"White-collar factories"

High-tech workers face insecurity, long work hours and isolation from co-workers

Are high-tech workplaces no better than “white-collar factories?” That’s what one researcher who studied the characteristics of workplaces in high-tech communities is suggesting.

The benefits of being an in-demand high-tech worker are well known: flexible hours, creativity and independence in the workplace. But with these benefits come problems of job insecurity, long work hours and isolation from co-workers, according to Sean O’Riain, a professor of sociology at the University of California. High-tech workers are living a precarious life at best, he said.

“When the economic crisis hit, they found themselves with few collective guarantees,” said O’Riain. “They were cast to their individual fates.”

His study found that while the task-oriented atmosphere in the tech community often involves working in teams, there is intense competition. This leads to strenuous deadlines, long hours and often frustrating work, which one engineer characterized as a “white collar factory.”

“Although high-tech workers are relatively free from supervision, peer pressure and deadlines drive them to extreme labour,” said O’Riain.

He said the individualistic, macho attitude that defines success within technical communities and the demands for total dedication raise the barrier for entry for some, most notably women. The time pressures are unpredictable and demanding, putting increased stresses on family life. This reinforces the relative absence of women in science and engineering generally and obstructs their advancement, he said.

But it’s not all bad news. O’Riain said organizations can learn a lot from the model set by high-tech workers. Technical communities provide a potential model for the future of work: creativity with co-operation, responsibility with flexibility and autonomy with community. For this model to work effectively, though, critical problems such as intense pressure, job insecurity, inequality and exclusion must be addressed.

“Co-operative relations within technical communities must ultimately be supported by collective institutions if they are to persist,” he said. “If such collective institutions assuring security of income and long-learning were strengthened, technical communities could emerge as an important alternative model of economic organization to increasing corporate dominance in the workplace.”

O’Riain’s research is published in the fall/winter issue of the American Sociological Association’s Contexts magazine.

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