Abstract

In the face of a technological revolution which massively reduces the quantity of work demanded, there are the following alternatives: 1) Either a smaller and smaller core of full-time workers monopolizes the interesting jobs and marginalizes the majority of the population, with the unions degenerating into corporatism elitist and conservative organizations; or, 2) wage labor is redistributed in such a way that all people can work less; work then ceases to be the central focus of life and the main source of identity. To survive, then, the union movement must transform itself so as to encompass the totality of human expectations (mainly cultural, non-economic, ecological), and no longer just expectations related to wage-labor