文字制限の為に２部構成になりました。前文より続く。 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ # ON CONSUMER PURCHASING POWER Two powerful forces increase the likelihood of a new accommodation between the U.S. management and work force. While reducing the labor component in the production process often translates into short-term gains for each company, employers are beginning to see a troubling decline in consumer purchasing power. As more and more workers are placed in temporary, part-time and contingent employment and experience a decline in wages, purchasing power diminishes. Even those workers with permanent jobs find their wages and benefits falling. The quickened pace of corporate re-engineering, technological displacement and declining income can be seen in stagnant inventories and sluggish growth, which in turn set off a new spiral of re-engineering, technology displacement and wage cuts, further fueling the downward drift in consumption. The second Achilles heel for employers in the emerging Information Age, and one rarely talked about, is the effect on capital accumulation when vast numbers of employees are reduced to contingent or temporary work and part-time assignments, or let go altogether, so that employers can avoid paying out benefits, especially pension-fund benefits. As it turns out, pension funds, now worth more than $5 trillion in the United States alone, have served as a forced savings pool that has financed capital investments for more than 40 years. In 1992, pension funds accounted for 74% of net individual savings, more than one-third of all corporate equities and nearly 40% of all corporate bonds. Pension assets exceed the assets of commercial banks and make up nearly one-third of the total financial assets of the U.S. economy. In 1993, pension funds made new investments of between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. If companies continue to marginalize their work forces and let large numbers of employees go, the capitalist system will slowly collapse on itself as it is drained of the pension funds necessary for new capital investments. A steady loss of consumer purchasing power and a decline in workers' pension-fund capital are likely to have a far more significant impact on the long-term health of the economy than all of the much-ballyhooed concern over the national debt and budget deficits. Of course, even an "enlightened" management is unlikely to heed the warning signals without pressure being brought to bear from both inside and outside the companies. The 30-hour workweek ought to become a rallying cry for millions of U.S. workers. Shorter workweeks and better pay and benefits were the benchmarks for measuring the success of the Industrial Age in the past century. We should demand no less of the Information Age in the coming century. # ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE THIRD SECTOR Even with a much-reduced workweek, the United States and every other nation are still going to have to address the problem of finding alternative forms of work for the millions of people who are no longer needed to produce goods and services for an increasingly automated market economy. Up to now, the marketplace and government have been looked to, almost exclusively, for solutions to the growing economic crisis. Today, with the market economy less able to provide permanent jobs and with the government retreating from its traditional role of employer of last resort, the nation's civil sector may be the best hope for absorbing the millions of displaced workers. " That is likely to change in the coming years as it becomes increasingly clear that a transformed third sector [the voluntary and social sector] offers the only viable means for constructively channeling the surplus labour cast off by the global market ..." - Jeremy Rifkin While politicians traditionally divide the economy into a spectrum running from the marketplace on one side to the government on the other, it is more accurate to think of society as a three-legged stool made up of the market sector, the government sector and the civil sector. The first leg creates market capital, the second leg creates public capital and the third leg creates social capital. Of the three legs, the oldest and most important, but least acknowledged, is the civil sector. For more than 200 years, this sector has helped community. Our schools and colleges, hospitals, social-service organizations, fraternal orders, women's clubs, youth organizations, civil rights groups, social justice organizations, conservation and environmental protection groups, animal welfare organizations, theaters, orchestras, art galleries, libraries, museums, civic associations, community development organizations, volunteer fire departments and civilian security patrols are all part of the Third Sector. There are currently more than 1.4 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, with total combined assets of more than $500 billion. Nonprofit activities run the gamut from social services to health care, education and research, the arts, religion and advocacy. The expenditures of America's nonprofit organizations exceed the gross domestic product of all but seven nations in the world. The civil society already contributes more than 6% of America's GDP, and is responsible for 10.5% of total employment. More people are employed in Third Sector organizations than work in the construction, electronics, transportation or textile and apparel industries. The opportunity now exists to create millions of new jobs in the civil society. But freeing up the labor and talent of men and women no longer needed in the market and government sectors for the creation of social capital in neighborhoods and communities will cost money. The logical source for this money is the new Information Age economy; we should tax a percentage of the wealth generated by the new high-tech marketplace and redirect it into the creation of jobs in the nonprofit sector and the rebuilding of the social commons. This new agenda represents a powerful countervailing force to the new global marketplace. In the old scheme of things, finding the proper balance between the market and government dominated political discussion. In the new scheme, finding a balance among the market, government and civil sector becomes paramount. Since the civil society relies on both the market and government for its survival and well-being, its future will depend, in large part, on the creation of a new social force that can make demands on both the market and government sectors to pump some of the vast financial gains of the new Information Age economy into the creation of social capital. # ON THE ROLE OF ORGANISED LABOUR Organized labor has been weakened by 40 years of automation, a decline in union membership, and a growing temp workforce that is difficult to organize. In meetings with union officials, I have found that they are universally reluctant to deal with the notion that mass laborthe very basis of trade unionismwill continue to decline and may even disappear altogether. Several union leaders confided to me off the record that the labor movement is in survival mode and trying desperately to prevent a rollback of legislation governing basic rights to organize. Union leaders cannot conceive that they may have to rethink their mission in order to accommodate a fundamental change in the nature of work. But the unions' continued reluctance to grapple with a technology revolution that might eliminate mass labor could spell their own elimination from American life over the next three or four decades. Organized labor's hopes also rest, in part, on the emergence of the civil society as a new social force. Unions are finding it more and more difficult to recruit workers in the new economy. Organizing at the point of production becomes difficult, and often impossible, when dealing with temporary, leased, contingent and part-time workers and the growing number of telecommuters. At the same time, the strike is becoming increasingly irrelevant in an age of automated production processes. Joining with Third Sector, service, fraternal, civic and advocacy organizations to exert a collective "geographic" pressure on management to share some of the gains of the Information Age with workers and local communities may be labor's best hope for success in the new era. # ON THE ROLE OF WORKING WOMEN Working women may hold the key to whether organized labor can reinvent itself in time to survive the Information Age. Women now make up about half of the U.S. workforce, and a majority of employed women provide half or more of their household's income. In addition to holding down a 40-hour job, working women often manage the household as well. Significantly, nearly 44 percent of all employed women say they would prefer more time with their family to more money. This is one reason many progressive labor leaders believe the rebirth of the American labor movement hinges on organizing women workers. The call for a 30-hour workweek is a powerful rallying cry that could unite trade unions, women's groups, parenting organizations, churches, and synagogues. The women's movement, trapped in struggles over abortion, discriminatory employment practices, and sexual harassment, has also failed to grasp the enormous opportunity brought on by the Information Age. Betty Friedan, the venerable founder of the modern women's movement and someone always a step or two ahead of the crowd, is convinced that the reduction of work hours offers a way to revitalize the women's movement, and take women's interests to the center of public policy discourse. Even with more women working in the marketplace and more men at home and in the community, women are still likely to remain the primary advocates of social capital because of their long-standing relationship to the Third Sector. Women have been the mainstay of the civil society for more than 200 years, volunteering their time to create the social capital of the country. Their contribution has gone largely unnoticed, in part because the political importance of social capital has gone largely unheralded. By politicizing the social commons, elevating the importance of social capital and making demands on the new Information Age economy to pump some of the gains into the civil society, women could help create a new third force in American politics over the next decade. # ON THE ROLE OF EMPLOYERS The biggest surprise I've encountered in the fledgling debate over rethinking work has been the response of some business leaders. I have found genuine concern among a small but growing number of business executives over the critical question of what to do with the millions of people whose labor will be needed less, or not at all, in an increasingly automated age. Many executives have close friends who have been re-engineered out of a job replaced by the new technologies of the Information Age. Others have had to take part in the painful process of letting employees go in order to optimize the bottom line. Some tell me they worry whether their own children will be able to find a job when they enter the high-tech labor market in a few years. To be sure, I hear moans and groans from some corporate executives when I zero in on possible solutions although there are also more than a few nods of agreement. But still, they are willingeven eagerto talk about these critical questions. They are hungry for engagementthe kind that has been absent in the public policy arena. Until now, politicians and economists have steadfastly refused to entertain a discussion of how we prepare for a new economic era characterized by the diminishing need for mass human labor. Until we have that conversation, the fear, anger, and frustration of millions of people are going to grow in intensity and become manifest through increasingly hostile and extreme social and political venues. # ON ECONOMIC JUSTICE In the debate over how to divide up the benefits of productivity advances made possible by the new high-tech global economy, we must ultimately grapple with an elementary question of economic justice: Does every member of society, even the poorest among us, have a right to participate in and benefit from the productivity gains of the information and communication technology revolutions? "We are long overdue for public debate over the future of work and how to share the productivity gains of the Information Age ..." - Jeremy Rifkin If the answer is yes, then some form of compensation will have to be made to those whose labor is no longer needed in the new high-tech, automated world of the 21st century. Tying compensation to service in the community would aid the growth and development of the social economy and strengthen neighborhoods across the country. By shortening the workweek to 30 hours, providing an income voucher for the permanently unemployed in return for retraining and service in the Third Sector, and extending a tax credit for volunteering time to neighborhood nonprofit organizations, we can begin to address some of the many structural issues facing a society in transition to a high-tech, automated future. Up to now, the world has been so preoccupied with the workings of the market economy that the notion of focusing greater attention on the social economy has been virtually ignored by the public and by those who make public policy. This needs to change as we enter a new age of global markets and automated production. The road to a near-workerless economy is within sight ... whether it leads to a safe haven or a terrible abyss will depend on how well civilization prepares for what is to come. The end of work could signal the death of civilization -- or the beginning of a great social transformation. The future lies in our hands.

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