Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:51:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: andrew robinson <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Class Struggle and the New Economy - article from Organise! on work patterns and work resistance


I thought people might be interested in this article from the Anarchist Federation magazine Organise!
 
The organisation of the work economy is deliberate - a strategy by bosses to suppress or sideline worker resistance.  It's an attempt to weaken the resistances available to the "mass worker".  But class struggle is taking place in the "new economy" as well.
 
The entire issue is available online at:
http://flag.blackened.net/af/org/org61.htm
 

Class Struggle in the ‘New Economy’

You might have noticed if you’ve read any of the bosses’ own publications (The Economist, Financial Times, Business Week etc) that they are pushing the idea of a ‘New Economy’. An economy based on the latest technology and IT, which has somehow overcome all the contradictions of the ‘old economy’ and developed a fundamentally harmonious basis; workers and bosses co-operating for the common good, the end of workplace struggle.
It’s the same self-serving myth the bosses have always dished out when they want to make changes that benefit them and harm us, right from the start of the Industrial Revolution. Marx said 150 years ago that "It would be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt", which is essentially what is happening today. The bosses are trying to use work-place technology against us, whilst simultaneously claiming it’s for our benefit. A look at what is actually happening in the ‘new economy’ will dispel some of these myths. You have to look at call-centres and similar workplaces and the production and assembly plants that make the components for this new technology, not just information workers or high-paid software designers. 
The first thing to emphasise is that the development of the New Economy is deliberate. It is the logical result of mostly US state-funded development programs that explicitly sought to create a pro-management environment through the use of technology. The early electronic plants in the 1950s were used as laboratories for road-testing new management plans to deal with the collective strength of what became known as "the mass worker" - a workplace community that had gained strength from the sheer numbers of people concentrated in one plant. The concept of ‘team-management’ grew from this experiment and was exported to other industries most notably the Detroit car factories and steel industries. 

It’s not only the advertised product that the ‘new economy’ is selling - it also sells plans to minimise worker resistance and new ways of making us work harder for longer for less pay whilst watching us every second. We should keep a very careful eye on what is happening in the ‘new economy’ as it may very well be happening close to home before too long - as the spread of just-in-time production, toyotism, self-management, work circles and other management ploys have demonstrated. So how have workers been responding to all this? 

Worker Resistance 

Despite the myths of a peaceful workplace there have been numerous examples of class struggle taking place in the hi-tech sector - practically from its origins. There’s a number of struggles that seem to be of particular significance because of the areas in which they took place, how they were organised, and the opportunities for spreading struggle among other parts of the working. The 1993 strike by workers at the Versatronex circuit board assembly plant in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley was of great significance as it was the first to take place among production workers (mainly female Mexican immigrants) who are the basis of the ‘new economy’ but who remain hidden behind the scenes in favour of stories about dot-com entrepreneurs. These workers were employed in a sweat-shop: forced to work damagingly long hours, with the usual problems that this causes in the family, at very high line speeds, in unhealthy conditions with no medical plan and with very little pay or job security. 
 This is
 life at the most basic of levels of the ‘new economy’ - looks very much like life in thee ‘old economy’ doesn’t it? No stock options here! The workers eventually struck and managed to spread the struggle to other factories in Silicon Valley and to other immigrant workers in unskilled jobs, janitors in these hi-tech factories being a prime example. The reality of conditions in the ‘new economy’ met with a worker response straight out of the old days of class struggle, of the boss and the worker having nothing in common. The work conditions allowed the workers to socialise and talk of their problems together and then come up with collective solutions. There was recognition of the common problems felt by the women and the social solidarity to do something about them. This contrasts with the better paid end of the hi-tech sector where one of the most common complaints is the social isolation felt by workers who no longer have to turn up at a definite place for a definite time an
 d who
 consequently feel they have to battle the boss alone or even that there is no point in struggling at all. 

Microserfs 

Moving up the scale (so to speak) we have the programmers - the people satirised as ‘micro serfs’ in Douglas Coupland’s novel of the same name. A recent study by the University of California made the claim that these jobs are the modern equivalent of the 19th Century factory. These workers are a clear example of how the bosses myths of "modern flexible working, untied by geographical office boundaries, able to work on their own initiative and offered stock options in their firms." has been used against the workforce. The reality is that these people are often forced into working 16 hours a day to meet deadlines (in some states overtime legislation has been abolished), and are forced to constantly update their skills (not paid for by the company) in order to stay in work. Resentment came to a head in the last few years with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the transfer of jobs to ‘developing’ countries and the mass immigration of IT workers prepared to work for lower wages 
 from
 those same countries. But "when the economic crisis hit, they found themselves with few collective guarantees, they were cast to their individual fates". There have now been a number of initiatives by these workers to form some form of collective organisation - trade unions or interest-based associations - to defend their interests and the lessons of social solidarity that the Versatronex workers learned are now being taken up by other sections of the ‘new economy’. However much of this still aims to protect individual careers rather then improve conditions for workers as a whole. One thing that this group has become aware of is that it has unique skills which management takes for granted - assuming that people can be easily replaced – but which they can use when deadlines loom. It’s a fact that is increasingly being used to gain concessions; these workers have not yet had their skills appropriated by the bosses. Whether this leads to 19th Century-style craft unions and guil
 d
 organisations or whether they are going to recognise that their disputes are part of a wider network of struggles is going to be a key question over the coming years. 

Telecommunications 

Call centres stand somewhere in the middle ground: neither production work nor designing and developing original plans, they are (along with data-entry clerks and similar) stuck in boring repetitive factory-like jobs but their tools are no longer the lathe but the pc. They are probably the most monitored workforce going, with constant intrusive supervision, almost every single task broken down into timed actions and compulsory overtime. Unsurprisingly this has led to well above average workforce turnover, sometimes a high as 80%, as stress levels become just too high. August 2000 saw 87,000 telecommunications workers strike against Verizon Communications in the US over forced overtime, job stress and job security. Forced overtime was the key issue: in some states management can force people to work 15 hours a week overtime, more in certain months, while another (New Jersey) has no limits on the amount of overtime that can be forced on workers. As one striking technician put i
 t,
 "Management can come up to you as you are getting ready to leave and require you to work another two hours, or before your day off they can require you to work four hours of it." This is now the norm throughout the industry - not an exceptional case at all. Other complaints were the speed of work and the supervision - a striker wrote : "For every call that comes in we have to 'assume the sale.' If we do not try to find a need and sell the customer a new service then we are disciplined. Depending on the supervisor, you could get a suspension. All of this and completing the repair or customer service order has to be done within specified time constraints. For a customer repair the calls have to be down to 300 seconds. Five seconds over and we are reprimanded… Mostly everyone in the business office is on Prozac. Many people are also out on sick leave due to the stress. I transferred out after two years. On Sunday nights I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about going back t
 o work
 on Monday. That job was hell." 

The strike which seemed so solid after two weeks out was brought to a halt by another throwback from the ‘old economy’ - a union sell out. The Communication Workers of America (CWA) split the workforce and all but ran a strike-breaking operation in areas where they met with determined opposition, imposing a deal that actually made the workers job even more stressful. The lesson in the ‘new economy’ remains the same as in the old: don’t trust union bureaucrats, rely on your own autonomous strength and solidarity in collective action. In the last years or so there have been strikes in call-centres all over the world (and a possibly quite large one looming at BT) as workers come to realise that many companies are now almost totally reliant on these modern day sweatshops. They are in fact a weakness that can be exploited, a point where capital is particularly vulnerable. 

Common to all the above sectors is stress. A recent TUC study has shown that: "Workers with stressful jobs are more than twice as likely to die from heart disease. An individuals mental health deteriorates when a change in workload results in higher demands, less control and reduced support. Poor management planning and organisation can lead to heart disease. Working for unreasonable and unfair bosses leads to dangerously high blood pressure. Workers are smoking, drinking and ‘slobbing out’ to deal with workplace stress. Long-term work-related stress is worse for the heart than aging 30 years or gaining 40lbs in weight." This is the ‘new economy’, eating up the working class just as surely as did the ‘old economy’ 

The boss talk of class harmony and co-operation is being used to deny all of this. But the fact is that a society that is organised around the capital-labour relation can never escape class struggle, can never escape from bosses vs workers. It may be old but its still true: 

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth." 


		
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