Appendix

But work being transferred into the home, where workers shoulder overhead costs, maintenance, insurance etc.

1991 census documented a 40% increase in the nos. of people reporting the home as their primary place of work. Among these, the three biggest occ. groups were clerical, sales and service, all three female job ghettos. Majority reported incomes of less than $20,000; a sizeable minority within that reported less than $10,000. That's not enough to support a life let alone a family.

Want to take a moment to bring this home as a woman's experience by talking about Carol Van Helvoort, who processes orders for Pizza Pizza pizzas from a computer and modem she rigged up in the bedroom of her one-bedroom apartment on the fringes of Metro Toronto.

It doesn't really bother her that the computer monitors everything she does. It bothers her more that what she does is so little worth monitoring. She talked about the inconvenience of having the family phone line taken over for 2 four-hour chunks of the day, as Pizza Pizza turns her home into a virtual workplace. She talked about how young mothers have had to get their kids to keep quiet. "But why should they? What does it do to family life?"

She also worried about women's increased vulnerability in abusive relationships, being trapped inside the home all the time.

And that's what bothered her the most: the loneliness and isolation - inside her silicon work cell. She used to do her hair all the time; now she doesn't bother. She used to do her nails, but now why bother? "You don't even bother getting dressed half the time," she told me. And I thought: how much she's disappeared as a social being.

So these are the trends: The extensions of man; the retractions of woman. High unemployment, under-employment, and work speed-up, polarization and the shift to more telework. These trends will likely intensity over the next 10 years, as the networking phase of restructuring proceeds, especially through the public sector.

Now, I'd like to switch focus from the general trends of digitization, globalization and restructuring to the particular trends in the educational sector. All along I've agreed with people like Linda McQuaig who've challenged the assumptions associated with the deficit-cutting cutbacks. We know that social spending is not resp. for the deficit. We know that if corporations paid their fair share of taxes -- and didn't get so many gov't hand-outs themselves, there wouldn't be a deficit. Etc. Etc.

It begs the question: why this continuing attack on the public sector? Because, I argue, it's been a convenient smokescreen. Behind which the public sector can be softened up, restructured and "reformed" -- ready for takeover by the private sector. Again, digitization and networks are the key elements in the restructuring picture. Once files are digitized. Once software takes over the administration and management of more functions. Once work is fragmented into Mcjobs. And once everything is linked and wired together, more and more can be shifted inside the networks of the new economy. In education, this means that everything from the administration of student registration and records to the management of teaching-learning centres and even the delivery of teaching itself can be contracted out.

What had been automatically embedded in face-to-face social relationships and bricks and mortar institutions can now be fragmented into service packages or modules, and de-institutionalized. Privatized. Opened up to competitive bidding -- by international information systems and service providers who, thanks to NAFTA, have the same standing as local and national suppliers. Then parceled out to sub-contractors. Imagine teleworkers in call centres putting together "customized" packages of computer-based and multi-media learning materials and sending these to distance learners at universities and colleges served by such education/information-management companies.