For most people, the work that they do is a strongly defining identity. In their minds, their work is a validation of their existence. This thinking is reinforced when people are viewed through the prism of consumerism. This view reduces people into objects and separates them according to their ability to buy. Not only that, it induces people to start viewing themselves as objects. This has several consequences.
One is that people are treated like any other input in the economic calculations of managers. In this environment, profit considerations become paramount and social aspects of work are downplayed and steadily ignored. Thus companies have no hesitation in relocating factories regardless of the impact on the local workforce. Second is that automation becomes easier to justify and implement. People and machines can be treated as being interchangeable. Thus over time the nature of the work changes. A third consequence is that since the job that a person does helps to a large extent to define his identity, when that job disappears, the affected person is left groping in the dark without any guiding light. Society too defines a person's worth on his ability to buy things and this ability is severely hampered by the loss of a job. A fourth and consequent effect is that people are rendered passive in the face of what seem to be overwhelming changes. Most people expect to work in a company and to a very large extent, we are conditioned to this expectation by the strong focus on job growth figures.
These consequences affect all types of work regardless of whether it is blue collar or white collar, labor or managerial, manual or knowledge based. How these consequences are playing out and what can be the form of work in the future will be explored in subsequent posts.
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