Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Comment from main page, 10 April 2007

No argument with anything anyone has posted. These comments are very helpful.

The book by Ross cited in the Silicon Alley article, No collar, is a text we read in the first iteration of the class, and I recommend it highly. The beginnings of employee organization and traditional labor consciousness are discussed in Ross's ch. 7, "Optimize me." The key issue is that while Internet companies were expending enormous energy to make employees comfortable in the workplace, the survival of the industry in 2000 came down to cash flow. As far as employees were concerned, the financial issues were offstage.

In the article about models, I was reminded of how the public image of flight attendants has changed in 50 years, due to cost cutting in the airline industry, civil rights actions by employees, and unionization by attendants. Glamor has been sacrificed, but attendants have greater status and job security, along with more dignity. How models could organize to protect themselves I don't know. Actors, who have similar physical issues, are very militant.

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