"At the very point when a privileged fraction of the working class seems to be in a position to acquire multiple skills, to achieve workplace autonomy and continually widen their capacities for action - all of which are things that were ideals of the worker self-management currents within the labour movement - the meaning of this ideal is thus radically altered by the conditions in which it seems destined to be fulfilled. It is not the working class which is achieving these possibilities of self-organization and increasing technological power; it is a small core of privileged workers who are integrated into new-style enterprises at the expense of a mass of people who are marginalized and whose job security is destroyed -people shunted from one form of occasional, unrewarding and uninteresting employment to another, who are often reduced to competing for the privilege of selling personal services to those who retain a secure income."

“Enterprises are adopting a strategy of flexible response on two levels simultaneously: the firm's stable core of employees must be functionally flexible; the peripheral workforce, for its part, must be numerically flexible. In other words, 'around a core of stable workers with a wide range of skills, there is a fluctuating, peripheral workforce with a more restricted range of more basic skills, who are dependent on the chance play of economic forces. The stable core must accept occupational mobility, both in the short term and in the long term , in exchange for job security. Their skills are essentially company skills provided, enhanced and perfected by the firm by means of a process of continuous in-house training. The firm therefore relies heavily on the employees it has trained, and vice versa.”

“The necessity -from a technical point of view - for control and, consequently, for domination, can be overcome without too much difficulty in small and medium-sized enterprises; it cannot be overcome in large enterprises except by effecting changes which are all the more difficult to implement since they affect both the enterprise's hierarchical structure and its technical organization. William F. Whyte provides a number of examples to show that organizations can be modified so that workers enjoy their work, espouse the aims of the enterprise and mobilize the reserves of productivity and skill they usually keep to themselves. The success of this kind of reorganization necessarily presupposes, first, a relationship of between and organized labour, second, recognition of the workers' ability to organize themselves, take the initiative and participate in, and third, financial involvement of the workers in the results of their labour. Sooner or later, however, this policy of 'participation' or co-management - of which the Scanlon Plan was one of the best example; and one in advance of the 'quality circles' of thirty years later -meets with the following difficulty: for job security to be guaranteed, the volume of sales must increase at the same rate as the productivity of labour. A duly motivated, however, can achieve staggering increases in: productivity . The volume of sales, however, cannot continue to increase at such a rate. The point inevitably comes when management decides to reduce the workforce in order to reduce costs, thus regaining sole ownership of the enterprise's decision-making power. The 'partnership' of labour and capital is thus destroyed at one fell swoop; the workers realize their co-operation with the management has been a swindle; and antagonistic class relations are re-established.”

“When the production process demands less work and distributes less and less wages, it gradually becomes obvious that the right to an income can no longer be reserved for those who have a job; nor, most importantly, can the level of incomes be made to depend on the quantity of work furnished by each person. Hence the idea of guaranteeing an income to every citizen which is not linked to work, or the quantity of work done.”

“The ideology of work and the ethics of effort therefore become cover for ultra-competitive egoism and careerism: the best succeed, the others have only themselves to blame; hard work should be encouraged and rewarded, which therefore means we should not subsidize the unemployed, the poor and all the other 'layabouts'. This ideology is strictly rational, as far as capitalism is concerned: the aim to motivate a workforce which cannot easily be replaced and control it ideologically for want of a means of controlling it physically. In order to do this, it must preserve the work-force's adherence to the work ethic, destroy the relations of solidarity that could bind it to the less fortunate, and persuade it that by doing as much work as possible it will best serve the collective interest as well as its own private interests. It will thus be necessary to conceal the fact that. there is an increasing structural glut of workers and an increasing structural shortage of secure, full-time jobs; in short, that the economy no longer needs everyone to work - and will do so less and less. And that; as a consequence, the 'society of work' is obsolete: work can no longer serve as the basis for social integration. But, to conceal these facts it is necessary to find alternative explanations for the rise in unemployment" and the decrease in job security. It will thus be asserted that casual labourers and the unemployed are not serious about looking for work; do not possess adequate skills, are encouraged to be idle by over~ generous dole payments and so on. And, it will be added, these people are all paid far too much for the little they are able to do, with the result that the economy, which is groaning under the weight of these excessive burdens, is no longer buoyant enough to create a growing number of jobs. And the conclusion will be reached that, 'To end unemployment, we have to work more.'”

“The image of the enterprise as a place where employees can achieve personal fulfilment is therefore an essentially ideological invention. It conceals the real transformations that have taken place, namely that enterprises are replacing labour by machines, producing more and better with a decreasing percentage of the workforce previously employed, and offering privileges to a chosen elite of workers, which are accompanied by unemployment, precarious employment, de-skilling and lack of job security for the majority. The advance of technology has thus resulted in the segmentation and disintegration of the working class. An elite has been won over to collaboration with capital in the name of work ethic; the great mass of workers have become marginalized or lost their job security and serve as a reserve army for industry which wishes to be able to adjust its workforce rapidly according to fluctuations in demand.”

“A system of co-operation between workers and management cannot survive, therefore, unless management effectively guarantees its employees job security, by which I mean employment for life. It is on this condition alone that there can be social integration on the Japanese model within the enterprise. Yet large Japanese firms are only able to guarantee their employees jobs for life by out the manufacturing and services which they, as, have no vital interest in undertaking themselves, to a vast network of satellite companies. These subcontracting enterprises cushion the parent company from fluctuations in economic conditions: they employ and dismiss their workers according to changes in demand, and the fact that their employees often have no union or whatsoever means this can be accomplished with great speed. Job security in the parent companies is matched by unstable employment and social insecurity throughout the rest of the economy. Employment for life and are privileges reserved for an elite . They are only compatible with economic rationality within the framework of a dual society. This social division has been the dominant characteristic of all the industrialized societies since the mid seventies.”