TOWARD A BRAVE NEW WORKPLACE?
Howard, Robert
Any period of rapid change presents society with unexpected opportunities as well as unforeseen problems. The emergence of the brave new workplace is no exception. The very economic and...
...Imagine that a mere tenth of the tax dollars spent on the ICAM project— $10 million—was devoted to a public program on the social implications of workplace technology...
...10017...
...In the 1970s, these "action research" projects helped articulate new union rights of participation in corporate decisions about the design and use of new workplace technology, rights that have been institutionalized in both formal collective-bargaining agreements and "work environment" legislation such as Norway's 1977 Work Environment Act...
...revised U.S...
...In part, this means acquiring the technical corn95 petence to be able to analyze new technology as it is developed and evaluate its impacts on work...
...The Reagan administration has radically diminished the government's presence in the workplace, by dismantling basic worker occupational health and safety protections and by severely limiting union rights...
...10017...
...Put another way, the inherently social nature of work and technology requires that all social groups and institutions affected by the changes in working life be included—"represented"— in the decisions and choices made about those changes: the workers who actually use technology in the workplace and the unions that represent them...
...Title of Publication: DISSENT IB...
...As computerization spreads up the hierarchical ladder of the corporation, those many members of the baby-boom generation who work in the corporate middle strata are also severely affected...
...When Eastern Airlines machinist Dave Boggs informally programs his computer-controlled punch press, when telephone workers at the New This is the final chapter of Brave New Workplace by Robert Howard...
...Feminist groups such as the National Association of Working Women have joined with labor unions in an effort to link issues of women's clerical work with those of office automation...
...Among other improvements in work organization and job design inspired by this effort, Dave Boggs has been able to work out an informal arrangement with management that allows him to do most of the prototype programming for the computer-controlled punch press in the Eastern Airlines sheet-metal shop...
...9. For Completion by Nonprofit Organizations Authorized to Mail at Special Rates (Section 423.12 DMM only...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-7,747...
...labor law, the document states that workers, "through their trade union and bargaining units," should have an "absolute right" to participate in all phases of management planning and decisions "that lead to the introduction of new technology or the changing of the workplace systems design, work processes, and procedures of doing work, including the shutdown or transfer of work, capital, and equipment...
...For this reason, the brave new workplace is also a responsibility of the federal government...
...Unions in the auto and telecommunications industries have also begun to appeal to middlelevel technicians and professionals caught in the vise of economic restructuring at big corporations such as AT&T, General Motors, and Ford...
...Actual no...
...Ultimately, the most important role for the federal government may be to sponsor new social legislation designed to institutionalize more effective mechanisms for social intervention in working life...
...Instead of going out on strike, the technicians in one office simply switched off the computers that collected information about residential customers' long-distance calls for billing...
...And they criticized the model of work organization on which the management plan for technology was based, claiming that, much as has been the case in the United States, it would lead to the fragmentation and deskilling of the telecommunications technician's job...
...The proposal was rejected by management, but in 1984 the union developed its own rank-andfile technology training program designed, according to a draft of the course materials, "to convince [members] that workers have a democratic right to be involved in the decisions about how to use new technology...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-5,276...
...Ironically, this may be where the recent experiments in labor-management quality-ofworklife programs will prove most important...
...And even those technology managers who are open to the new idea of "user participation" tend to define that participation as narrowly and instrumentally as possible...
...TELECOM ultimately agreed to a model of work organization and technology that was a compromise between the original management and union proposals...
...C. Total Paid and/or requested Circulation (Sum of 10B1 and 10B2): Average no...
...Their ultimate significance may well be not so much in furthering company-union cooperation but in providing unions with the organizational forms and experience necessary to intervene in corporate decision-making at the shop-floor level...
...of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-2,500...
...Most of all, negotiating the shape of the brave new workplace would bring new values and new perspectives into working life, instead of excluding everything but the narrow goals of the corporation...
...In a sense, this requires reinventing technology and work...
...The norms established by the federal government for its own technology would become generalized throughout American industry...
...They will be willing to extend the idea of user participation beyond the common superficial understanding...
...A. No...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-8,550...
...3685...
...Two computerized switching exchanges were put into operation, one organized according to management's highly centralized model, the other according to the union alternative...
...A typical example is the Air Force's Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing project (ICAM...
...To give one simple example, the federal government is probably the largest purchaser of new workplace technology in America today —equipment to be used in its own offices and departments...
...How might unions respond...
...They constitute a second category of workers with a special interest in the social control of technology and work...
...the designers whose technical expertise and talents are so crucial to the proper functioning of new technical systems, but who have little say about the ends to which the technology they create is put...
...Others will embrace this new model of the designer's role out of a growing frustration with their own increasingly constrained possibilities in working life...
...Participation in such programs can lead to the development of new kinds of organizational skills for union members, new internal union networks, and ultimately a taste for control on the part of rank-and-file members...
...economy...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-578...
...Put another way, what will be the equivalent in the brave new workplace to the crucial role of the sitdown strikes to win union recognition in the 1930s...
...government already enjoys in the brave new workplace—an influence that is as shortsighted as it is profoundly undemocratic...
...seeing them not as the products of some ineluctable technological development, autonomous and pure, but as a sometimes messy act of social construction, built upon a foundation of a myriad interests and goals...
...F Copies not Distributed...
...I prefer to think of it as an extension of labor's collective voice and the principle of negotiation and collective bargaining to a whole new area of working life...
...But perhaps the most important occupational category with which labor should seek a dialogue and, if possible, an alliance is the rapidly expanding professional community of technical personnel whose job is to design and 97 implement the new technologies of working life: the computer scientists, systems designers, software engineers, and other professionals whom I have called "technology managers...
...Because they occupy a strategic role in the ongoing development of the brave new workplace, they are crucial to the creation of an alternative social vision for technology and work...
...I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete...
...Managing Editor: Edith H. Tarcov, 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...It provided them with the resources to develop technologies too expensive for any of them to develop on their own...
...E. Total Distribution (Sum of C and D): Average no...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date— None...
...These pages suggest a few steps that are necessary for this to happen, along with the particular responsibilities of some specific social groups...
...Another states that workers displaced by technological change "shall be entitled to training, retraining, and subsequent job placement or reemployment"—as a fundamental right of employment...
...Of course, this is not to say that workers are entirely powerless...
...Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Penguin, Inc...
...However, behind the political right's ideological attack on the principle of government intervention and regulation, there is a hidden agenda of aggressive government advocacy for business interests in both the workplace and society...
...Instead of using taxpayers' dollars to reinforce the corporate control of work, it could target these funds at initiatives to empower ordinary citizens in their workplaces, unions, and professional associations—helping them to develop the resources and skills necessary to effectively exercise influence and choice in working life...
...Instead, they argued that no new technical systems should be introduced without first obtaining union input and approval...
...And networks of pro-union high-tech workers have been established in California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 in a first step down the long road toward unionization...
...Part of the Air Force's Partners in Preparedness program, ICAM was a generous source of financial largesse for some of America's biggest corporations (primarily in the aerospace industry) and most prestigious engineering schools...
...In the end, today's quality-of-work-life programs may be analogous to the company unions of welfare capitalism in the 1920s...
...The decisions determining their use in the workplace also intimately affect work organization, corporate investment, products and markets, even industrial efficiency itself...
...Editor: Irving Howe, 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...As a result, these technical experts have greatly contributed to the erosion of workers' control in the brave new workplace...
...10017...
...Because they were creations of management, such unions were fundamentally flawed as an independent expression of the workers' collective voice...
...And the process of technology development itself would be defined as a complex "negotiation" in which different social groups bargain with each other over the purposes and functions of new technology and work systems...
...A "successful" design would be one that met at least some of the interests of all the groups involved in the design process...
...Actual no...
...10017...
...And labor must begin to reach out to them, whether through traditional union organizing or by forming new kinds of professional alliances...
...While such initiatives haven't resolved all the problems of the brave new workplace, they have certainly made it easier for workers and the public to make choices about technology design and work organization...
...Such a vision would begin by unequivocally challenging the principle of "management prerogatives" developed during the era of scientific management...
...q STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULA TION (Required by 39 U.S.C...
...Instead, he or she would have to be an arbiter whose professional role and responsibility was to make explicit to different interest groups involved in the design process the various social implications of diverse technical options...
...But the unions didn't stop there...
...It might even sponsor pilot projects in "participatory systems design" at selected workplaces in industry...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-8,615...
...And the very design of new technology itself would reflect the social dialogue among the various interest groups of the work organization...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-315...
...B. Paid and/or requested Circulation...
...Specific measures might include a nationwide "labor-market informa100 tion system" that would provide the public with accurate and timely information about trends in the labor market...
...3. Frequency of Issue: Quarterly...
...In the past decade, it has spent billions of dollars to make sure that the brave new workplace conforms to the dual imperatives of expanded corporate control and the increasing militarization of economic life...
...How can they possibly play a meaningful role—given the constraints of international competition, the growing complexity of technology and work organization, and the power of the corporation itself...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-7,776...
...They argued that TELECOM's plan, by centralizing service and maintenance functions and underestimating the amount of training necessary for those working the system, would cause telephone service to deteriorate...
...Yet, there 98 are a number of reasons why at least some of these new professionals might be willing to rethink their place in the brave new workplace— reasons that have to do with their emerging and still undefined sense of themselves as members of a distinct profession...
...Of course, new rights that are not recognized are really no rights at all...
...and perhaps even a comprehensive "work environment" act articulating specific society-wide goals and criteria for working life...
...Usually, they see the social dimension of working life as either an irrelevancy to be ignored or an obstacle to be eliminated (in the words of one, "replacing a part of the human with a machine...
...A recent example, from Australia, dramatically suggests that unions may have a great deal more potential power in the brave new workplace than they might think...
...Given the long and sorry history of corporate attempts to do away with the human element in work, these and other recommendations are extremely dubious...
...No durable solution to the problems of the brave new workplace is possible without a vigorous renaissance of trade-union activity in American industry...
...10017...
...2. Mail Subscriptions: Average no...
...SIMONE PLASTRIK, Business Manager 101...
...And, of course, it will not be required that all technology managers take up these ideas for them to have a substantial social impact...
...But not all conflict is destructive...
...Were the government to establish a set of social criteria for the design of the computer technology it purchased—ergonomic standards for office automation systems, for example, or procedures mandating federal office worker participation in the development and implementation of new workplace technical systems—the producers of office technology would have to respond...
...They extend to society as a whole...
...The technologists have served as "union consultants" to locals at metalworking shops, chemical refineries, railroad repair centers, insurance offices, and newspapers...
...And such support can only follow on the widespread conviction among ordinary people that working life can indeed be different and that they have the power to make it so...
...many of them need not cost a great deal of money nor require the creation of new federal bureaucracies...
...Actual no...
...But what if the entire process of technology design and development were understood differently— not as a matter of impersonal technical calculation, but as a kind of social dialogue among the various interest groups of the corporation...
...The unions even engaged in some creative industrial action to emphasize workers' importance in running a highly automated system and to cement their alliance with the public...
...The unemployed worker may disappear from the company balance sheet or the union membership rolls, but he or she remains a citizen...
...But even more important is developing programs of rank-and-file education, training, and activism around technology issues that teach people how technology can be made to serve their own interests and goals and allow them to contribute their own perspectives to the design of workplace technical systems...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-2,500...
...of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-5,247...
...The systems designer would help each group determine what uses of technology were acceptable and unacceptable to them...
...A strong labor movement dedicated to the social control of technology would redefine the brave new workplace in terms of traditional union values of equity, solidarity, and work as a cooperative social activity...
...This is perhaps the most difficult step of all...
...Despite the popular image of the ambitious and successful Yuppie, more and more of them are seeing their own career hopes crushed in the squeeze between intensified labor-market competition with their generational brothers and sisters and the diminishing number of places in the upper reaches of the newly rationalized corporation...
...5. Complete mailing address of the Headquarters of General Business Offices of the Publisher: 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...Would a strong labor movement for the social control of technology constitute a return to the "adversarial relationship" in American industrial relations...
...sometimes it can be the catalyst for social creativity, as the case of the Australian telecommunications unions suggests...
...Actual no...
...At other times, this negotiation process would surely involve cooperation, as management and union work together to define mutually acceptable criteria for the design of tech96 nology and work...
...2. Date of Filing: Oct...
...As a result, the federal government is less able to provide citizens with useful information about trends in the labor market than it was five years ago...
...According to this perspective, user participation would extend far beyond the usual functional definition to include the idea of the "user" as a bearer of unique interests and goals...
...Government could be made to play a very different role in the brave new workplace...
...They took their case to the Australian public as well...
...I. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, and Counter Sales: Average no...
...One can imagine a point in the not-toodistant future when, frustrated by the limitations of conventional quality-of-work-life programs, union activists will attempt to push these shop-floor committees beyond "environmental" concerns to more substantial issues of management prerogatives and policy...
...The unions presented an alternative proposal for the computerization of the system, one based on a decentralized work organization of local, worker-run offices...
...This would have the added impact of shaping the entire technology market...
...So the systems designer would strive to reconcile the competing needs and scenarios of corporate management, unions, professional associations, and the like...
...And this ever-present struggle makes the managerial utopia of a perfectly efficient and eminently humane brave new workplace far more problematic, more fraught with its own contradictions and unintended consequences, than most corporate managers would be willing to admit...
...The alliance has already borne some fruit...
...of Issues Published Annually: Four...
...If systems design were conceived in this way —as a "social process"—the role of the designer as an impartial technical expert would become obsolete...
...Using its own technology-purchasing policy is one relatively straightforward way for the government to support the introduction of social criteria into the brave new workplace...
...G. Total (Sum of E, F 1 and 2—should equal net press run shown in A): Average no...
...One of the most detailed surveys of union-worker attitudes in quality-of-work-life programs—conducted at MIT's Sloan School of Management—found that while cooperative programs rarely lead to increased worker control over corporate decision-making, they do cause workers to identify the acquisition of such control as an important union goal...
...So a labor movement campaign for the social control of technology would also have to formulate a long-term strategy to win corporate recognition of those rights —much as the infant industrial union movement of the 1930s had to fight to win management recognition for the principle of unionism itself...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-7,972...
...This advocacy intimately shapes the major influence that the U.S...
...And while the corporation may be able to "externalize" the costs of economic and technological transformation, society cannot...
...One place where some of these ideas are now being put into effect is Scandinavia...
...And in the innovative Workplace Democracy project undertaken by the Machinists union at Eastern Airlines, participation is based upon a welldefined framework of new union rights—including seats on the board of directors, access to detailed financial information about the company, and a role in the design of new work systems...
...And organized labor, surely, cannot achieve it all alone...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-8,091...
...Samples, Complimentary, and Other Free Copies: Average no...
...In November 1984, after a nearly three-year struggle that eventually led to a nationwide boycott of Equitable by the AFL–CIO, the National Organization for Women, and other groups, the workers won a labor contract that, among other provisions, included explicit criteria for the design of computer terminals and office furniture, special rest-breaks for workers engaged in continuous VDT use, limits on computerized monitoring, and advance notice of forthcoming technological changes...
...The very economic and technological forces that are the harbingers of potential disruption for many segments of the American work force and substantial social costs for American society as a whole could also be made to serve quite other ends...
...As computer programming and systems design itself become subject to the same tendencies of rationalization as other occupations, at least some computer technicians and professionals are realizing that the control they thought they enjoyed in the workplace is an illusion...
...It would support independent union efforts to develop "technology education and training" programs for rank-and-file members and fund experimental projects at nonprofit agencies, public-sector organizations, or worker cooperatives to use new technology to meet social needs...
...Such an assertion runs against the current of prevailing political wisdom in America—the conservative denial that government has any role to play in working life...
...Despite their veneer of technical impartiality, they have been agents of the corporate control of work...
...Not surprisingly, many of the recommendations coming out of the ICAM project reflect the most rigid conception of industrial automation imaginable and the worst assumptions of the perspective that sees technology as an instrument of managerial control...
...The major public source of financial support for research and development of new workplace technology, today, is the U.S...
...labor law defining new union rights of participation in corporate decisionmaking...
...Perhaps more than any other single occupational group, they are in special need of representation in the brave new workplace...
...They have helped unions explore the impact of computerized work systems and develop their own independent strategies for influencing them...
...Conceived as an amendment to U.S...
...a great many of them, especially in urban areas, are black or members of other minority groups...
...Extent and Nature of Circulation: A. Total No...
...Nevertheless, involvement in these company unions taught workers important lessons about how to organize on a company-wide level, lessons that were put to good use by the independent industrial-union movement of the 1930s, when the Depression made the limitations of the company unions clear to most workers...
...This money would be used to provide funding and expertise to a broad cross section of social and professional groups for the express purpose of helping them expand their participation in the brave new workplace...
...Actual no...
...After all, it would challenge their dominant position in the brave new workplace and seem to require them to give up some of their own independence and control...
...Department of Defense...
...Such an effort would require, first of all, articulating new rights for workers and their unions to participate in the design and use of new technology at work—and to participate not merely as performers of certain vital functions (a memo from AT&T's Bell Labs calls them "roleware" to match certain hardware and software) but as the representatives of important social interests different from those of corporate management...
...At the worst, their desire to extend their own control over work can contradict not only workers' aspirations for autonomy but the very ends of increased productivity and efficiency that are the ostensible reasons for new technology in the first place...
...This is a profoundly ambitious social agenda, as daunting in its scope and its difficulty as the idea of industrial unionism must have seemed more than 50 years ago...
...The bill also defines a model for how technology should and should not be used in working life...
...At a time when the U.S...
...C' -ies Printed (Net Press Run): Average no...
...Some of the most interesting union-organizing efforts taking place today are aimed at these occupational groups...
...Organized labor, for all its current problems and organizational weakness, still remains the central institution in American society where new rights of participation and power at work will first be articulated, realized, and put into practice...
...4. Complete mailing address: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc., 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...From the beginning, organized labor was excluded from the ICAM project, and the Air Force repeatedly rejected 99 the requests of the Machinists union for a role in the automation program...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-8,550...
...Only then will the contradictions of control in the American corporation find their resolution and the brave new workplace begin to reflect the aspirations of all Americans...
...At times, such negotiation would surely involve competition and conflict as management and union strive to win workers and the public to their varying models for working life...
...The condition is that we choose to do so (as individuals but also as a society), choose to shape the changes traversing the working life and harness them to different social goals...
...The tryout demonstrated that TELECOM management did not have a monopoly on organizational efficiency...
...There is no better illustration of this fact than that most elementary dimension of working life, employment itself...
...In their 1983 contract negotiations, the Communications Workers called for the expansion of the Technology Change Committees to include local workplace committees...
...Since the late 1960s, Scandinavian unions and a small but influential group of computer scientists, engineers, and other technical specialists have been engaged in a creative social dialogue about technology and work...
...Unions have been so institutionalized for so long in American society that many labor leaders seem to have lost the capacity for waging long-term labor struggles, to such an extent that now, when unionism is faced with a major corporate attack, many find it difficult to respond...
...If unions ever are to be successful in winning similar rights in this country, there is one final task they will have to take up: the creation of new kinds of institutional expertise necessary to put those new rights into practice where it counts the most, in the workplace itself...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date-225...
...I. Office Use, Left Over, Unaccounted, Spoiled After Printing: Average no...
...As these new growth industries consolidate and mature (diminishing the possibilities for advancement made possible by rapid economic growth) and as information about the health effects of work with toxic hazards in high-tech industry spreads, they may begin to see through some of the contradictions of the enchanted corporation and start searching for an alternative that a unionism of the brave new workplace could provide...
...Until now, work and technology have reflected, almost exclusively, the interests of one institution—the private corporation and the managers who run it...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-8,615...
...For example, one conclusion is that skill requirements for shop-floor workers in the aerospace industry should be substantially diminished and that state-funded vocational education programs should be downgraded...
...All these initiatives are elements for a broad coalition favoring public participation and social choice in working life...
...labor market is on the edge of enormous transformations, Reagan budget cuts at the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics have forced government statisticians to limit data collection for the bureau's "occupational outlook" forecasts...
...Publication No.: 00123846...
...What would it mean to open the brave new workplace to these and other groups...
...Some will surely be interested in the idea of systems design as a social process out of the simple conviction that the effective design and implementation of new workplace technology depends upon it...
...As a result, it has also been the prime determinant of technology's impact on people...
...Actual no...
...citizens who must live with technology's impacts, whether on the health of their neighborhoods or the quality of the products and services they pur93 chase...
...The government would work with state universities and technological institutes to establish programs for training workers and managers in the social implications of new technology and how to address them...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months-524...
...The government might also fund efforts at engineering schools or in computer science departments to develop curricula on "the social responsibility of the computer professional" or "systems design as a social process...
...When, in the early 1980s, the management of Australia's public telecommunications agency, TELECOM, announced a plan for the comprehensive computerization of that country's telecommunications network, the industry's unions did not passively accept management's proposals...
...10017...
...In February 1982, employees at the Syracuse, New York, claims benefit office of the Equitable Life Assurance Society—mostly female VDT operators— voted to join District 925 of the Service Employees International Union in an effort to cope with problems caused in part by managerial practices concerning new technology...
...And the role of a "trade unionism of the brave new workplace" would be to translate those union goals into concrete organizational principles for technology, work, and social life...
...D. Free Distribution by Mail, Carrier, or Other Means...
...One example is the New Technology Bill of Rights developed by the International Association of Machinists (representing some 650,000 workers in the machine-tool, metal-working, aerospace, and airline industries...
...In order for this to happen, however, unions need to look to their past as well as to the future...
...6. Full Names and Complete Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc., 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...From 1979 to 1984, ICAM spent $100 million in order to make the much-publicized and long-awaited "factory of the future" a reality, by developing the next generation of integrated computerized manufacturing systems...
...the union-designed office was at least as efficient as that of management...
...As the primary expression of workers' collective voice and collective interests, unions must take the lead in making the brave new workplace an enterprise of social choice...
...Thus both equity and efficiency demand that other interests than those of the corporation be introduced into the brave new workplace...
...One provision stipulates that technology should "improve the condition of work and . . . enhance and expand the opportunities for knowledge, skills, and compensation for workers...
...Appropriately enough, it concerns the unions of the Australian telecommunications industry...
...Finally, the Machinists union proposal forbids the use of technology "to monitor, measure, or otherwise control the work practice and work standards of individual 94 workers" as well as uses that threaten worker safety and health or are "destructive of the work environment...
...Actual no...
...On the contrary, they are protesting against this corporate control of work in any way they can...
...The purpose, function and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during preceding 12 months...
...And as contact with shop-floor workers has led technical specialists to reflect on the assumptions and implications of their own work, they have begun to formulate alternative methods of "systems design" so that unions' social priorities and goals can be reflected in the technology development process...
...Actual no...
...Actual no...
...Most of these workers are women...
...Trained in the traditions of scientific management, these workers have generally seen their role as that of impartial experts of the workplace whose only task is to construct the most economically efficient and technologically proficient systems possible...
...The unions at the Australian telecommunications authority won the crucial right to negotiate with management over the use of new technology at work...
...They may welcome the opportunity to play new roles and put their considerable talents in the service of different social goals...
...More specifically, they need to recapture the idea of unionism as a social movement that offers a competing vision of the future, an authentic alternative to the corporate blueprint for the brave new workplace...
...This could take place in any number of ways...
...But the federal government could also do a great deal more...
...However, there is one social partner that the Air Force left out—the labor unions representing aerospace workers at many of the participating companies...
...The corporation's logic of profit, competitiveness, and market success at almost any price has defined the ends according to which technology has been designed and used in the workplace...
...York City International Operating Center strike to protest job pressures, when videodisplayterminal (VDT) operators engage in acts of "resistance," or when semiconductor production workers like Marta Rojas and Anita Zimmerman, disabled by exposure to toxic chemicals in Silicon Valley, take their former employers to court—they are all, one way or another, making their interests known...
...As management resists such initiatives, unions may develop more independent agendas for worker participation in and influence over working life...
...Were even a small minority of concerned computer professionals to begin to speak out on the "social responsibility of the systems designer" and, as in Scandinavia, even join together informally and formally with unions and other "user representative" groups in order to create alternative approaches to planning technology and work, then the project to enlarge people's realm of choice in the brave new workplace would take a giant step...
...The new technologies of the computer and advanced telecommunications constitute the central nervous system of the brave new workplace...
...There are already some signs that American unions may be adopting a more independent perspective on joint labor-management cooperative programs...
...1985...
...The problems of the brave new workplace, however, exceed the capacity of particular professional groups or labor unions to address them...
...Should a movement to limit the corporate control of work ever gain substantial support in organized labor and the public at large, it is likely that it would face massive political opposition from the American business community...
...But there are other social groups that may find the idea of exercising social choice in the brave new workplace extremely appealing...
...7. Owner: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc., 521 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y...
...According to recent research, one occupational category to be heavily hit by the technological transformations of the brave new workplace is the vast number of unorganized clerical workers in the service sector of the U.S...
...The telephone system worked as well as ever—and the public received free telephone service for a short period of time...
...They gained government support for a unique tryout of two competing approaches to organizing technology and work...
...And of all the areas of working life that have traditionally been considered the exclusive responsibility of the corporation, the design and development of new workplace technology may prove to be the most important...
...At first glance, it would seem unlikely that American "technology managers" would be interested in a more social conception of their own work...
...Of course, governmental initiatives to open the brave new workplace to the ideas and interests of diverse social groups will require broad public support...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months—None...
...In addition, more and more high-technology production workers in the semiconductor and computer industries face not only low wages but work environments that threaten their very health...
...Nevertheless, the damage has been done...
...Even as the government is supporting the most socially narrow conception of the brave new workplace through Pentagoii-funded projects like ICAM, the Reagan administration has been making it more difficult for ordinary citizens to cope with the changes of working life...
...Some American unions have already taken steps toward defining these new rights...
...Copyright © 1985 by Robert Howard...
...As a result of their multifaceted campaign, the unions were able to win a great deal more than the usual protective measures (which included a "no layoffs" guarantee far beyond any "job security" provision that American unions have recently won...
...8. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 percent or more of total amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or other Securities: None...
...2. Returns from News Agents: Average no...
...For this reason, the social control of technology is, finally, a political project, one that replaces the empty illusion of the all-powerful and benevolent corporation with an alternative vision of work as a realm of democratic social choice...
...and, finally, government officials who approve the vast amounts of public money supporting technological research and development and, more important, are the ultimate representatives of the public good...
...B. Annual Subscription Price: $14.00...
...publicly funded and controlled worker retraining programs to encourage the development of new work-force skills...
Vol. 33 • January 1986 • No. 1
