最近、日本の格差社会に関する報道が増えている。その時ふっと思ったのが、UCLA時代の友人から薦められたジェレミーラフキン（Jeremy Rafkin)の"The End of Work"と言う本の事を思い出した。まさに、技術革新が人間の職を奪って．．．労働者の２極化（日本で言えば、勝ち組と負け組か？）が進む。労働者としての女性の立場が違う日本とは全く同じ状況ではないが．．．また、日本の税制に関しても一石を投ずるのではないか？（アメリカには、IRAと言う税金の納付を先延ばしに出来る口座を個人が持っているが、日本は労働者は全て税金を先取りされる仕組みになっている。これが、一つの老後の不安をあおっているようにおもうのだが．．．）以下、英語ではあるがその本の内容を抜粋したものである。 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ # ON THE BIG ISSUE From the beginning, civilization -- as well as people's daily lives -- has been structured in large part around the concept of work. But now, for the first time in history, human labor is being systematically eliminated from the economic process. In the coming century employment, as we have come to know it, is likely to be phased out in most of the industrialized nations of the world. A new generation of sophisticated information and communication technologies is being introduced into a wide variety of work situations. These machines, together with new forms of business reorganization and management, are forcing millions of blue- and white-collar workers into temporary jobs and unemployment lines -- or, worse, breadlines. Our corporate leaders, economists, and politicians tell us that the rising unemployment figures represent only short-term "adjustments" that will be taken care of as the global economy advances into the Information Age. But millions of working people remain skeptical. In the United States alone, corporations are eliminating more than 2 million jobs annually. Although some new jobs are being created in the economy, they are for the most part in the low-paying sectors, and many are only temp jobs or part-time positions. The global economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation in the nature of work brought on by the new technologies of the Information Age revolution. These profound technological and economic changes will force every country to rethink long-held assumptions about the nature of politics and citizenship. # ON THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY At the heart of this historic shift are sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications and other Information Age technologies that are fast replacing human beings, especially in the manufacturing sector. The number of factory workers in the United States has declined from 33% of the work force to under 17% in the past 30 years, even as U.S. companies have continued to increase output and overall production, maintaining the country's position as the number-one manufacturing power in the world. "The shift from mass to elite labor forces is what distinguishes work in the information age from that of the Industrial Age ..." -- Jeremy Rifkin Sophisticated computers, robots, telecommunications, and other Information Age technologies are replacing human beings in nearly every sector. Factory workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, salesclerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers, and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction. Automated technologies have been reducing the need for human labor in every manufacturing category. Within ten years, less than 12% of the U.S. work force will be on the factory floor, and by the year 2020, less than 2% of the entire global work force will still be engaged in factory work. Over the next quarter-century we will see the virtual elimination of the blue-collar, mass assembly-line worker from the production process. For most of the 1980s it was fashionable to blame foreign competition and cheap labor markets abroad for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. In some industries, especially the garment trade and electronics, that has been the case. Recently, however, economists have begun to revise their views. Paul Krugman of Stanford and Robert Lawrence of Harvard suggest, on the basis of extensive data, that "the concern, widely voiced during the 1950s and 1960s, that industrial workers would lose their jobs because of automation, is closer to the truth than the current preoccupation with a presumed loss of manufacturing jobs because of foreign competition...." # ON THE JOBS OPTIMISM Until recently, economists and politicians assumed that displaced factory workers would find new jobs in the service sector. Now, however, the service sector is also beginning to automate: in the banking, insurance and wholesale and retail sectors, companies are eliminating layer after layer of management and infrastructure, replacing the traditional corporate pyramid and mass white-collar work forces with small, highly skilled professional work teams, using state-of-the-art software and telecommunications technologies. Even those companies that continue to use large numbers of white-collar workers have changed the conditions of employment, transferring workers from permanent jobs to "just in time" employment, including leased, temporary and contingent work, in an effort to reduce wage and benefit packages, cut labor costs and increase profit margins. "The global economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation that will reshape civilization in the twenty-first century. Sophisticated computers, telecommunications, robotics, and other information-age technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry ..." -- Jeremy Rifkin Acknowledging that both the manufacturing and service sectors are quickly re-engineering their infrastructures and automating their production processes, many mainstream economists and politicians have pinned their hopes on new job opportunities along the information superhighway and in cyberspace. Although the "knowledge sector" will create some new jobs, they will be too few to absorb the millions of workers displaced by the new technologies. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, for example, talks incessantly of the need for more highly skilled technicians, computer programmers, engineers, and professional workers. While Secretary, he barnstormed the country urging workers to retrain, retool, and reinvent themselves in time to gain a coveted place on the high-tech express. But he ought to know better. Even if the entire workforce could be retrained for very skilled, high-tech jobswhich, of course, it can'tthere will never be enough positions in the elite knowledge sector to absorb the millions let go as automation penetrates into every aspect of the production process. Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who headed the National Economic Council, argues that the Information Age will bring a plethora of new technologies and products that we can't as yet even anticipate, and therefore it will create many new kinds of jobs. Tyson notes that when the automobile replaced the horse and buggy, some people lost their jobs in the buggy trade but many more found work on the assembly line. Tyson believes that the same operating rules will govern the information era. Her argument is compelling. Still, I can't help but think that she may be wrong. Even if thousands of new products come along, they are likely to be manufactured in near-workerless factories and marketed by near-virtual companies requiring ever-smaller, more highly skilled workforces. It is naive to believe that large numbers of unskilled and skilled blue-collar workers who lose their livelihoods will be retrained to assume the new jobs that are being created. The new professionals-the so-called symbolic analysts or knowledge workers-come from the fields of science, engineering, management, consulting, teaching, marketing, media, and entertainment. While their number will continue to grow, it will remain small compared to the number of workers displaced by the new generation of "thinking machines." Peter Drucker says quite bluntly that "the disappearance of labor as a key factor of production" is going to emerge as the critical "unfinished business of capitalist society ..." It's not as if this is a revelation. For years futurists such as Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt have lectured the rest of us that the end of the industrial age also means the end of "mass production" and "mass labor." What they never mention is what "the masses" should do after they become redundant ... # ON THE CHALLENGES OF AN ELITE WORKFORCE The knowledge sector is, by nature, an elite and not a mass work force. Indeed, the shift from mass to elite labor is what distinguishes work in the Information Age from that in the Industrial Age. With near-workerless factories and virtual companies already looming on the horizon, every nation will have to grapple with the question of what to do with the millions of people whose labor is needed less, or not at all, in an ever-more-automated global economy. While mainstream politicians have embraced the Information Age, extolling the virtues of cyberspace and virtual reality, they have, for the most part, refused to address the question of how to insure that the gains of the high-tech global economy will be shared. Up to now, those productivity gains have been used primarily to enhance corporate profits, to the exclusive benefit of stockholders, top corporate managers and the emerging elite of high-tech knowledge workers. If that trend continues, the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots is likely to lead to social unrest and more crime and violence. The antidote to the politics of paranoia and hate is an open and sober discussion about the underlying technological and economic forces that are leading to increased productivity on the one hand and a diminishing need for mass labor on the other. That discussion needs to be accompanied by a bold new social vision that can speak directly to the challenges facing us. In short, we need to begin thinking seriously about what a radically different society might look like in an ever more automated global economy. # ON A SHORTER WORKING WEEK In the past, when new technologies dramatically increased productivity, U.S. workers sought a share of the productivity gains and organized collectively to demand a shorter workweek and better pay and benefits. Today, instead of reducing the workweek, employers are reducing the work force. "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 ..." -- Jeremy Rifkin The new labor-saving technologies of the Information Age should be used to free us for greater leisure, not less pay and growing underemployment. Of course, employers argue that shortening the workweek and sharing the productivity gains with workers will be too costly and will threaten their ability to compete both domestically and abroad. That need not be so. Companies like Hewlett-Packard in France and BMW in Germany have reduced their workweek from 37 to 31 hours, while continuing to pay workers at the 37-hour rate. In return, the workers have agreed to work in shifts. The companies reasoned that if they could keep the new high-tech plants operating on a 24-hour basis, they could double or triple productivity and thus afford to pay workers more for working less time. In France, government officials are considering offering to rescind payroll taxes for the employer if management voluntarily reduces the workweek. While the government will lose tax revenue, economists argue that it will make up the difference in other ways. With a reduced workweek, more people will be working and fewer will be on welfare. And the new workers will buy goods and pay taxes, all of which will benefit employers, the economy and the government. Governments ought to consider extending tax credits to any company willing to do three things: voluntarily reduce its workweek; implement a profit-sharing plan so that its employees will benefit directly from the productivity gains; and agree to a formula by which compensation to top management and shareholder dividends are not disproportionate to the benefits distributed to the rest of the company's work force. With such an incentive, employers would be more inclined to make the transition, especially if it gave them a marked advantage over their competitors.

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