|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
Can knowledge workers of the world unite? This question becomes
ever more urgent as telecommunications technology shrinks the world
and as more and more work is based on creating, processing and
transporting information. Communications, information and cultural
workers hold together the new global value chains that characterise
more and more industries. But, with employers responding to global
crisis by exerting ever-greater pressure on wages and working
conditions, will these workers be able to overcome national and
language differences and the divisions between occupational groups
to unite against them? This important collection brings together
articles from around the world to assess the state of play. From
striking IT workers in China to screenwriters in Hollywood, from
postal workers to cartoonists, from librarians to logistics
workers, what these workers have in common is that their work is
not only embedded in global value chains but also necessary for
modern communication to function. This includes communication among
workers and the organisations that represent them. The message:
knowledge workers can learn a lot from each other about how to
understand - and resist - the global forces that are shaping their
lives. Volume 4, number 2 of the innovative interdisciplinary
journal Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation will be of
interest to anyone studying the new international division of
labour whether this is from the perspective of labour sociology,
management theory, economic geography or industrial relations.
Knowledge Workers in the Information Society addresses the changing
nature of work, workers, and their organizations in the media,
information, and knowledge industries. These knowledge workers
include journalists, broadcasters, librarians, filmmakers and
animators, government workers, and employees in the
telecommunications and high tech sectors. Technological change has
become relentless. Corporate concentration has created new
pressures to rationalize work and eliminate stages in the labor
process. Globalization and advances in telecommunications have made
real the prospect that knowledge work will follow manufacturing
labor to parts of the world with low wages, poor working
conditions, and little unionization. McKercher and Mosco bring
together scholars from numerous disciplines to examine knowledge
workers from a genuinely global perspective.
An explosive book that exposes the abuses of
institutionalization."How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
It was one of the first questions kids asked each other when
Catherine McKercher was a child. She never knew how to answer
it.Three of the McKercher children lived at home. The fourth, her
youngest brother, Bill, did not. Bill was born with Down syndrome.
When he was two and a half, his parents took him to the Ontario
Hospital School in Smiths Falls and left him there. Like thousands
of other families, they exiled a child with disabilities from home,
family, and community.The rupture in her family always troubled
McKercher. Following Bill's death in 1995, and after the sprawling
institution where he lived had closed, she applied for a copy of
Bill's resident file. What she found shocked her.Drawing on primary
documents and extensive interviews, McKercher reconstructs Bill's
story and explores the clinical and public debates about
institutionalization: the pressure to "shut away" children with
disabilities, the institutions that overlooked and sometimes
condoned neglect and abuse, and the people who exposed these
failures and championed a different approach.
The Laboring of Communication examines the transformation of work
and of worker organizations in today's Information Society. The
book focuses on how traditional trade unions and new worker
associations growing out of social movements are coming together to
address the crisis of organized labor. It concentrates on the
creative responses of the technical and cultural workers in the
mass media, telecommunications, and information technology
industries. Concentrating on political economy, labor process, and
feminist theory, it proceeds to offer several ways of thinking
about communication workers and the nature of the society in which
they work. Drawing on interviews and the documentary record, the
book offers case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts
among both traditional and alternative worker organizations in the
United States and Canada. It concludes by addressing the thorny
issue of outsourcing, describing how global labor federations and
nascent worker organizations in the developing world are coming
together to develop creative solutions.
The Laboring of Communication examines the transformation of work
and of worker organizations in today's Information Society. The
book focuses on how traditional trade unions and new worker
associations growing out of social movements are coming together to
address the crisis of organized labor. It concentrates on the
creative responses of the technical and cultural workers in the
mass media, telecommunications, and information technology
industries. Concentrating on political economy, labor process, and
feminist theory, it proceeds to offer several ways of thinking
about communication workers and the nature of the society in which
they work. Drawing on interviews and the documentary record, the
book offers case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts
among both traditional and alternative worker organizations in the
United States and Canada. It concludes by addressing the thorny
issue of outsourcing, describing how global labor federations and
nascent worker organizations in the developing world are coming
together to develop creative solutions.
Knowledge Workers in the Information Society addresses the changing
nature of work, workers, and their organizations in the media,
information, and knowledge industries. These knowledge workers
include journalists, broadcasters, librarians, filmmakers and
animators, government workers, and employees in the
telecommunications and high tech sectors. Technological change has
become relentless. Corporate concentration has created new
pressures to rationalize work and eliminate stages in the labor
process. Globalization and advances in telecommunications have made
real the prospect that knowledge work will follow manufacturing
labor to parts of the world with low wages, poor working
conditions, and little unionization. McKercher and Mosco bring
together scholars from numerous disciplines to examine knowledge
workers from a genuinely global perspective.
|
|