Computer Chips and Paper Clips Technology and Women's Employment, Volume II: Case Studies and Policy Perspectives (1987) / Chapter Skim
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IV. Policy Perspectives
IV. Policy Perspectives
Employer Policies to Enhance the Application of Office System Technology to Clerical Work
Pages 311-342
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Part IV Policy Perspectives
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We do not share the view that the technology somehow dictates one dominant implementation strategy, or that women clerical workers are encountering one set of "OA (office automation) impacts" wherever VDTs are being installed.
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A second book, The O§icc Automation Cor~troversy, will be published in 1987. ~ Between April 1982 and June 1984, the Educational Fund for Individual Rights conducted a study of "The Workplace Impact of Using VDTs in the Ounces The centerpiece of the research was a program of on-site visits to 110 organizations implementing office system technology.
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We do not share the view that the technology somehow dictates one dominant implementation strategy, or that women clerical workers are encountering one set of "OA (office automation) impacts" wherever VDTs are being installed.
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We used a topic checklist for these interviews, made up of neutrally worded questions designed to minimize prompting or forcing of issues.2 Our questions asked how long the employee had been using a VDT; whether she had done this job previously without a VDT; what kind of training for the machine she had received; what personal involvement, if any, she had had in the process of using office system technology at her job; how the VDT was affecting "her job" and "her works; whether she had read or heard anything about "VDT issues"; how management supervised her performance; what problems, if any, she had encountered using the VDT and whether she had raised these with management; how 2 We guaranteed employees complete anonymity for their comments, and our interviews were done without supervisors or managers present. As a result, we believe these women clermals were open and candid in their discussion of how they saw VDT uses affecting them, and their responses provided us with valuable reports on the reactions and problems of clerical workers doing intensive VDT work.
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Both sets of interviews probed personal history, education, pre-VDT work experiences, career goals, social and family situations, treatment as women on the job, and other key elements shaping the reaction of these women to the use of VDTs. OFFICE AUTOMATION AND WOMEN'S ISSUES—EVIDENCE FROM CASE STUDIES The following are trends among organizations in our field study that relate most directly to the impact of office systems technology trends on women clerical workers (for the detailed data and full-scale discussions of these trends, see our study report, Westin et al., 1985~.
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We found firms with nearly identical types of clerical operations, work force characteristics, lines of business or government activity, and economic circumstances whose policies toward the two issues of concern in this paper were dramatically different and were perceived as such by women clerical workers we interviewed. (See the profiles of "Great Northern" and "National Services" later in this paper for specific illustrations of this contrast.)
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The feelings of women we interviewed were significantly shaped by whether managements were providing task variety and interesting activities in the new VDT jobs, or whether they were providing retra~ning and new job opportunities for clerical employees for whom straight data-entry work would be an unsatisfactory job. In terms of the physical comfort of women clericals using VDTs, especially operators using terminals for data entry, customer service, and word-processing jobs for more than 5 hours per day, over threefourths of the organizations we visited during 1982-1984 did not have the majority of their clerical-worker stations in "minimally corrects ergonomic conditions.
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of women clericals we interviewed were convinced that only if they spoke up at the workplace would women's concerns about pay equity and fair promotional treatment be addressed by management. Variations at the Job- Type Level The executives and managers we interviewed described attracting and keeping good employees for customer BeT=ce and secretarial work, using VDTs as a major organizational need.
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In some of these organizations, staff groups had recommended new policies to improve job quality for women clericals, reduce discriminatory effects, or take positive actions to enhance women's opportunities, but these staff groups had not yet been able to persuade top management to implement the policies. In only a fourth of the organizations had top management set clear affirmative action goals for VDT clerical work and had line managers actually begun putting such policies into effect.
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Follow-up calls we made in 1985-1986 to sites visited early In the project showed increased attention being paid by these managements to issues of ergonomics, training, employee communication, and other aspects of using VDTs, compared with 1982-1984. GOOD MANAGEMENT POLICIES AFFECTING CLERICAL WORKERS: THE GRAPHIC A REPRESENTATIVE EXAMPLE Among the 110 organizations we visited, there were sites at which objective work conditions for VDT use and management policies toward women's equality issues were both quite positive.
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About a quarter of the operators are black or Hispanic. The positive experiences of six women clericals follow: ~ Norma, a black woman in her twenties, has worked for 4 years in this organization.
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~ Rosa is a Hispanic woman in her mid-thirties who has been at The Graphic for 5 years, and went right into VDT work in this department. Previously, she worked for 3 years at a local Social Security office, where she was trained on the VDT and where she handled the issuance of checks for disability insurance.
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elf you're happy at the job, and the pay isn't bad and the benefits are good, why would you want to change? Rosa stresses that everybody is coping with the temporarily bad VDT working conditions now without too much complaint, because they know they'll be moving into excellent quarters soon.
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She likes her job and she likes keeping busy ald the time ~T would be bored out of my skull if there wasn't enough work to do." Jennifer is a supervisor in this department, and has held that post for the past 4 years. A white woman in her thirties, she joined The Graphic 7 years ago, and was trained in-house on the VDT as a customer service clerk.
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They should give us material to read up on, and answer our questions." She also wants to start an exercise program, and to have more discussion about physical problems and guidance for dealing with them in the training program. She sees herself as a Young professionals in the new field of VDT work, and finds the whole area of technology "exciting to work in." ELEMENTS OF GOOD USER PRACTICE Good user practices in office system implementation do not come from printed assembly instructions in boxes housing VDTs, nor do they arise through some kind of accidental serendipity.
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Sometimes, an organization may be in the midst of a changeover in human resources policies from a traditionalist/authority-centered philosophy to a more participative quality-of-work-life approach. If this is happening usually because of a change in top managementapplying the new human resources philosophy to office automation can be part of the transition process in such an organization.
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Figure 1 identifies the organizational policies that user managements need to consider in their VDT implementation, and the basic employer, employee, and special women's interests that need to be taken into account in such policy making. JOB SATISFACTION AMONG WOMEN CLERICALS AT THE GRAPHIC Referring back to the vignettes of our representative customerservice operators at The Graphic, we can easily identify the sources of the generally high job satisfaction these women conveyed.
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EMPLOYER ROLES AND INTERESTS Str~lc planning Godiva in~du~on Good bansiton ~ an op_n fin ad use Incm~d produ~v~ "Problem responded 10 ~vG'y Improved = poslDon Opel advantage 329 ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES System Design H~dwars/~#a Sheldon nlng Job Design -s~ Coupon -Cup Oaken -~ E-mn_m (Economics) Health and Saw Conditions an ad Benefit Employ~n1 Policies -ma 1 I SPECI^L WO~EN'S ISSUES Pay Equal Equal Protons Oppo~nM~ Absence of Endued Sex -~on now HIM, Child Can, as.
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Taking all these factors together, clerical workers at The Graphic were both eager and satisfied users of new office technology. Where there were problems in system design and applications (and there were some,
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, or when ergonomics were pursued on an upgrade rather than an all-at-once basis, the basic trust of the clerical work force provided a vital support resource for management. EXPLOITIVE OR DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT OF WOMEN CLERICALS The sites we visited, as already noted, were weighted in the direction of organizations with positive human resource philosophies and good labor-management relations.
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The management saw such a heavy turnover as quite all right, since they had a steady supply of trained VDT operators willing to take "probationary pay, and the firm did not need operators knowledgeable about the business to do the data-entry work involved. Sheila decided to leave VDT work and is now employed in the food service business.
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It would be easy to multiply these vignettes many times over. What they have in common is that exploitive or discriminatory practices that were followed in pre-VDT work settings are now being applied in the context of VDT-based clerical work.
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Between 1982 and 1984, managements enjoyed almost total autonomy in applying office system technology, because there was no state or federal legislation in place and virtually no EEO agency attention to special issues of office technology impact. Less than 10 percent of clerical workers were represented by unions, and even in union-represented workplaces, neither collective bargaining contracts nor grievance systems exercised significant influences over management use of VDTs.
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In fact, concern over sex stereotyping and lack of affirmative action promotional opportunities for women ciericals and supervisors surfaced in one recent employee survey In which two-thirds of women said they weren't satisfied with their chances for advancement. However, when this firm underwent a recent reorganization and a reduction in staff, its sales and management ranks became loaded with men who had seniority, and top management doesn't want to "rock the boat.
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The result was about as evenly balanced a customer-service work force at the VDTs as any political party convention manager or EEO visionary could imagine, by sex, race, and age. Since the pay levels at National Services are above average for customer-service work in the area, since there is a generous benefits policy, and since the firm has a history of providing strong job security, it was not surprising that individual VDT operators we interviewed considered working at this site an "outstanding job." They particularly liked the mixture of people they worked with.
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We identified issues relating to office technology and women clerical workers which
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Finally, in terms of social impact, the introduction of new office technology can have one of several alternative effects on the equality and quality of work-life interests of women clerical workers: OA could produce important positive changes in the objective condition of women clerical workers, along dimensions such as pay, job quality, working conditions, career opportunities, etc. ~ OA could have no appreciable effects one way or the other on the equality and equity interests of women, proving to be a weak
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. Finally, OA could actively increase discriminatory treatment of women clerical workers, by enlarging the differential treatment of women in office work under what were perceived by managements as imperatives for effective technological utilization and economic efficiency.
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Because the great weight of scientific evidence supports the position that VDTs cannot be shown to cause disease, managements are increasingly communicating with employees on this issue, preparing briefing booklets and stories in employee newspapers that report scientific findings and explain their conclusions. The "don't make waves" concept of not talking to employees about VDT health issues has given way in most organizations we visited to direct communications, including practical guides for exercises to relieve muscu1Q-skeletal tensions, resting the eyes from intensive VDT work, dealing with job stress, and so on.
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This is probably due to a combination of factors: the deeply institutionalized nature of organizational policies in these areas; the absence of clear or relatively cheap "fixes" for these problems; the absence of regulatory pressures on these issues from the Reagan administration, federal or state EEO agencies, or the courts; and labor-market conditions that currently provide employers with ample supplies of willing women clerical workers. As of 1986, then, new policies addressing the quality of work life aspects of VDT use were developing widely among the organizations we studied, following the most common to least common patterns we have just estimated.
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whether regulatory advocates can produce evidence of harm to employee health or well-being that convinces policy makers that the substantial costs employers would have to bear would be worthwhile. We have shown that there are good policies present among some user organizations we studied, addressing both the quality of work life and women's equality issues of concern to millions of women clericals in business, government, and nonprofit organizations.
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