Bank tellers fear a shift to on-line financial transactions and the elimination of the branch network. Many workers wonder about the impact on their community of the next big merger.
Government employees see former colleagues rehired on lower wages and benefits as subcontractors.
And nobody seems to have a clear idea where it is all leading, who will be the ultimate winners and what will happen to the losers. In the debate about globalization, one of the most frequently expressed concerns is the rise of uncertainty. Rapid technological innovation, ups and downs in foreign exchange and stock markets, changing trade and organizational patterns are all feeding through rapidly into turmoil at workplaces all over the world. As government leaders and businessmen debate reform of the architecture of global governance in obscure jargon and a jumble of institutional acronyms, new political forces of xenophobia compete for the streets with environmental, labour and social activists. Yet in this confusion of voices about where globalization is and should be going, hundreds of millions of women and men are denied the right to representation at the workplaces which is the motor of economic and social transformation.