Will you be left out of the new society?

Perhaps it started sometime in the ’50s and ’60s, but by 1970 Alvin Toffler in his "Future Shock" described the new global information society.

We are now experiencing this new society and like most major social changes, it will not always be pleasant. For some, it will be disastrous. If you want to reread your history books, the move from the agricultural society to the industrial society forced many workers from the land to crowded factories in population-impacted cities. Folks who felt they knew their "roots" and the rhythm of nature became strangers in big cities. And now again, we face change as we move from the industrial society to the post-industrial global information society.

Society needs ‘smart’ workers

The basic outline of this new system reads something like this: The information society is constantly changing. Economic organizations (what Toffler called "adhocracies") will succeed if they can continue to keep pace with this change. Those workers who can endure or enjoy rapid social and personal change all their lives will survive in this system. The information society needs "smart" workers who can learn, relearn and retrain all their lives. They also become independent brokers marketing tlieir talent throughout their entire life.

Toffler continued to describe this society in "The Third Wave" and "Power Shift," but the basic premise of his scenario remains the same. Each of us will become part of this global effort.

However, this system has a down side. What about those who cannot be "smart" mobile workers? What will happen to them?

In my area of the large global work force, the community college, our job is to meet students at their origin of potential and to encourage them to learn a skill or prepare them for the senior academic institutions. Outside agencies have given us high marks for our performance, but even we will admit there are some we cannot reach.

In the past, many of these individuals would have been absorbed into the factory system. Jobs were hard and monotonous, but the pay, hospital benefits and pensions made these jobs attractive. Now these jobs are for the most part leaving the country. In Newsweek last December, Marc Levin reported that during the ’80s, 25 percent of the job base was lost to robotics and over-seas jobs. How long do you think it will take to get some of the manufacturing jobs back? Do you think that when large organizations have the choice of low-wage workers in other countries, that they will stay in this country?

Nation in February noted that even a small southern town with low wages and non-union workers lost jobs to workers in Mexico.

To further complicate matters, U.S. News and World Report indicates the United States has moved from 1960 as a manufacturing society to the 1990s as a service economy. On balance, service jobs pay less.

Further. Time magazine in March indicated that future jobs on the whole will be part-time and the major employer in the United States is Manpower Inc., the temporary help corporation employing part-time workers. It is even bigger than General Motors. In the same issue, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is quoted as sadly saying. "Nobody is safe." The majority of new jobs are temporary, not permanent. Newsweek reported on a survey that asked workers if they had a full-time job last year and then again this year. Their "unemployment rate" was 20 percent.

Americans now have seven or eight different jobs in their lifetime, and they move at least 15 times on average. The global information society may accelerate those statistics.

Adult children returning home

In the end, very small families that can travel lightly and make room for returning adult children who are unemployed, will probably be the survivors in this new society. Families with two children may be thought to be "big" families. The luxury of living in one home a good part of one’s life will probably pass away from the American experience for many people.

It would appear a number of people will be left out of this new society. What will happen to them? Do you really think they can be absorbed in some part of the private sector? The next column will deal with this and other compelling issues.

Joel Snell of Cedar Rapids is professor of social science at Kirkwood Community College.

Published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette: Thursday, June 30, 1993