The free agent revolution is over
The authors reject the idea that there is a significant trend of more workers becoming self-employed, setting up micro-businesses, or becoming temporary or portfolio workers. Permanent jobs, whether part or full-time, are the norm. There is no revolution in the structure of employment, but there may be a revolution in the content of jobs: much modern work revolves around the labour intensive business of managing relationships – building contacts, selling, networking and teamworking.
Such messages, of course, are a far cry from the raft of predictions about the future of work that have been heard since the 1990s – and almost a flat contradiction. Across the developed world, management gurus, labour market pundits and social theorists came together to predict both the “end of work” – meaning “wage-based work” – and the rise of precarious forms of casual work. The “free agent” was replacing “organisation man” as “the archetype” of the American workplace, claimed Free Agent Nation, a book published in 2001. Indeed, the new messages about the future of work are so different that it is tempting to believe Working in the 21st Century may simply be a provocative one-off.
Freelancers have always fluctuated with economic trends. When there are more corporate jobs, people gravitate toward security. When there are more layoffs and unemployment, many people become freelancers or consultants to bide their time. Freelancing serves as a fluid labor pool. New IT tools just make it easier to freelance, but the basic underlying conditions -- the search for stable income and medical insurance -- remain two unchanging goals of most workers, especially those with families to support.
Posted by: Sheridan Tatsuno | 30 November 2005 at 04:08 AM