When PSA posits a future of a different model for employment, and works to develop concepts that would make that future better through cloud learning, we are confronting yet another area of “disruption” and “innovation” that is changing our world. Change brings potential for good, and for bad, and tends to increase uncertainty and sometimes anxiety, as well as hope for “something better”.
Uber is not so much a labor-market innovation as the culmination of a generation-long trend. Even before the founding of the company in 2009, the United States economy was rapidly becoming an Uber economy writ large, with tens of millions of Americans involved in some form of freelancing, contracting, temping or outsourcing.
The decades-long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a “transformation that promises new efficiencies and greater flexibility for ‘employers’ and ‘employees’ alike, but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class America was built.”
A lot is at stake, but sometimes change is going to happen whether we desire it or not, and leadership is required for those who would help people “make the best of it”. PSA is not going to conduct extensive studies on the economic implications of cloud tools, beyond noting that it appears quite likely that for both education and healthcare, cloud tools offer potentials for much more efficient provision of those services.
Rather, we’ll research links to comprehensive reports on the American workforce, and post links to stories on same, such as below from NYTimes.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Growth-in-the-‘Gig-Economy’-Fuels-Work-Force-Anxieties-The-New-York-Times.pdf”]