Hello and welcome. In the previous class, we discussed the relationship between society, people’s characteristics, social organization, and the effects of illness. We showed how this is inevitable and inherent to social relations and work-related issues.
In this class, we will talk more about some characteristics of the contemporary world and their effects on the way people relate to each other, especially people’s personal characteristics. We will point out some changes in “work” and some of the effects of this on the processes of subjectivization, that is, on what we are. The first aspect we’d like to point out is automation.
Contemporary work is greatly marked by automation processes. As we observe the robotization of industries with more or less autonomous machines, we have the perception that humans are becoming less required. It is important to observe that even though physical work is increasingly less required in industries, workers are still permanently required as intelligent beings mainly capable of solving problems.
If a problem occurs, from a mechanical perspective, it is necessary for a worker to be able to intervene, solve, predict, and anticipate possible future problems to guarantee that the process flows in the best possible way. In spite of automation, workers are still in demand from an intellectual perspective. There is a very strong characteristic today in the development and education of people.
Workers need to be more qualified. These forms of work are designated for a group of workers who had access to schools, which have been improving on the developments of science and work processes. But let’s not forget that not everyone will have access to this type of work and not all schools are being prepared to meet this demand.
Many workers will continue to have access to schools with fewer social, political, and economic investments. It is somewhat perverse, but these schools also have the function of training workers who will perform the tasks that are not of interest to many of those who have access to better schools. So, tasks that have a lower social, intellectual, and cognitive requirement will undoubtedly be assigned to those who have less access to schools that are more adequately prepared for more qualified forms of work.
This may explain in part why there isn't a more egalitarian investment in quality in all schools. Because it is understood, perversely, that perhaps not everyone needs access to the same functions at work, and maybe some characteristics of the school are enough to meet the demands of workers who don’t need to be as qualified as those with more training and cognitive development. One of the characteristics of contemporary workers, especially those who are more privileged in their current forms of work, is the fact that they are required more for their personal, intellectual, and emotional characteristics.
Not so much for physical strength, but for their knowledge, relationship skills, initiative, etc. Many technologies are developed to attract the more privileged and qualified workers and link them to the interests of companies. It is as if their dreams could be worked on because modern-day productive processes are transforming companies into much more than producers of goods.
They are producing dreams and desires as well. Nike is a typical example. Nike doesn’t just produce shoes; it produces a way of being.
It doesn't matter who produces the shoe, it doesn't even matter where the shoe is produced, what matters is that Nike is a brand that produces a desire to be something that people may want to be, like an athlete or a sportsman. This production is the most important for Nike, so it needs workers who are able to produce this type of desire for beautiful tennis shoes that generate interest and status. This is why there is a demand for this kind of worker, who can understand this social dynamic.
Audio-visual and marketing professionals, and other workers who no longer need to operate heavy machinery. Thinking about this kind of qualified professional, we can use the term and the idea of an “entrepreneur” as a reference that fits well into what we are describing. What do you expect from an entrepreneur?
What do you imagine when you think of an entrepreneur? I will list a few words that describe well how an entrepreneur is supposed to be; a dedicated, creative, resilient, determined, studious, committed, and strategic person that knows how to relate to the market. We expect entrepreneurs, who are business owners, to have several of these characteristics and skills.
But curiously, employed workers are also expected to be creative, resilient, determined, strategic, and employable So, curiously, the same characteristics expected from an entrepreneur are also expected from an employed worker. The difference is that employed workers don’t own the business and don’t have full autonomy. Contemporary workers are expected to have the qualities of an entrepreneur in order to be linked to jobs that require them to produce what is expected by being creative, innovative, and proactive problem-solvers.
In compensation, what do these workers need? They need to be recognized as someone who can contribute to the company. So, they want to be recognized financially, symbolically, and emotionally by the company, and they do this by growing within the company.
Contemporary workers are taught early on that they will not spend their entire careers in one company. More important than having a long life in the company is being able to reach the objectives that they consider to be fundamental to their careers. They learn early on that they need to have a career plan that is independent of the company they are participating in.
Thus, they end up being entrepreneurs of themselves, not in the sense of opening their own business, but rather of guaranteeing, in the name of “employability”, a bond as someone important to the market as a whole. As someone who has something special, someone capable of managing their own career, showcasing their abilities, and selling themselves in order to have some autonomy in relation to the market. This perception of autonomy is interesting because good employability requires objective planning and awareness of your actions.
But in the end, all you really do is become increasingly linked to the market itself. You take coaching, do career planning, therapy, and everything you can for a supposed autonomy in relation to the market, but you are increasingly anchored in what the market wants. Paradoxically, this makes your development not so autonomous but geared to offering more to companies.
In the name of liberty, you become more dependent on what companies need, and the more you do this, the more you permit companies to circulate workers and have less loyalty from them. So, today the market presupposes increasingly autonomous and individualistic people who build fewer collective ties. So, these entrepreneurs/workers end up serving the company itself and demanding from themselves that which the companies want.
Companies obviously need to manage this. They need to equalize this difference in people and have them work well. They have to convince people to be loyal to the company as it could be a stepping stone to getting to where they want to be.
But ultimately, it's like an informal agreement where one takes advantage of the other as much as possible without having a bond of responsibility for their future in the company, or what they collectively produce, and how each one is individually left to chance. This is why nowadays we have been losing social ties to unions, this sense of being a peer, a colleague, and sharing collective ideals. Although there is still a lot of solidarity, there is not necessarily an experience of community and union struggles.
And on the other hand, companies have been talking more and more about topics such as organizational citizenship, business ethics, and organizational commitment to try to seduce people and capture their personal investments in their own careers for that company. It’s as if they are trying to capture people’s personal investments for the company’s benefit, however, such articulations and characteristics of an entrepreneur are in fact a way for the company to not take responsibility for the future of the worker, who ends up breaking certain social ties of community, solidarity, and belonging, in a more individualistic search for success. This obviously impacts the development of these people, their social life, personal relationships, mental health, and the way they organize themselves socially, including their family lives.
If we understand this set of aspects of the world of work that require certain types of personal characteristics for certain groups of workers, which are different from others, we can see how this type of contemporary work produces certain types of illnesses. But obviously not only illness. It is very gratifying for many of these workers to perceive that they have much more autonomy now than they had in the past.
We cannot deny that there are benefits to this social, political, and professional movement. However, we also cannot deny that there are effects. How workers invest in their careers and cut social relations affects how they can get support to deal with the difficulties that the job market can produce.
In times of crisis, for example, mental suffering can be great not only due to lack of money but also due to a lack of perspective in life, to the extent that employability guarantees the meaning invested throughout one's career. So, the characteristic of who we are as workers, what is expected of us, the changes at work, and how we get sick, is what we need to understand, and this is what we will discuss a little better in the next classes. Good class for us all.
