Ladder

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The state jobs agency FAS, in Ireland was criticised a lot in the media over the past number of years. But like a lot of things in Ireland I think we have it all backwards.

The state jobs agency FAS, was criticised because it tried to take manual contract cleaning staffers and depict them in expensively created promotional videos, becoming semi-conductor technicians and rocket scientists. This is what I think we have gotten backwards, here in Ireland.

Our problem in Ireland, is not taking manual labour and trying to reinvent them as skilled knowledge workers. Our problem rather, is that our skilled knowledge workers end up becoming manual labourers, or at the very best, in our periodic ‘boom’ times, they graduate to the level of trades persons.

You speak to anyone in the regional urban centres in Ireland. They will tell you about a succession of employers down through the generations, who have come and left again. It saps the will out of the people who inhabit these urban centres and surrounding hinterlands. It saps the life out of them.

I remember, at one stage I was a manual labourer and I had all sorts of ambitions to become an expert technician in semi-conductor technologies. I am sure I could have achieved that goal also. Ireland isn’t a bad location to get on a ladder, and make something of oneself. However, I do recall an instance in 1998, where I was mixed cement plaster and putting it in a bucket for a plastering tradesman.

We were high up on a scaffolding, which collapsed. It was prior to the time when health and safety was taken as seriously as it should do in Ireland. We got talking about life in general, as we tried to get our wits back following the accident (we all escaped un-injured thankfully).

The man told me of the two successive computer companies he had worked for in the city of Limerick. We talked about aspects of computer technology, engineering and management of projects in the high technology area. Then we both mounted back up, on a re-built scaffolding, and started throwing sand and cement at a wall again.

A couple of years later, I had obtained a job working at Dell computer corporation in Limerick city, and quite liked it. The scale of it, and management of such a massive labour force in one place.

The point of my telling the story really, is to say that the man I had crossed paths with for that brief scary moment in 1998, was heading in the opposite direction to myself. He had been in the high-tech knowledge economy in the 1980s, and was headed back towards manual labour.

I was trying to move up the ladder at the time. We both met for a brief and sorry moment, on the same ladder as it were. The modern knowledge economy landscape, is one such that, resources be they human, industrial, logistical or otherwise, do fall out of use very quickly. There is a worldwide crisis because of that.

In 2010, I watched a documentary on Irish television in which they looked at the lifes of ex. Dell employees from Limerick city. One man, who was vocal on behalf of the ex. workers of the plant, explained his neat idea to get into business for himself. He was going to install timber decking features to the backs of peoples' homes.

I wonder to myself, how many times has that cycle occurred in Ireland now? I mean, since the earliest days of industrialisation in Ireland. Have we ever spoken to the various generations of workers, who were discarded at one point or another from the system? Have we asked them as a collection of people to describe their experiences?

I wrote a short blog over the summer time about an interesting character in the field of management consulting, I have been reading for quite a while now.

Mr. VanPatter of Humantific is one ex practitioner from the architectural profession, who has a fairly good handle on the times we live in, and the kinds of challenges posed by the kind of economy in the 21st century.

My simplistic way of looking at it is, each economy today has to learn how to recycle its own human resources many times over. We simply don’t have the luxury any more in 2011, of hoping that another job on the not-so-well-built scaffolding we emerge for ex. transistor engineering staff, to occupy them throwing sand and cement at a wall, and hoping they don’t fall to their deaths in the process.


Brian O' Hanlon


Other Reading.


Blog entry, Recycle.


Sub Note: Smart Economy


A commentator at the Irish Economy blog wrote,

Conditions today in the highly educated, high tech market are quite frankly brutal. The days when a 3 to 12 month course would ensure re-employment are gone. I thank my lucky stars that most of my working life was in a high demand era.

I think it should be a priority though, in the coming years, that we change focus a little bit from the old fashioned FAS emphasis of taking people from the lowest, and raising them up. What needs to be addressed is those who are already up on the ladder, and how to keep them there. None of this sounds very good in speeches though.

It is like what the American legal professor, Elizabeth Warren says about the problems facing the middle classes. No one wants to do proper research in that area, because there is a natural assumption that the middle classes are boring and stable. Hence, the fact that very intelligent and aware people, get caught out in assuming that all of the cliches are correct.

As a nation, we spent a lot of money on agencies such as FAS, which had very mixed success. And I wonder if we could have made a lot more progress, had we taken a deep and detailed look at the high tech sector jobs, and how people in that area manage their careers over decades.

I am trying to keep this brief. But I would like to write a few words in relation to the smart economy. It is unfortunate in a way, that someone such as former Taoiseach Brian Cowen became the sales personality for this particular initiative.

Because I think the smart economy banner could be extended to become quite a good umbrellas policy for many disparate state agencies to coordinate themselves by. After all, this is the challenge of running a state at any time, in any context. How to find an intelligent way to coordinate the disparate efforts of so many.

I would simply relate the idea of a smart economy, to the idea as applied to the electrical smart grid for instance. I recall attending a lecture by the deputy chief executive in charge of Ireland's electricity network a couple of years back.

His main point was to emphasise, that Ireland's grid had become increasingly smart down through the years. In that, it becomes more self aware, better able to diagnose its own faults and so on. It helps those who manage the system, to get to the problems faster and figure out a strategy without too much confusion.

I believe, that if we look at the resource of skilled labour in Ireland, we need to add an extended time dimension to the equation. That is, children who move away from education in their 20's - we simply cannot allow those people to drift through their 30's, 40's and 50's - without some audit of the demands the enterprise environment places upon our human resources at different times.

I always get back to the generation who built the new semi-state companies for Sean Lemass coming out of the 1950s, and in the 1960s. Those people have retired at this stage, but are still around and available for interview. We aught to interview those people. We aught to do the same with the generations of 1980s, in various sectors.

In short, we should look at all sectors in the economy. We aught to interview folk from different generations in all sectors. We aught to build up a picture. The smart economy in my opinion, is one such that it is made more self-aware, and perhaps better equipped to respond to unfolding events.

My greatest fear though, is the conveyor belt of the Irish economy is one that disposes of large portions of labour at one point or another, and is so wasteful it tries to dispose of the same for good - and replace again with fresh young graduates from the bottom.

One could imagine in that case, why people who make their way to the top, in Ireland, realize the significant possibility they are due for disposal. This one inform a lot of decisions that are made by those who work at the top. It creates an unnecessary level of risk for those who have made it.

They could easily find themselves out in the cold, too quickly and this is the major source of the power of the trade unions in Ireland. And in turn, it takes away a lot of the legislative and policy making discretion from the government executive. The pressure upon them also, is not to change.

Not to try to make too many adjustments, for risk of unseating too many, who have worked too hard, to get to a certain level.


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