Jeremy Rifkin

’s “The End Of Work” Essay, Research Paper

Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work”

Assignment #2

by

Sugumar Sivagnanam 233722 Sec. C

Dominic Lozada 228223 Sec. B

Mike McDonald Sec. C

Presented for

M.N. Kiggundu

Business 42.210

Individuals tend to develop a false sense of security concerning the

certainty of their jobs. After working for an organization for fifteen or more

years, it is difficult for them to understand that their employers may no longer

need their service. Jeremy Rifkin wrote The End of Work in order to warn people

about what he foresees may be happening to the global labour force because of a

rapid increase in the use of automation in the workplace. He identifies what he

believes are causes of the problems which we are currently facing within the

organizational structure along with some potential solutions. Rifkin’s ideas

may be relevant to most peoples lives including ours. The reactions of six

currently employed persons to Rifkin’s message will be included in this text.

These professionals include a technical manager, a convenience store owner, a

cashier for Marriot food services, a Residence-Life Staff Coordinator, a Part-

Time Credit Card Service Assistant and an Assembler for an Electrical Switch-

Gear Manufacturing Company.

Rifkin observes that the main problem of mass global employment in both

the private and public sectors is caused by the continuing advances in

technology and it’s impacts on organizations, it’s structure and design and it’s

direct effect on the global labour force. In particular, organizations are

using the concept of re-engineering and replacing human labour with labour

saving technologies. Rifkin gives us a better understanding of the development

of the cause of this problem by examining the three industrial revolutions. In

the first industrial revolution, Rifkin identifies steam power as the major tool

used by industrial and manufacturing sectors. In the second industrial

revolutions the electrical innovation effected the manufacturing, agricultural

and transport industries by further reducing the global labour force.

Unlike the past, two industrial revolutions where industrial

technologies replace the physical power of human labour, the third revolution

(The Information Age), at present, is contributing new computer based technology

which are involving into thinking machines. These thinking machines will evolve

to the extent that eventual the human mind will be replaced in all economic

activities. In particular, advancements in computer technology including

parallel processing and artificial intelligence (robots) are going to cause a

large number of white collar workers to be redundant in the near future.

Furthermore as a result of advancement in the information and telecommunications

technologies, organizations are using the concept of re-engineering to

restructure their organizations to make them more computer friendly. As a

direct result of this, training employees in multi-level skills, shortening and

simplifying production and distribution processes and streamlining

administration. One example of this is the global auto industry which is

reengineering it’s operation and investing in new labour displacing information

technology, related industries are doing the same, eliminating more and more

jobs in the process.

It is Rifkin’s belief that it is technology that is taking jobs away

from people. He includes many statistics concerning job loss, unemployment and

how much organizations are benefitting from all this, he states that “more than

75 percent of the labour force in most industrial nations engage in work that is

little more than simple repetitive tasks. Automated machinery, robots and

increasingly sophisticated computers can perform many if not most of these

jobs… in the years ahead more than 90 million jobs in a labour force of 124

million are potentially vulnerable to replacement by machines.” (Rifkin p.5).

He shows us that this global unemployment effects those who are in agriculture

industry, “nearly half the human beings on the planet still farm and land. Now,

however, new breakthroughs in the information and life sciences threaten to end

much of outdoor farming by the middle decades of the coming century.” (Rifkin

p.109). Just to show us how widespread this problem is, he includes information

concerning the downfall of those who work in the service industry “computers

that can understand speech, read script, and perform tasks previously carried

out by human beings foreshadow a new era in which service industries come

increasingly under the domain of automation.” (Rifkin p. 143).

Rifkin does, however have a few solutions to this dilemma. The first of

which demonstrates a 30-hour work week because “the information and

communication technology revo

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