Work

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WORK

Work done by human beings is purposive action guided by intelligence; work that is repetitive or arduous is often called labor. Both purpose and intelligence may originate in persons other than those actually doing the work. Associated with the basic definition are many related usages including effort expended (also called toil); the result of that effort (a work of art); and one's job or employment, workplace, trade, occupation, or profession. In all these senses work is subject to technological modification, scientific and literary study, and ethical reflection.

Historical Background

In early civilized societies, the kind of work people did depended on their class: The elite had slaves do whatever they considered demeaning, notably if it involved unrewarded physical exertion. Certain religious attitudes perpetuated this devaluation. Some Buddhist and Christian monks, for instance, have associated physical inactivity with the highest spiritual states.

By contrast, in medieval Europe, a combination of prayer and work (ora et labora) came to be viewed as a more fully human expression of spirituality. Government despoliation of monasteries during the reformation reduced the feasibility of a life devoted primarily to prayer. But comparable lifestyles are still possible. These aside, the Industrial Revolution tied most workers' survivability to remunerative employment.

Throughout recorded history societies have adopted various attitudes and expectations regarding work. Knowledge of this history lends perspective to contemporary attitudes and expectations. Over time, though, vast technological changes have been made in the production, marketing, and distribution of goods and services, so that past arrangements may not pertain to contemporaneous circumstances. The young Karl Marx (1818–1883) thought history pointed toward an egalitarian society in which every worker would freely choose which activities to engage in. Hannah Arendt (1958) preferred instead a socially stratified society, as in ancient Athens, where a knowledgeable few engage in (political) action, while others work (produce something) or labor (exert themselves physically).

History aside, work-related matters are now routinely viewed in economic terms. In particular, all types of paid activity are identified as labor (skilled and unskilled), and labor costs are largely determined by supply and demand. The supply of labor is, in turn, increasingly a function of globalization; and labor is sought mostly for tasks that technology has not mastered. In this context, work is conceptualized as remunerative employment and is commodified.

Indeed, in the early twenty-first century most people associate work with earning a living and, for the career-oriented, enhancing social status. Frequently, though, personal career aspirations exceed what is attainable under the prevailing economic system—whence arise a number of ethical issues.

These ethical issues include the following: Is the character of work determined solely by the market? Who is obliged to work? Under what circumstances? Should remuneration provide a decent living for the worker (a living wage) and for the worker's family (a family wage)? Which if any institution(s) should provide and/or assure employment, humane working conditions, meaningful and satisfying work? Are those unable to find employment entitled to subsistence? The social effects of scientific and technological change increase the salience of these issues.

Established Ways to Think about Work

Practical approaches to such questions involve both ethical determinations and public policies. These, in turn, draw on research findings in such disciplines as history, economics, sociology, psychology, and jurisprudence, most of which have tended to reinforce socially favored attitudes toward work.

Work is now commonly treated as something bought and sold—typically, a service or product. Employers decide which services or products to offer or generate in a given locale and employ workers accordingly. Workers' remuneration is a function of their productivity in their economic environment. This productivity, in turn, is measured by subtracting overhead—that is, the expenses incurred by conducting a business on-site—from revenue received for services or products. Because a large part of overhead is labor costs, management strives to keep these to a competitive minimum, and may therefore resort to workforce downsizing, technological displacement, and/or workplace relocation. From these practices arise many ethical issues directed to fostering cross-cultural fairness in every aspect of the employment relationship, but especially those having to do with hiring, retention, remuneration, and working conditions. Also important, especially to employees, is finding in work both personal fulfillment and conformity with a socially promoted work ethic (Gini 2000).

A work ethic involves making work a key measure of personal success (Rose 1985, Beder 2000). Industrial-era capitalists fostered a work ethic to maintain a sufficient supply of willing workers. But workplace rationalization and globalization (see below) have rendered the work ethic an unreliable incentive. Some theorists nonetheless still call for meaningful work (Schwartz 1982, Byrne 1990) and a right to work. The latter expression sometimes signifies individualist opposition to unionization (Dickman 1987) and sometimes, gainful employment as such (Harvey 2004, Skopcol 1990). In either sense it is stymied by cost-cutting strategies that replace higher- with lower-paid workers and human beings with machines.

Since the Great Depression in the 1930s governments have assumed some responsibility for this problem by funding systems of unemployment compensation (UC): twenty-two countries had done so by 1949, and sixty-eight countries by 2004. Some scholars argue that any structurally unemployed person is entitled to subsistence income. But governments increasingly require a claimant for UC (as distinguished from generic welfare support) to have been employed and/or be actively seeking employment. Thus in the 1990s even Nordic countries, long noted for their generous UC programs, made these programs less accessible and their benefits less supportive.

Many factors enter into the amount of compensation a person receives for work done. These include the level of development and/or indebtedness of the economy within which one works, one's social and political affiliations, and one's gender, race, national origin, and so on. For example, work done by women is sometimes labeled differently from men's work to justify paying women less (Wright et al. 1987; Mohanty 2003). A society may also set ethical limits on the time a worker may devote to play (Byrne 1990). This pro-work mindset (manifested even in the career-oriented way parents view their children's preschool activities) seeks to maintain an abundance of available labor, now on a global scale.

Large corporations increasingly dominate worldwide employment without assuming responsibility for the negative consequences of their decisions regarding workforce size or location. Even in the face of automation (Byrne 1990) and globalization (Goudzwaard 1979), though, less socially disruptive strategies are possible. These are supported by calls for decent working conditions and a living wage (for example, the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, arts. 23 and 24; John Paul II, 1981). Such declarations, though, forestall few if any downsizing decisions. Moreover, the unemployed are often stigmatized and considered personally responsible for their situation even as governments dismantle programs that would mitigate the effects of unemployment (Beder 2000). These conflicting attitudes about work show that the ways in which work has been viewed are no longer adequate to the challenges now emerging.

Finding New Ways to Think about Work

The premodern fusion of work and life associated with primitives and studied by cultural anthropologists is now rare. The modern fusion of work and compensation is coming undone as the availability of jobs depends less on individual skills or dedication than on strategic workplace and/or workforce selections that contribute to profit maximization. In short, the industrial-age problem of worker displacement engendered by rationalization of process is now being compounded by globalization. So earlier analyses of work-related problems need to be reviewed through new lenses if a humane approach to work is to be restored.

Already in the eighteenth century some theorists began speculating about the future of work in view of the inroads of mechanization. Building on earlier utopian visions, some social planners proposed founding communes that would use technologies selectively (Manuel and Manuel 1979). But classical economists, including Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Ricardo (1772–1823), believed that an unfettered market would achieve "full employment equilibrium." As explained by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), for example, supply creates its own demand and this engenders full employment. This "law of markets," or Say's law, predicts that as laborsaving devices replace workers more products become available at prices more consumers can afford, thereby creating a need for additional workers. On this theory, unemployment is not structural (inevitable given system priorities) because a machine-challenged workforce will accept lower wages, which in turn diminishes the need for more expensive machinery (Gini 2000). The mature Marx predicted instead that capitalists' continued recourse to laborsaving devices would engender a great mass of marginalized and potentially insubordinate poor. Proving this prediction incorrect has been a priority for theorists and politicians ever since.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries laborers were assumed to have minimal intelligence, which Taylorization and Fordism sought to exploit. But such workplace strategies destroy job satisfaction, lowering productivity. So during much of the twentieth century social scientists were recruited to improve workplace human relations and quality of work life, in large part to forestall unionization. In this vein, industrialist Henry Ford once raised his workers' wages above then-current rates so his employees could afford to buy his automobiles. Still others, from John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) to Franklin D. Roosevelt, worried about what the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) called technological unemployment (Gini 2000, Goudzwaard 1979). Contemporary defenders of Say's law do not share these concerns. Their trickle-down economics, however, do not address the emerging phenomenon of companies "churning" a literally global workforce to cut costs. So this survey of work-related issues must, finally, take note of recent attempts to evaluate these new approaches to workforce dynamics.

The problem, in brief, is how to accommodate the tendency (a) of employers to pursue the least costly means of production and (b) of employees to seek the most advantageous compensation. In the age of discovery made possible by the development of reliable ships, employers combined on-site production with slave labor. In the industrial era, employers welcomed wage laborers to their fixed-site factories. Now in the age of computers and electronic telecommunications it is possible to locate supplies, employees, equipment, product, and vendors in whatever mix most favors a given business. Enslavement is now a violation of human rights under international law. It still occurs, however, and in other ways as well. Transnational corporations exploit Third World workers and will continue doing so until prohibited under international law (Moran 2002). They will do so because they gain monetary, trade, tax, and other advantages by locating facilities and employees so as to minimize total labor costs and maximize return on capital. Adding these strategies to automation, capitalist management strives to control workers, as did communist managers (Shaiken 1985). Control of the work process now depends, however, not just on routinizing a task but on where and by whom that task is most profitably carried out.

Most workers need to use tools, including highly complex machines that sometimes replace workers. Thus the availability of employment depends in part on what technology and operators are available. With this in mind, contemporary experts, like their forebears, debate whether introducing new technologies expands or contracts job opportunities (Aronowitz and DiFazio 1994, Bix 2000). In fact, it does both, either by requiring additional workers, as did the assembly line, or by rendering skills previously in demand obsolete, as has containerization and automated manufacturing processes, or both eliminating some jobs and creating others, as has the computer. The U.S. Department of Defense's funding of science and engineering since World War II has severely skewed educational and hiring priorities in many technical fields (Standler 2004). And computer-based network technology generally reduces complex layers of jobs to comparatively few, thereby rendering many employees superfluous. Some laid-off workers can be retrained for new jobs (hence the U.S. Workforce Investment Act of 1998). These jobs, however, are often temporary and/or part-time with no employer-provided benefits. In this context employers no longer stress company loyalty but promise their employees heightened skills for placement elsewhere. But those seeking reemployment may be deemed overqualified, in part because they are in a labor pool that includes many others, some no less skilled, in or from countries where compensation is substantially lower. Partly because of this migration of work unemployment is much lower in many developing countries, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, than in some developed countries, especially in Europe. This situation remains subject, however, to profit-maximizing strategies, which are ever under review. So however work is distributed around the world, it will enhance a globalized buyer's market that primarily benefits corporate executives and investors.

This noted, economic growth does tend to lower unemployment, albeit not precisely in accord with Okun's law (a 1% increase in the rate of economic growth lowers the unemployment rate by 0.3%). Lower unemployment, though, is not inconsistent with job obsolescence. Individuals with advanced degrees, especially in technical and business-related fields, do have better marketability than do those less or less appropriately educated. And it is true that in developed countries, especially in Europe, new jobs are being created mainly in the service sector. This sector, though, is itself being transformed by the same network technology that has reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing.

Workers' Rights in a Global Workplace

The global marketplace raises pressing ethical issues regarding workers' rights. But workers' rights are difficult to enforce in many countries. So business ethicists recommend codes of ethics that can be applied cross-culturally. These have tended to favor management, but public awareness of corporate executives' malfeasance and disproportionate compensation has generated support for tighter external regulation of business practices. The decades-old debate about corporate responsibility now takes into account stakeholder theories, which extend property rights to groups other than shareholders and management, such as plant-location cities, suppliers, and customers. But such theorizing is difficult to apply to structurally consolidated professional services, such as in health care, or to transnational combinations in industries such as finance, telecommunications, and retail groceries. Government and corporate leaders extol the resulting increases in productivity, even as they blame the unemployed for not having jobs (Beder 2000). Such politically motivated problem skimming, however, does not address people's growing sense that the globalized marketplace is limiting their employment opportunities.

Global employment strategies that are advantageous to an employer disadvantage some potential employees more than others. Protective tariffs may be imposed to safeguard jobs tied to goods not produced at competitive costs. But the availability of substantially cheaper labor in or from developing countries disfavors retention of higher-paid employees in developed countries. Thus by the year 2015 the U.S. electronics industry will have transferred some three million jobs to India, and possibly as many as that to China. Comparable moves are planned in Europe, even in non-English-speaking countries. Meanwhile, China now produces four times as many apples as the United States so that only growers in the state of Washington can still compete without tariff protections. And if U.S. tariffs on orange juice are abolished under a proposed free trade agreement, Brazil's product will capture the U.S. market and Florida orange growers will no longer hire Mexican migrant workers. Changes of this magnitude in job markets cannot be neutralized by extolling the rewards of adhering to a work ethic. A better response might be to somehow apply Marx's maxim: from each according to ability, to each according to need. This ideal, however, is not easily introduced into the corporation-dominated global economy.

Economists who study the effects of globalization disagree about their ultimate ramifications. Some retain the optimism of Say's law by arguing that the global economy as a whole improves whenever something is produced where it can be done efficiently and at a substantially lower cost than elsewhere. This thesis, which economists explain in terms of comparative advantage, needs to be modified to take into account both international monetary exchange rates and the losses incurred by displaced workers. Moreover, if the comparative advantage in question depends on exploiting workers (for example, in sweatshops) or engaging in illegal activities (such as laundering money), it is subject to additional ethical objections. To address such distortions of global fairness both the International Labour Organization and its parent body the United Nations (UN) have identified certain core labor standards with which all employers should comply. Subscribed to by many UN member nations, these standards favor workers' right to organize and condemn forced or compulsory labor, child labor, and discrimination in employment or occupation. Much debated is whether the inclusion of these core labor standards in trade agreements would mostly benefit Third World workers or First World corporations (Basu et al. 2003).

Work in the Future

In short, the ethical problems associated with a globalized and technologically challenged workforce involve not only economic but social and political considerations as well, especially because their solution requires moving beyond the modern tendency to base people's income eligibility almost exclusively on their work. This is rarely considered in the United States, where job responsibilities (such as being "on call 24/7") are blurring the line between work and leisure. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom programs are being developed precisely to achieve better "worklife balance." In some places, such as Alaska and Saudi Arabia, resource-based wealth has been distributed to all citizens, even those not participating directly in the generation of that wealth. Expanding such arrangements and devising others not dependent on the market is desirable (Offe and Heinze 1992) but unlikely so long as such traditional capitalist values as property rights and the work ethic remain dominant. For the foreseeable future, then, few besides the independently wealthy will be able to live decent lives without engaging in wage work. Where, then will this work be found?

This question is often answered by extending historical precedents into the future, namely, by viewing past transitions (from agricultural to industrial to service and to information sectors) as an evolutionary indication of another major employment sector to come. This may be so, but present data fail to reveal this new source of work in the world.

In the United States alone, some three-fourths of all workers deal with—create, collect, or use—information. The complexity of their involvement, and thus of their compensation over a lifetime, is partly a function of their education. But only 25 percent of the U.S. workforce have had four years of college, and only 5 percent have advanced degrees. The growth rate of researchers in the United States is a third less than the rate for all OECD countries. A fourth of the scientists in the United States are foreign-born, as are a third of doctorate-level scientists and engineers. Moreover, the United States has in recent years been attracting fewer foreign students to its technical programs. Indeed, it has been lowering annual ceilings for high-skilled (H-1b) visas even as the Japanese have greatly increased theirs. Meanwhile, more than 10 percent of all U.S. workers, mostly women, do not have regular full-time jobs. Given such indications of the present situation, what is needed is surely neither utopian nor anti-utopian scenarios but all the social inventiveness Americans can muster.

EDMUND F. BYRNE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arendt, Hannah. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Argues that the political sphere should address intellectual concerns, not the life-maintenance concerns of laborers.

Aronowitz, Stanley, and William DiFazio. (1994). The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Affirms that as technology diminishes job opportunities society must replace free market mythology with more egalitarian policies.

Basu, Kaushik, Henrik Horn, Lisa Román, and Judith Shapiro, et al., eds. (2003). International Labor Standards: History, Theory, and Policy Options. Oxford: Blackwell. Examines the history and economic implications of the controversial call for international labor standards.

Beder, Sharon. (2000). Selling the Work Ethic. Carlton North, Victoria, Australia: Scribe. Discusses the idea that the capitalist-fostered work ethic is both factually unfounded and detrimental to human well-being.

Bix, Sue. (2000). Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs? America's Debate over Technological Unemployment. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Diverse interested parties over three generations support technological advances, disagree about responsibility for structural unemployment.

Byrne, Edmund F. (1990). Work, Inc.: A Philosophical Inquiry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Asserts that defense of workers' rights requires community constraints on corporate hegemony.

Dickman, Howard. (1987). Industrial Democracy in America. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Claims organized labor is an unjustifiable hindrance to laissez-faire capitalism.

Gini, Al. (2000). My Job, My Self: Work and the Creation of the Modern Individual. New York: Routledge. Maintains that work is essential to maintenance of a human being's sense of self-worth.

Goudzwaard, Bob. (1979). Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society, trans. Josina Van Nuis Zylstra. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Argues that supportive economic theories notwithstanding, people's faith in progress is in crisis.

John Paul II, Pope. (1981). On Human Work: Encyclical "Laborem Exercens." Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference. Has value primarily as manifestation of the worker's intrinsic dignity and vocation.

Manuel, Frank E., and Fritzie P. Manuel. (1979). Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press. A comprehensive survey of utopian writings in the Western intellectual tradition.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (2003). Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press. Describes how diverse local cultures regarding gender are used to exploit women workers.

Moran, Theodore H. (2002). Beyond Sweatshops: Foreign Direct Investment and Globalization in Developing Countries. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Advocates more equitable distribution of foreign investment in developing countries.

Offe, Claus, and Rolf G. Heinze. (1992). Beyond Employment: Time, Work, and the Informal Economy, trans. Alan Braley. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Examines the emergence of an informal economy that replaces waged labor with non-monetary exchanges of services.

Rose, Michael. (1985). Re-working the Work Ethic. London: Batsford. Examines changes in workplace values and responsiveness to rewards and controls.

Schwartz, Adina. (1982). "Meaningful Work." Ethics 92(4): 634–646. Argues that a more democratic division of labor is better suited to enhancing individual autonomy.

Shaiken, Harley. (1985). Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer Age. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Affirms that workers should have more input into the planning, programming and control of computerized automation.

Skocpol, Theda. (1990). "Brother, Can You Spare a Job? Work and Welfare in the "United States." In The Nature of Work: Sociological Perspectives, ed. Kai Erikson and Steven Peter Vallas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Presents the idea that employment assurance, as recommended by New Deal planners, needs to be reconsidered now that the era of selective welfare is over.

Wright, Barbara Drygulski, et al., eds. (1987). Women, Work, and Technology: Transformations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Feminist responses to gender-biased accounts of women's involvement in workplace technologies.

INTERNET RESOURCES

Harvey, Philip (2004). The Right to Work and Basic Income Guarantees: Competitive or Complementary Goals? Available at http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/Files/Papers/2004Harvey.pdf. Assesses alternative ways proposed to redress the failure of economies to assure a decent standard of living.

Standler, Ronald B. (2004). "Funding of Basic Research in Physical Science in the USA." Available at http://www.rbs0.com/funding.pdf. Argues that science in the United States is too dependent on military funding priorities.

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics