The labouring of international communication

Research in international communication studies has tended to cluster around three interconnected topics: media, messages and audiences. Those who focus on media are inclined to look at power and control, including media ownership and the social, political, and economic relations involved in constructing messages and audiences. Research on messages generally focuses on content, ranging from news to propaganda to advertising, and the discursive and technological forms these messages take. Those concentrating on audiences tend to examine the way individuals and groups receive, make sense of, understand, act on, ignore or incorporate messages into daily life. The field has produced rich and varied work, but one aspect has received little attention: labour. Intellectual and physical labour are required to produce messages and the

technologies used to disseminate them. Receiving and acting on messages also requires labour. However, international communications scholars rarely address the various forms of labouring or confront the wider challenge of what Denning (1998) has called the labouring of culture. In addition, the organizations that represent media and information workers, and the presentation of labour in the media, also receive relatively little attention. This is particularly unfortunate because labour organizations are developing global strategies and making full use of media to participate in international activities (Blok and Downey, 2003; Taras, Bennett and Townsend, 2004). It is with this in mind that McKercher and Mosco have taken on a research project that aims to expand the attention scholars pay to the labouring of communication and culture. Two recent collections demonstrate that research is growing in this area (McKercher and Mosco, 2006, 2007a) and this chapter reports on how to build on this work with specific attention to the Union Network International (UNI), a Swiss-based global labour federation that specializes in media, communication, information, and service workers. Working in different disciplines, scholars have demonstrated the importance

of information and communication labour in the modern economy (DyerWitheford, 1999; Huws, 2003; Terranova, 2004). In an era characterized by declining trade union penetration, increasing corporate concentration, and the rise of global conglomerates that feed into – and are fed by – the spread of

new communication and information technology, knowledge workers have begun to explore new ways to deepen and extend control over their labour power. This is especially the case in the communication and information sectors, which provide the equipment that makes globalization possible, and the production and distribution of the ideas that are central to its operation. Most of the literature on knowledge workers has concentrated on how the technological and institutional forces of post-industrialism structure work and worker organizations. Valuable as this research has been, it has treated labour as a largely passive category to be shaped by the dynamics of capitalism and has obscured just how labour makes itself, at work and in its organizations. This project contributes to lifting the veil on labour as an active agent, constituting itself, sometimes defensively, sometimes offensively, in the changing political economy. For some time, Mosco and McKercher have been separately studying

diverse segments of the US and Canadian communications industry, including its workers and labour organizations (Mosco and Wasko, 1983; Mosco, Zureik and Lochhead, 1989; Mosco, 2002; McKercher, 2002; Mosco and McKercher, 2006). Their joint 2004-7 project demonstrated the importance of labour convergence or the integration of labour unions and worker associations across the converging communication industries of Canada and theUnited States, bringing together, for example, journalists, broadcast workers, telecommunications and information specialists, among other knowledge workers, in one large organization (Mosco, McKercher and Stevens, 2008; McKercher and Mosco, 2007b; Mosco, 2005; Mosco, 2006a; Mosco, 2006b; Mosco, 2006c; Kiss and Mosco, 2005; McKercher and Mosco, 2006; McKercher and Mosco, 2007a). This research complemented the already extensive body of work which focuses on the impact of technological and industry convergence on media content, typically concluding that these forms of convergence limit content diversity and access to media (Skinner, Compton and Gasher, 2006; Kunz, 2006). This focus is justifiable but it left gaps in understanding how convergence changes the nature of work and challenges trade unions. Research is only now beginning to document the impact of media convergence on employment in the industry (DiCola, 2006; Yoo and Mody, 2000). The results of Mosco and McKercher’s 2004-7 project filled some of these

gaps by documenting how major North American worker organizations have expanded their success in collective bargaining, in mobilizing membership, and in political activity. Unions such as the Canadian Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) and the Communication Workers of America (CWA), and worker associations such as the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech), demonstrated their success in labour actions at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in organizing workers across the wireless sector, and in winning a court contest against Microsoft. On the other hand, those unions which have not been able to bring about the same level of labour convergence, for example the Screen Actors Guild, the

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Telecommunications Workers Union of Canada, are less successful, partly because they have chosen to remain focused on one particular sector of an increasingly converged industry dominated by companies that span the industry. However, even those labour organizations that successfully achieved a

measure of national or even, as in the case of the CWA, binational convergence are limited in what they can accomplish because they lack a strong international scope. For example, when the worker association WashTech, which has received strong CWA support, successfully defended information technology workers, Microsoft fought back by outsourcing the work to India and elsewhere (Brophy, 2006). Examples like this make it imperative to broaden the study of labour convergence to the international arena. In doing so, one can also respond to calls in the scholarly literature to rethink international labour federations in light of a changing global political economy (Jakobsen, 2001). But it is important to do so with research that is grounded in the complexities of a changing international division of labour that is not easily reducible to simple conclusions. Consider the issue of outsourcing communication and information labour.

Trade union organizations invariably attack it, while most businesses conclude that it is an unalloyed gain for economic growth. Basing policy, including the strategies of international labour organizations, on these simple responses is dangerous because, as research has shown, outsourcing is not without its antinomies. A large share of outsourcing in the knowledge and communication sectors is contained within the developed world, where, for example, Canada has become Hollywood North and Ireland continues to benefit from its skilled workforce and wage premium. Moreover, although India is a major source of low wage knowledge labour, its major companies such as ICICI, Tata, Infosys and Wipro are taking leading roles in the outsourcing industry. Their activities in North America suggest that place still matters and that culture continues to count. Finally, resistance is growing from labour organizations and that is one reason why the expansion of convergent unions and worker associations in the knowledge and communication sectors is particularly important (Mosco, 2006a; see also Elmer and Gasher, 2005). Research that assesses the strategies and prospects of international labour organizations needs to be grounded in a recognition that the international division of labour, particularly in the knowledge and communication sectors, is complex and not easily reduced to singularities, however attractive as political slogans or mythic symbols (Mosco, 2004). Specifically, sensitive to these complexities, Mosco and McKercher’s project

examines the state of international labour organizations in the communication and information sectors, documents the relationships among them, and assesses the extent to which they enable workers to meet the challenges of informational capitalism. The research is situated in a political economy perspective which concentrates on power relationships at the institutional level and at the

point of production, and addresses the extent and effectiveness of labour convergence at the international level (McKercher, 2002; Mosco, 1996; Sussman and Lent, 1998). There is an extensive body of literature on convergence in the communication and information arena that examines how technologies, companies and entire markets are coming together through the process of digitization to create new and enhanced opportunities to make communication content and the audiences for it valuable market commodities. Furthermore, convergence is increasing opportunities for companies to expand the commodity form in the labour of communication and information workers. But it also provides these workers with opportunities to mobilize effectively to challenge media corporations. To cite one example, in 2005 management at Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, argued that the pressures of technological and industry convergence made it essential for the corporation to combine jobs across its media streams and to outsource more of its work. Workers at the national broadcaster were successful in the ensuing lockout because they were represented by a converged union, the CWA, which brought together technical workers and journalists and supported them with a large strike fund that has grown as the union has expanded its membership across the converging communication field (Mosco and McKercher, 2006). Research has documented the process of global convergence in technology, firms and markets, but we still know very little about the international dynamics of labour convergence. It is for this reason that Mosco and McKercher are in the process of pro-

ducing a global map of labour convergence by describing four primary types of international labour organization. These include international federations that remain rooted in one of the major sectors in the communication and information industries, global federations of unions that span the communication and information industries, government or public federations that represent the interests of workers, and worker associations that may be rooted in one nation but are testing new forms of organizing and are partnering with unions and federations outside the nation. In essence, it is intended to produce an assessment of the state of global labour convergence and the prospects for building international solidarity among workers and their organizations. It provides the groundwork for a set of detailed case studies that examine organizations facing a range of challenges related to convergence. These include the challenge of making use of converging technologies to meet the needs of workers and their labour organizations. In the remainder of this chapter, we identify and briefly describe the first two of the four cases and then proceed to focus on the case of UNI, including its relationship to unions in India, which form the core of our fourth case study. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) provides an example of

convergence that continues to focus on just one sector of the media industry. The IFJ is the world’s largest organization of journalists, representing 500,000 journalism professionals who comprise its 161 member unions from 117

countries. One of the arguments made in defence of union convergence is the ability to take on broad policy issues that smaller unions cannot afford to address. The extent to which the IFJ succeeds on four of the issues to which it gives prominence – media concentration, women’s rights in the media, authors’ rights to control their work, and institutional attacks on press freedom – is being investigated. The IFJ also claims to bring together journalists from both rich and poor nations. This practice is particularly important because companies like Reuters have begun to outsource journalism work from wealthy nations like the UK to low-wage nations like India. Has convergence enabled the IFJ to address this practice? Finally, as technological and corporate convergence challenges traditional definitions of journalism and as some of its member unions, like the CEP in Canada, enlist workers across both the content and technical segments of the knowledge industries, can the IFJ continue to succeed by focusing on one media sector? The project’s research on the International Labour Organization (ILO)

considers how labour convergence operates in a UN agency. The ILO differs from both the IFJ and UNI in that it is an arm of the United Nations and was chartered in 1919 to promote justice and human rights for workers. Formally, it produces conventions and recommendations that establish minimum standards for labour rights, including freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, abolition of forced labour, and equal opportunity and treatment. It also provides technical assistance to workers and labour organizations. This case study enables an examination of an international public institution charged with protecting workers and their unions. How does convergence affect the ILO’s operation? Specifically, how has it dealt with the shift from industrial work, the main form of labour throughout most of its history, to the increasingly important category of knowledge work, as well as with the differing regional balances of those two forms of labour? The project is also assessing the extent to which the ILO has or has not been a force in building networks between first and third world information workers, between those occupying different positions in the outsourcing system and in the changing international division of knowledge work. The chapter now considers the case of the Union Network International

(UNI), a global federation that spans all sectors of the converging electronic services arena. Unlike the IFJ, UNI fully embraces convergence, calling itself ‘a new international for a new millennium’. It primarily spans the newly converged electronic information and communication sectors, including workers in the postal, media, entertainment, telecommunications, and culture sectors. A driving force behind its creation was the growth of companies that span these sectors by taking advantage of converging electronic technologies. Although it is new, UNI has been in the forefront of global labour issues like outsourcing and prominent in applying pressure to global companies and global organizations like the World Trade Organization.