Page 111 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Commun cat on and Knowledge Labor

engineering contain little or no bulk), the production process requires the use of
global telecommunications systems whose costs have been declining over years
of technological development. This process of outsourcing enables, for example,
an American company to use data-entry workers in China, call-center employ-
ees in Canada, and software programmers in India and incur a fraction of the
labor costs that it would by employing workers in the United States. This pro-
cess is by and large an extension of the general predominance of a business-led
neoliberal agenda that has transformed the business-labor social contract of the
1950s and 1960s (guaranteed jobs at a living wage with a package of benefits) to
a business-first agenda that, in the name of productivity, has made jobs, wages,
and certainly benefits far from a guarantee in today’s developed societies. Be-
cause outsourcing is part of a wider business agenda that has also attacked the
social policy instruments that protected labor and trade unions, it has been all
the more difficult for working people to mount a successful defense.

knowLEDgE workErs uniTE

Out of necessity and often using the tools of their trade, knowledge work-
ers are increasingly organizing to defend creative work and its public purpose.
Across the converging communication and information technology sectors,
they are organizing trade unions that respond to technological convergence
and the convergence of companies that have created massive concentration in
the knowledge industry. For example, the Communication Workers of Amer-
ica (CWA) represents 700,000 workers in the media, telecommunication, and
information technology sectors. A similar convergent union, the Communica-
tion, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada, now represents about 80,000 workers
in these and other occupations. Demonstrating the value of labor convergence
across borders, the CWA used its power to successfully unite on-air and techni-
cal workers to defeat the 2005 lockout of workers at Canada’s national broad-
caster. At the international level, the Union Network International (UNI),
a global federation spanning the converging knowledge arena, calls itself “a
new international for a new millennium.” UNI was founded in 2000 and includes
15.5 million workers from 900 unions in 140 countries. Finally, even high-tech
workers, typically an enormous challenge to organize, have, with the help of the
CWA and other unions, revived social movement unionism in the United States
by organizing disgruntled workers who write code and produce content at Mi-
crosoft, IBM, and other big firms.

wiLL aCaDEmiC knowLEDgE workErs FoLLow?

University and college professors long ago recognized that technology, edu-
cation, and professional status did not lift them out of the realm of workers.
Many responded by organizing trade unions that follow the craft model. This
has provided a privileged status and academics are arguably the new aristocracy
of labor. But it has separated teachers in higher education from the process of
labor convergence. As a result, they cannot enjoy the benefits of joining workers