Over the last few years, two social and economic trends have become apparent in the developed world whose influence on employment, and therefore on trade unions, will be both profound and permanent. The first is the irresistible shift within developed countries away from production (agriculture, construction, manufacture, and engineering) to services and 'dematerial' industries such as software development and the media; a shift which can be readily detected in the employment figures. One of the most important effects of this has been an increasing emphasis on the flexibility of both organisations and employees. Words like "outsourcing", "downsizing", and "partnership" now pepper the discourse of business - permanent employment and huge, paternalistic employers are now things of the past.
The second trend is the encroachment of information and communications technologies (ICT) on to everyday economic territory. The steadily spreading microcomputer, the persistent focus on networks and interconnectivity, and the relentless rise of information as a business resource have stimulated radical revisions to the organisation of both labour and capital, on one level bringing production-line attitudes to management, administration, clerical, and creative work and, on another level, creating opportunities for completely new ways of working.
Technology and Society
The two trends have never been entirely separate - the new technologies bring opportunities, and lend concepts and terminology to the world of industry and business, while economic and commercial necessities generate demand for technological solutions. Moreover, the emergence of national information infrastructures and global networks from the specialised worlds of academic research and military strategy has inspired much concern at the highest political levels about the impact of advanced data communications on culture, employment, and the economy.
Europe's political fragmentation, its significant unemployment problem, and the shockwaves from the collapsing Eastern bloc have inspired its politicians to emphasise the use of telematics as a social glue: creating work, integrating administrations, and unifying peoples. Hence the Delors White Paper, Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The Challenges and Way Forward into the 21st Century (1) in 1993, and the Bangemann report (2) and European Council Action Plan (3) last year.
In the US, the same awareness of data communications has combined with the potent reality of the Internet to emphasise telematics as a social stimulant: inspiring schoolchildren, supporting commerce and trade, and reinvigorating the political process. Hence, Al Gore's 1993 proposals for a National Information Infrastructure (4), the project on "reinventing government" (5), and the US's missionary zeal at the recent G7 conference in Brussels on the global information infrastructure (GII).
Of course, the very phrase "global information infrastructure" is an Americanism. In Europe, they talk of the information society not the infrastructure. It would appear that there is a difference between a superhighway and an infobahn. There may even be difference between an infobahn, an inforoute, and an infostrada. Yet, for all the discussion and debate about what these things mean, and how they will change our lives, we have heard precious little from the one group - the one social partner - whose identity and organisation will perhaps be altered more than any other's in the new information society - the labour movement.