This article challenges the notion-proposed by liberal-democratic theories of the "knowledge worker" and industry accounts of "friction-free" capitalism-that labour conflict is no longer relevant within digital capitalism via an in-depth examination of a case of collective organizing by temporary workers at Microsoft. The paper suggests the formation and activities of their union, WashTech, prefigures 21st century collective organizing. Two concepts are proposed as guides to these struggles. "Immaterial labour" refers to a set of increasingly important forms of labour within post-Fordism, ranging from callcentre work to software development. "Precarity" denotes the material and existential insecurity suffered by workers as a result of flexible employment arrangements. These concepts are examined by drawing on archival material and interviews with WashTech members.Résumé: Cet article conteste la notion-proposée par la théorie libérale démocratique du « knowledge worker » et du capitalisme « sans friction »-que les luttes ouvrières manquent de pertinence quant au capitalisme numérique. À partir d l'analyse de WashTech, organisation de travailleurs temporaries à Microsoft, nous proposons que les activités de ce syndicat préfigurent l'organization ouvriere au 21e siècle. Deux concepts peuvent élucider ces lutes. Le « travail immatériel » signale des formes de travail don't l'importance augmente dans le post-fordisme, consistant de centres d'appels et du développement de logiciels. La « précarité » désigne l'insécurité matérielle et existentielle subie par les travailleurs résultat des arrangements d'emploi « flexibles ». Nous considérons ces deux concepts à partir de recherches d'archives et d'entrevues des membres de WashTech.
Countering the more placid depictions of call-centre work on offer from academic literature, this paper illuminates the labour antagonisms currently being produced within this growing form of employment. It brings into sharper focus one of the ways in which call centre workers are organising to protect and their interests, by describing their participation in the emerging model of ‘convergent’ trade unionism of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) and their 2004 strike against the Canadian telecommunications company Aliant. The five-month strike was provoked by a set of processes that characterised the transformation of the Canadian telecommunications sector in the 1990s, including the privatisation of public telephone companies, corporate convergence, and the restructuring of the labour process at the telecommunications companies that emerged. Drawing on the descriptions offered by a group of call-centre workers who are members of Local 506 of the CEP, the paper focuses on the transformation of the Aliant customer contact labour process from its ‘help-desk’ functions towards conditions prevailing within non-unionised outsourced call centres across New Brunswick, and recounts the 2004 strike. It concludes by assessing the significance of these events for unionised call-centre workers in the Canadian telecommunications sector and reflecting on how convergent unionism might be extended to include non-unionised workers at outsourced call centres across the region.
This article surveys the recent transformation of Simon Fraser University (SFU) against the backdrop of the crisis of Canadian public post-secondary education. The article contends that the Canadian model for the public funding of mass higher education that became consolidated in the postwar years is coming to an end, and that the metamorphosis of SFU over recent decades illuminates some of the tensions, tendencies and conflicts within what the Edu-factory Collective (2010) has called a double crisis: that of the university on the one hand, and of the global financial system on the other. Three processes in particular are at the heart of this transformation: a) the increasing importance of private capital, management and branding of the university in an era of decreased public funding; b) the university’s expansion across the urban fabric, in a process that brings displacement and gentrification; and c) the emergence of hybrid public-private models of educational delivery that cater to global markets for tuition dollars. Within this transformation, the article also points to lines of tension that are emerging out of these processes, creating conflicts and moments of encounter between the labour organizations, student groups and anti-gentrification activists struggling against the what Andrew Ross (2009) has called the global university.
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