Computer Chips and Paper Clips Technology and Women's Employment, Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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5. Conclusions and Recommendations
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 167-182
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From page 167... ...
Overall, the total number of jobs held by clerical workers has not declined, but the rate of clerical employment growth has slowed relative to the growth of total employment. There have been both increases and declines in employment linked to the introduction of new technologies in a number of specific occupations.
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From page 168... ...
Since there is some uncertainty about our expectation of continued moderate change, however, the panel also offers policy suggestions that should come into play if the future employment situation develops in a way that more severely affects clerical workers than is now expected. The new technologies have the potential to alter job quality as well as job quantity.
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From page 169... ...
in addition to women workers' special needs that stem from their present disadvantaged position. Overall, most consumers, employers, and workers benefit from technological change through lower prices, new products, higher profits, and higher wages based on productivity increases; some workers and firms, however, are losers in the process.
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From page 170... ...
The recommendations are organized by eight subjects: education, training, and retraining; employment security and flexibility; expansion of women's job opportunities; adaptive job transitions; identification and dissemination of good technological design and practice; worker participation; monitoring health concerns; and data and research needs. Each of the sections begins with a statement of the panel's major conclusions.
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From page 171... ...
Because of women's customarily greater dependent care duties, however, they may need additional help to manage dependent care when education or training takes place outside normal working hours or locations. (Men who are responsible for dependent care, of course, have the same needs.)
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From page 172... ...
and private organizations collect and evaluate data on the availability and quality of training and retraining programs with special reference to women. They should also fund demonstration projects examining the usefulness of such programs, disseminate information about successful models, and, when appropriate, provide continued funding for high-quality training and retraining programs.
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From page 173... ...
The panel recommends that: · employers seek to maintain continued employment of individual workers in the face of change, even if it is not possible to guarantee continuity in their specific jobs; · employers monitor the application of new technologies, the resulting potential job changes, and respond, to the extent possible, with policies (for example, job rotation, retraining, and assistance with geographic relocation) that provide secure employment for individual workers; · unions and other worker organizations encourage worker flexibility in return for employment security and explore new membership forms that do not hinder such flexibility (for example, seniority benefits that are not negatively affected by the loss of a specific job, job change, or even employer change)
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From page 174... ...
While in the past women's concentration in clerical jobs has worked to their advantage in terms of employment growth, in the future it can be expected to work to their disadvantage. On the supply side, the rate of increase in the supply of women workers to the labor market will also slow.
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From page 175... ...
ADAPTIVE JOB TRANSITIONS Technological change can contribute to unemployment in several ways. A1though our best guess is that massive unemployment problems resulting from technological change will not occur over the next 10 years, some job loss in specific categories, leading to some transitional unemployment, will occur.
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From page 176... ...
In modifying existing programs to meet the needs oftechnologically unemployed workers, or in developing new ones, there is a need for awareness of several issues that particularly affect women. Additional financial aid may be required for retraining and transition when the only household wage earner is a female with limited financial resources and substantial family responsibilities; dependent care is likely to be an impoItant need.
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From page 177... ...
The panel recommends that: · public and private organizations systematically assess current practices in the introduction of technologies and broadly disseminate their findings; · employers, manufacturers, and designers, and their representative organizations, as well as women's organizations, unions, and educational institutions, take an active role in identifying applications that work better than others and disseminating information about them; · designers and manufacturers of equipment and employers and workers who use it share their knowledge and experiences so as to facilitate the creation of sound ergonomic standards and practices;
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From page 178... ...
Although evidence is somewhat limited for the specific case of clerical workers and computer-based technologies, studies elsewhere of worker participation in the design and application of new equipment suggest that such participation can lead to substantial productivity improvements as well as to workers who are more satisfied because they have had a role in determining the direction of change. Women may be disadvantaged in their ability to participate because of their generally lesser technical background, lower-level positions, and lack of worker organizations, but they are well qualified to participate because of their first-hand knowledge of actual practice.
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From page 179... ...
These effects can be largely eliminated by the proper application of current knowledge about sound ergonomic design, the use of appropriate furniture and lighting, and job design that includes variety and challenge. Despite good overall practices, some individual workers will experience clinical problems related to eye or body fatigue; these individual responses should be respected, and prudent employers should seek solutions to specific problems.
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From page 180... ...
It might even be possible to develop a periodic survey instrument that tracks technological changes in firms and relates them to the employment characteristics of workers in the affected firms. Data on such worker characteristics as sex, race, ethnicity, and age should be collected because of likely differential effects.
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From page 181... ...
, to improve the ability to generalize about the effects of technological change; · systematic research about the effects of technological change on the quality of work life and other human consequences of alternative applications of technology. Such studies should also examine the effects of alternative implementation approaches on productivity gains and the effects of worker participation in decision making; a comparative perspective would be especially useful for this subject.
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From page 182... ...
The panel believes that its recommendations provide a means of dealing effectively with the particular opportunities and problems that technological change poses for women workers. In its examination of the context in which technological change takes place and in which women work, this report may also suggest a broader consideration of economic and women's issues.
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