Sir, - Amid all the election hype, an article by Charles Carroll (business pages, May 26th) seems to have elicited no reaction - surprising for a piece headlined: "The merchants of gloom got it wrong.
The "merchants of gloom" are, according to Mr Carroll, Charles Handy (primarily) and "other writers of the death of work school who were seriously mistaken in foretelling the death of jobs".
As one who could be deemed to be a collaborator with the Handy school (I produced an eight part radio series based on Handy's book The Future of Work in 1986), may I make two observations. I do so neither as a management specialist nor a work guru, but simply as an innocent onlooker.
1. Charging Charles Handy with the "death of work/jobs" is too facile. As I read him, he warned of the death of work as we knew it. The era of the paid secure job for life was ending for many. How we would work (e.g. by contract), where we would work (e.g. from home) when we would work (e.g. going back into education or opting out to rear children), why we would work (e.g. for a mix of format payment, community service, etc.) and for whom we would work would all change in the coming years. Eleven years later it seems to me that much of Handy's thinking has been borne out.
Incidentally I did not detect so much "gloom" in The Future of Work. The scenario Handy portrayed offered many possibilities for a liberating and satisfying lifestyle, but of course it also posed great challenges for education, taxation and the avoidance of a "haves and have nots" society.
2. The script of the first programme in the radio series opened, with the number 239867 "No, it's not our telephone number," we said. "It is the number of people deemed to be officially without a job." Eleven years later the official unemployment figures is still well above that 1986 number.
In The Irish Times of June 5th. Michael Foley reported that throughout Europe there are 17.5 million people unemployed, 35 million living below the poverty line and five million homeless. Haves and have nots? It seems to me like an awful lot of down sizing still going on. - Yours, etc.,
Radio Producer,
RTE,
Dublin 4.