No Collar

I'm ill. I haven't finished reading. I feel like rolling over to die.

1. Does it seem to anyone else that the corporate culture of such organizations is to give employees what they think they want in order to elicit more productivity and thus more profit?

2. For all the talk about sellouts by the fish, aren't they, in their own way, elitists? And, as noted by Ms. Snyder, they seem oblivious to the power hierarchies under which they are employed. How can they both rail against the traditional models without knowing exactly how those models are structured? Does this ignorance/naivete leave them susceptible to corporate structure changes that would/will move them closer to older models?

3. The cult metaphors seem strong, but there is this similarity in the sense that work becomes one's life. Fellow employees are "family" and the head of the family, the corporation itself, is entity worth sacrificing oneself for. Do the images and the rhetoric these workplaces exude "trick" people into thinking that they aren't part of the machine while sacrificing their lives to it? How is this any different to the cold war business environment in which loyalty to the company was the thing?

I will try to be in class tomorrow, but right now I feel wretched.

Katy

Questioning Unity

1. Where might Benner and Lucore place teachers' unions in all of this? Drawing from Dorothea's comments, I wonder if this field is too feminized to merit consideration.

2. I suspect that we could all curse Wal-Mart and like entities all day. My question is, at what growth point does a company become a target for unionization? Is it always necessary? Do employers have a right to control the work conditions within their own company (and set wages, etc.)?

3. In his brief list of professional associations, Benner left out the ALA (est. at the same time as the AMA). How do librarians fit into this idea of professional associations and guilds? Is the association path the best one? Might a guild be more useful? What does your association do for you?!?

I don't think this is the mobility Florida has in mind...

$17 an Hour Technology's Nomads

Slowdown Forces Many to Wander for Work
IT Unemployment Now Exceeds Overall Jobless Rate

By Greg SchneiderWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A01

YORK, Pa. -- David Packman knocks on the motel room door and his wife lets him in. His 9-year-old son is waiting with sneakers on, hoping for a trip outside after a day of sitting around. Packman's other son, 4, dances gleefully around the room. Dad's home from work.
This is no holiday getaway; this motel room, for the moment, is where the family lives. Packman, 34, is one month into a four-month contract fixing computers at a local company, and one day closer to the end of the line. It's Monday, and the $50 in Packman's pocket will have to cover food, laundry and incidentals for the coming week.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35193-2004Nov8.html

Questions for a Creative Class

Did anyone else have trouble with Blogger earlier today? Maybe I'm just not creative enough - just one more idiot drone laboring in the university sweatshop.

And by the way, I certainly hope that pox Dorothea is casting about isn't too contagious!

1. I really really was planning to 'play nice'; then I read this: "Employing millions of people merely to do rote work is a monstrous waste of human capabilities. Someday it may be seen to be as retrograde, both ethically and economically, as compelling humans to pick cotton on a plantation" (321). How do we feel about Prof. Florida's assertion that (paid) rote work is analagous to slavery?

2. Florida assumes that workers have mobility, that they are able to move to the region or city of their choice. Is this a valid assumption? How does this effect his analysis of cities' creative environments? Are certain workers (within the 'creative' groups) more mobile than others?

3. Towards the end of the book, in the small section "beyond nerdistan" on page 284, Florida quotes someone who quotes someone saying "Ask anyone where a downtown is and nobody can tell you. There's not much of a sense of place here...." Is this a problem of not drawing creative class people? Or is it just bad city planning?

4. In what ways does or doesn't Florida understand social services/welfare's role in society?

Did anyone else feel like they were reading a Tony Robbins publication?

I LOVE the idea of the 'whitey index'!!

Questions for Halloween

1. Brynjolfsson and Hitt claim that with the investment in computer and information technology, a "firm has a new system with lasting value" (55). But how lasting is that value? If hardware and software advancements continue, will prior investments retain their value?

2. Prasad discusses the phenomena in which "an informal norm had developed such that styaing with a company longer than four or five years begins to be seen as deviant, such an employee may be presumed to be stagnating, or to have reached a limit" (437). How might this effect corportate/work culture(s)? How might it effect the worker and the worker's family?

3. B & H's discussion of workers' resistance to change - Why might those in charge, those who institute change, fail to plan for such resistance? How can they avoid it? Are humans/workers simply stubborn when they resist change? Or are they, at some level, concerned about how the job might change? That the change could lead to no job? That they might need to be 're-educated'?

I forgot one...

In what way(s) does the idea of temp work foster hope? In what way(s) is this 'false' hope? What leads people to temp work and what do they hope to gain from it? How is this different from the worker identity that agencies construct in their marketing enterprises?

Temps Questions and Commentary

Another comparison to Orr: Rogers remarks that 'dress' and 'appearance' are important for good/high-end placement for clerical temps. How can we correlate the temps' experiences with dress and appearance to that of the xerox technicians? How does dress construct identity within these systems?

2. While on the subject of identity construction...How does naming serve to identify workers' status within these forms of employment? What does it mean to be a contract attorney vs. a temp worker? What are the implications?

3. The student of rhetoric asks, in what way do the means of discursive control outlined by Rogers exist or operate in all forms of employment? In what ways are these methods specific to THS? For those out there who have temped, can you throw some examples our way? And how can we compare the storytelling we see in Temps with that which we see in Talking About Machines?

HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers (MercuryNews.com)

In January, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, issued a report stating that workers who make computer components for IBM, Dell and HP in Mexico, China and Thailand are suffering ``atrocious conditions for extremely low pay.''

Read the whole article at: MercuryNews.com | 10/21/2004 | HP, IBM, Dell set `code' for treatment of workers

Pass the Prozac

What a depressing set of readings!

1. This question is for anyone who feels qualified to answer it (really, it isn't meant to be gender-determinate). How/why is it that complete devotion to the machine and its workings is seen by these undergrad male computer science majors as normal? At what point and in what type of environment does such a life (one that I would consider grossly unbalanced) become normalized?

2. Same article as above - This study was conducted in the late 90's. Does anyone know if there has been a follow up study? I guess my question is, do we know or do we think that the changes the university instituted helped alleviate the problem?

3. Tympas is critical of Light's focus on intellectual work, but Light does mention that the women are crawling around the machine looking for things that they need to fix/adjust/etc. To me, this did seem to indicate that she acknowledged the manual labor aspect of the job. I guess my point/question is, as much as manual labor seems to be gendered masculine, there are occupations that involve physical labor that are gendered female - occupations such as nursing. Is this because of the nature of the physical labor? Does this occur when the labor seems repetitive, boring, or odious for some other reason?

Questions about Talk and machines

1. Is Orr's treatment of talk and discourse and narrative undertheorized? He writes about the place of discourse and narrative, of storytelling, to these technicians, yet he ignores a lot of research on discursive practices and narratology. How might this effect his conclusions? How does it effect his treatment of the place of discourse in the work environment?

2. While it is clear that Orr refers back to Geertz's work, how does he envision his ethnographic processes within the context of these methodologies? How does he approach fieldnotes? What method of data (audio tape) transcription does he use? Why? While he is taking his fieldnotes, what interactions between his subjects does he miss? Why didn't he take post-field work interviews with the participants? What cognitive processes and/or thoughts did he miss because they weren't articulated?

3. "white-hatted wrench-slingers" (160). This notion of the technicians as rescuers reminded me of a great ethnographic study by Ann Dyson - Writing Superheroes - about early elementary students who construct themselves and their place in the classroom community by writing and acting out "stories" they write about superheroes (X-Men, Ninja Turtles, etc). The children, like these technicians, position themselves within their world in a way that often valorizes them.

I guess this isn't really a question as much as a comment. Or maybe it is part of a question. Does this indicate some sort of human need to be important within the context of one's life? Is it a way to find power in a world that renders us powerless? Are these workers able to demonstrate (at least to themselves) that they are more than just cogs in the corporate machine?

Temps

I know the Temps book comes later in the semester, but y'all might find this article at the washingtonpost.com interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22773-2004Oct10.html

One, Two, Three Questions

After commenting on student papers all weekend, I now have scrivener's palsy....

1. This is probably similar to earlier questions - In the Rosenhaft essay, it seems that attaining certain levels of literacy is necessary to attain these work positions, yet it is the production of literacy that constrains these men; in fact, it is what leads to Dies' job loss. Contrary to what many might assume, the attainment of literacy leads to oppressive work conditions, not advanced status. How might we apply this idea today?

2. Again, similar to other questions, but I am interested in the injuries and maladies that tend to arise from this sort of work (in Rosenhaft). While clearly in the Rosenhaft essay the workers are male, it seems that today many of these workers are female. And many of these maladies are seen as "phantom" illnesses. Many of the occupations/duties described by Rosenhaft are now considered feminized occupations; they entail drudge work. I'm wondering how (or if) gender figures into the credibility given to these injuries and illnesses, as well as the status accredited to these jobs.

3. This question is more a plea for help. Can someone (the author of the article in which the term is used, perhaps) explain the technological systems paradigm to me in more detail?

4. Access to information (in Rosenhaft) supposedly means that the worker will earn more, but it seems that the workers in question don't have the level of access to merit retaining them. They seem to have become machine parts that come in contact with the information and produce more information, yet aren't seen as a large threat to company security (it took Calenberg quite a bit of time to determine that Dies might be a threat, that he might spread his expertise to companies in other cities). I don't know where this is going, it is a point that keeps gnawing at me.

and I would like to discuss the "boundaries" issue, too.

Drat, Last Again!

It is a good thing I chose not to indulge in reading the latest Lemony Snicket novel, or this would have been even later.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to mention that not just once, but twice I fell asleep while reading Bell. While his prose is not quite as turgid as a certain historian of literacy who shall remain unnamed, it comes close.

1. Not a question so much as a statement (namely, ick!): "Whatever the extaordinary appeal of Marxism as a social appeal, it was in backward countries, not advanced capitalist countries, that Marxist movements have been most successful" (56). [italics are mine]

Bell fails to examine his own assumptions, those ideas and ideologies upon which his own worldview are based. Maybe this is my question: if we were to flesh out the assumptions on which Bell grounds this statement, would the argument hold up? How do his biases effect his conclusions and/or affect reaction to his conclusions.

2. "Not only is there a much greater degree of educational attainment, but there is also a greater degree of cultural homogeny" (143). What is Bell's basis for this correlation. Does greater "educational attainment" lead to "cultural homogeny," or are there other factors at play here? In a text full of references to information, he doesn't seem to consider the manner in which information (and entertainment) are disseminated and how this might also be a factor. Or does he?

3. As you probably noticed, I've been busy examining the assumptions behind Bell's argument. Here is another item that troubled me. "News is no longer reported but interpreted"(468). When had it ever been otherwise? While admittedly discussions of representation are perhaps more in vogue now than when Bell wrote his book, he has, I think, quoted enough dead Germans (and others) as well as referred to ethos, the representation of character, the idea of information/knowledge, to understand that all news, all information, is interpreted. Since he refers, at times, to Plato, shouldn't he be more consciously aware of the Forms?


I guess all of this (and other points of question that I didn't post) stem from this issue of assumptions and biases. What did or didn't Bell see, consider, "forecast, etc., because of assumptions he made based on his definitions, the methodologies he privileges (and I have heaps to say about this), etc?

"Committee blocks minimum wage increase" (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Saying an increase in the minimum wage would threaten small businesses and Wisconsin's fragile economic recovery, Republican legislators Thursday blocked Gov. Jim Doyle's plan to raise the $5.15-per-hour minimum wage to $6.50 over the next year.

Ideas on how this relates to "information labor"?

JS Online: Committee blocks minimum wage increase

More Questions...

Greetings fellow 810 laborers!

Or are we? This is my first question, one that applies not only to this text but to the course as a whole. How do we define labor and who do we name laborers? What is explicit and implicit in the use of these terms? How do those who call themselves laborers or see themselves part of a 'labor group' claim ownership of these terms and use them to exert agency?

ok, second question. pp. 243-244 and the gendered labor forces, education, etc. Historically, my area within English departments, that of composition studies, is seen as the feminized field. Teaching composition is more labor intensive than teaching literature and, earlier in the last century, these labor-intensive (and thus undesirable) jobs went to women and part time faculty(who were often women). I'm not sure where my little questionless ramble is going - perhaps that is because I wanted to read more about this point in the essay. Perhaps because of the essay's function as an end-of-the-book commentary it must be a briefly made point. I guess my question, if it is one, is that aside from instinctual knowledge and bits of knowledge about this topic accumulated from other areas, I am not entirely clear how it is functioning within info tech labor. Anyone care to clarify this for me?

And now I need a third question - Whatever shall it be....

Just what information technology labor 'is' appears to be somewhat nebulous (see pages 240-242). At what point does information technology labor merge with other forms of labor? and why or why doesn't this matter? Are we all laborers in an information economy?

ok, a fourth question - how are we defining revolution? What constitutes a revolution? And why does it matter if it is a 'revolution' or not?

I seem to be leaning towards the semantics of all of this tonight. Fear not, it won't always be this way.

Sorry this came out so late in the evening - I really would keep vampire hours if I thought I could get away with it.

Katy

"Fewer can afford college in state" (Captial Times)

With respect to our brief discussion of the "digital divide" film from Monday, comes this disturbing statistic reported in today's Capital Times:

A decade ago, 30 of every 100 people age 18 to 24 from minority ethnic groups were enrolled in college in Wisconsin; now only 16 of 100 are.

If college, and not tech skills, truly is the more reliable stepping stone to a "high tech career" (whatever that is), then we have cause to worry here in the Badger State.

The Capital Times

"High - Tech Market Has Lost 400, 000 Jobs" (NYT)

Interesting article today from the Associated Press in the NYT:

The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report.

Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs -- 206,300 -- were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied. [...]

The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies.

The New York Times > AP > Technology > High - Tech Market Has Lost 400, 000 Jobs:

A Brief Introduction

I'm taking a break from reading The Great Gatsby for the course I am TAing for this semester (that's for you, Dorothea!), so here is a brief intro. for those of you I haven't met yet. I am working on a double degree - a MA in LIS and a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric (part of the English Department). I think that at SLIS I am somewhere towards the end of the first year, and I am just starting my third year in Comp/Rhet. This might qualify as an act of academic masochism - I haven't completely decided yet.

As for my interests, I am interested in the ways in which rhetoric is employed by groups and individuals involved with the production of information, in who has (to borrow from Bordieu) "linguistic capital," in the structures of power.

As a compositionist, I am also interested in how information or writing is constructed/presented online. How do we read and write in this medium? How do we construct arguments in this medium? Etc.

I'm also interested in the ways in which literacies function in these work environments. In particular, I am interested in exploring how certain literacies are valued or devalued.

Well, I need to return to Gatsby. I will see everyone Sept. 13.

Katy

Ranks of Poverty and Uninsured Rose in 2003, Census Reports (NYT)

Latest "new economy" misery numbers from the government, as reported in today's NYT:

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. [...]

Approximately 35.8 million people lived below the poverty line in 2003, or about 12.5 percent of the population, according to the bureau. That was up from 34.5 million, or 12.1 percent in 2002. The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty. The Census Bureau's definition of poverty varies by the size of the household. For instance, the threshold for a family of four was $18,810, while for two people it was $12,015.

Nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance, or 15.6 percent of the population. That was up from 43.5 million in 2002, or 15.2 percent, but was a smaller increase than in the two previous years.

Meanwhile, the median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained basically flat last year at $43,318. Whites, blacks and Asians saw no noticeable change, but income fell 2.6 percent for Hispanics to $32,997. Whites had the highest income at $47,777.

The New York Times > AP > National > Ranks of Poverty and Uninsured Rose in 2003, Census Reports

Newberry Library labor history talks (Chicago)

This is a good seminar series, and while it's too far for me to drive to on a regular basis, thought I'd pass it on to any adventurous students.

The Newberry Library Seminar in Labor History

Co-Sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, and the Labor and Working Class History Association

Schedule 2004-2005
Fridays 3:00-5:00pm, The Newberry Library

October 15, 2004
Prostitution Blues: Black Women's Sex Work as a Musical Theme, 1920-1940
Cynthia Blair, University of Illinois at Chicago

November 12, 2004
Factories for Turning Out Criminals: Convict Labor, Torture, and the Invisible World of Prison Punishment in New York, 1860-1900
Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Loyola University Chicago

December 10, 2004
Sex and the Motor City: The Bachelor Culture of Detroit Auto Workers, 1920s-1930s
Steve Meyer, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

January 21, 2005
The World that Trade Built: International Worker Rights in a Globalizing World, 1959-1999
John French, Duke University

February 18, 2005
On a Wing and a Prayer: Organizing on the Airlines
Liesl Orenic, Dominican University

April 15, 2005
Big Labor's Golden Age?: Labor-Management Conflict and Class Politics in the 1950s Midwestern Heartland
David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University

May 13, 2005
Crossing Over: Mexican Labor and the Color Line in 1920s Chicago
Anne M. Martinez, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Scholl Center seminars present scholars' works-in-progress. All papers are pre-circulated. If you plan to attend, you may receive a paper by sending an e-mail message to scholl@newberry.org, or by calling 312.255.3524.

Young Workers Are Changing India (NYT)

In the debates over IT outsourcing that often involve Indian-based firms and workers (see below), it is important to take time to learn about the social processes at work in that nation and the diverse groups of people involved in their uneven geography of capitalism:

In a demographic bubble that is transforming Indian politics and society, 54 percent of India's one billion plus people are now under the age of 25. [...] They are a demographic behemoth but not a monolith. In interviews with 21 Indians under age 25 in modern high technology offices, derelict slums, rural villages and industrial cities across the country, young people expressed a clear split over how India could achieve greatness.

The division reflects the difficult mandate facing the new government, led by the Congress Party. As it pursues continuing growth and globalization, it must balance the rich and the poor, the old and the new.

It must reconcile the division between those who yearn for India's community-oriented quasi-socialist past and those who embrace the capitalist, Americanizing influences now present, between those who believe the profit motive fuels selfishness and greed, and those who believe it most efficiently allocates and expands resources.

Some young Indians are extravagantly successful, linked by technology to a globalizing world. More are poor, isolated from the rest of the world and frustrated by their exclusion from a narrow economic boom.

Read the full article at The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Young Workers Are Changing India

Financial Firms Hasten Their Move to Outsourcing (NYT)

According to an article in today's NYT: From 2003 to 2004, Deloitte Research found in a survey of 43 financial institutions in 7 countries, including 13 of the top 25 by market capitalization, financial institutions in North America and Europe increased jobs offshore to an average of 1,500 each from an average of 300. The Deloitte study said that about 80 percent of this went to India.

Why India? Said one analyst, "With its vast English-speaking, technically well-trained labor pool and its low-cost advantages, India is one of the few countries that can handle the level of offshoring that U.S. financial companies want to scale to."

One reason is the cost of living and wage differential between labor here and there: in 2003 the average M.B.A. working in the financial services industry in India, where the cost of living is about 30 percent less than in the United States, earned 14 percent of his American counterpart's wages. Information technology professionals earned 13 percent, while call center workers who provide customer support and telemarketing services earned 7 percent of their American counterparts' salaries.

But labor costs are not the only issue: Global financial institutions are moving work overseas to spread risks and to offer their customers service 24 hours a day.

What do you think? Read the whole article at: The New York Times > Business > World Business > Financial Firms Hasten Their Move to Outsourcing

Welcome

This is a course weblog for the Fall 2004 seminar on "information technology and information labor" held at the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies. Students will be invited to participate in posting to this weblog, and comments from the wider Blogger community are invited as well.