CASBS Future of Work and Workers Project

What is the future of work? What will be the most consequential changes in the world of work and workers, and what anxieties and possibilities will they produce?

More specifically, are robots going to take over all work? How do we prepare the workforce of the future? How should governments and corporations respond, and what are the models for governance? What creates meaning in a world of temporary work? How will demographics change the future of work?

In the midst of technological, generational, global, and policy changes, the time is now to address these critical questions and many other related ones.

“The Future of Work and Workers,” an ongoing project based at CASBS, explores the sources and implications of the ways in which work is changing globally. The project considers the effect of technological changes, skill preparation, and the norms and practices of different generations and groups throughout the world.

Since 2014 the principal organizers, CASBS director Margaret Levi and technology forecaster/Stanford consulting professor Paul Saffo, have convened working groups at CASBS on several occasions (with more to follow) to explore the issues. Attendees have included journalists, entrepreneurs, foundation officers, and academics from a variety of disciplines.  Among them are current CASBS fellows Natasha Iskander, Louis Hyman, Phyllis Moen, and Maureen Perry-Jenkins; former fellows Katherine Isbister and Margaret O’Mara; former CASBS visiting scholar (and New York Times science writer) John Markoff; CASBS board members John Seely Brown and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar; and Stanford faculty members Woody Powell and Melissa Valentine. The initial meeting was co-sponsored by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, while subsequent meetings have been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

The project is much more than a talkfest. Levi envisions output of fruitful research and ideas that warrant the establishment of scholar residencies at CASBS that last from a few weeks to a full academic year.

“The Future of Work and Workers” project also involves a publishing partnership with Pacific Standard. Nearly 100 contributors recruited specifically for the project – business and union leaders, social scientists, technology visionaries, activists, journalists, and public officials – posted articles to a dedicated PS web site page on a near-daily basis beginning in August 2015 and extending through the year, with occasional new articles appearing in 2016. Each article, hyperlinked, also appears with its corresponding author below. The editor of the series is Glenn Kramon, an editor for the New York Times for more than a quarter-century who supervised or edited ten Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters. Among the many authors contributing to the PS series are U.S. Senator Mark Warner, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun, CASBS fellow Yi-Huah Jiang, and several members of “The Future of Work and Workers” project. A book compendium of many of the pieces is under discussion. In addition, the future of work was the cover story for the November/December 2015 print issue of the magazine.

Pacific Standard’s editor-in-chief, Nicholas Jackson, stresses the importance of the collaboration in advancing the discussion.

“The rapidly evolving future of work raises profound questions for our economy and our culture,” said Jackson. We’re thrilled to partner with CASBS for an unprecedented forum, gaining insights from some of the deepest thinkers and hands-on experts.”

The analytics show that the articles have reached (as of February 2016) more than 345,000 viewers, with some of the most popular pieces earning well over a thousand shares on social media platforms. Authors have been interviewed on NPR, C-SPAN and cited by dozens of media outlets. Jackson appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program to discuss the publishing part of the project.

The future of work and workers received still more attention in April 2016, as part of the final installment of the CASBS 2015-16 public symposium series. On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, CASBS fellows Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander gave a joint talk on "The History of Catastrophe and the Future of Work," followed by a question and answer session. C-SPAN filmed the symposium for airing at a later date. Learn more about the symposium and watch CASBS full video coverage here.

Iskander’s take on the project provides a clue as to what symposium attendees experienced.

“The future of work and workers project grew out of a concern that we are on the cusp of a major regime change related to work and production,” she says. We are trying to peer over the horizon and interpret how coming technological breakthroughs, environmental changes, and demographic shifts are likely to affect work and the conditions under which it occurs. How these changes play-out is deeply political and directly engages questions of fairness, equity, and justice. A central goal of the project is to protect and strengthen the avenues through which we as workers can use our political voice to shape the changes.”

Articles on "The Future of Work" Published in Pacific Standard