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Monday, November 18, 2002 |
Ghost Work
There's a lot of ghost work being done today:
(gohst wurk) n. After a round of layoffs or firings, the work that used to be done by the former employees and that must now be handled by the remaining staff.
In an office haunted by the ghosts of laid-off employees, those workers who dodged the hatchet aren't necessarily the lucky ones. They must excel at their old jobs to avoid still looming staff cuts and must also juggle extra, unfamiliar duties. Workplace experts are only beginning to grasp the phenomenon. "In the information age, knowledge is critical to business—and it's the employee who owns it," says Hamilton Beazley, 58, chairman of the Strategic Leadership Group, a consultancy in Arlington, Va. Beazley coined the term ghost work—now catching on around the country—to describe the additional workload taken on by surviving employees, usually without their former colleagues' trove of knowledge.
—Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, "Where Did Everyone Go?," Time, November 18, 2002
I remember at one job after a layoff I said that it was like a nuclear war, that the survivors would envy the dead.
9:10:35 PM Permalink
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Government Duty to Elect Republicans
President Bush has harnessed the broad resources of the federal government to promote Republicans in next month's elections. From housing grants in South Dakota and research contracts in Florida to Air Force One rides and photos in the White House driveway, Bush has made Republican success on Nov. 5 a government-wide project.
More than 330 administration appointees, some of whom were told by White House officials that they needed to show their Republican credentials, have taken vacation time and are being flown by the party to House and Senate campaigns in states where control of Congress will be decided. The appointees will organize volunteers, work the phones and go door to door.
9:00:50 PM Permalink
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More on the Pentagon Database
I doubt if anyone is listening, but here's an ACLU action alert that helps you send a letter to the president asking him to halt or modify development of the massive Pentagon database on all of us. Highly recommended.
You should probably also register as a patriot, just to make sure.
8:55:40 PM Permalink
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Why Religion Doesn't Matter. The latest issue of Wired magazine featured a cluster of articles on the subject of science and religion. I read them with interest, then alarm, since the message was the same old harmful myths that have been circulating for ages. Science doesn't have all the answers; science is against lame without religion; only religion leads to morality and an appreciation of beauty in the world. Here, in the context of examining Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters, I argue that these notions are not only wrong but dangerous. [kuro5hin.org]
Agreed. I read the Wired pieces last week; mostly they are rehashes of tired arguments that have been posed time and again. This is especially true of Kevin Kelly's piece. Po Bronson's piece about the woman who did the research into the power of prayer was very good, though (it turns out that the research had hidden biases, and the reports didn't tell the whole story, not a surprise, I suppose). I was really disappointed in these articles.
12:56:24 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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