Time for a brave, new world?

Work or employment have for centuries been the foundation-stones of society, providing the means for living and the opportunity for advancement. A perfect storm of factors may be about to change this permanently, in Western society at least as the work available to be done may no longer be valued sufficiently to sustain the majority of workers and the dependents.

These factors include neo-liberalism’s stranglehold on power; new technologies and the digitisation of jobs; and mass migration.

Neo-liberalism describes a political mindset particular to the powerful and wealthy who control the levers of power. These, the so-called 1%, have effectively used the media they control to persuade sufficient voters to support their “small State” doctrine, in which the markets which their organisations dominate are given free rein to decide the value and price of everything, with minimal control or regulation from government. Markets like low costs and high profits. Where labour is a significant cost element in the price of goods or services, its costs is reduced wherever possible. Jobs which demand high skills pay most but wherever possible these are kept to a minimum. So whilst in this country political leaders have decreed that more and more young people should go to university, fewer and fewer of the skilled graduates will be needed in work-places. How can this be achieved? Through the application of market forces – competition – and of the digitisation of functions previously thought to depend on human expertise. New technologies have enabled paradigm shifts already in how society goes about its business. Jobs which used to pay good, living wages have disappeared as new ways of doing things have been made possible, often without significant skills or large numbers of workers. Dock work was destroyed by containerisation of shipping decades ago. Coal-mining went in the face of alternative fuels. Secretaries are nowadays mere vanity items for the few instead of essential lubricants of business, as anyone can make arrangements, keep records and manage communications using a tiny hand-held device. Shops have disappeared as consumers buy online, leaving retail staff without jobs or with squeezed wages. Financial and medical advice has migrated from thousands of local experts to websites staffed by tiny numbers. Travel agents cling on to service technophobes whilst the majority can arrange travel, find the best accommodation and arrange currency for themselves, online. True, employment numbers have been upheld as new employments like call-centres and coffee-shops have grown; but these are low-paid, insecure and not career roles.

This trend shows no sign of slowing. What other, even more skilled historic functions may decline or disappear into the Internet? Teaching looks vulnerable to the ideologues of neo-liberalism as they week to remove standards and accreditation and encourage “any willing provider” to try their hand, turning the profession into a low-wage employment at best; or into an online endeavour for self-educating students. And what of drivers? Today there are millions of drivers of cars and trucks, buses and trains. How many of these will be left after the advent of the driverless vehicle? Uber has already demonstrated how the use of new technology can devalue the skills of the black-cab driver. It is not beyond imagination that Uber cars will become driverless, is it? And how many even higher-skilled jobs may be more accurately carried out, without human error, by robots? City trades can be automated and increasingly it is realised that humans are quite poor at betting, so maybe even the bonus-enriched may be replaced. Even film-acting may give way to CGI.

And why does mass migration matter, if the Right can slam the country’s doors shut? First, this is no passing event which will end when/if Syria is emptied. Climate change will perpetuate the drift northward of millions from Africa, the Middle East and subcontinent. Wire fences will not stop this. The influx of more and more workers, many highly skilled, desperate to earn a living and willing to work for lower wages, undoubtedly creates ever greater competition for those jobs which remain.  So there will be more people, fewer jobs and lower wages, for the foreseeable future.

Governments of the Right point to record high employment numbers and to how wrong the Luddites of history were in such warnings in the past, as evidence that these warnings are baseless. This time, though, they cannot point to high wages nor future opportunities beyond for a small minority of highly skilled researchers and developers of the next generations of non-employing enterprises. So how will they continue to persuade young people to indebt themselves to go to universities when at the end of their education there will be a graduate premium for only a few engaged in the most valued and creative fields of science, the Arts and, cherish the thought, good governance; but a lifelong struggle for subsistence for most? The inequalities already bemoaned in US and UK economies can surely only grow in these circumstances unless a new model for life and remuneration is found. Experiments with a Living Income – paid regardless of work status are worthy of attention. Just as Gordon Brown instigated Working Tax Credits to supplement low paid work, perhaps the State should simplify matters and just settle for everyone having leisure for life. No means testing; no transport to work requirement; no benefits system. Utopian – or inevitable?

Tom Serpell

Is less more for education?

"Less is more" is a quite useful rule in some fields, avoiding over-complication and delay. The current government, though, seems to believe that such an approach should apply to public services, with less money supposed to achieve wellbeing for a growing population. How may this apply to education under the upcoming Morgan [or is it Osborne] Education Bill?

Is less qualification of teachers likely to lead to more learning by pupils? Is less Local Authority oversight of admissions and provision likely to lead to more parent satisfaction with the places their children access, especially in rural areas with fewer options, far apart and poorly connected?  How will reducing public assets of land and buildings increase State provision? Will lower pay, poorer terms of employment and working conditions for teachers raise recruitment, retention and standards? How will fragmentation of commonalities such as curriculum or teacher training give more families comfort? Will less parent and community governance end up with more village Primary closures at the behest of Trust finance directors? Could it even be that removal of education from the budgets of Local Authorities  actually reduce their very viability?

The one certainty where less will mean more is that the loss of local accountability for education will mean more central bureaucracy, more Civil Servants at the failing DfE and more opportunities for private sector contractors to profit from Academy Trusts. Lack of evidence of competence or capacity to educate in either DfE nor Academy Trusts set up by Big Capital suggests a wholesale, arbitrary abandonment of a generation of children and a denial of the State's duty to educate all. Less indeed. Let us have no more of it.

Tom Serpell