Future Of Labor Research Articles

Productivity, the humanization of work, and the future of labor: insights from industrial psychology in late socialist Yugoslavia and Romania

ABSTRACT Industrial psychology in socialist Yugoslavia and Romania is a relevant source for both labor history and the history of science/intellectual history. In this paper, we lay down the intellectual and institutional foundations of the discipline in the two contexts, including the envisaged roles for industrial psychologists working in factories and plans for expanding the profession. We argue that industrial psychologists defined the pursuit of labor productivity on the shopfloor as not just a matter of economic calculation, but also as a matter of workers’ self-realization. Their perspective on workers went beyond the measurement of their abilities and skills, taking into consideration personality features as well as inter-personal relations. In research conducted to support creativity and battle monotony at work, industrial psychologists also broadened the understanding of labor efficiency to encompass the pursuit of workers’ satisfaction. We show that research in industrial psychology was part of a broader drive to theorize work and the future of labor under socialism. Discussions of issues such as the scientific-technological revolution, the second industrial revolution, AI, cybernetization, automation, and narcomania, which we analyze in the final part of the paper, represent a rich source of Marxist intellectual reflection on the topic of labor in late socialist Eastern Europe.

The Introduction of Basic Income is a Pillar of a Socio-cultural Revolution

Abstract The article proposes to defend the basic income as a pillar of a socio-cultural revolution. This is done exclusively from a literature review and articulation of different works. The introduction section presents the characteristics of a basic income. Section 2 brings how it would mitigate current capitalism problems, which are: increasing inequality, lack of equality of opportunity, means tested social security and its bureaucracy, narrow definition of paid work and future of labor. On Section 3, the author does a literature review to address two common objections against basic income: the cost, and potential labor decrease. Section 4 presents the author argument on three pillars of the socio-cultural revolution: austerity, active citizenship, and solidarity. The article ends with a general conclusion.

The agrifood-migration nexus: migration regimes and the politics of labour shortages in Italy and Sweden

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 crisis has put the spotlight on the role of migrant workers as ‘essential’ for agrifood systems in Europe and elsewhere. The paper compares Italy and Sweden in terms of the interplay between labour shortages in agriculture and the policies facing migrant workers’ exploitation within their respective agrifood systems. Our cases show how labour shortages are politically constructed and have become a key issue in the possibility for migrants to integrate within the current corporate-environment food regime. There are clear indications that a shift in agriculture is reshaping migration policymaking; with important consequences for how labour migration is being redefined and the impact on the future of agrifood systems in Europe. We conclude that national migration policy responses are politically conditioned by the way governments use state mechanisms and regulation to implement decisions produced by ideological positions on the future of labour, agriculture and food supply at the national level.

Media Representations of Healthcare Robotics in Norway 2000-2020: A Topic Modeling Approach

Robots are projected to affect healthcare services in significant, but unpredictable, ways. Many believe robots will add value to future healthcare, but their arrival has triggered controversy. Debates revolve around how robotics will impact healthcare provision, their effects on the future of labor and caregiver–patient relationships, and ethical dilemmas associated with autonomous machines. This study investigates media representations of healthcare robotics in Norway over a twenty-year period, using a mixed-methods design. Media representations affect public opinion in multiple ways. By assembling and presenting information through stories, they not only set the agenda by broadcasting values, experiences, and expectations about new technologies, but also frame and prime specific understandings of issues. First, we employ an inductive text-mining approach known as “topic modeling,” a computational method for eliciting abstract semantic structures from large text corpora. Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, we implement a topic model of manifest content from 752 articles, published in Norwegian print media between 1.1.2000 and 2.10.2020, sampled from a comprehensive database for news media (Atekst, Retriever). We complement this computational lens with a more fine-grained, qualitative analysis of content in exemplary texts sampled from each topic. Here, we identify prominent “frames,” discursive cues for interpreting how various stakeholders talk about healthcare robotics as a contested domain of policy and practice in a comprehensive welfare state. We also highlight some benefits of this approach for analyzing media discourse and stakeholder perspectives on controversial technologies.

The Gig city: Tech-based revitalization and contingent labor across classes in Chattanooga, TN

In Chattanooga, TN, the construction of a fiber optic telecommunications network has led to a tech-based revitalization strategy, and the promotion of entrepreneurial and technical positions within the Downtown. Rather than being a solution for a better labor future, this paper demonstrates how revitalization has served to perpetuate contingent hiring practice across classes and sectors and create contingency in new ones. In focusing on the types of work valorized in public discourse (an educated yet contingent tech sector) and those that remain devalorized (the many ancillary sectors which support tech-based growth) this paper argues for the need for a policy agenda which takes varied labor forms and livelihood strategies into account. The experience of contingency is examined across classes to demonstrate how revitalization discourses and historical discourses perpetuate social disparities despite the connectedness of workers via workforce restructuring.

Blake's debt: Artisanship and the future of labor

AbstractTaking as prerequisite Peter Frase's argument that the labor markets and living conditions of the twenty‐first century will be primarily determined by the dual “specters of ecological catastrophe and automation,” this article investigates William Blake's poetic response to the problems of religious and financial debt within the context of his own environmentally compromised era. It briefly historicizes the financial components of Blake's printmaking before turning to an examination of his illuminated books, which imagine a form of debt relief grounded in a millenarian theory of political intervention. While Blake's investment in artisanal labor reveals an aversion to technological reproducibility, his cyclical notion of an artificially constructed ecological future models a technologically hybrid ontology useful for addressing Frase's nexus of environmental destruction and mechanized production.

How is workers’ education responding to the rising precariousness of work? Some international and South African examples

ABSTRACT Consistent with the large-scale re-emergence of precarious forms of work, in recent years literature on precarious workers and their working conditions has become one of the main strands in labour studies. However, the literature on the nexus between precarious workers and workers’ education is almost non-existent; and yet precarious work is probably the future of labour at least under global capitalism. In an attempt to fill the gap and make a contribution to the emerging literature on precarious workers and workers’ education, the article argues that the emerging workers’ education that has tended to be ignored by the literature on precarious work is beginning to respond to the fact that the workforce within South African borders has been fundamentally restructured by the current phase of capitalism. The decline of the trade union movement in South Africa in the 2000s meant that precarious workers have limited resources to advance their workers’ education agenda, but interestingly non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and advice centres are gradually fling the gap by engaging with precarious workers in education that is dialogical and emancipatory. There is a similar trend in other countries, where precarious workers are also defining their educational programmes to improve their working conditions.

БУДУЩЕЕ ТРУДА И ПСИХОЛОГИЯ ТЕХНИКИ

Relevance. The development of information society technologies becomes a crucial point in the transformation of human labour. Technogenic processes of automation, robotization and development of artificial intelligence models have an impact on the human labour. The future of labour becomes inseparably linked to an ever-increasing complexity and irreplaceability of technological tools. The need to single out a special field of psychology in order to study and predict the relationship between man and technology in the cultural-historical context of information society is on the agenda. Purpose. The study’s aim is to show the necessity to study the psychological mechanisms of interaction between man and technology in the information society. It is based on the analysis of the main predictive vectors of transformation of labour activity under the influence of high technologies. Method. The logic of the present research corresponds to the cultural-historical and activity semantic paradigm. To achieve these goals the author uses theoretical analysis, method of generalization, and mental modelling. Results. The study analyses possible solutions to the problems posed within modern humanities and associated with the technological replacement of a number of professional activities. Along with the traditional philosophy of technology and the developing sociology of technology, it suggests that the psychology of technology is singled out as an independent sphere of research. It could provide specialized psychological studies of the interaction between people and the technical tools they use. Conclusions. The development of information society technologies and their integration into the habitual, everyday life, the processes of replacing natural abilities and historically developed kinds of labour activity with technical tools imply a number of problems, especially those having to do with understanding the complexity of relations within the system “Man-Machine”. The answers may be found within the framework of psychology of technology, the task of which is to provide the basis for studying conditions of interaction between man and the surrounding technologies and “smart machines” that are hard to understand for a human being. Understanding their nature becomes increasingly unattainable. The discipline in question also aims at providing a psychological assessment of the impacts of technological progress on the possibilities of human self-realization.

New forms of employment and workers' health

Globalization and digitalization give rise to a complex of problems of economics, sociology, and occupational health. The prevalence of precarious employment (PE) is growing. In connection with the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis, employment and social well-being have become acute. The study aims to review literature and essays on PE as a problem of occupational health and a new social determinant of workers' health. The author has made the analysis of documents from WHO, ILO, European Union, etc., scientific literature and essays on the problem of PE and its impact on somatic (including reproductive) health, mental health, and workers' social well-being. The legal bases of labor and health protection are considered. The informal economy, the terminology of forms of PE, and the ILO Convention No. 175 on part-time work and the Convention No. 177 on home work and the Decent Work Initiative were analyzed. The characteristics and prevalence of PE, examples of forms of work organization, affected groups of the population, and sectors of the economy are considered. Vulnerable groups are women (especially pregnant women), young and elderly workers, migrants, and the most unfavorable situation is in construction, agriculture, catering, tourism, etc., and much better in the public sector. PE and its impact on health are an essential topic in social epidemiology, and affective health problems are almost as severe as unemployment. PE is often associated with poor working conditions, physically demanding work and an increased risk of accidents, with young workers more often affected. The lack of confidence in keeping a job negatively affects mental health - the odds ratio is over 1.5. PE is associated with impaired reproductive behavior and reproductive health and the birth of children with low body weight. The features of home work, its pros, and cons are given. An analysis of employment from the standpoint of occupational health revealed the relationship between forms of employment and indicators of health and quality of life and made it possible to complete some generalizations and formulate the principles of work and health. The future of labor, new occupations, knowledge, and skills are considered. In the United Nations Development Program, Goal 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth, is to achieve full employment and decent work for all by 2030. PE is becoming more frequent; therefore, further data collection and research into its effects among new groups of workers is necessary. Soon, the digitalization of the economy and society will cause a paradigm shift in occupational health: the future of occupational health is the prevention of occupational diseases and work-related disorders.

Labour, laziness and distribution: work imaginaries among the South African unemployed

AbstractA wealth of new writing has emerged around the future of labour, focusing on thinking beyond employment in imagining the futures of ‘surplus populations’ no longer needed by labour markets. These new imaginaries include radically expanded forms of redistribution, such as unconditional cash transfers or universal basic income. But what are the views of the ‘surplus populations’ themselves? This article uses ethnographic research in an informal settlement in South Africa to understand why the unemployed or precariously employed poor are themselves often reluctant to delink labour and income. In particular, we focus on the discursive use of ‘laziness’ by urban unemployed young men. The varied (and often contradictory) ways in which these men employ the laziness discourse sheds light on the logics linking waged work and money in our informants’ social imaginaries. It illuminates the underlying contradictions and complexities of such logics, including those of gender, relational obligations, expectations of citizenship, and the inevitable tensions between aspirational hopes and economic realities. To begin thinking ‘beyond the proper job’, to use Ferguson and Li's phrase, we must unravel and understand such nuanced logics that continue to bind together hard work, deservingness and cash – even for those left out of labour markets.

Ten Years of the Global Labour Journal: Reflecting on the Rise of the New Global Labour Studies

The article examines the origins of the Global Labour Journal (GLJ) and its goal of broadening labour studies. It shows how, over the past decade, the GLJ has recorded and analysed the forms of action and organisation that fall outside the traditional focus of labour studies. Through a range of careful case studies, the Journal has made an important contribution to the growing field of global labour studies. The two topics that have been the focus of most attention across all types of submissions have been: 1) precarious work and new forms of labour struggles; and 2) international trade unionism or transnational/global labour. The Journal has been successful in giving a platform to content from the Global South, but it is uneven and limited. Another major limitation is the failure to bridge the divide between the big questions raised in the Marx/Polanyi debates during the early phase of the Journal with the more concrete accounts of labour rediscovering its power on the periphery of labour movement. The article concludes by pointing towards possible options facing labour and the choices facing the GLJ.
 KEY WORDS: Global labour; global labour studies; precarious work; future of labour

The idea of the Biblical economics: Utopia or chance in the face of the contemporary transformations of the sphere of work

The future of labour appears as one of the crucial themes of the sociological and economic reflections. Sociologists and economists proclaim a shrinking scope of labour and, consequently, a certain elitism of jobs. In their opinion, professional work will be a privilege for those who are more skilled and better educated, and those who are able to face the challenges of the rapid technological progress. This will be causing an unknown future of the reality of both common unemployment and enforced idleness, and, consequently, a deep social transformation. Questions related to human labour from the very beginning are an important field of involvement for the ecumenical movement. Theologians and churchmen of different Christian confessions, while striving for unity, put the stress on the common reflection and activity in order to counteract poverty and unemployment. An example is a biblical economics developed in the ecumenical movement, an attempt to apply both some specific biblical economic ideas and biblical general model of economic relations to the contemporary economic systems, to make them more just and more ecological. This article presents the most important elements of the biblical economics and considers their relevance for the sphere of human labour in the perspective of the oncoming crisis. Research methods encompass analysis of the presentations developed within the World Council of Churches as well as some sociological diagnosis concerning professional and wage work.

Natacha Vas-Deyres Patrick Bergeron Patrick GuayC'était demain: anticiper la science-fiction en France et au Québec (1880-1950) [It Was Tomorrow: Anticipating Science Fiction in France and Québec, 1880-1950

657 BOOKS IN REVIEW sciences, Rhee’s exploration of the future of human labor produces valuable insights into the human epoch, refreshingly without ever pronouncing the word anthropos. Those engaged with feminist science and technology studies, Marxist feminism, labor history, contemporary art criticism, and posthumanism will find this book a useful one to peruse. Sf scholars interested in a genre history of robot stories will want to supplement Rhee’s book with other studies, which makes sense because Rhee does not frame the book as a genre history. Sf scholars should pick up this book to aid discussions of the human, the alien, and the future of labor at conferences, in seminar rooms, and across publications.—Brent Ryan Bellamy, Trent University New Scholarship on Early SF in France and Québec. Natacha Vas-Deyres, Patrick Bergeron, and Patrick Guay, eds. C’était demain: anticiper la sciencefiction en France et au Québec (1880-1950) [It Was Tomorrow: Anticipating Science Fiction in France and Québec, 1880-1950]. Bordeaux, France: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, Coll. EIDÔLON #123, 2018. 428 pp. €26 pbk. First, it might be helpful to have some historical context about this book. In the July 2015 issue of SFS, I reviewed and recommended a similar 2014 collection of critical articles on French and Québécois science fiction called Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) [The Hidden Gods of French and Francophone SF, 1950-2010]. It was edited by the same team of Vas-Deyres, Bergeron, and Guay (and two more scholars, Florence Plet-Nocolas and Danièle André), and it too was published by the same French university press in Bordeaux. I concluded my review with the following observation: Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) is a fine collection of stimulating and intelligent essays on modern French and Francophone science fiction. The quality of the scholarship is high; the price of the volume is low; and the material covered includes not only sf literature but also sf cinema, television, comics, and museum exhibits. I strongly recommend it for all university libraries. And I look forward to the publication of its sister volume, C’était demain: anticiper la science-fiction en France et au Québec (1890-1950), with much anticipation. (398) Much of what I said then about Les Dieux cachés can be said today about its “sister volume” C’était demain. Although the latter was published in 2018 rather than 2016 (as advertised), and although its title and supposed coverage has been expanded from 1890-1950 to 1880-1950 (despite the fact that some essays discuss texts from earlier in the nineteenth century), the quality of the scholarship in this chronological “prequel” does not disappoint. The book is divided into four major sections. Part I, “Initialiser la sciencefiction au Québec” [Initializing Science Fiction in Québec], is devoted to early sf in Francophone Canada, and the essays included are uniformly interesting. Sophie Beaulé analyzes a number of utopias and alternate histories published in Québec during the period 1916-1944. Renald Bérubé focuses on the well-known Québécois writer Yves Thériault and especially his short story “Angoisse-de- 658 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) Dieu” [Anguish of God, 1944]. Claude Janelle, compiler of the reference tome Le DALIAF (Dictionnaire des auteurs des littératures de l’imaginaire en Amérique française) [Dictionary of Authors of Literatures of the Imaginary in French America, 2013], speaks about the usefulness—and limitations—of this work when searching for the origins of Québécois sf. Jean Levasseur discusses an early apocalyptic poem La Fin du monde par un témoin oculaire [The End of the World by an Eyewitness] published in 1889 by Pierre-Paul Paradis of Chicoutimi. Part I concludes with an excellent synoptic essay by Jean-Louis Trudel (whose own Petit guide de la science-fiction au Québec [Little Guide of Science Fiction in Québec] was published in 2017), who describes Francophone sf in Québec during the period of 1916-1953 as an “essor avorté” [abortive burgeoning] that did...

The Predictions on the Future of Labour are not Grounded; Some Arguments for a Bayesian Approach

Expectations on predicting the future of work are not substantiated, and can only control some of the variables that define its character. The following variables could help to shape a Bayesian methodological framework of the future of labour and could interfere in modelling labour status: 1) The meaning of labour depends on the context of significance specific to each historical period; 2) The fate of labour is dependent on the ontological status of the utensil; 3) The status of labour is defined to a significant extent in the self-fulfilling / defeating prophecy horizon; 4) The normative perspective: the future of labour will be as we want it to be; but we cannot predict the evolution of our desires; 5) The present confirms to a small extent the expectations of the past; 6) Predictability in the field of labour is not protected by black swans: the evolution of artificial intelligence outlines the most important dimension of the extremistan; 7) If the decision belongs to the human, there will be at least some areas where human labour will be preferred; 8) The increase in the number of jobs and the decrease in their quality cannot be excluded; 9) the progress can also lead to the increase of the number of jobs; 10) The diminishing of social control over labour will persist. The arguments in favour of labour show that it will still exist; but we cannot be sure who and how it will be, or what status it will have.

Performing Labour’s (Non)Futures

Public performances carried out in support of the movement for a universal basic income—such as a massive ‘currency-dump’ of Swiss francs in a public square by a group of Swiss artists and activists, a series of ‘speculative advertisements’ by US artist Josh Kline, and a ‘robot march’ through the streets of Zurich—have tended to establish spectacular equivalencies between bodies and units of currency, and between bodies and machines, to demonstrate that the future of labour is marked by both economic abundance and unprecedented labor-substitutability. Historically, the concept has emerged from points across a wide political spectrum and the movement holds together a set of divergent political ideologies, which share the belief that the future might be simplified and secured by an economic floor. The universal basic income idea is, overall, profoundly performative, in that it attempts to model the ultimate pragmatism of wider social nets of generosity, and does so by representing the embodied conditions that might be brought into being by such generosity. In this way, the utopian heuristic of an unconditional, guaranteed income is said to be, in the words of Belgian political ethicist Philippe Van Parijs, an ‘instrument of freedom’ and a ‘device for economic sanity’. The question is though, as is often the case: freedom and sanity for whom? The movement, in reality, often falls short of its ‘universal’ aim. Nonetheless, its basic aspiration points to a potential transformation in the way social and political claims are made on the global monetary system.

Shades of Basic Income

The basic income concept, at a high level of generality, has generated increasing interest among scholars, policymakers, and members of the public around the world and across the political spectrum. In practice, however, the basic income label encompasses a variety of different proposals, with different underlying policy motivations, design features, and anticipated effects. The varied motivations reflect different political ideologies and policy priorities, as well as different expectations for the future of the economy and labor market demand. While many agree that basic income could be a useful solution, there is no consensus as to the problems basic income solves. In order to systematize the policy analysis of basic income, this Essay describes the different motivations underlying different proposals. We begin this inquiry with the starkly different possibilities for the future of labor presented at this conference.

The Economics of Artificial Intelligence

This paper develops a model of Artificial Intelligence technology as an object in order to form an assessment of the future of labour, the future of production, and the future of the distribution of income, as well as policy responses which may ensure the liberty of individuals to live such a life as they deem fulfilling. The nature of modern Artificial Intelligence technology incorporating Machine Learning is considered to develop a model of Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning as an object which may be placed within a model of the economic system as a whole. This is then done. We find that in principle, Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning will replace all routine human labour. We find, further, that in principle, Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning creates an economy subject to production technology with massive scaling capability. We find, finally, that Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning facilitates a winner-take-all dynamic in the distribution of income where income resembles “rents” rather than remuneration for labour expenditure. We find that the liberty of individuals to live such a life as they deem fulfilling may be maintained by education policy which promotes the learning of generalised rather than specialised knowledge.

‘The Corbyn Problem’ and the Future of Labour

‘The Corbyn Problem’ and the Future of Labour

The Corporate Human Development Index CHDI: a tool for corporate social sustainability management and reporting

Sustainable development is one of the dominant societal and political discourses around the world now, and the Human Development Index HDI has become an important issue of debate in many countries but so far there is a lack of perspective regarding the impact of the HDI issues on corporate management, and vice versa. The paper suggests a transparent, easy-to-communicate supplement to the existing, often complex and data-heavy corporate CSR management and reporting tools by borrowing from a macro level concept: the Human Development Index HDI.We derive the CHDI by projecting the criteria and categories of UNDP's HDI to the company level, using in addition the capital stock approach and the discourse on the future of labour. Its basic components are (1) longevity and industrial relations, (2) education, knowledge and skills, and (3) the standard of living and distributional justice.As a management tool, the CHDI focusses attention on the social and human capital of a company by monitoring main factors contributing to their slow erosion which is often recognised too late in day-to-day management.Integrating the CHDI into corporate management and target setting is this a contribution to risk management by extending stakeholder management to one key group, the corporate staff. Regarding reporting, the CHDI enhances transparency and credibility, is independent of size, sector and location of a company and can be used for social sustainability/human development rankings.

“A Sense of Possibility and a Belief in Collective Power”: A Labor Strategy Talk with Karen Nussbaum

Historian and former union organizer Lane Windham sits down with longtime labor activist and leader Karen Nussbaum to discuss the promises and challenges in today's worker's movement through the lens of Nussbaum's own life. In 1973, Nussbaum cofounded 9to5, a groundbreaking women office workers' group, and now directs Working America, a community-based AFL-CIO group for working people who do not have a union, founded in 2003. Windham paints Nussbaum as a foremother of contemporary “alt-labor,” labor groups like Working America that are not based in traditional collective bargaining. Nussbaum and her 9to5 cofounders rode the momentum of the women's movement in the 1970s just as workers' organizations today build from the immigration, sustainable food, and global justice movements. Highlights of the article include Nussbaum's motivations for founding Working America, her thoughts on labor's future, and a discussion of strategies necessary for a potent new workers' movement.