Effect on Nature of Jobs
As new technologies become standard in the workplace, many positions are tending towards higher skilled and more adaptive workers, while others require almost no previous knowledge, experience, or eagerness to learn. In services, data analysis, and engineering positions, for example, most workers clearly need to be technologically savvy, even the secretaries who might be required to use complicated accounting programs, email, and other communication devices. Even a worker on a modern production line might need to use several computers and other complication machinery just on his portion of the line. This job requires a great deal more flexibility in work patterns and tools than a similar job before the automated production line, where one or even several people might be assigned the job of just tightening bolts or just putting on the company decal. However, one also notices that technology can have the opposite effect as well, the de-skilling of jobs. Before the automated cash register became commonplace in stores, shopkeepers needed to have a good idea of where merchandise could be found, what it cost, and also possess some mathematical skills. Today with an electronic register and laser code reading, clerks need only swipe a product over a light and put it in a bag. Other de-skilled jobs include data entry, where oneÕs computer knowledge can consist of simply "enter the number, then push that button, enter another number, and so on".
Increased technological use also effects the mobility of workers in different areas and services. In the past, for example, an unskilled worker who started out sweeping floors in an automobile production plant would have a fair chance at moving up to the production line if he proved reliable and punctual. Once on the production line, several years of service might see him move up to management, where his knowledge and experience of the process would prove valuable in dealing with the workers and keeping the plant in order. It would even be conceivable for him to reach the top position in the plant. However, with todayÕs ever-increasing prevalence of technology in the workplace, experience in a low-level job provides little preparation for advancement. An office manager or secretary in a high-tech firm has very little chance of being promoted to management, and even less to engineering. The skills learned as a secretary are valuable primarily in that specific area, and do not apply well to the other areas of the company.
This stratification of the workforce perpetuates and worsens class divisions, where the skilled workers have no respect for the jobs performed by unskilled labor, and the unskilled workers have little hope of making the leap to a skilled job. This jump is difficult since they clearly do not possess that knowledge already, would probably need to go to school or a specialized training program to attain the current level of skills required, and because even as they train the skills learned are constantly outdated by the rapid rate of advancements. At least in the past, a bridge-builder would be impressed by the ability of a hardware store employee to go in the back room and pull out a bolt of the right length, material, and purpose without having to call national headquarters to figure out where in the hardware store the bolts were stored. The severe distinction between skilled and unskilled labor breaks down the existing relationships between people of different labor groups as the patterns of their lives change to incorporate the advancements being made professionally and personally, or the lack thereof. At the same time, it prevents such relationships from forming because the perceived difference between a skilled and unskilled worker transcends the workplace, promoting unfounded beliefs about oneÕs past, future, and family and personal life.
As the rate of technological development quickens, those who do not work with these advancements on a day-to-day basis can become detached from the modern industry and consumer demands and become far less useful to a company. A young employee at a bank or trading firm in the past could become increasingly useful and valuable to his company as he aged, since his knowledge would be cumulative over all that he had experienced, since the industry would probably not undergo drastic changes in even fifty years. Today, however, a 50-year-old manager of a computer firm would have started his career when punch cards were used to collect and store data and programs. For him to keep up with the astounding changes in the computer industry over the past 30 years would be a commendable achievement by itself, let alone running a company at the same time.
This "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, while very sensible in terms of overall productivity and increasing the technological aptitude of a company, threatens to break down the traditional chain of command that has been the backbone of not only businesses in America, but corporations and even families and communities all over the world, for thousands of years. The worker who began sweeping the floor of a plant, working his way up to the top over many years or decades, belongs there. He has been through it all, has learned to respect people, learn from them and understand them. He has learned to be loyal and reliable, and recognizes the rewards these qualities bring. By bringing in a supposed hot-shot engineer or computer scientist, often fresh out of school with little or no working experience under his belt, companies fall into the inversion trap of technology: those who may have some special quality or skill, but little else in the way of understanding and respecting others, are thrust into high positions of responsibility and have far too many people looking to them for advice they are unable to give.