Journalist and author Andrew Bibby began his presentation by drawing comparisons between today's technological revolution and the first Industrial Revolution. Drawing on the history of Hebden Bridge, a former mill town where he lives, Bibby observed that before the Industrial Revolution, wool workers, like today's teleworkers, had a certain control over their working hours. Industrialisation was responsible for a loss of worker control and appalling working conditions, though, ultimately, it made possible a collective form of organization that is recognised as today's labour movement.
The Industrial Revolution lead to the centralisation of work and the growth of large industrial centres and cities. Today, he said, we could be witnessing the opposite, as teleworkers begin to operate from home, satellite offices, community telecentres, and telecottages.
Different Experiences
Bibby pointed out that while professional workers, particularly those in senior or middle management or running consultancy businesses from pleasant homes in pleasant areas, might find teleworking a positive experience, it could be an entirely different experience for someone working in cramped conditions on low paid, low status work. Such work included inputting data by keyboarding and responding to telephone enquiries. There was a gender issue involved, he said, and drew comparison between women teleworkers and Britain's poorest paid workers, sewing machinists working from their own homes.
Bibby believes that childcare and teleworking are incompatible. It is, he argued, a myth that teleworking allows women with small children to return to the job market, although it could offer more flexibility to people with childcare responsibilities.
Against Casualisation
The main body of Bibby's presentation was concerned with the growth of the casualisation of the work force through part time work and the development of outsourcing by larger companies to smaller, peripheral subcontractors when trade was good. This, he said, contrasted with the view held by early writers who had assumed that teleworkers would remain employees of their companies. He believed casualisation could lead to a worsening of workers' conditions and rights.
Bibby reported that the MSF had prepared a check list (1) for negotiating telework arrangements. Both it and a Low Pay Unit report prepared by Ursula Huws in 1984 (2) made the point that teleworkers should stay on the payroll as employees.
He outlined the other key points raised by the MSF and the Low Pay Unit's codes of practice:
Bibby noted that while some companies have done their best to maintain good personnel practice, there was a danger that unions would be unable to stem the move towards casualised working and the increased use of freelance teleworkers. In addition, it could make recruitment, communications , subscription collection and the organization of collective action difficult for unions.
The Union Response
Teleworkers could find they need the support of unions even more in combating new forms of exploitation, including self-exploitation, said Bibby. Unions would have to be imaginative in their delivery of services.
Bibby mentioned the National Union of Journalists' on-line service, NUJnet, as an example of how technology could be developed as a service to members, and he concluded that the labour movement as a whole should embrace the opportunities of the future, not run away from them.