With this essay, I intend to show: that technologies are intrinsically biased by design, manipulatable, and vulnerable to preconceived ideological goals, which inherently direct design, use, function, and meaning. With this in mind, I shall endeavour to focus on how technology - and information technology (IT) specifically - functions to influence social formations generally and labour/management relations specifically.
Political and Economic Control of IT:
Information technologies (IT) "are central to the hemispheric integration of business activities" (Mosco Political; also see Menzies). The multinationals, according to Edward Comor, are fully aware of the need to control the use and development of communication technology as they "First,...are pushing for the freedom to transmit anything at any time across international boundaries. Second, most multinationals want full control over the management and administration of communication networks both domestically and internationally" (Comer). Edward Comor writes that "In essence, what many U.S.-based multinationals need is an extension of traditional property rights to include information and culture products and services within and between any country at any time" (); Let's assume that the various international free trade "agreements" (FTA) accomplish this 'task'1, and that "unique provisions" of the Canada/USA FTA are to be used as a "model" within the GATT.2
Now we can more easily discuss the inherent ramifications of communication technologies on global capital-labour politics.
With the control of global communication systems secure, one goal of the 'Corporate Agenda'3, the transnational corporations have also secured what Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello describe as "capital mobility". Due to "capital mobility", which is guaranteed and protected from national regulation via the FTA's Annex 1404(C)4 and its "National Treatment Provision", governments and unions alike have been out-maneuvered, by the transnational corporation, in that government policy can be directed, and union bargaining power circumvented: Capital
Mobility offers the opportunity 'to move to low cost areas' and 'pit the peoples of different nations against one another.' By using the threat of moving as a club, 'corporations can extract wage and work rule concessions from workers in their home country.' And mobility allows companies to challenge or escape such claims on value as 'health care, welfare, and subsidized housing programs; worker and consumer safety standards; and environmental regulations.'(Brecher and Costello)
Governments are now threatened with national "economic abandonment"5 and unions with lay-offs and plant closures:
From the point of view of TNCs, [transnational corporations] the rights of trade unions, even the very existence of unions, and high employment standards generally appear as so many barriers restricting the 'freedom of the market,' as restrictions to capital accumulation. Through 'global strategic management' - multiple-sourcing, international subcontracting, blackmail, financial manipulation, physical relocation - TNCs are able to pressure governments to level employment and other standards and to restrict union rights. (Teeple)
Macro Effects:
Global "competitiveness" is the corporate chant, and it is a double-edged sword as it encourages all players to "race to the bottom"6 Due to the Third World's debt7, the World Bank and the IMF, through their "structural adjustment programs" and "shock therapies", have effectively pressured Third World governments to establish "Export Processing Zones" (FPZ) or "Free Trade Zones" (FTZ), that the First World is then forced to compete with (see Nelson; Barnet and Cavanagh). Working conditions in FTZ's are poor: In the FTZ in Mexico, better known as the maquiladoras, "Wages...according to Business Week, were half those in the rest of Mexico-and one-tenth those in the United States" (Brecher and Costello). "Global competitiveness" is insidious as the First World is forced to compete with Third World conditions, and the Third World is forced to accept IMF and World Bank "conditions" for loan renewals:
The Bank [World Bank] began tying its loans to the willingness of poor countries to make 'structural-adjustments'....governments had to agree to devalue their currencies, reduce government payrolls, encourage export sectors, let markets set food prices, and cut back health, education, and welfare programs to what they could actually afford. (Barnet and Cavanagh)
Helen Caldicott agrees: the IMF and the World Bank have "produced a proposal that basically demanded that developing countries sacrifice government spending on health, education, and welfare in order to service the debt" (). With effective economic pressure applied, the First World is forced to compete with Third World conditions that are "spiraling to the bottom" in order to attract investors. As "David Mulford, undersecretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration" puts it, "The countries that do not make themselves attractive will not get investors' attention "(qtd. in Barnet and Cavanagh). Dothan Alabama is a case in point. Foreign firms are 'attracted' due to "excellent weather; cheap land; an abundance of workers with a good 'work ethic'; a state industrial development bond with substantial tax benefits; and free training for workers...worth in itself about $1 million" (Barnet and Cavanagh). This 'work ethic' referred to is elaborated upon: "Alabama is a 'right to work' state, and Dothan civic leaders proudly offer foreign firms a union-free atmosphere" (Barnet and Cavanagh).
Gary Teeple writes that
National labour legislation and employment standards, ...are the product of national working classes, trade unions, and capital not reflective of economic activity with global arrangements dominated by transnational corporations (TNCs) and characterized by high technology....() [and that trade unions] are ill prepared not only for the challenge of the new right, which is upon them in the form of deregulation, privatization, and anti-union legislation, but also for the realities of the global economy, advanced technology, and the supranational organizations representative of the interests of capital. ()
Technology, a Product of Choice:
Technology, according to John Livingston, "refers to any complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined result" (). Developments in all types of technologies are the result of directed effort towards the achievement of desired goals, and are not haphazard, as the following authors indicate: Neil Postman comments that
embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another; ()
Liora Salter writes that "technology is grounded in specific social and economic conditions; it is tied to relations of production, kinds of markets, and vested political and economic interests" (qtd. in Galarneau); John Hannigan: "technological change interacts with political, economic, and social forces to determine how and where new inventions are utilized" ();
Howard Frederick:
Technology is not politically neutral. Quite the contrary, it plays an important role in the international distribution of power and the exercise of political, social, and economic controls. Like all products of human labor, technology has a social origin. Its development is connected with certain social needs, purposes, and practices as perceived by centres of power....Technologies 'can foster liberation or deepen dependency and domination, depending on the objectives of and social environment in which they are applied'; ()
Ursula Franklin:
The notion that the technical requirements for an efficient operation dictate the way technology is laid out is usually not correct. The way a task at hand is dealt with can change as the values and priorities of a society change. ()
These quotes suggest that technological development is selective in that it is designed to fulfill predetermined social, political, and economic needs. Development of IT is subject to the same political and economic constraints/motivations as other technologies. How IT is supposed to function, is determined in the design process.8 As Franklin concisely puts it, "Any goal of the technology is incorporated a priori in the design" ().
To clarify, it is not my intention to argue technological determinism per se. Rather, I want to show that IT can be designed/moulded to meet/favour differing social demands. Lars Qvortrup: "The future structure of society is not determined by technology itself" (), but its structure is certainly influenced by the social valves and interests that the different types of information technology reflect and represent. These social contents of information technology are not decided on by democratic procedures". ()
In considering how IT will influence social formations, we must concern ourselves with how "the interest groups that decide upon the design of information technology allow it to develop...'" (Qvortrop). The important questions, then, with respect to the degree to which ITs function to enhance freedom or domination, are: what are the objectives set for the development of IT, and who's setting the objectives. I think it is safe to assert that transnational capital is setting the objectives, but what are the objectives?9
Design Objectives and Micro Effects:
According to Menzies technologies are being developed and used to increase productivity and to centralize control via "two philosophies of control" known as Taylorism and the Panopticon (). Taylorism is a method which allowed management: "to fragment production into a set of prescriptive tasks, to study how best to do each of these tasks, and then to supervise their execution based on scientific-management" (Menzies). The panoptic method is a "prescriptive" structural concept that facilitates "compliance and conformity" on the part of the subjects under surveillance (Menzies).10 Robins and Webster appear to agree and write: the "information revolution" is a kind of "panoptic society" where surveillance is almost unavoidable: "Overcoming spatial and temporal constraints, the electronic grid fulfills the dream of an 'infinitely minute web of panoptic techniques'" (Robins and Webster).
Central to the panoptic structure is employee/citizen "self-monitoring" and isolationism. By controlling IT, transnational business has secured the "essential means to integrate their operations internally and externally" (Mosco Political), and specific developments in IT are what has enabled transnational capital to pursue the post-fordist model of production, which has embraced what Menzies calls "social Taylorism" and a panoptic structure.11 Robins and Webster write "one techno-enthusiast has commented, 'the multinational can now use its communications network to coordinate the activities of decentralized units'" (), that is, "Decentralized activities can be coordinated as if they were centralized" (Robins and Webster; See also Menzies).
This means that decentralized production units (factories and people) around the globe can be isolated intentionally (ie, no essential communication or contact), and the management/control of these same units can be coordinated and rationalized, which fundamentally effects and defines relations between capital and labour.
The capacity to manage operations globally has enabled business to create a "international division of labor"; Mosco writes that The effective goal of 'development' is to produce an international division of labor that maintains the flexibility and control of transnational business to maximize the cost-effective use of capital, raw materials, and labor .
Communication and information technology is central to this process because it provides the means to overcome space and time constraints on the ability to manage international operations and respond to constantly changing market demands and conditions. (Mosco Political)
Corporations aggressively demand, as part of the friendly "attractive" business environment, flexibility; flexibility of wages, employees, time, production, and consumption (Webster). Menzies cites numerous examples of deskilling, () isolation, surveillance, and centralized control - all essential features of social Taylorism and the panopticon. Deskilling is achieved by automation and by increasing the division of labour.
Menzies notes example after example about how workers are forcibly (via technological structure) being denied opportunities for decision-making; the deskilling has advanced to such an extent that the term "Mcjob" is common in society. Isolation is maximized via IT as it facilitates "vertical disintegration"12, "flexible specialization" of production, and the expansion of telework; the Benetton corporation is cited as an early example of corporations that are utilizing IT to maximize production and centralize control (Menzies; Webster).
IT has been designed to enhance management's capacity for continuous visible and invisible surveillance, as Menzies notes, "the corporation's supervisory gaze is built right in" (). Current IT, then, is being designed and implemented as prescriptive13 technology and as Franklin warns, prescriptive technologies are "designs for compliance" () for within such designs, a workforce becomes acculturated into a milieu in which external control and internal compliance are seen as normal and necessary....prescriptive technologies eliminate the occasions for decision making and judgement in general and especially for the making of principled decisions. () Franklin refers to the current structure of IT as functioning as "non-communication" () technology in that it actually functions to restrict communications.
As Young reminds us:
There are many technological structures which distort and defeat communication; many existing arrangements of information technology which eliminate mutuality, reciprocity, and collectivity in the knowledge process. Information technology must be organized in a democratic communications format if it is to contribute to the human project. The exclusion of persons from communication excludes them at the same time from the process by which human culture is produced and from the human community as well. If a communications system is to be democratic, it must be interactively-rich and informationally-rich. (Young)
Because transnational capital controls IT development and regulation, and is primarily interested in profit maximization over "contributing to the human project", IT is indeed structured along the panopticon model, and IT reflects and promotes the goals of "social Taylorism".
In such a system, the world of work is transforming into a world and perhaps a life of compliance for prescriptive technologies affect social behaviour as well as behaviour more directly related to industrial production as "The ordering the prescriptive technology has caused has now moved...to the prescriptive ordering of people in a wide variety of social situations" (Franklin). Menzies brings attention to what amounts to "cultural training" or "attitude-adjustment" programs that various workforces are being subjected to.
These "high-impact" communications strategies are to "clarify" the corporate vision and to encourage "individuals to explore the vision and [to] become part of it" (). Menzies suggests that this "cultural training", which is an example of what Franklin described above as the prescriptive ordering of people's lives in social situations, may ultimately be the "primary goal" of the design of IT ().
Imagine, in such a world, trying to organize a union when you have never seen, talked to, or even heard of a co-worker Imagine what you might say given the likelihood that what you are saying is being monitored. Imagine trying to organize a union within your global company knowing that each one of the countries your fellow-workers live in have different laws and regulations with respect to unions, safety standards etc14.
With modern IT controlled and developed by transnational corporations, todays worker is intentionally becoming more monitored, controlled and isolated than s/he, in the First World, can be prepared for, and more controlled and isolated than s/he, in the Third World, can possibly deserve. Until there is a "'free international trade union...which is the true counterpart to [the] free movement of capital'", (qtd. in Teeple) the horizon looks bleak.