For working people, a world without wires = a world without strings
Now kings will rule and the poor will toil/And tear their hands as they tear the soil/But a day will come in the dawning age/When an honest man sees an honest wage
Van Diemen's Land, U2, Rattle & Hum
How it's going to be
Many ages have dawned for working people and none have been all that good. Exploited by kings, aristocrats, industrialists and, more recently, global capitalists, working people have always come out on the short end of the stick. That's all about to change. The age that is now upon us - the knowledge age - holds great promise for workers. Our problem over the millennia has been our inability to communicate among ourselves widely enough, quickly enough and effectively enough to develop a common vision - our own idea of how it's going to be - and then to find a way of getting to it. But that was then and this is now.
We can all feel it. Ever since this communications tool we are all using came into our lives, things have been different. Some of us just know a lot more about things in which we're interested. Some of us have met others with whom we share common interests and similar ideas about how it's going to be. For instance, those of us who think the workplace needs to be catapulted into the 21st century (from the 19th) are finding there are an awful lot of us out there. We are connecting with people whom we would otherwise never meet in a million years and we are all, in our own way, talking about how things ought to be and starting to make things happen. >From day to day, hour to hour there is a sense that we are moving with increasing speed towards something. We're moving towards how it's going to be - a future of our own creation.
At MFD this week, the unfolding future was the subject of a lot of discussion. Check out this one thread alone. In this wide ranging discussion, you can see a tremendous example of the kind of worker-to-worker discussion that is now taking place thanks to the net. This discussion is mostly about communication - how, where, what kind, where to put the focus. You also find a fascinating reference to emerging technology and how it's going to propel us to the next dimension in the workplace.
Power in our hands
The Internet has made knowledge accessible to workers. Little handheld wireless devices will take us from knowing to acting and then to building - how it's going to be. The proliferation of these devices will allow us - on a scale many time greater than anything we currently know - to seek out those with common interests, to talk, to identify common goals, to exchange information, to seek out support, to raise awareness, to plan, to mobilize, to go there.
These little handheld devices (more powerful, more functional future incarnations of the ones described in the discussions at this thread) will be available to millions of workers. When that happens, the final hurdle between our enormous power and us will be overcome. The ability to communicate with each other anywhere, any time, about anything - instantly, by voice or text, and to access virtually limitless sources of information - is going to profoundly change our lives and nowhere will this change be as evident as quickly as in the workplace.
When we are able to communicate directly with each other on this scale, we will no longer be dependent on representatives or middlemen whose interests are not always the same as ours. By speaking directly with each other, we will scope out what's important to us. We will consider our options and choose the best ones and we will act. We will redefine our communities based on our interests and not on geography, occupation or employment arrangements. We will use our enormous numbers to change a lot of things.
Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure? They should have control over it themselves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice in running the institutions that affect their lives?
Noam Chomsky
What's this going to mean in the workplace? Some predictions:
The Labour Relations system (the system of laws and government agencies that administer them) that governs labour-management relations will collapse. It won't be legislated away by some anti-worker government it will simply become irrelevant.
The LR system is an industrial era system the main purpose of which is control. It was created to control the growing militancy of workers. It gave workers the right to join unions and at the same time gave the unions the right to control workers. Everything about the system is constrictive, controlling and confusing. Workers are dependent on the holy trinity that makes the system work - employers, unions and government. The system exists to support old machine age institutions.
The system is collapsing and signs of this are all around us. It does not work well for organizing, especially in multi unit service industry workplaces. Workers themselves have few, if any rights, within the system. In some provinces, DFR complaints by workers against their unions now outnumber unfair labour practice complaints by unions against employers. The system is another country club - one that regulates relations in the world of union-management partnerships. It does little for those who truly need representation - the workers who need representation the most are those whose chances of getting organized are almost nil. The arbitration system for dealing with grievances is little more than a means for the employers and unions to put on a bit of a show for the workers - to give them the impression that they're having their day in court. The building is falling down and everybody is pretending not to notice. In a few years the mainstream will have no choice but to notice but it will be too late. Working people will have found more effective ways to get what they want.
In the new age, there will be little need for LRB's. Unions will be member driven organizations. Bureaucratic unions or biz-unions will cease to exist. They will become irrelevant. Some may reform significantly but many will not. Workers will desert them in droves for other more meaningful alternatives.
Workers will recognize that their power comes from themselves - individually and collectively - and not from their organizations. They will recognize that the organization is simply a means to an end. The well being of workers themselves, their families and communities are that end.
Most working people will belong to a union, a workers' association or some group that represents the collective interests of a group of workers. There will be a very diverse array of unions. Some will be the unions we know today - those that were able to make the transition, some will be new unions that will spring up as quickly as people learn how easily this can be done. Although most workers will belong to a union, there will not be one big union but rather a network of groups that have overlapping as well as unique interests. Some will be specifically focused on the workplace while others will have interests that extend beyond the workplace and into the community - the local one and the big global one as well. The networked groups will collaborate where they have common concern and will do their own thing, quite autonomously on other issues.
Net-working - because what they're doing now is not-working
The network does not lend itself well to concentration of power or control. Networks function as open systems. They are robust and conducive to collaborative rather than control. Online networks are not constricted by time and space. Information abundance and information flows are characteristics of networks. For these reasons, the new networked unions will be highly democratic - the networked community will not allow the concentration of power in the hands of a few. The networked unions will have no need of bureaucracy in any event. An empowered membership does not need to be told what to do or what to believe. It will make those decisions on its own. The services provided by the bureaucracy will no longer be needed or will be provided by the workers themselves or by external resources. This will be the case in the early going. Fledgling associations will initially, rely on experts to help them get their act together in areas like communications, organizing, bargaining and to provide advocacy services before the LRB's and boards of arbitration. As things progress, however, members themselves will carry out these functions. Eventually, much of this - especially the LRB and arbitration stuff - will no longer be needed.
Who Needs the LRB?
The Labour Relations Boards and the legislation they administer will eventually become irrelevant. It's not that they will be legislated away by some anti-worker government (there will be big corresponding changes in the way in which we govern ourselves as well - but that's a whole other discussion), they just won't be used much and eventually will dry up from neglect and under-use.
Workers will organize themselves based on their own communities of interest (not the ones the LRB's use to certify bargaining units). We may see community-based bargaining units emerge; where workers at a number of different businesses or institutions within a community decide that they will join or form a union and bargain collectively. Or we may see supply-chain bargaining units where, for example, workers at a restaurant chain decide to form a union along with workers who work for the distributor who delivers goods to the chain, and those who work for the manufacturer who processes the food, and those who work for the agricultural firm that grows the food and so on. They may enlist the support of the consumers on whom all the various businesses rely for their survival - you get the picture. Of course today's LRB's would never certify such bargaining units but these workers won't be relying on the LRB to get recognition. With their enormous power fully realized and the support of the consumers on whom the companies depend for their survival, who needs the LRB? Don't forget - workers organized and got recognition by the hundreds of thousands in the days when employers were under no obligation to recognize them at all. Knowing where your leverage is and how to use it - that's the key to recognition. The rest is administrivia.
Workers will not be confined to any one particular union. They may belong to many depending upon their interests and the communities of interest in which they are active. Memberhsip in a union will not end when a worker leaves a particular employer. Our relationships and associations will be grounded in more than just our source of income. Membership in organizations will continue for as long as it has meaning for us.
The workplace will be democratic. The 19th century concepts that govern workplace relations will be discarded. There will be no managers as we know them today. Between the owner of the business and the workers (or "creators") will be a layer of coordinators - maybe. There will be no more rules, quotas or standards as we know them today. The master-servant relationship will be something that we laugh about and not a concept we try to maintain in the contemporary workplace.
What will the business community think of all this? It won't be as traumatic an adjustment as we may think. The sea change ushered in by the knowledge age will have profound impacts on the business community itself. Corporate social responsibility will no longer be just an interesting subject for debate. It will be real. Profit maximization will no longer be the sole objective of the for-profit enterprise. Business will have multiple bottom lines: the environment, our communities, people, and whatever else we collectively will decide is important. Those who don't like the rules will have to get out of the game.
And all of this will happen, you are asking, because of these little wireless handheld devices? Yes, that's exactly how it will happen. But, but...we can hear all the skeptics asking already, "How will we get them, how will enough of us get our hands on them? Won't they be too expensive? Too much for the average worker to afford?" Well, no. The capitalists will give them to us - at low, low prices and at really affordable monthly rates. With millions - maybe billions - of potential buyers waiting, they will be tripping over themselves to see who will be first-to-market. It's really ironic but it's real. Here's an interesting commentary - by a Canadian management consultant/trend-spotter - called "Marx wins"
Of course not everyone is looking forward to this change. For those who like things the way they are this is a scary thing. Here's Martin Maddaloni, the head of the UA, at the union's most recent convention in Miami:
"I guess the advancement of new technology creates a new era for all of us. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. I think the use of a public web is bad for organized labor, I really do. I think it should be censored in some way shape or form."
We'll bet you do Marty. But time marches on and the dawning age is fast upon us. It's overwhelming for us too at times. But to get over those overwhelming moments, we remind ourselves that this is all part of a much broader phenomenon. One that has brought us a lot of things that only years a go would have been considered too strange, too radical, too scary for mainstream consumption. All of this is a part of a much greater picture. It's part of changes in our world that are coming about as a result of people looking at established orders and conventional wisdom and saying: It's not good enough. This is how it's going to be.
And there's no end to the high strangeness that all this is causing either. Look - here's Bono and Bill Gates talking about "Global Equity":
It is indeed a strange universe.
Coming this week: MFD does what it can to get to how it's going to be.