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NEW WAY OF WORK
I find it difficult to equate readily with the apparent desperate plight in which many people seem to think they are in this general matter of what they call “the economy”.
The vast majority seem to feel themselves to be underpaid. Now, during Election Time, they blame it on whomever happens to be President. The point which always comes through clean and clear to me is that, in the vast majority of cases which are detailed in all their misery for me to read and to sympathize with, I suppose, are actually getting at least twice as much per pay period than I ever received. Time-after-time, their minimum per week pay is more than I was paid per month.
You can say: “Well, these are different times!” The two eras are not that different.
In terms of specific salary amounts, you'll have to admit that the man who makes eleven dollars an hour as a security guard in not too put upon; or what about the case of the young girl, getting a bit less per hour, who finds it woefully difficult to keep up with her debts which, after have made every budgetary cut she can possibly be expected to make, includes her being four months in arrears in an 8-thousand dollar credit card debt accumulation. There are both union workers, by the way, so that knocks that handy and over-used argument in the head. The guard has not had a raise in three years but no one says he deserves one, either. The girl needs some financial guidance at the most elementary level, it would appear .
To see such cases touted in our media as being the fault of our President is disgraceful and disquieting.
Occasionally we see genuine humor in an advertising ploy. One, which I understand is being prepared at the agency level at this moment, consists of providing the celebrated “Maytag Serviceman” with a helper. The somewhat unique plight of this under-worked technician is that he finds himself ministering unto a product line which never fails and does not require such repair services. He has a job doing nothing which is chronicled on the TV spot series by “Maytag.” I like the series and it is very interesting to hear that the agency handling the production of those TV spots is, at the present time, adding an apprentice. The serviceman will now undertake to to train an apprentice to take over his job. “Maytag” has touched on a sensitive nerve in our national system with this do-less worker being given a helper... someone to take over such duties as he has had all these years.
No doubt the idea came from the furor created by Donald Trump's noisy entrance into TV programming last year. Teaching someone else how to do nothing well is quite a challenge. I sorry I do not, know the real names of the two actors who have filled the role thus far - the original who was a minor film star of yesterday, I'm sure, and the relatively new one who has been doing the job well. They deserve praise and recognition for depicting a character who is all too common among us. It is made to seem comical in the commercial application, but, in real life non-working job holder are far from being funny.
In the labor field we have too many titles left over from a previous economic era. Such established “slots”are filled rather than staffed. The nature of the work to be done has changed radically over the past decade or so. The very nature of jobs now being done have mutated with the computerized regeneration of the business and commercial world. Old standard of what a person's “worth”on the labor market might be are totally skewed and, in many cases, unresolved as the very nature of the work to be done is changing.
Our educational system, unfortunately, has not kept pace with technical change. We have been training young people for work which no longer exists. We are rapidly learning the value of replacing anew rather than repairing, patching, re-painting or laminating concepts, ideas and basis principles. The nature of work changes. The work ethic remains constant.
A.L.M. July 17, 2004 [c713wds]
