CITA Home | Co-Chairs | Committee Membership | Previous Workshops and Grants |
Other Accomplishments | Links | Contact Us | UML Home
2005 CITA-Labor Extension Conference
Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Workplaces
October 27-28, 2005
October
27: Boott Mill,
October
28: Alumni Hall at UMass Lowell
Photo's from 2005 Conference
How are jobs and workplaces changing across the
economy? How are these changes playing out in specific sectors? How are
they affecting workers? What can we do to make our jobs and workplaces
more sustainable?
“Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Workplaces” will open Thursday evening October 27 with a keynote address by Larry Cohen, Executive, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America. Larry will focus on collective bargaining as a public good. We will then discuss how work in particular industries is being reorganized, without the benefit of worker input or collective bargaining.
“Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Workplaces” is
cosponsored by the Labor Extension Program and the Committee on
Industrial Theory and Assessment (CITA) at UMass Lowell. Research papers
will be available on this site a month before the conference.
What is a
sustainable job? What is a sustainable workplace?
New technologies are being introduced into our workplaces that monitor and track us, speed us up, de-skill the work, and make it easier to move work anywhere in the world. At the same time, work is being reorganized to combine jobs, intensify work, increase flexibility for management and decrease control for workers.
A job is sustainable if it is secure – and if it
offers security. Wages and benefits matter, but so do a reasonable pace
of work, proper staffing levels, reasonable schedules that allow time
for family and community, limited and voluntary overtime, skill
development and utilization, etc. If the experience we are seeing in the
industries we have studied so far is an indication, the changes in
technology and work organization are taking things in the wrong
direction.
Every day decisions are being made that impact the
sustainability of jobs, every day decisions are being made about
technology and work organization that workers have little or no input
into and that, even in unionized workplaces, are often outside the realm
of collective bargaining.
In particular, we will look inside the workplace
and the work process to examine two interlocking issues:
What are the trends in the
restructuring of work and the introduction of new technologies and how
are they affecting the quality of jobs and the possibilities of
collective voice?
What needs to be done to improve the outlook for sustainable jobs and how can all the parties contribute?
Click Here to View Call for Papers
CITA Home | Co-Chairs | Committee Membership | Previous Workshops and Grants |
Other Accomplishments | Links | Contact Us | UML Home| 2004 Activities