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  3. For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for

For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for

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问题    For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines out standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by out fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a comer; that because work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom, frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel of despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative.
   Inequality at work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we tackle it head-on. Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society.
    The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning, they are able to exercise responsibility, they have a considerable degree of control over their own—and others—working lives. Most important of all, they gave the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, and for growing numbers of white-collar workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful exercise. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable—for themselves—by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their worker experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.
   Rising education standards feel rising expectations, yet the mount of control which the worker has over his own work situations does not rise accordingly. In many cases his control has been reduced. Symptoms of protest increase—rising sickness and absenteeism, high turnover of employees, restrictions on output, and strikes, both unofficial and official. There is not much escape out and upwards. As management becomes more professional—in itself a good thing—the opportunity for promotion from the shop floor become less. The only escape is to another equally frustrating manual job; the only compensation is found not in the job but outside it, if there is a rising standard of living.
Why do working conditions generally remain bad?
选项 A、The workers are quite satisfied with them.
B、No one can decide what to do about them.
C、Managers see no need to change them.
D、Office workers want to protect their position.
答案C
解析
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