Work Force In Jeremy Rifkin's passage entitled "Work: A blueprint for social harmony in a world without jobs", Rifkin believes that blue and collar workers will be cut out of the work force because they will be replaced by machines in new technological generation. Since the high-technology is being introduced into a wide variety of work situations, millions of blue and white-collar workers are forcing into temporary jobs and unemployment lines. Nobel-winning economist Wassily Leontief has warned that with the introduction of increasing sophisticated computers, "the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors." Obviously, the effect of the computer revolution and re-engineering of the workplace in manufacturing sector is more than elsewhere. In this article, management consultant Peter Drucker estimates that "employment in manufacturing is going to continue dropping to less than 12 percent of the U.S.
United States
Jeremy Rifkin, painted portrait DDC_4785
United Statesworkforce in the next decade." Although the workforce continues to decline, manufacturing productivity is soaring. Economists deemed that loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. because of foreign competition, cheap labor markets abroad, and automation.
In fact, most retail outlets have used electronic bar codes and scanners to increased the efficiency of cashier. Therefore, it absolutely reduced certain number of position. Many industry analysts are predicting that electronic home shopping will replace more and more of the large-sized retail market. However, it's not just blue-collar jobs that are eliminating. As a result of advances in automation, more and more white-collar and service work are taken over by machines. For examples, automatic teller machines replaced nearly 25 percent of banks in the U.S. by the year 2000; secretaries are declining gradually as computers,