MULTIPURPOSE MAN: A New Work Style for the Modern Age

Job enrichment programs"" are required to relieve the stress of ""dull, repetitive work."" Goldring's solution is to give workers two jobs, making them ""better-tempered."" Reduced hours at each employment would remedy assembly-line fatigue, alcoholism, mental illness, and labor problems. Students and women would have more opportunity and everyone would have time for volunteer work. Goldring believes most people are ready for this lifestyle; in 1971 16 percent of British workers were already either on part-time or double jobs. During the present ""worsening depression"" Goldring finds that ""multiple part-time working can best be considered and planned for,"" since ""it is psychologically difficult to institute a radical change during a period of settled prosperity."" He adds that ""part-time working would simply accelerate a move towards a workermanagement relationship of mutual respect and independence. It represents a further stage in the process by which the old-time boss becomes the new-style team leader. Such team leaders were last heard of in Brave New World, and before that Dr. Ley's Labor Front. ""Multi-purpose man, questing, fresh-minded and many-sided, livelier, happier and more fulfilled..."" sounds more like a Pepsi-Cola than a human being and Goldring's ""New Work Style"" seems to have been unintentionally and sadly prophetic.