Re-Shaping Work 2: Labour, the Workplace, and Technological Change 9781442602922

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Reshaping Work 2 Labour, the Workplace and Technological Change

edited by Christopher Schenk and John Anderson

co-published by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Garamond Press

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Re-shaping work II: labour, the workplace and technological change Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88627-175-4 (CCPA) - ISBN 1-55193-029-3 (Garamond Press) 1. Labour supply-Efect of technological innovations on-Canada. 2. Technological innovations-Social aspects-Canada. 3. Trade unions-Canada. I. Anderson, John, 1948- II. Schenk, Christopher Robert, 1942- III. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. HD 6331.2.C3R47 1999

331.12'0971

C99-901336-X

Printed and Bound in Canada Published by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 410-75 Albert Street Ottawa, Ontario KIP 5E7 613-563-1341 Phone 613-233-1458 Fax www.policyalternatives.ca [email protected] Garamond Press Canada's leading independent academic book publisher 63 Mahogany Court, Aurora, Ontario L4G 6M8 905-841-1460 Phone 905-841-3031 Fax www.garamond.ca garamond @ web.net

Table of Contents

Preface

i

Introduction Christopher Schenk and John Anderson

1

Riding the Digital Revolution: The Impact of Technological Change on Workers in the Commercial Printing Industry Karen Hadley

27

Information Highway and the Technological Revolution: Toll Road or Freeway? John Anderson

47

Listening to Workers: The Reorganization of Work in the Canadian Motor Vehicle Industry Wayne Lewchuck and David Robertson

Empowerment at Xerox Jonathan Eaton

83

Ill

Building Green: An Environmental Future in the Construction Trades David Sobel

135

Workers' Attitudes to Shorter Hours of Work Julie White

157

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Preface

We are pleased to introduce you to a second contemporary text of research findings on work and technology. This book is the result of original research by Canadian trade unionists through a unique program called the Technology Adjustment Research Program (TARP). The aim of this major research initiative was to examine the effect of new technologies and new forms of work organization on workers. What a novel idea! While governments give money to companies and to universities to study work, for the first time a government gave resources to employees' own organizations so that the effects of technological change could be studied from workers' own perspective. The TARP initiative came out of the Ontario Government's Premier's Council under the Liberal government of David Peterson in 1990. A total of $5.5 million was allocated over five years. Research proposals were then submitted to the Ontario Federation of Labour and assessed by a Management Committee composed of union research directors and academics in the field. The OFL was also able to hire the necessary staff to administer the program. Project researchers were hired by the unions concerned and worked out of the various locations of their union offices. This enabled them to be an integral part of the union's ongoing activity. At the same time, all of the researchers hired were able to meet regularly for purposes of mutual assistance and collective education. All researchers met and listened to reports on the progress of each project, and tried to assist one another through helpful suggestions and critical assessment. The result was not only the particular research studies found in this volume, but also the development of a cohesive group of skilled union researchers. Among the key skills developed were those of participatory research approaches that assisted in eliciting the expertise of rank-and-file

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workers in their places of employment. One mechanism that proved particularly helpful in this process was the use of focus groups. This text represents the final round of TARP research. With the fiveyear program concluding during the final period of the NDP Government, it was renewed for a further five years, only to be abruptly cancelled by the newly-elected Harris Conservative Government before it could be implemented. Nonetheless, the issues researched, the problems assessed, and the proposals made are all important ones. We hope that this book will contribute to a better understanding of the issues of workplace change, the role of new technologies, the debate on lean production and empowerment of the workforce, work and the environment, and on the possibility of shortening work hours. There is little ongoing progress on some of these issues by union research, given the immediate demands of collective bargaining and the cancellation of government funding. Ideologies of productivity and an overwhelming concern for the "bottom line" of profit dominate the thinking of corporations. Finally, the settings for this research are all in Ontario, where much of Canada's industry is located. The research subjects, the problems uncovered and the solutions posed, however, are Canada-wide. Indeed, in many cases they are universal. We think this book demonstrates the commitment of the union movement to continue the critical public debate on these issues. Hopefully, it will help us in reaching a stage, sooner rather than later, where technological change can be implemented in a manner that will put the needs of workers front and centre.

Wayne Samuelson President

Ethel LaValley Secretary-Treasurer

Irene Harris Executive Vice-President

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Introduction Christopher Schenk and John Anderson

"Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his "work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men...The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, everybody would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community." -Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man, 1891.}

"The great paradox of this economic revolution is that its new technologies enable people to take sudden leaps into modernity, while at the same time they promote the renewal of once-forbidden barbarisms. Amid the newness of things, exploitation of the weak by the strong also flourishes again." -William Greider, One World, Ready or Not, 1997,2

Christopher Schenk was the Chair of the TARP Management Committee. He is the Research Director of the Ontario Federation of Labour. John Anderson was the OFLTARP project co-ordinator. He is a consultant, writer and educator, based in Toronto.

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Technology on Trial: More Lessons From the Labour Frontlines This second volume of Reshaping Work continues the documentation of revolutionary changes in work relations and technology occurring in our midst. The current economic and societal changes are fuelled by a range of factors fundamental to which is the competitive drive for expanded market share and the private appropriation of wealth. As we noted in the first volume, in substantial part "This revolution is about technology and how the decision-makers use new technologies to re-shape the world of work and our everyday lives."3 It is in this sense that technology remains on trial. The case studies contained in this volume make up further evidence in that trial. They detail the effects of new technologies on particular groups of working people. Very often we learn about specific impacts of change from workers' daily life experiences and in their own words. Surprising to some is how, in many of the cases documented, the latest technologies and organizational structures—often claimed to be empowering by mainstream scholars and commentators—are actually found to be more restrictive and oppressive than earlier forms of workplace organization. The point made in the first volume unfortunately still stands, "...technology has been generally used as a weapon, not for our liberation from monotony, stress and want, but rather for the private appropriation of profit; for changing the workplace beyond recognition with the main aim of increased revenues instead of for the greater welfare of society and better conditions for working people."4 The evidence herein is again amassed by union researchers and activists. As such, its special strength is its unique access to the workplace and its ground-up perspective—a perspective not duplicated by those outside the workplace and workers' organizations. While closer to the harsh realities of new technologies and their usage by corporate owners and managers, these are not pessimistic studies with doomsday scenarios. The evidence collected also indicates new directions for taking control of technology and our economic destiny: how to take technology off the corporate agenda and insert it into what could be termed a people's agenda.

The Global Picture On the eve of the 21st century, economic, technological and societal change is more rapid and profound than ever before. The drive towards an inte-

Introduction

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grated world market dominated by privately-owned transnational corporations seems unstoppable. Indeed, it is presented as a phenomenon beyond the control of any of us. "Market forces" are alleged to be more efficient and so superior that they are considered the only viable way to structure our world. Even intervention by democratic government, the norm of the post-war world, is now said to be unwarranted interference, inhibiting economic growth, inefficient, and even in violation of "common sense." The increasingly international economy can be said to largely consist of several processes of change: first, the spread of market or capitalist forms of production; and second, the increasing interdependence of the world's economy. In the first meaning, the last half of the 20th century has seen the spread of market relations of production around the world in a more intense and thorough way than ever before. Transnational corporations are increasingly dominant, not only in manufacturing and commodities, but also in services, food and culture. There currently exists a MacDonald's restaurant in almost every major city in the world, and even the smallest village transmits Western culture through Hollywood movies. Today, there are few places in the world where feudal relations or other pre-market forms of economic organization dominate. This is true not only in advanced industrial countries, but also in Latin America, Africa and Asia, even though hundreds of millions of people remain tied to the land. Produce not directly consumed is sold on the market, contributing most often to an extremely modest income with millions still leaving in poverty. This process of capitalist expansion is even more complete given the collapse of the Soviet Union and East European "command" economies with their nationalized industries. The "free trade" zones and massive import of private capital into countries such as China and Vietnam demonstrate further evidence of the dominance of market productive relations in our contemporary world. This process of expanding market relations, while evolving over several hundred years, has not always been smooth and continuous, or even peaceful. Rather, it has been crisis- ridden with wars, political upheavals, recessions and depressions, the post-war incorporation of millions of women into the workforce, radical changes in work relations and lifestyle, given urbanization and the often disruptive moves from work in industry and resource extraction to majority employment in the service sector. Nonetheless, no matter how uneven, disruptive and brutal for the people involved, the expansion of capitalist market forces has continued. The second meaning given to this process of international market expansion and integration, often termed "globalization," refers to the increased

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interdependence of the world's economies. This too has an ongoing presence. The renowned historian Eric Hobsbawn has written that the "major fact of the 19th century is the creation of a single global economy."5 Seen from this vantage point, the developments of the 20th century consist more of an uneven continuation, expansion and intensification of earlier trends than qualitatively new and unique developments. Nonetheless, the world approaching the millennium is more interdependent than ever. Glyn and Sutcliffe identify the key elements of this interdependence process as: •

National economies are becoming increasingly interlinked such that the health of one is in significant part conditional on the health of the others. With this level of macroeconomic integration "the main determinants of income and employment can now only be understood at a global and no longer a national level." At the time of writing, the vulnerability of this interdependence is most clearly seen in the economic financial crisis in Southeast Asia where one country after another has seen its currency collapse or be dramatically devalued. Now the Russian rouble has crashed and Brazil's economy is in serious need of bailout monies. Millions of the world's people face unemployment and a free fall in their standard of living. These developments, in turn, impact on the economies and living standards of Canada, the United States and all of the world's economies.

•

Interdependent production and consumption patterns are increasingly evident. A more clearly definable international division of labour in which each nation or region increasingly depends on the other for particular goods and services, as well as for markets for its own products.

•

Markets are more integrated, particularly for capital as well as for goods and services, as is demonstrated in the above example of the collapse of Southeast Asian markets. This is not the case in the market for labour, however, as working people, despite periodic large waves of immigration, remain largely tied to their communities and countries. In all but this latter case, these more integrated markets are notable for their growth in import/export trade and in the technologicallyenhanced mobility of capital. Indeed, international trade and investment have grown faster than production in nearly every year since World War II.

Introduction

•

5

Global corporate structures: national economies are largely composed of private corporate structures which, in an era of