[Overview]
As more and more people were using digital technology, previously
distinct information-based industries, such as printing and publishing,
graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging
into one industry, with information as a common product. This trend was
named "multimedia convergence", with a massive loss of jobs, and a
serious enough issue to be tackled by the ILO (International Labor
Organization) by 1997. The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia
Convergence was held in January 1997 at ILO headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland. This international symposium was a tripartite meeting with
employers, unionists, and government representatives. Some
participants, mostly employers, demonstrated the information society
was generating or would generate jobs, whereas other participants,
mostly unionists, demonstrated there was a rise in unemployment
worldwide.
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence was held in January
1997 at the headquarters of ILO (International Labor Office) in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Peter Leisink, associate professor of labor studies at the Utrecht
University, Netherlands, explained: "A survey of the United Kingdom
book publishing industry showed that proofreaders and editors have been
externalized and now work as home-based teleworkers. The vast majority
of them had entered self-employment, not as a first-choice option, but
as a result of industry mergers, relocations and redundancies. These
people should actually be regarded as casualized workers, rather than
as self-employed, since they have little autonomy and tend to depend on
only one publishing house for their work."
This international symposium was held as a tripartite meeting with
employers, unionists and government representatives. Some participants
still thought our information society would generate jobs, whereas it
was already stated worldwide that multimedia convergence was leading to
a massive loss of jobs.
Michel Muller, secretary-general of the French Federation of Book,
Paper and Communication Industry, stated that the French graphics
industry had lost 20,000 jobs - falling from 110,000 to 90,000 - within
the last decade, and that expensive social plans had been necessary to
re-employ those people. He explained: "If the technological
developments really created new jobs, as had been suggested, then it
might have been better to invest the money in reliable studies about
what jobs were being created and which ones were being lost, rather
than in social plans which often created artificial jobs. These studies
should highlight the new skills and qualifications in demand as the
technological convergence process broke down the barriers between the
printing industry, journalism and other vehicles of information.
Another problem caused by convergence was the trend towards ownership
concentration. A few big groups controlled not only the bulk of the
print media, but a wide range of other media, and thus posed a threat
to pluralism in expression. Various tax advantages enjoyed by the press
today should be re-examined and adapted to the new realities facing the
press and multimedia enterprises. Managing all the social and societal
issues raised by new technologies required widespread agreement and
consensus. Collective agreements were vital, since neither individual
negotiations nor the market alone could sufficiently settle these
matters."
Quite theoretical compared to the unionists' interventions, here was
the answer of Walter Durling, director of AT&T Global Information
Solutions: "Technology would not change the core of human relations.
More sophisticated means of communicating, new mechanisms for
negotiating, and new types of conflicts would all arise, but the
relationships between workers and employers themselves would continue
to be the same. When film was invented, people had been afraid that it
could bring theatre to an end. That has not happened. When television
was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it
had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future
should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity
was needed to generate new employment. The spirit of enterprise had to
be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those
who had been displaced. Problems should not be anticipated, but tackled
when they arose." In short, humanity shouldn't fear technology.
In fact, employees were not so much afraid of the future as they were
afraid of losing their jobs. In 1997, our society already had a high
unemployment rate, which was not the case when film was invented and
television developed. During the next years, what would be the balance
between job creation and lay-off? Unions were struggling worldwide to
promote the creation of jobs through investment, innovation, vocational
training, computer literacy, retraining for new jobs, fair conditions
for contracts and collective agreements, defense of copyright,
protection of workers in the artistic field, and defense of teleworkers
as workers having full rights. The European Commission was expecting 10
million European teleworkers in the year 2000, which would represent
20% of teleworkers worldwide.
Despite unions' efforts, would the situation become as tragic as what
we read in the report of the symposium? "Some fear a future in which
individuals will be forced to struggle for survival in an electronic
jungle. And the survival mechanisms which have been developed in recent
decades, such as relatively stable employment relations, collective
agreements, employee representation, employer-provided job training,
and jointly funded social security schemes, may be sorely tested in a
world where work crosses borders at the speed of light."