"Some say that people like working at home and the flexibility that newer work spaces offer. But most agree that the pace of work has quickened as people speed up to do many things at the same time and compete for the next project or job. " "This talk of 'market' makes it seem like we are some how talking about a vegetable market or a flea market, instead of an economic system that is based on competition." "What's at issue here is not so much the subjective feelings of people who are now working in different places, but the objective fact that they do not have many other choices."

Joan Greenbaum: The Efficiency Vice interviewed by Harry Goldstein Joan Greenbaum is one of the earliest baby boomers, born with the Pearl Harbor-plus-nine-month crowd that was the little splash before the big wave of boomers. As a result, she carries with her the insecurity of her parents' Depression years and that of World War II and the weird post-war period we now call the nostaligic '50s. Greenbaum is currently a professor of computer information systems at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, and visiting professor of economics at Barnard College. She is the author of In the Name of Efficiency (1979), Windows on the Workplace (1995), co-editor of Design at Work (1991), and the author of numerous articles on the effects of technology on jobs and on the gender aspects of technology in the workplace. Tripod: Generally, how do you think people are being affected by the move away from traditional offices and toward home offices and hotels? Joan Greenbaum: Looking at work changes today is a little like looking back at the early Industrial Revolution and asking new factory workers, "How do you like working in a hot, sweaty factory compared to the nice quiet farm you used to be on?" In northern Europe, in the later part of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, people were pushed out of agriculture by economic forces which resulted in larger farms and more concentrated land ownership. People got jobs in cities in mills and factories, not so much because work was better or better paid, but because they basically had no other choices. Sociologists today ask questions like: Are the new workplaces more interesting and more challenging than the older form of office jobs? Economists: Are there as many jobs? Is the pay as good? Anthropologists study the social aspects of how people work. The studies give mixed results. Some say that people like working at home and the flexibility that newer work spaces offer. Others say that the insecurity of incoming pay -- and having to look for the next piece of freelance work down the road -- overshadows the benefits of increased mobility and flexibility. And most agree that the pace of work has quickened as people speed up to do many things at the same time and compete for the next project or job. What's at issue here is not so much the subjective feelings of people who are now working in different places, but the objective fact that, like the early factory workers, they do not have many other choices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that between 1993 and 1995 almost 8 1/2 million people were pushed out of their jobs involuntarily ("The New York Times," 8/23/96). Add this to the more than 43 million job losses between 1979 (when the Department of Labor began counting this) and 1993, and it means that more than 50 million workers have been fired. Most of these jobs have been eliminated and more than 50 percent were office jobs. These changes reflect a huge shakedown as this phase of post-industrial capitalism gears up for faster, more intense world-wide competition. It's in style now to say that these changes are part of the global market economy, but this talk of "market" makes it seem like we are some how talking about a vegetable market or a flea market, instead of an economic system that is based on competition. Over the last two centuries we have seen that capitalism is an incredibly productive system that results in more goods and services being produced faster, and often more cheaply. But we have also seen that it is unbelievably short-sighted. Compounding this problem is the fact that the U.S., the largest and most unregulated post-industrial economy, has the most disparity in income -- with a huge gap between a very few very rich people and a large number of very poor people. Canada, the European Union, and Japan have all considered this problem -- and for the most part continue to regulate their economies through their governments, in order to insure more equity in income and the right to basic needs like housing and health care. Tripod: What aspects of the changing office culture will filter down into society at large? What kind of working world (I'm thinking of office work in particular, in its physical, emotional and intellectual dimensions) is being formed by the kinds of management techniques and office systems that are in vogue today? And what is that world going to look like 10 years from now? JG: Scott Adams' "Dilbert" cartoon is a great chronicle of the changing times. Sometime in the future, it will probably be looked at like Charles Dickens novels were in telling the cruel tales of early industrialism, or the way Charlie Chaplin's film "Modern Times" showed the absurdity of early automation. Changing management practices and attitudes reflect changing economic conditions. The emphasis on competition and short-sightedness is heightened -- both for people working in more or less "traditional" offices and for those coping at home or on the move in their tangential relation to what we used to call "bosses." Management theory and business schools make up great names for organizational and corporate culture, talking incessantly about "team players" and "human resources." No matter what it is called (and who knows better how to sugar-coat the problems than those writing the business school theories), management techniques are about getting more work out of workers, or getting workers to work more cheaply. In factory days, this process of getting more work out of workers was speeded up with assembly lines and automation. In the early post-industrial office period -- particularly between the 1950s and the 1970s -- this supposed "speed-up" was accomplished by layers of middle managers overseeing layers of workers inside the corporate cake. In its day, this too was efficient -- since every company played by similar rules. Today the most effective management technique is to rely on the "professionalism" of office workers, encouraging them to get more done in the name of their professional reputation. Of course, like factory workers before them, it isn't a matter of choice. People know that if they don't work harder, longer, more intensely, someone else will be there ready to do their job. Competition is a rather nasty, creeping condition that is certainly not built into us. Look at other cultures, where kids are taught to cooperate rather than compete, and you can see the difference right away. When I was living in Denmark, for example, it was common for students to work on papers together through their Master's because working together was considered the norm -- competition was frowned upon. This constant coercion for competition in the workplace -- and in hunting and seeking jobs -- is spilling over into the wider social and political landscape. The governmental assault on "welfare" is the tip of the iceberg of competitive pressure. The other post-industrial countries each have social security systems for members of their society who don't or can't work. It is strange that the market myth makes Americans blind to the idea that taking care of people is a basic function of society -- always has been. This is just one way that the intensified competition in work relations has spilled over to the society at large. Tripod: It seems logical that, at some point, striving after efficiency reaches a point of diminishing returns. Do you see this point approaching in the near future? And if so, what are a couple of scenarios that might play out at that point? JG: That search for efficiency runs into the short-sightedness problem that I mentioned earlier. Economists like to say that predicting the long-term is easy because "in the long term, we are all dead." That might be so for us as humans -- but in the not-so-long-term, corporations and government agencies may indeed be dead if they keep chasing after short-term profits. In 1979 I wrote a book called In the Name of Efficiency. It was about how computer work, such as programming and systems development, was being cut up into smaller chunks and divided up among different workers. This process, which businesses called "rationalizing for efficiency" wasn't efficient in terms of getting work done, it wasn't efficient in terms of getting software quality, and it was not at all effective in terms of treating people like human beings. Why did it persist in the 1970s and '80s? Because it served short-term profit objectives of controlling what work was being done and of holding wages down. Take an example from today. Bell Atlantic, the telephone company in the part of the country where I live, fired a tremendous number of workers during the past year as part of their so-called "battle" to gear up and compete with other telephone companies. They made it seem, as other companies like banks and airlines do, that it was in our interests as customers for them to become more competitive. Well...try to get a phone fixed, or a new line installed, or report a problem. You can spend at least one hour waiting on hold for the "customer service hot line." We are all going nuts today waiting on hold. Maybe the slogan of the coming period is "customers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but being on hold!" In the not-so-long-term, say a few years, this telephone company, like banks and insurance companies and airlines, is going to find out that they can't run "lean and mean" like the business strategy courses they have been listening to. We shouldn't put up with it as customers, and certainly we shouldn't put up with it as citizens. We need to say -- as customers and citizens -- that we desire humane treatment (like talking to real people and not waiting forever) and we also deserve jobs that have some security built in -- security for the worker and security for the customer, so that he or she knows that the business will be there when they need it. But probably the worst characteristic of this striving after efficiency is the time vise that it pressures us with. Early factory workers felt this, too, as factory work was measured in hours and days -- not in seasons like agricultural work. Now, of course, professionalism means getting the work done -- no matter where or when. This puts insane demands on people and critically effects what we now call our "lifestyle" (this word wasn't around until the 1980s). How can people be home and play with children? How can they enjoy each other? How can they just "hang out" and enjoy nature without measuring their time as "quality time" or "rest and relaxation"? These questions place very definite limits on our lives and in turn we will place -- through our social and political actions -- very definite limits on the ways companies and government agencies view efficiency. Tripod: What is the single most important thing office workers can do today to influence their work environments of the future? JG: Union activists say that there are three things that need to get done in order to make work more secure, safe and better paid. They are: organize, organize, organize. True, traditional workplace unions, built up during the large factory industrial period, may not be appropriate for today. But some combination of workers, citizens, and customers may make fertile ground for breaking the bind that companies hold over us with their slogans of competition and global markets. © 1996 Tripod, Inc. All rights reserved. The Virtual Office Lobby