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Williamsburg meeting, was "tremendously salable and appealing." There might be some antitrust problems in channeling technological change, as proposed by Mr. Herrick, but our approach to such problems should be a positive one: We should start from the conviction that such changes are required and then work out the problems. "The real convincer will be the actual successful experiment,” he concluded.

Mr. Gotbaum restated his strongly-held view that job content and job satisfaction are important, but not the most important part of the problem and the solution. Workers are interested only in material progress:

At the reality of the bargaining table, I have never been able to bargain any aspect of job fulfillment above the buck. The membership won't trade job satisfaction for less dollars. 14

He recommended more training and career development programs directly linked to work organizations and handled by a single institution such as the union or the company:

If it's fragmented by institutions, there will be more chance to cop out.... And forget about research and development. Persuasion and trial are much better.

Who does what? By the end of the Williamsburg Conference, this question remained unanswered for all practical purposes. Either the materials provided in advance or the nature of the conference dialogue, or both, were inadequate stimulators to bring home effectively to the participants any sense of concern about the changing nature of workers' reactions to the tasks they must perform to earn their daily bread. How one earns that bread is, of course, part of a broader context.15 As Ben S. Stephansky expressed it:

We've been involved in a special case here. The larger case is humanizing the quality of life in our society. This is challenging every one of our institutions. Now that we've had the meeting, I have to say that we could not have invited different group to come here.

These are the relevant actors.

But the Williamsburg Conference was only a prelude. Its intention was to provoke greater recognition of the role of work in the lives of men and women. Despite the seemingly lethargic nature of the participants' con

14It would be interesting to find out if such a choice has ever really been forced on workers, and how frequently.

15Such a sentence is now a required culturally-prescribed platitude. Failure to use such words opens one up to a criticism of not being "comprehensive."

cern, the Upjohn Institute studies and the Williamsburg Conference have touched off some organized interest; and efforts are underway — for example, to meet separately with union and management groups to promote small-scale programs to cope with the job problems of workers as they experience them.

If and when we ever reach a near-utopia in which all or nearly all would-be jobseekers find and keep secure and well-paying jobs, will we then have established a true utopia? Or will workers at all levels — begin to concern themselves more with the very intrinsic content of the tasks they perform in order to achieve and maintain what they deem to be a high-quality standard of living? Will work-itself components become the greater issues with which workers, employers, and government will become more preoccupied than they are now, when "bread-and-butter" goals are viewed as the only bases for employee discontent?

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Arocena Holiday Hotel

Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico 25 July 1972

Mr. Mark Schneider

Assistant to Sen. Edward Kennedy

United States Senate

Washington, D.C.

Dear Mark Schneider:

I hope that the hearings went well, and that they will be the beginning for further legislative work. Enclosed is a statement that I hope can be included in the record. I plan to be back in Washington around the first of September and will get in touch with you then.

With best wishes.

Sincerely,

Michael Macwly

Michael Maccoby

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