RonPrice's Journal

Jan 2012
8:12 PM AEST

TIGHT CONTROL

As the third millennium entered and with it the 21^st century in 2001, the long economic boom of the 1990s came to an end. �By then I had just retired from my career as a teacher and a forty year working life. I was on a disability pension in Australia. In the decade, 2001-2011, there was an extension of the digital revolution of the 1990s.� At first that digital-computer revolution seemed that it would mark a definitive break with the manufacturing economy that had thrived in the United States and the West since the late-nineteenth century.
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With the pervasive use of IT, information technology, by: banks, insurance companies, hospitals, clinics, even warehouses and retail stores, the era of industrial mass production, it was at first assumed, would fade into the past. Also redundant, so went the argument, would be the blue-collar workers who had manned the old assembly lines. With 80 per cent of the workforce employed in post-industrial white-collar service industries by the turn of the 21^st century, economists assumed that there would no longer be any need for a large industrial proletariat with limited skills, passively taking orders from above.
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The findings of the three books mentioned below, along with much recent research, suggest that methods of production based on top-down standardization and tight control of work and workers are as influential in the digital economy as they were in the industrial economy. Drawing upon the virtually unlimited powers of computers to monitor the activities of employees and to use information, the old methods for blue-collar workers have simply been readapted for the white-collar workplace.-Ron Price with thanks to Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale UP, 2006; �John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School, 2000; and Barbara EhrenreichBait and Switch: The (Futile Pursuit of the American Dream, Owl Books, 2005.
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If you don’t like the tight control and top-down
ordering, if you don’t like your boss or the work
in the fast-lane, you can join millions of white-
and-blue-collar unemployed. Armed with your
r�sum� or not, in transition from one job to
another, if you can—trying to land middle-class,
any-class, job with some career coaching, perhaps
personality testing thrown-in,trawling a series of boot
camps, job fairs, and networking events, job-search
evangelical government ministries. You get an image
makeover, workto project thatwinning attitude, yet
getproselytized andscammed, lectured at again-and-
again-rejected—so the story goes. There are millions
who’ve done everything right. They got their college
degrees, developed marketable skills, and built-up
impressive bio-data, a curriculum-vitae. They have
become repeatedly vulnerable to a financial disaster,
& not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle.
�
Today’s ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding
their surplus employees---plunging them, for months
or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white or
blue-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes
a full-time job in itself, with few social supports for these
newly disposable workers, & little security for those who
are fortunate enough to have a job at all..goes the story!

Ron Price
24 December 2011
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Tags: job-hunting, personal, unemployment, workforce

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Gender / Age: Male, 79

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About Me: EMPLOYMENT-SOCIAL-ROLE POSITIONS: 1943-2012 2010-2012-Retired and on a pension in George Town, Tasmania 1999-2009-Writer & Author, Poet & Publisher, Editor & Researcher. Retired Teacher & Lecturer, Tutor & Adult Educator, Taxi-Driver & Ice-Cream Salesman, George Town Tasmania Australia 2002-2005-Program Presenter City Park Radio Launceston 1999-2004-Tutor &/or President George Town School for Seniors Inc 1988-1999 -Lecturer in General Studies & Human Services West Australian Department of Training 1986-1987 -Acting Lecturer in Management Studies & Co-ordinator of Further Education Unit at Hedland College in South Hedland WA 1982-1985 -Adult Educator Open College of Tafe Katherine NT 1981 -Maintenance Scheduler Renison Bell Zeehan Tasmania 1980-Unemployed due to illness and recovery 1979-Editor External Studies Unit Tasmanian CAE; Youth Worker Resource Centre Association; Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour Tasmanian CAE; Radio Journalist ABC---all in Launceston Tasmania 1976-1978 -Lecturer in Social Sciences & Humanities Ballarat CAE Ballarat, Victoria 1975 - Lecturer in Behavioural Studies Whitehorse Technical College, Box Hill Victoria 1974 -Senior Tutor in Education Studies Tasmanian CAE Launceston, Tasmania 1972-1973 -High School Teacher South Australian Education Department 1971-Primary School Teacher Whyalla South Australia ----------ABOVE THIS LINE AUSTRALIA AND BELOW THIS LINE CANADA-------------------------------------------------------------------- 1969-1971 Primary School Teacher Prince Edward County Board of Education Picton Ontario Canada 1969-Systems Analyst Bad Boy Co Ltd Toronto Ontario 1967-68 -Community Teacher Department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development Frobisher Bay NWT Canada 1959-67 -Summer jobs-1 to 4 months each- from grade 10 to end of university 1949-1967 - Attended 2 primary schools, 2 high schools and 2 universities in Canada: McMaster Uni-1963-1966, Windsor Teachers’ College-1966/7 1944-1963 -Childhood(1944-57) and adolescence(1957-63) in and around Hamilton Ontario 1943 to 1944-Conception in October 1943 to birth in July 1944 in Hamilton Ontario --------------------------BELOW THIS LINE-----------------------BIO-DATA----------------------- 2. SOME SOCIO-BIO-DATA TO 2011 I have been married twice for a total of 44 years. My second wife is a Tasmanian, aged 65. We’ve had one child: age 34. I have two step-children: ages: 46 and 41, three step-grandchildren, ages 18, 15 and 1, as well as one grandchild aged 3 months. All of the above applies in December 2011. I am 67, am a Canadian who moved to Australia in 1971 and have written several books--all available on the internet. I retired from full-time teaching in 1999, part-time teaching in 2003 and volunteer teaching/work in 2005 after 35 years in classrooms. In addition, I have been a member of the Baha’i Faith for 52 years. Bio-data: 6ft, 230 lbs, eyes-brown/hair-grey, Caucasian. My website is found at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/ You can also go to any search engine and type: Ron Price followed by any one of a number of words in addition to: poetry, forums, religion, literature, history, bipolar disorder, psychology, sociology, Baha’i, inter alia, to access my writing________________________

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