George Ayoub: Monday holiday good reminder of changing world

My first paid job was a journey into self-employment and business independence: the lemonade stand.

Well, kinda.

To be accurate, I sold Kool-Aid and "I" was really "we," as in my big sister and some neighborhood kids who insisted on getting in on the gig. Still, I was raking in coin (mostly nickels and dimes) on the northwest corner of 10th and Kimball under a catalpa tree when I was 5.

That math means come this Labor Day, when we celebrate the American worker, I will have been part of the club for 53 years.

The Kool-Aid enterprise waned in the hot summer sun, the combination of a mid-afternoon slump in business, diminishing excitement and short attention spans simply too much to overcome.

About six years later, I started delivering newspapers, first as a "helper," then as the main man: a paperboy. I would race home from school, sit on the back porch and fold The Grand Island Daily Independent just so. I then packed the aerodynamic squares into a permanently gray bag, which I attached to the handle bars of my green Schwinn.

The rest was riding and throwing and an occasional "roofing."

Every couple of weeks I would put on my best manners and go to each subscriber to collect, punching holes in oak tag cards and making nice with the customers. At Christmas, the generous ones would slip me an extra dollar or a couple quarters; when I'd miss a porch or the paper would find a wet patch, the crabby ones would earn their reputations.

Forty-five years later, they still do.



New dynamic

Conventional wisdom is that my generation of workers is beginning to retire, trading in the time clock for an easy chair or a fishing pole.

But that's the world of work we used to know, when Labor Day marked the start of the school year, a world of sugary Kool-Aid at 5 cents a pop and a young entrepreneur trying his best to keep the afternoon news out of Mr. Benson's bushes.

Truth is, we are not retiring. We are working longer -- in years.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 1977 and 2007, employment of workers over age 65 increased 101 percent. Total employment grew by 59 percent during the same period.

Yes, that's a doubling. The numbers are also pre-Boomer. The vanguard of that group is not yet 65.

Nor is this my parents' labor dynamic.

The Greatest Generation came home from war and built America into the most powerful economic engine the planet had ever known. Among the principles it established was this: Worker loyalty equals job security. We had company towns, gold watches, sons and daughters clocking in with fathers and mothers.

Not anymore. Authors Joseph Boyett and David Snyder, writing on the University of North Carolina Web site, said 20 percent of today's work force is considered temporary. That radically alters the paradigm of worker allegiance established many Labor Days ago.



Disappearing difference

My first product required water, sugar, Kool-Aid mix, cardboard and a crayon. A pack of the premixed stuff, which we saw later, would have been unthinkable.

Today, technology is primary to the workplace and workers. Its influence cannot be overstated.

Robots now do the work of humans, even humans with the personality of a robot. Artificial intelligence makes decisions for us.

Technology has allowed people to work virtually anywhere. I could, for example, be writing this column atop Mount McKinley, in a comfy chair at a Cincinnati Starbucks or at my kitchen table.

Or where I wrote it -- in the newsroom of The Independent.

Boyer and Snyder report that about 60 percent of the work force is doing something for which place -- where it is being done -- is not an issue.

That's a long way from 10th and Kimball.

Of course, being able to work anywhere means being able to work anytime, which means that whole weekend/weekday differential is disappearing.

And the new trends will affect many of us until we are well past 65.

That's what I'm going to think about while I work this Labor Day.

I haven't decided from where, but under a leafy catalpa sounds good.



George Ayoub is senior writer at The Independent. Read his sports blog, "Bawls and Bats," at www.grandislandblogs.org/george