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  3. Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high u

Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high u

admin2010-02-20  56
问题    Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely.    But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to re- vive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work?
   The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future of work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
    Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
    Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In preindustrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to pay employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
   It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded -- a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to bye active lives.
   All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full times jobs.
The effects of almost universal employment were overwhelming in that _____.
选项 A、the work status of those not in paid employment suffered
B、the household and village community disappeared completely
C、men now traveled enormous distances to their places of work
D、young and old people became superfluous components of society
答案A
解析 该题问：普通的雇佣工作带来的主要影响是什么?文章第五段提到在全球化的职业制度中，妇女是受害者，因为在工业化之前，男人和妇女共同承担家庭责任，然而现在，男人们出去从事有报酬的工作，女人们在家里的工作是没有报酬的，这导致了男女地位的不平等，同样，老人和年轻人也被排除在工作之外，所以答案是A项“那些没有报酬的工作者的工作地位受到损害”。
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