The High Tech Dilemma

The rapid development of high technology industries and the growing use of robots, computers, and sophisticated electronic systems by multinational firms is causing enormous, far reaching changes in work and the quality of life in both industrialized and developing nations.

For American workers, jobs are being lost, skills eroded, union power weakened, and wages lowered, leading to what one national union leader calls the "spectre of mass technological unemployment." For countries in the Third World, corporate domination of new technologies increases dependence on the developed countries while creating new jobs - many of them a result of shifting investments and plant closings by multinationals. The rapid diffusion of information technology, Western media, and advertising in the Third World can have a serious impact on culture and indigenous patterns of technology, education, and lifestyle.

But in many ways, high technology is deepening the economic and political links between the North and South. Many American high tech firms are locating their production facilities abroad, both for export back to U.S. markets and for servicing foreign markets, while new technology is being licensed to foreign multinationals.

Besides costing U.S. jobs, such strategies put a tremendous strain on wages in the U.S. "With Korean wages at 80' an hour and ours at $8.00, the companies can always use the threat to move abroad and pressure us to lower our wages," says George Kohl, a researcher with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). "The other solution is to automate. And that's what's happening."

With assembly production undergoing fundamental changes, automation can also displace Third World workers. The 1982 withdrawal of Control Data Corporation from South Korea, though blamed on the union, was precipitated by the company's automation of its software production. So while the drift of production to the Third World is causing resentment among workers in the U.S., the similar effect on workers in both places is also leading to new possibilities for developing alternatives and fighting corporate power.

Labor

Many of the most innovative ideas about labor and technology have been generated in Western Europe, where the power of labor parties has led to the adoption of legislation giving unions the right' to notification in advance of technical innovation, strong contracts limiting layoffs, and requiring companies to pay the costs of retraining unemployed' workers. In Norway, "data shop stewards" paid by the company are trained in computer technology and given complete access to information about company plans in order to develop counterstrategies for the union. Based on these ideas, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has been promoting a "New Technology Bill of Rights" for American workers (see box).

But as the process of deskilling continues and more and more jobs move overseas, trade unionists are talking about the need for stronger measures. Some strategies currently under discussion include:

Changes in contract language. A current goal of many unions is to negotiate' contracts giving workers input into the introduction of technology and requiring the training of production workers in the use of computers. "The big confrontation is going to come over the right to know, the right to bargain intelligently," says George Poulin, Vice President of the IAM. "Management doesn't want to tell you and they don't want you to have any say in how you handle new technology."

A number of such contracts exist: AT&T, for example, is required to give the CWA a six month notification before new technology is adapted. "But this is just enough to mitigate the impact," says the CWA's Kohl. "Workers and unions have to intrude into what is perceived as management's right" to change the design of technical systems. But such "intrusion" is unacceptable to American management: last year the CWA attempted to reach an agreement with AT&T giving the union the right to negotiate over the introduction of new job titles and to participate in the design of future jobs. "The whole plan collapsed because AT&T wouldn't agree to equal rights to grade jobs, or a joint union-management team," says Kohl.

Machinist Frank Emspak is a member of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) who set up a union technology committee at a General Electric plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. He argues that workers should have the right to veto the introduction of technology that will replace their jobs. "If they have the right to say yes to technology and then move, we have the right to say no and prevent them from moving. That's equality," he says.

Organizing. The vast majority of high tech workers are unorganized. With their own ranks severely depleted by the layoffs of the last few years, a number of unions have joined together to organize the electronic and computer complexes that have developed in Boston and in California. But the attempts have brought little success. Rand Wilson, a CWA organizer in Boston, attributes the difficulties to "IBM-style" paternalistic management practices, the "fragmentation" of the labor movement, and the international character of the electronics industry. "Workers are very aware of the mobility of capital and the international character of the companies they are working in," he says. "When you try to organize in one particular place, people just don't have the sense they can win at that level."

Rather than concentrating their efforts on individual plants, says Wilson, the CWA is trying to develop an "industrywide" approach, and has organized a "high tech workers network" to "work with people on problems and issues they're facing and try to have the unions develop their credibility among the employees." Such a network "wouldn't preclude the idea of a CIO-type industrial union," he says. But he adds, "There just has to be a larger movement, a context in which organizing could take place, so it would make sense to those workers out in front." Wilson points to the example of the international organization of Philips Workers, a network of employees of the Dutch electronics multinational, as a successful multinational organizing effort.

Legislation to curb capital flight. So far the major legislation proposed to deal with global corporate strategies had been the United Auto Worker's (UAW) domestic content bill (see MM, July 1983), which would require a certain percentage of auto parts to be produced in the U.S. But many want much stronger legislation. "Domestic content doesn't deal with the fact that many of our firms are export dependent," says Emspak of IUE. "It really doesn't help to have domestic content if you are producing for the Chinese market in Korea." Adds Kohl of CWA: "When people talk about industrial policy, it's important to have reform of labor law. A climate has been created where it's very difficult to organize, and that allows the companies to have that much more freedom to move. "

To get the changes they desire, many in the labor movement see the need for a much broader social movement.

"We've got to broaden out the fight," says Kohl, "and build new alliances between workers and the public." Kohl points to a number of examples as successful models: a Rochester, New York CWA local has initiated a fight against a local Bell company that is forming a nonunion subsidiary to sell business equipment; arguing that the new investment would be funded from profits generated from phone rates (in effect shifting funds from a regulated to an unregulated business), the local has gained community support. In California, the Santa Clara Labor Council organized a fight to clean local water systems contaminated by leakage from electronic corporations. And in New Jersey, state employees have led the campaign against higher taxes.

Until a broad based movement takes shape, however, unions will be fighting a desperate battle just to hold on to current jobs. "Right now the struggle in the shop is for people to understand what's happening, get a grasp of the technical systems that are getting put in, and understand how they affect our jobs and skills," says Emspak. "Then we try and negotiate to the best of our ability to preserve them while we deal with the global problems through federal or state legislation."

Third World

The problem for many Third World governments is that unless they develop industries in the new technologies, they will fall further and further behind economically. "What they realize is, that the application of these new computer based systems in the [industrialized] countries is changing the economic structure practically across all industrial sectors," says Dieter Ernst, a professor of Internationl Economics at the University of Hamburg and author of The Global Race in Microelectronics. "That has implications for their own exports, and for their own international competitiveness."

A number of the "newly industrialized countries," such as Brazil, Argentina, India, South Korea, and Taiwan have begun to develop their own computer industries. But despite their attempts to "protect" domestic markets by encouraging local development of small computer and component industries, these industries are still part of the multinational chain. "It's a funny kind of protection," says Atul Wad, a Boston University researcher in science and technology. "India is not succeeding in building up its own hardware, and is still dependent on the multinationals for the components. Brazilian products are basically clones of American products." Similarly, in South Korea and Taiwan, local companies are linking up with U.S. companies such as AT&T, ITT, Apple, Western Electric, and Texas Instruments to produce small computers and circuits for telecommunications systems.

Many observers wonder how the products developed from these ventures can compete with products from the U.S. or Japan. "Most developing countries don't have the capacity to build and design their own chips and software," says Wad. "Countries like Korea can only compete in a certain niche, such as the minicomputer, and just assemble chips." Ernst, who has studied these industries in detail, says he is "fairly skeptical about [these countries'] ability to develop software engineering capabilities." The development of the 64K RAM chip in Korea, he says, is "more an internal power game. Where are they going to find the markets?"

According to Ernst, the worst problem is that "in societies like India, independent, critical research on these technologies does not exist," a situation he considers "disastrous." "How could you go about developing any kind of viable alternative strategy if you don't exactly know what's happening?"

Both Ernst and Wad emphasize the need for Third World countries to use the new technologies for local needs. Although people are aware of the ways sophisticated technologies might serve development goals, Wad says he "hasn't seen a single national policy" aimed at such ends. He suggests that developing countries start pooling their resources to develop new products and find new markets. "No Third World country has a large domestic market by itself," he says. "At the political level it would be very appealing to have a joint research facility."

Wad, who is from India, is presently working with the U.N. Center for Science and Technology for Development on an "advanced technology alert system." Just launched, this project will provide a vehicle for Third World countries to keep abreast of new developments. The program will issue semiannual reports on one area of technology, review the negative and positive aspects of the technology, and study the implications for developing countries. "With this information, a person sitting in a planning office can make intelligent decisions about technology," Wad says.

The need to develop alternatives in the Third World is pressing. "Five years ago, high tech was proclaimed as the best thing that could possibly happen to the Third World," says Wad. "That mystique is gone, and industrialists and policy makers are aware of some of the problems now, although it hasn't reached the level it has in the U.S., where many jobs are being lost." But popular awareness could grow, he says, when computer technology starts being introduced in public administration, which tends to be very labor intensive in the Third World. "When they start doing away with those white collar people, there will be problems," he says.

"The starting point would be identifying the basic social needs," says Ernst. "It would make sense to have good information on weather conditions, on devices that would indicate the level of moisture in grain so it wouldn't become rotten. There's a long list of things. In the social infrastructure, transportation, health care, computers could play a role."

According to Wad, microelectronics can potentially be used in small scale, decentralized industries such as irrigation of fields, grain storage, livestock feeding, or the fermentation of fields. "But all of these areas use traditional ways of knowledge," he warns. "New technology might do the jobs better, but it could also damage people's livelihood and cause the loss of valuable knowledge." Artisans and crafts people producing textiles, jewelry, or sculpture could be threatened by automation in the future, he suggests.

Thus, the central question for both the industrialized and the developing countries is very much the same: who controls the technology, and why it is being introduced.

Labor's "New Technology Bill of Rights" In response to the threat that rapid developments in automation and computerized manufacturing pose to American workers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has adopted ten principles as a blueprint for the future. They were summarized in a recent speech by IAM vice president George Poulin: Technology shall be used in ways that create jobs and full employment. Cost savings from new technology shall be shared with workers and shall not go solely to capital, management and shareholders. Local, state, and national governments shall have the right to levy a replacement tax on robots that decrease tax revenues by decreasing the number of human workers who now pay taxes. Workers displaced by new technology shall be entitled to retraining and re-employment. New technology shall be used to strengthen America's industrial base rather than licensed for export. New technology shall not be harmful to the environment either in the workplace or in the community. Workers shall have the right to bargain collectively on management's decisions affecting work processes, including shutdown or transfer of jobs, capital, plants, or equipment. New technology shall not be used in the manner of Big Brother to monitor, measure, or otherwise control individual work standards on the job. Computerized collection of personal information on workers shall be tightly controlled and dissemination shall be strictly limited. When new technology has military applications, workers shall have a right to bargain for establishment of committees to try to find ways to adapt such technology to socially useful production for civilian purposes.