No More Time

Manchester was good to us, W. says, back at Piccadilly Station. It was good. We gave our talk, fielded questions, didn't get lynched …

Did we convince anyone? We convinced ourselves, at the very least. We even moved ourselves, talking about the transformation of work. The transformation of time.

For us, for people like us, there's no more time, we observed. Time has been broken up, sold off. Time has been broken up into short-term contracts. Time is for consumption, and commercialised leisure. There's no long term, not for the worker, nor the consumer. Nothing connects. Experience no longer accumulates. All fixed, fast-frozen relationships dissolve into the air …

The Manchester postgraduates seem to understand what we meant, we agree. They understood Manchester!

There's no long-term, for the worker, not now, we said. Deferred gratification need bring no reward. For the new elite, it's all about contacts, about their network, not about the firm. Self-discipline without dependency: that's what they show, the editors of the new media, the advertising creatives, living in converted warehouses. Free-wheeling initiative: that's what they exhibit, the floor traders in brokerage firms, the internet entrepreneurs who buy apartments redeveloped by Urban Splash …

And for the rest of us, the non-elite, around whom their firms are constantly changing?, we said. For those for whom work means constant insecurity, the constant re-engineering and restructuring of their workplaces, constant delayering and outsourcing, constant downsizing and networkisation? Casualise your labour pool: that's what the consultants recommend. It's what the market wants, they tell their clients: labour flexibility impresses the investors.

So what is to be done?, they asked us, our Manchester audience. What are we to do? We didn't know, we said. They didn't know. But all around us, we could see from the window in the winter afternoon, the city was being rebuilt.