Passage 40

Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is toblame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay.This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the availabble employment more widely.

But we need to go further.We must ask some fundamental questions

about the future of work.Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self — respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work?

The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs.The industrial age may now be coming to an end, some of thechanges in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed.This seems a daunting thought.But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work.Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.

Emplloyment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependemt on paid work by depriving them of the use of land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves.Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes.Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment umtil, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage.In pre- industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community.Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife.Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles

between the sexes.

It was not only women whose work status suffered.As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded———a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.

All this may now have to change.The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to urgent practical task of helpingmany people to manage without full—time jobs.

  1. Research carried out in the recent opinion polls shows that

.

  1. available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population

  2. new jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures

  3. available employment must be more widely distributed among the unemployed

  4. the present high employment figures are a fact of life

  1. The arrival of the industrial age in our historical evolution meant

    that .

    1. universal employment virtually guaranteed prosperity B)economic

      freedom came with everyone's grasp

  1. patterns of work were fundamentally changed

  2. to survive, everyone had to find a job

  1. As a result of the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries

.

  1. people were no longer legally entitled to own land

  2. people were forced to look elsewhere for means of supporting themselves

  3. people were not adequately compensated for the loss of their land

  4. people were badly paid for the work they managed to find 4.The

    effects of almost universal employment were overwhelming in

that .

  1. the household and village community disappeared completely

  2. men now travelled enormous distances to their places of work

  3. young and old people became superfluous components of society

  4. the work status of those not in paid employment suffered 5.The

    article concludes that .

  1. the creation of jobs for all is an impossibility

  2. our efforts and resources in terms of tackling unemployment are

    insufficient

  3. people should start to support themselves by learning a practical

    skill

  4. we should help those whose jobs are only part—time