Rethinking work in the 21st century

The danger of using superlatives for describing one book is when you read the next one, and find it gives you a verbal bear hug every bit as strong as the previous one. Nonetheless, the joy is all mine in reading the latest contribution from Ellen Ruppel Shell. The Job: Work and its future in a time of radical change  (2019) As I was reading it I couldn't help but think: I wish this was the book that I had been able to write five years ago when I was deep into my own story (see left side bar link). It acts as a perfect sequel to the musings from my slim volume.

Shell is a professor of journalism from Boston University. She has provided her thesis with an enviable depth of research that, at last, has given her subject the gravitas it deserves. Chapter 8 in particular made me feel vindicated in a way few other authors have articulated. Mind the (skills) gap elucidates the fantasy of widely available stable, living-wage jobs, and characterizes this wishful thinking as "toxic alchemy." This truth alone, makes it harshly obvious that if the poor have no choice but to take any job they can get, then they are participating in the precarious, low-wage jobs that keep them poor in the first place. Perfectly stated this way:

“Because it incentivizes more people, no matter their skills, to accept any job they can get, it reduces the need for employers to create better jobs, or to open up better jobs to people closed out of them, people who may lack credentials or a certain pedigree but who, like Susan and Leroy, are willing and able to work.”  “The idea that a lack of skills is preventing many people from working their way out of poverty is wrong,” Edin said. “‘Skills’ is a smokescreen for other things.”

Also:

"This "skills gap" finding was so widely quoted that it became a sort of cultural meme. But other than the say-so of employers, there was little if any evidence to support the vague and slippery claim."

We are often told that the future is an open field for those educational concentrations involving science, technology, engineering and math, but she reports that the supply of STEM graduates is 2 to 3 times larger than demand. Even Paul Krugman has coined the term "zombie idea" to indicate beliefs that have been "repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die."

This ruse does not escape the notice of grads:

 “Smart students preferred not to invest their hopes, efforts, and intellectual capital in sectors that no matter the hype dumped workers at the least provocation, sometimes only to replace them with cheaper workers, whether they be domestic or from abroad.” 

Then in Chapter 11, The Finnish Line, when you are good and ready for some solutions, Shell delivers with a truckload. Finland certainly wasn't on my radar, but putting it there was a welcome education. We are introduced to Pekka Pohjakallio, whose firm is rethinking work for the 21st century. In contrast to how most Americans conceptualize the urgent call to innovate, here a more realistic version prevails.

 “The innovation bubbles up most often when the brain is relaxed and deep in thoughts beyond the particular problem at hand—that is when we seem to be least productive.”

“Reflection is what makes most of us more efficient, not less, Pohjakallio said, “But we are given no time for reflections because it’s impossible to measure, and impossible to bill against. We are constantly fixated on the ends, not the means, and that holds us back. If we really knew what was valuable, many of us might easily be able to accomplish what needs to get accomplished not in ten or twelve hours a day but in four.” 

If you are hungry, even starved, for hearing about methodologies that function at human scale this book doesn't disappoint. In fact, it elevates the reader's potential to believe that improvements are possible. Shell refers to our current system as our nation's work disorder, and rightly partners with those who predict it will not be solved by technology, but by a change in the rules.

And it gets better: 

Chapter 12, Abolish Human Rentals. In this chapter Shell makes clear that the very basis of our interactions binding us to forces of commerce create in us a violation of what would otherwise be an equalized sense of duty to each other, collectively.

“Regarding ourselves as “human rentals” makes it more difficult for us to make meaning of our work, for the very reason that we are human and therefore subject to certain assumptions, including what social scientists call the “reciprocal obligation.” In employment context, the reciprocal obligation involves a psychological contract between employers and employees--the implication that each party will work together for mutual benefit. Employment at will essentially breaches this implicit contract: since it allows employees to be fired for almost any reason, or no reason at all,…”

In every subsequent passage and chapter the author never backs down from revealing every layer of sham contrivance made for the advantage of the employer. And then, in Chapter 14, Homo Faber, I came across an explanation I've wanted to hear for a seriously long time.

“For nearly a century, corporate social responsibility was subjugated to--and some argued legally trumped by--a fiduciary duty to make shareholders as much money as possible. This duty--later articulated by Milton Friedman--was first made law through the case of Dodge v. Ford Motor Company in 1919, in which Henry Ford was overturned in his effort to employ as many men as possible so as to spread prosperity (and presumably demand for his cars). Oddly the ruling also thwarted Ford’s efforts to lower the price of his cars, and to raise wages. The Michigan Supreme Court declared that Ford shareholders must take precedence over the needs of employees and even customers. Over time, through both law and custom, the concept of “shareholder primacy” became the default position for all publicly held companies.”

And in this last chapter as much as I could agree with the author, I still had questions I would have loved to invite her to answer. But to prevent this review from going on indefinitely, I'll leave you not only with a hearty recommendation to read it for yourself, but also one last necessary quote:

“Growing efficiencies was a fixation of the industrial age. It’s a fixation we can no longer afford. We must quell the GDP fetish, a metric that overvalues work of the sort that brings outsized profit to the few and underrates and even fails to measure what matters most--work of intrinsic value to those who do it and to those who need it done. …”

 Amen!