Smashing Wage Slavery:

The Self-Employment and Telecommuting Promise

May I cut to the chase?

Wage slaves in America are jumping ship in record numbers. On the other side of the equation, millions are being pushed overboard as they are "clownsized" with only a few hours' notice.

A little more than one hundred years ago, nearly 90 percent of all Americans were self-employed and many worked from their homes. Doctors saw patients in their living rooms. Salesmen worked out of inventory in their garages or empty sheds. The grocer lived with his family upstairs above the store. Today, it's just the reverse: fewer than 9 percent of us are self-employed.

Recently, however, the relative security of a salaried job with a good company has given way to a chronic sense of insecurity as jobs and companies that once inspired our loyalty disappear. People with what they once considered lifetime careers are getting laid off and finding themselves at loose ends with skills and education-but no place to go. Not only are they losing their jobs, they are losing their medical benefits and, in some cases, their retirement packages. Most analysts believe that many jobs currently being eliminated in the corporate and governmental sectors are likely to never return. And, even if the job itself is secure, indebtedness and a deep sense of "time poverty" cuts across all professional levels. After commuting to work, working, and then commuting home again, there's almost no time left to do anything but eat, "relax" in front of the TV, and hope to sleep well enough to do it all over again. I certainly don't envy the average American worker today.

But during the past few years, an interesting thing has happened in living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms all across the nation. Millions of people have set up home offices and started working from their homes.

Some chose to remain in the salaried culture and use their home office to catch up on corporate "homework." Others telecommute from their home office by sending their work in to their corporate headquarters from a personal computer via phone lines. (In fact, telecommuting suddenly became the "in thing" within hours of the January 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, which destroyed many of that sprawling city's freeways.) And many others swapped the insecurity of dependence on a corporation and the good will of a boss by starting their own home-based business-a new version of traditional American entrepreneurship and independence. They have wiped out the commute to and through congested urban areas and have saved their lifestyles and, perhaps, their lives.

The trend toward working from home is encouraged not only by cultural change but by a rapidly evolving technology that is much more accessible and affordable than ever. A one- or two-person office can appear to the outside world like a fully staffed corporate warren, complete with fax machines, computers, and copiers. Equipped with a laptop computer and built-in fax/modem, you can carry this fully informed "office" onto a boat, into a hotel, or to the top of a mountain.

If you are currently in a salaried position, setting up a personal office now will give you a "lifeboat" to jump into if you suddenly become "job free," or the launching pad for a successful new business that puts you in charge. Ironically, as corporations shrink, they are relying more and more upon outside, independent suppliers and consultants who they don't have to cover with medical insurance and retirement plans. This means that the opportunities for independent professionals and tradespeople will get better even as the job market shrinks.

The transition to relative or total independence is no hop-skip-jump, however. Dagwood Bumstead of Sunday comics fame found this out the hard way in 1993 when he quit the job he'd held for sixty years working for Mr. Dithers and went to work with Blondie in her home-based catering business. Unfortunately, he literally ate all the profits and was summarily fired. Dagwood is now back at work for Mr. Dithers. But you, possessing more initiative and capable of more forethought than a two-dimensional comic character, will surely succeed.

And consider this: The total number of Americans working from home part- or full-time is greater than the entire population of California.

If your wristwatch has been looking lately like the slave bracelet of the industrial revolution, consider working independently, from a home office-in the spirit of community. It just might be the social sea change that neither the right nor the left is likely to deliver.

© 1996 by Jeff Berner