Sunday 19 September 2010

The Precariat? NOT an early orange root vegetable!

Yes, it's a new buzz-word to us as well. It seems to be a concatenation of "precarious" and "proletariat".  French sociologists a couple of decades ago used the word to describe a new class of 'unprotected', temporary or seasonal workers. It has since been adopted by the Japanese to describe workers who choose the flexibility of short-term contracts and temporary work rather than bow to the established job-for-life tradition of the 'salaryman'. Like them, we see these people as a critical part of the "virtual team" within an organisation that allow it to be flexible enough to respond to rapid change.

Toby Scott, Director of Pentacle Ireland, will be provoking the audience, by proposing how the pace of change in the New World means that the Precariat will become the dominant employment group over the next decade or so, at a free symposium in Dublin arranged by GradCam, the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media on Friday 24th September.  Toby plans to then educate the audience on how to respond to the change and benefit from it.

Uproot yourself and join Toby if you can!





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