Three interrelated changes, much discussed in the literature on the direction of the American economy,[22] were unmistakable in the firms we examined: a change in the organization of work; the slow introduction of new technologies, with new and old production processes coexisting; and the greater use of computer applications. The dominant change in the organization of work has been the trend toward flatter hierarchies within firms with fewer supervisory layers, requiring individuals to perform a wider variety of tasks and take on greater responsibility for the work they perform. In part, this change has come from greater competitive pressures, forcing employers to economize on labor. It has also resulted from the introduction of computers in many aspects of production, forcing individual employees to perform a greater variety of tasks and requiring them to master additional computer-related skills. As the manager of a medium-sized manufacturer of vending machines in the Frankton area described,
We can't afford to have one person who just does electronics and one who does all of the others [i.e., the mechanical rather than the electronics machinery]. We're a small company, and the whole drive is to be more flexible. The more flexible you are, the more skills you have. If you want to find a machinist who can also troubleshoot all the equipment, it's very difficult.
The most obvious manifestation of workers having a greater variety of responsibilities is that older occupational divisions are no longer clear. In the occupations we examined, for example, the distinction between the occupations of machinist and electronics technician have begun to blur: With the advent of CNC machining, individuals who at one point were traditional machinists--skilled on a variety of conventional metal-working equipment like lathes and drills--now need to know some computer programming and electronics as well since they may need to diagnose and repair the newer CNC machines or programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are now ubiquitous in manufacturing processes. The individuals who serve as repairmen and mechanics--crucial positions in continuous-production facilities--now require the skills of machinists, electricians, and electronics technicians (to diagnose and repair computer-driven equipment). For example, a personnel director for a glass manufacturer in Frankton commented,
It just seems to be getting much more complicated than just the two-year tech. And maybe they're getting left out because they don't have the other half. I don't see industry as being computer programmers over here and electronics people over there, and if there is an electrical problem or a hardware problem you call the electronics tech and if there is a software problem you call the programmer in. I guess I see those people becoming more and more one person.
Similarly, an electronics instructor in Rosefield described the skills required of students in the future:
Metallurgy, pneumatics, hydraulics, mechanics, electronics--these are the kinds of things that I see coming together to give the student a broad-based, saleable skill. And those are the ones we're going to have to address more. I don't see electronics as being the ultimate: I see it being a portion of everything.
In addition, a manager of computer programmers for a Palmdale company predicted the slow elimination of programming as a separate occupation:
Concurrent programming will be the concept of MIS in the future. That means you're not going to be a programmer anymore. You're going to be an analyst. You're going to be a user; you're going to be a solution provider, instead of just doing programming. So this group of people, they are undergoing a different type of training at this moment to work with users. There are going to be big changes.
For jobs whose boundaries are expanding, postsecondary vocational programs are often too narrowly defined since they provide only a subset of the skills required:
The problem we have is finding a two-year [electronics] tech person who wants to be a grease monkey as well. . . . We have a lot of people come in and want to do the electrical part, and they are these people that have a two-year degree, and they may have been doing electrical tech work at a company that has a little different structure from ours, and that's all they do. . . . But this guy doesn't want to take a motor out; he doesn't want to go to the top of the material elevator and pull a belt up that thing with three other guys and end up dusty from head to toe.
In this firm, the solution to the inability to find sufficiently widely trained individuals was to set up a training program with a local private vocational school that was customized to fit the firm's requirements. A similar problem arose in the Rosefield area. As a human resource manager for a large computer manufacturer commented,
Most community colleges seem to train electronics techs for bench tech positions. But jobs [in this firm] are very mechanical. A mechanical aptitude is necessary to do electronic work. A lack of mechanical training is a problem with community college training. . . . We also need communications and teamwork. The line techs are middlemen [between production-line workers and managers], and they have to work with production and engineering. They have to present ideas and reports to managers. [At the same time], this is a dirty job; it's not a suit and tie job.
The addition of communications skills as technicians need to communicate with managers or with vendors of complex equipment complicates the requirements still further; numerous employers complained about the lack of communications skills in employees whose technical training is adequate to their jobs (as we will see in greater detail in the "Employers in the Sub-Baccalaureate Labor Market" section).
Similarly, the boundaries among various business, accounting, and computer-related occupations have blurred as employers use individuals in positions that require them to know computer applications like spreadsheets and word processing, enough accounting to complete spreadsheets, and the business procedures that a specific firm uses. Furthermore, with greater responsibility, individuals in nontechnical positions (like accounting and business occupations) may need to know more about the technical side in order to identify and resolve problems. As the manager of accounting in a high-tech firm explained,
As [the firm] changes jobs and we grow [employees] into varying areas, adding additional responsibility, they have to understand a lot more from the business aspect but also from the technical aspect, particularly on the accounting side.
While the blurring of occupational boundaries appears to have taken place with a wide variety of employers, it seems especially prevalent among the employers we examined for two reasons. One is that while large employers can still afford a detailed division of labor, the small and mid-sized employers which dominate the sub-baccalaureate labor market--particularly among recent graduates of community colleges--cannot. The most obvious manifestation among educational providers of changes in work organization has been the proliferation of courses in total quality management (TQM), particularly in contract education. In the community colleges we examined, the demand for TQM has expanded enormously. As a philosophy espousing that all employees be more customer-oriented and responsible for quality at every stage of production and a method for decentralizing decision-making and making continuous improvements, TQM is a simple idea; but the emergence of TQM as a "movement" reflects the greater responsibility of many more employees within workplaces with flatter hierarchies, fewer supervisors, and a greater range of tasks for each employee. As a staff member with the contract education division of Frankton Community College remarked,
As more companies talk about total quality management, they push the responsibilities down to the beginning worker, and they've got to make those decisions and understand the processes well enough to deal with that. When you talk to CEOs, they're going to talk literacy stuff. You talk to the supervisors at the entry level and they want technical skills.
To clarify, a reorganized production facility requires a greater range of skills, leading to the situation where individuals at different levels of a firm stress the importance of different skills.
A second change is technological rather than organizational: Small- and medium-sized firms have introduced new technologies--especially computer-driven technologies--slowly so that production facilities include a hodgepodge of ancient and modern equipment and many which are hybrids made by retrofitting traditional machinery with computerized elements. As one foreman of a firm manufacturing cable described,
People who come out of school who've been into the new technology--transistors, PLCs [programmable logic controllers], digitals--I take them over here next to a DC drive, which is one step above tubes, and they don't understand it. American businesses suffer with what we've got as long as we can make it run. You get out of school, you don't expect to see that because they don't teach you that.
The only exceptions to the tendency to produce with a mix of old and new machines occur within sectors that are entirely novel, exemplified by the producer of lasers in Palmdale, or in those few production facilities--for example, the manufacturers of robotics equipment in Cotooli--that are showcases for new technology. Otherwise, most operatives and technicians have to be able to work on a range of traditional, electro-mechanical machines and modern, computer-based equipment and need both the craft skills of the traditional craftsman--including the ability to cobble together repairs with tricks and baling wire to outmoded equipment--at the same time that they can troubleshoot computerized machines.
The third characteristic change, related to the first two, is the ubiquity of computer applications. Secretaries, accounting clerks, and most other business occupations use word processing and spreadsheet programs; drafting has moved to CAD systems; most machinists now work with at least some CNC machines or with older machines which have been upgraded with electronic controls; and, of course, electronics technicians and computer-related occupations are positions which have emerged in response to the burgeoning of computer applications. Of course, some computer applications used in jobs within the sub-baccalaureate labor market are not particularly advanced. Many--word processing and spreadsheet programs, for example--do not require much more than reading a manual and a little on-the-job practice even though community colleges and other educational providers devote entire courses to teaching them. Even CAD and CNC systems can be taught on the job, particularly to individuals with experience in conventional drafting and machining. Computer-related skills can therefore be learned in a variety of ways--in formal education, on-the-job, or in other informal ways (e.g., learning at home or through recreational use of computers). However, the emergence of computer-based skills does provide an additional role for education institutions to play in preparing the workforce.
In response, virtually every educational provider in our sample has expanded its range of computer-related offerings. These range from "computer literacy" courses, providing an introduction to computer terminology and simple procedures, to courses in specific word processing programs, spreadsheets, simple programming languages, the use of CAD in drafting courses, and introductions to CNC machines in programs for machinists.[23] In addition, customized training departments of community colleges which provide short-term courses to specific firms (also referred to as contract education) usually include many computer applications in their programs to upgrade the skills of current employees.
Educational providers have been responsive, then, to the changing demands of work. However, these changes have not yet been enough to make postsecondary education more crucial in gaining access to employment within the sub-baccalaureate labor market. As long as the skills necessary for new forms of work can be obtained on the job, employers still appear to prefer experience to formal education in their hiring criteria, as we will see in greater detail in the "Employers in the Sub-Baccalaureate Labor Market" section. Even though work is changing in the direction of a workforce with nominally higher skills and responsibilities, the conventional corollary--that additional formal schooling will be necessary for large fractions of the workforce--does not necessarily follow.
Not surprisingly, the pace of change toward new forms of work organization and toward the greater use of computers varies from area to area. Frankton, which is at its core an agricultural community, has been especially slow to convert to computer applications, and some education providers complained that their computer-based programs (in CAD and accounting specifically) were ahead of developments in employment. On the other hand, employment in the Palmdale area, an important center of high-tech development and manufacturing, and in Cotooli, with many firms committed to advanced manufacturing technology, has been much quicker to change. The result is substantial variation across local labor markets and around the country in work organization and technological developments in the sub-baccalaureate labor market.
[22] See, for example, Brown, Reich, and Stern (1992) characterizing the difference between the new form of employment they describe as SET (security, employee involvement, and training) rather than the older JAM (job characteristics, adversarial relations, and minimal training) and the discussion of the "high skills equilibrium" versus the current "low-skills equilibrium" in American's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! (Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 1990). It is important to note that the firms we examined have made only some of the changes associated with SET and that movement to a new equilibrium may be slow and incomplete.
[23] It is difficult for educational providers to offer more than an introduction to CNC machining because of the costs of the machines themselves. The issue of keeping up with rapidly advancing and expensive technology is examined in greater detail in "The Providers of Education and Their Connections to Employers" and "Employers in the Sub-Baccalaureate Labor Market" sections.