Alienation In Workplace

Introduction

Alienation is described as the state of individuals’ labours that has become to satisfy the hirer’s demands and individuals are motived to work for momentary purpose which is meant for personal survival (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014). Marx describes the cause is due to capitalism which has distorted the “inherent relation between labour and human nature” (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014, p.53). This paper attempts to show that the virulent effect of alienation continues in today’s workplace and the white-collar workers continually faced alienation despites the imporved economy activities and increase use of advanced technology. Four types of alienations are identified namely, from the act of working, the products of work, other workers and

Workers are functioning as followers with minimal sense of roles in the total production process (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014). Individuals’ activities are determined by others. Technology further oppresses them with fragment and deskill labour. Blauner (1964) posits this as powerless among the workers are powerless towards organizing their own works. A national survey reported that eight-four percent of America journalists were facing low morale and deprived of using their creativity to research and write stories (Hickey, 2000). In an American newsroom study, it was found that journalists were reduced to one-third of their usual time to complete a story (Minami, 2009). Under capitalism, news agencies cut production costs by standardizing journalists’ work processes. Office automated with computer technologies serve to routinize and regulate journalist’s workflow. Journalist’s product becomes rationalized and predictable as stories are instantly produced. This provided no room for journalists to reflect their products. This indicates that work is fragmented and narrowed the journalist’s goal is simply to create as many products as they can in a tight and specialized environment. Journalists are helpless in the newsroom as the bosses’ power are over them and have to be quiet about it. They may not be able change their occupations because of the lack of portable

Ministry of Education (MOE), the initiator of TLC-FA, produced a resource kits that contains detailed workshops and manipulatives for teacher’s implementation in the class. Teachers are deprived of control and freedom in the execution process as they are supposed to follow the resource kits and show their completion through peer observations in class. This occurs as meaningless to the teachers as they cannot see the relation between their teaching and TLC-FA. As such, they regard themselves as alienated from the MOE’s instruction for teaching