[asia-apec 503] (ICT-JOBS): SUMMARY OF THEME 1: ICT AND JOBS:

[Roberto Verzola]

I'd like to share with the asia-apec list some points raised in an
extended online discussion on the impact on labor of new information
and communications technologies (ICT). The debate shows how ICT will
play a major role in causing changes in the future workplace, which
supports my earlier suggestion to include ICT among the topics for the
People's Forum on APEC in Malaysia.

Obet Verzola
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THEME 1 - ICT - CREATOR OR DESTROYER OF JOBS
* * *
SUMMARY OF THE DISCUSSION

   1.  With important exceptions, most panellists agreed that ICT both
created and destroyed jobs and that the net, long term result tilted
toward its propensity to create work rather than to destroy it.
   2.  An attempt was made to set the creator/destroyer issue in the
theoretical frameworks developed by Schumpter and Kondratiev, which
predict that we should now be emerging from the job suppression stage to
enter the creation stage.  But the pace and pervasiveness of ICT resist
theoretical packaging.  In addition, the pace of change, and the rapid
obsolescence of products and skills could make new jobs risky, so
militating against job creation. 
   3.  Several panellists suggested that ICT's impact on employment
was not determined by technology itself but was the result of social and
organizational choices made by employers and national policy-makers. 
Where the labour-force was seen less as a cost to be minimized, and more
as a key competitive asset, the creative aspect of technology was likely
to come uppermost.  Corporate values, behaviour and *tradition*, and their
response to consumer and stakeholder pressure were also seen as important
determinants of *desirable or despicable outcomes*.  Theme 3, which looks
at the new business environment will address this issue in greater depth.
   4.  Panellists also suggested that arguments for and against
technology's impact on jobs were informed by whether evidence was sought
at the macro-level of the economy (eg. through jobs research or through
industry level accounts of labour shortage (which tended to be
optimistic)) or at the micro-level where anecdotal evidence highlighted
the highly differential impact that the high tech boom was having
regionally, or on particular categories of workers including women and
older workers.
   5.  Others felt that constituency, background and personal experience
could also colour attitudes towards ICT.  Based on experience, trade
unions, like the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU),
considered it the *job destroyer par excellence*: the *grim digital
reaper*.  Anecdotal evidence, even from computer-literate professionals
who have lost their jobs and cannot find others, also suggested that ICT
is destructive.  Panellists concerned with productivity, considered the
"elimination of non-productive jobs ... a good trend, generally", but
others felt that this was one reason why technology was feared as a job
destroyer.
   6.  Reality was more complex.  While some jobs based on traditional
work processes and skills were indeed falling victim to ICT, new products
and services were creating new jobs, and even labour shortages in some
sectors.  The brain drain among highly-skilled information workers in some
developing countries, and the selective immigration quotas of others, were
cited as manifestations of this trend.
   7.  Several panellists argued that, in the final analysis, all new work
methods and technological innovations enhance society and the economy to a
greater degree than they destroy.  Positive spin-offs of ICT include new
communications-related jobs; telemarketing which is being used to reach
beyond limited local markets (as in the case of Japanese strawberry
farmers and Ghanian microentrepreneurs); information on jobs and new types
of work which is being used to create new business ventures including
consultancy and business services; and teleworking which could facilitate
the decentralization of jobs, even off-shore.  The flexibility of location
and time offered by some of these new work options were creating fresh
opportunities, particularly for traditionally disadvantaged workers, such
as women, but were also throwing up new challenges such as growing
polarization (even between different groups of women), the erosion of
bargaining power, the need for lifelong learning and the problem of
measuring (and rewarding) intellectual capital in knowledge-based
companies.
   8.  While ICT offered substantial opportunities for informal sector
activities and significant livelihood options, these were not adequately
reflected in current approaches to jobs and work, or in their
institutional underpinnings.  The latter included job classification
systems, wage structures, career paths, industrial relations systems and
social security.  It was suggested that ICT offered an unique opportunity
to consider the future of work and to design the best approach to it. 
These issues will be picked up in Themes 2 and 3.
   9.  Many panellists felt that the real issues went beyond creation or
destruction of jobs to the kinds of jobs that were being created, to their
quality and to the ways in which the labour-force (and particularly those
segments of it that were dispossessed in the course of the transition from
old work systems to new ones) could be equipped and supported to benefit
from the change.
   10.  We were reminded that enormous numbers of workers, especially in
the developing countries were untouched by ICT and were, consequently,
severely neglected in policy-making at national and international levels. 
Better ways had to be found to understand and describe livelihood systems,
how technology impacted on them, and how public policy could more
intelligently help them.  This is an issue which should be picked up again
in Theme 4.
   11.  The existence of an international division of labour was implicit
in many interventions.  Because ICT made it possible to find the cheapest
sources of labour world-wide, developing country workers may profit from
the current movement of jobs, to the detriment of unskilled workers in the
developed world.  However, this did not apply to all developing countries,
some of which were marginalized by the global information economy.
   12.  We were warned that segments of information processing work
currently being carried out in off-shore sites like Manila and Bangalore
may disappear in the next stage of restructuring.  Furthermore, the
professional and technical brain drain from developing to developed
countries may outweigh the advantages of relocated employment and may even
have a negative effect on the former group's ability to take advantage,
on-shore, of the world-wide lack of cognitive skills.
   13.  Lack of skills and of basic infrastructure (such as electricity
and telephones) also hampered developing countries in making the fullest
use of ICT's potential as a tool for development.  This was an area for
state intervention.
   14.  Decentralization also affected regions or localities in the
developed countries. The problem of the lagging regions in leading
economies (LRLE) appeared to be caused by the use of ICT to (re)centralize
work processes and services to metropolitan headquarters to the detriment
of the local economy and of its skills base.  The consequent
out-migration, especially of young workers, with technological skills,
binds LRLEs into a vicious circle in which local labour shortages and
unemployment go hand in hand.  For LRLEs, as for developing countries, the
idea that 'getting the factors worked out right' will promote their
development into new Silicon Valleys may actually distort policy-making
and give rise to expectations which mask or exacerbate local conditions. 
This is an issue worth exploring in greater depth and it would be
interesting to know if other panellists know of similar cases.
   15.  One suggested response to this problem was to create a *bubble
development*, structurally isolated from surrounding economic, social and
institutional conditions.  Do other panellists have comments on the
feasibility of such a policy or its possibilities of success?
   16.  Political will and bureaucratic imagination also appeared to be
important preconditions for the redistribution of ICT-oriented employment
opportunities to peripheries, be they localities or countries.  Could the
Italian industrial district model, based on co-operation between disparate
groups which could include the corporate sector, trade unions, government
and academic institution be an alternative to bubble development which
incorporates both imagination and will?  Do panellists have views on this,
or alternative suggestions to put forward? 
   17.  The kinds of infrastructure and community development programmes
undertaken by peri-urban and rural communities in South Africa, with the
support and participation of the corporate sector, academic institutions
and NGO's seem very similar to industrial districts in structure and
functioning, if not in goals.  It would be interesting to know more about
their activities in building information-based local economies.  Are there
other experiences which panellists could share?
   18.  Education and training emerged as key preconditions for access to,
and survival in, the 'new' jobs.  However, some panellists appeared to
feel that, here too, traditional systems had to be reviewed and revised to
meet new needs.  It was suggested that the permanent innovation necessary
for competitive survival required a high level of 'permanent education'
wherein primary education is designed to create the basis of continuous
lifelong learning, flexibility and multi-skilling.  If such education
really becomes the precondition for access to jobs and work, the gap
between nations and between citizens within nations could widen
disastrously.
   19.  Even if education was a major tool in preserving jobs and helping
people to find (or create) new job opportunities, it has its limitations,
at least as far as the lower echelons of the existing workforce are
concerned.  It may be difficult to train the unemployed into new jobs
which require higher education, new skills and, most importantly, a
different mind-set.
   20.  It was suggested that children show greater facility in acquiring
computer-based skills than their parents and grandparents.  Does this
argue the gradual emergence of a two-tier labour force divided along age
lines?  Would the existence of such a divide, require dual, or parallel,
educational and training policies which focus primarily on the creation of
a computer-literate new generation while applying 'band-aid' policies to
the existing labour force?  Who would shape such policies?  And who would
pay for their implementation - government, employers, or individual
workers interested in up-grading their skills and knowledge?