The ongoing technological and digital revolution determines a revolution in the world of the labor market as we know it. Some properties of this new digital universe are already there: independent work, intermittent work, service provision instead of employment contract, post-salary relationship, digital nomadism, distance work, platforms, screens and applications, among others.
From a certain perspective, we are talking about the solitude of digital work, almost always between the screen and now also the mask. Let's look at the main properties of this digital emergence in the labor world.
>>Long-term work under the protection of collective contracts no longer characterizes the socio-labor models that organize the world of work today,
>>The end of careers and the emergence of temporary jobs leads to a crisis in the socio-professional universe,
>>Professional intermittence determines and requires ongoing lifelong training,
>>The digital nomadism is the sign of a growing geographic mobility in search of new experiences and opportunities,
>>A growing mobility is reflected in family and psychosocial instability,
>>Work individualism is reflected in a growing devaluation of union and corporate organizations,
>>Individualism and mobility are reflected in a break in the bonds of trust, loyalty and sociability in the world of work that temporary work worsens,
>>A growing degradation of the socio-labor environment transforms exposure to risks into exposure to danger,
>>The growth of temporary work and the lack of a professional horizon confuse the worker with regard to merit and productivity incentives,
>>The employment relationship is, for all these reasons, increasingly smaller and, thus, the citizen as we know him has to be reinvented with regard to his multiple affiliations.
In short, we are witnessing a progressive disintegration of the employment, social and symbolic link. This disaggregation is particularly visible in the hypercapitalism of the large conglomerates of the new digital economy.
In the current stage of the digital revolution, a growing and dangerous social polarization is already in sight. On the one hand, qualified and well-paid digital work that revolves around the large technological conglomerates, on the other, the so-called ideology of uberization, the latest radical version of capitalism, which heralds a new independent and post-salary regime.
Basically, everything fluid, precarious, transitory, passenger, like everything UBER transports, in accelerated transit to the digital precariousness, the new voluntary servitude of networks, always within neoliberal capitalism and on a civilizational collision course in terms of economic, social and human rights.
It is necessary to warn, in particular, the most distracted digital natives about this virtual seduction and the illusion of the so-called accessible self-entrepreneurship that is passed on through a presumed post-salary relationship. The maximum connection to 5G is announced, the open path of solitude with independent work and digital nomadism, but also the total distraction by gamification, gamification and the arts of entertainment.
However, the old sacred limit between working hours and personal time has already been surpassed, we are permanently available, we forget the time for love, friendship and solidarity.
Today, the right to disconnect outside working hours is even discussed. On the other hand, the precariousness of work and its intermittence are a bare and raw reality, as well as its logical corollary, pluriactivity and multi-income, distributed over increasingly fractional working hours.
That is, with regard to independent workers, precarious and intermittent in the digital universe in a broad sense, they will have an identity and professional paths made from multiple experiences, because in the near future all societies will be a kind of diaspora collection made migration and nomadism, but also a lot of interaction and intermittence.
It is within this general framework that the formation of the new social classes of the digital age is inscribed:
– The digital hyper class: a reduced but growing, well-paid digital elite that has all the means and devices of connection and creation, whose members create and manipulate information on multiple platforms, which is why they are privileged digital nomads and living , therefore, a voluntary solitude made up of multiple intermittencies.
– The digital middle class: the digital labor, a group that seeks to expand and assert itself, struggling to join the hyper class and escape the digital proletariat; one part with employment relationship and the other part under independent work and service provision, but, in both cases, technological innovation and obsolescence threaten with professional precariousness and intermittence; an important part of these professionals are dedicated to new forms of content production, especially the performing arts, entertainment and entertainment industries, which are essential to keep this digital work within acceptable limits of social and political tolerance.
– The digital proletariat: a certain form of proletarian digitalism, a very vast, undifferentiated and dysfunctional group, left behind in the interstices of the post-industrial model of more traditional goods and services, always in the limbo of an elementary digitalism and on the threshold of a systemic poverty.
Final grade
In summary, the world of work today has lost the ideological and narrative consistency given to it by industrial capitalism, by introducing a vertical and temporal cut in the life of each worker.
The long duration of the employment contract and the promise of a professional career gave way to intermittent and variable short time and service provision.
As for the rest, the solitude of digital work, between the screen and the mask, is expected to not feed many of our prejudices and petty hatreds.
We are programmed for face-to-face, eye-to-eye contact. Looking into each other's eyes and blushing for shame makes it much harder for us to hate ourselves. Let us take the time, then, to take care of our sentimental ecology. Let us connect with humans and transform loneliness into solidarity, as simple as that.
Author António Covas is a Retired Full Professor at the University of Algarve
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