Chippy
Peter Paterson
The Collapse of Work Clive Jenkins and Barrie Sherman (Eyre Methuen £7.50) Mr Clive Jenkins is mellowing. He has always been a great optimist, of course — how else can you survive as a trade union leader? — but the vision of the future is no longer apocalyptic. It doesn't even require us to change the political system particularly: we can muddle along indefinitely, providing we adopt some of the comforting nostrums that still sustain the Labour Left in its time of adversity. So; we can cope with the new micro-chip technology and the enormous unemployment which Mr Jenkins and his collaborator, Barrie Sherman, believe it will create by putting our faith in compulsory planning agreements, a social contract (perhaps on an international scale), higher public spending, and, above all, a very much shorter working week.
But first, the mellowing of Mr Jenkins. This book abounds with hints and insights which tell us much of Clive's progress. There is the hurtful criticism unfairly levelled at him from time to time of, well, high living. Do I detect a defensive note towards such charges when he and Barrie — a man of like tastes — observe of the complexities of class, status and attitudes in British society: 'Some people obviously have highly developed senses of social consciousness and justice, and demonstrate these in their work or spare time activities. Some have a highly developed sense of acquisitiveness and yet may still also be very socially aware'?
Then there is the old hostility towards the Common Market. It still has to be declaimed, but there is a tangible softening of attitude as Jenkins and Sherman realise that the EEC's supranational laws, with courts that can impose fines and even imprison malefactors for contempt are, in the context of dealing with high unemployment, 'features [that] take on an attractive appearance where they would otherwise appear repugnant'.
Clues for Clive-watchers apart, this is a serious attempt to sound the tocsin as the micro-processors begin their unstoppable march into our factories and offices. The authors take a careful look at the kinds of jobs most likely to be taken over by the silicon chip, and the industries which stand to benefit, or suffer, the most. If you are the kind of person who worries about the trade or profession you will put your sons and daughters into, this is the book to tell you what's safe and what isn't. But so rapid is the likely advance of the new technology, if they have reached their 0 Levels, you're probably too late already.
Almost every possible defence is examined, from out-and-out Luddism to the creation of hordes of workers' co-ops devoted to alternative technology. In the end, Clive and Barrie conclude that we have no option but to adopt the chip and all its works. Their figures suggest that if we ignore it, we shall have 5.5 million unemployed by the end of the century. If we embrace it, we shall have 5 million.
The latter course will at least produce sufficient wealth to enable us to handle this huge level of unemployment without relapsing into totalitarianism, so long as we plan, so long as we use North Sea oil revenues to pay for the new technology (with a little extra from the pension funds of the big insurance companies), so long as we give the unemployed the equivalent of average earnings to live on, and so long as we change our whole attitude towards work.
For a man as devoted to work as he is, Clive is remarkably cavalier about the work ethic. He seems to regard it as a comparatively recent phenomenon, dating back only to the industrial revolution. To prove that it is not an intrinsic element of man's nature, he points to the Kuwaitis, who apparently do no work at all. But, of course, they are rich enough from their oil to import all the labour they need. Nor are they Protestants.
The fact is, however, that most of us find it difficult to believe all these forecasts of the impact of the new technology: this book is more restrained than some other predictions, which push the possible unemployment figure over the next 15 or 20 years to as high as nine million.
But I suppose I started to believe it. when Clive and Barrie report that a plant employing only 24 people now makes nearly all the beer cans for the whole of Australia.
What, I suppose, surprises me most about The Collapse of Work is the degree to which it underplays the existence, and the psychology, of the trade union movement in all this. Surely this is one factor that most starkly distinguishes the imminent technological revolution, if revolution it is, from those of the past. In their belief in corrective, or ameliorating, action by governments, and the ability of international bodies to co-operate to the same end, Clive Jenkins and Barrie Sherman may be telling US more about the ingrained corporative instincts of British trade union leaders, than the innate bloody-mindedness of British trade union members. The disappearance of The Times, after all, suggests that the rank and file do not share Clive Jenkins 's optimism that it will all work out fine in the end.
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