The following five talks are different opinions about working
at home instead of working in of rices in the centre of towns.
Michael People spend a lot of their working day
actually getting to and from their place of work, never mind the expense of
that. I mean, the rush hours, as everyone knows, are the worst times of day to
travel, and millions of people spend their working lives either getting up early
to avoid the rush hours or travelling in the middle of them with all the
pressures and stress it can cause. Jane Now we
think the future looks very bad for these people. I mean it sounds extraordinary
but you think about it in those technological terms you see. In future a British
firm in, for example, London, might employ clerks in Belfast, or a Paris company
could have their secretaries in Spain, and then they just dial around for the
cheapest labour. Lily Such arrangements suit a
lot of people, particularly women. If they have young children they don’ t want
to travel a long way from home. And... uhm... perhaps they want the advantages
of flexible-time, where they have a number of hours to do but they can choose
when to do them. Cathy Now, what is clear is
that the new technologies are radically changing the working lives of people.
Well, it’ s those people who traditionally have had very little say in their
conditions of employment. Now it would be very easy for an employer to exploit
these people further by keeping them beyond any possible contacts with trade
unions. Nancy This appears to affect those
people in the secretarial and data-processing field. You see there are three
million women in Britain whose jobs involve processing information, and many
employers would like to have them out of the way at home, with none of the
protection they would get if they were in an office. Now match
each of the persons with the appropriate statement. Note: there are
two extra statements. Statements
[A] Flexible-time offers no job security.
[B] Flexible-time gives people much more freedom to organize their lives.
[C] Flexible-time reduces expenditure on office renting.
[D] Working at home reduces stress and pollution.
[E] Flexible-time is risky to certain women workers.[F] Flexible-time may
cause decrease in workers’ salaries.[G] Working in offices is
time-consuming.