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On a recent night at Dodger Stadium, Brad Luster was taking in the game but suddenly felt compelled to reach for his cell phone.

“I’m at Dodger Stadium,” said Luster, a commercial real estate broker, leaving a voicemail message. “Give me a call on my cell phone. I’ll be happy to talk to you. Besides, I figure it will get boring here pretty soon. It usually does.”

Ten years ago, it would be hard to imagine such a call being placed. Few people had cell phones. Most offices didn’t have voicemail. And the Dodgers were more exciting back then.

But Luster, managing partner of Major Properties Realtors, isn’t the only one conducting business from the ballpark, or the freeway, or the grocery store. These days, folks are working longer hours, facing tougher on-the-job demands, doing more work at home never, in fact, really punching out.

Is this the way people will be expected to work from now on? Or are these changes just a phase, part of the rocky transition from the 9-to-5 office to a more “virtual” working environment?

“To compete in a global economy, businesses feel the need to place higher demands on their people,” said Alec Levenson, acting director of labor markets and human capital studies at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica. “In return, companies are adopting certain ‘worker-friendly’ practices adjusting their benefit plans by offering things like child care, allowing people more flexible working arrangements.”

Despite all the hype about a “new economy,” Levenson and other analysts suggest that the rapid pace of today’s workplace may not be part of a grand plan, but a confluence of factors: a tight labor market, a fiercely competitive global economy, and the premium that today’s marketplace gives to those with sophisticated skills and knowledge.

Levenson sees the strains on higher-income workers as largely an issue of choice. “They want to acquire more, and they can,” he said.

Effect of computers

One of the curious aspects of the new workplace is that, at least according to the numbers, computer technology has been slow in making workers more productive.

From 1946 to 1973, private, non-farm productivity rose at a 3 percent annual clip. Then the domestic economy hit the skids, as productivity rose by only 1 percent a year until 1994.

There are many explanations: overseas competition, stagflation and corporate downsizing among them.

Since 1995, productivity has ticked upward, to an annual rate of 2.1 percent. Fans of the new economy have attributed much of the gain to technology. Milken Institute demographics specialist Ross DeVol notes that, since the recession of 1990-91, the high-tech sector has grown four times faster than the rest of the economy.

And the boom is bringing a record number of people into the workforce. Nearly 140 million Americans hold jobs today, up from 119 million in 1990. The unemployment rate is holding steady at less than 4.5 percent.

As that larger workforce becomes increasingly adept at using technological advances, its output per worker is climbing.

Economists Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT and Loren Hitt of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania attribute as much as half of the recent growth in productivity to high-tech advances. Some optimists predict 3 percent to 4 percent real productivity gains per year, as far as the eye can see.

Are they right? It’s hard to say, in part because it’s tougher to measure the productivity of a technical support worker at an Internet company than the output of an assembly-line worker in a Toyota factory.

Changing workplace

Further clouding the issue is that many paper transactions once handled by workers are now being done electronically. ATMs reduce the number of checks that banks process, but also reduce the number of employees they have to hire. While consumers are generally served more efficiently, determining ATMs’ impacts on bank employees’ output is far more complex.

Whether technology has made workers more productive, or just more harried, there’s no denying that the workplace has changed. Some of those changes have been profound, even though they may have gone largely unnoticed.

Improvements in technology, for example, are credited with renewing the interest in animation, especially in computer-generated images that make flat images on a screen seem 3-D.

In some respects, animators use the same techniques as they have for 70 years. Artists still draw and paint images on cells that are filmed and edited in a studio. What’s changed is that the digital technology used to do that filming and editing has reduced the cost and increased the speed of the process.

Such is the case with “Futurama,” the second Fox series from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening. Set in the year 3000, the series uses digital cameras and 3-D software to produce stunning images.

If the show used analog cameras, much of the production would probably be done in Korea (as “The Simpsons” does), with cheap labor and traditional filming techniques, said Claudia Katz, a producer of “Futurama” who is based at Rough Draft Studios Inc. in Glendale.

“If we had a problem with an episode, we could move the scenes around or maybe cut them,” Katz said. “But to really fix a problem (in an analog environment), we would have to ship the entire thing back to Korea for them to make the changes.”

With digital technology, “We do our camera work here,” she said. “We have a director in-house. We can fix a problem in a half-hour that would otherwise take several days. There’s no substitute for having everybody in the same room.”

Speedier factories

Such advances are not confined to Hollywood. They’re being felt in traditionally low-tech industries as well. At L.A.-based Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., “Where you’d once see supervisors scribbling on carbon paper, now line workers are inputting data in a computer,” said CEO Dave Hannah.

“(Technology) has helped us turn over our inventory a lot more consistently,” Hannah said. “As soon as we’ve converted a coil of steel into a certain number of flat sheets, our sales staff immediately knows that it’s done and ready to sell.”

In fact, Hannah says, “Our next big challenge will be e-commerce. Customers will want to get on our Web site and talk to us (via e-mail) as easily as they can by picking up the phone.”

While some industries are eagerly embracing technological advances and hailing the resultant productivity gains, others are bristling at the prospect. Luisa Gatz, president of Local 26 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, says he represents “a diversified group of workers technology has done in.”

Indeed, the portion of union workers in the overall U.S. economy has fallen off in recent years, as the workforce becomes more mobile and technologically sophisticated. “I just settled a four-year strike that went from 80 jobs to 30 jobs,” Gatz said. “By the time we could settle with the company, it had automated the factory.”

ILWU members are now embroiled in a struggle with the shipping industry over how extensively West Coast ports will be automated. The unions fear that local ports will become “a paperless, person-less waterfront,” Gatz said. “The most sophisticated cranes and machinery can move things faster than people.”

Gatz adds, “There’s nothing I can do individually to put in place the kind of changes society needs to make. We need a shorter workday without cutting overall pay, and an end to overtime. Technology has been used to serve stockholders and not society.”

Even so, some unions have found ways to adapt. Take Local 11 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Darrell Brown, a spokesman for the sound and communications division of the local, says, “Technology has had a dramatic impact on our members. We’re using laptops to program fire-alarm systems, when before we would have data circuits on every floor.”

The demand for new telecom equipment has led to a nationwide shortage of installers. “There aren’t enough people to fill the jobs,” Brown said.

Union training

The local has just opened a facility in Diamond Bar that will certify members in BISCI, an internationally recognized certification program for telecom and security installers. A lot of construction jobs require BICSI-certified installers; the local sets aside 10 cents for every hour its members work to fund the center.

“It costs $3,000 a person to get a member certified at the BICSI home facility in Florida,” Brown said. “So we sent a couple of (members) there and got them certified as instructors. Every apprentice and journeyman in our (480-person) local will go through the program.”

This focus on member training is not unusual for the construction unions, which have typically organized individuals who moved from job to job, says Daniel J.B. Mitchell, a labor economist at UCLA’s Anderson School. Training is one of the benefits that construction unions have provided to their members.

Such “lifelong education” may well be essential if technology continues to affect the workplace. “People with skills and resources will always be able to take care of themselves and their children,” Levenson said. “As a matter of policy, we need to be concerned for those who can’t afford the best. For those who lack skills and education, the glass is three-quarters empty.”

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