage service industry positions. Likewise, more people than ever are employed in temporary positions, which provide little security, few benefits and lower wages than permanent workers in the same fields.

Mr. Rifkin’s solution begins with a 30-hour work week, where workers trade income for job security and a more stress-free leisure time. Workers would be encouraged to engage in more community service and to devote more time to the family. Government would place value on volunteer hours by allowing charitable deductions for time expended and by paying the nation’s poor a social wage in return for their working in the public sector. This transition would be financed by “cuts in defense spending, elimination of unnecessary subsidies to transitional companies, and the paring down of the welfare bureaucracy,” coupled with a value added tax and exemptions for essentials and small businesses. Parts of Mr. Rifkin’s solution are being tested in Europe, as well as in America, where companies such as Hewlett-Packard Digital Equipment already have reduced their work week up to 25 percent.

Mr. Rifkin is an attorney, economist and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. Even those who do not agree with his solutions will benefit from his chronicle of the history of labor and from his assessment of how work continues to change, in what Mr. Rifkin deems the “Third Industrial Revolution, where computers, software and robots replace the human worker.” The End of Work is not easy reading, but is worthwhile for any attorney interested in addressing social ills at their root, instead of merely administering first aid through the current legal system.