New forms of work and employment and the core principle of subordination Value Flow in Network Compa

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New forms of work and employment and the core principle of subordination Value Flow in Network Compa

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New forms of work and employment and the core. principle of ... Like quicksilver. Technology makes it easier to produce; but harder to hold and capture value ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: New forms of work and employment and the core principle of subordination Value Flow in Network Compa


1
New forms of work and employment and the
coreprinciple of subordinationValue Flow in
Network Company
  • Larry Haiven
  • Saint Marys University

2
Old subordination
  • value created mostly at factory
  • Formal, then real subordination
  • Subordination ?Dependency
  • Production is centre of value creation (not
    consumption, distribution)

3
Changes in value creation
  • Change of locus
  • Less standardized work arrangements
  • Informatization
  • Immaterial labour
  • Intellectual property
  • Production less dominant other moments more
  • Unravelling of vertical firm move to networks

4
Change of locus
  • Dramatic decentralization
  • Less in factory more outside (social factory)
  • Boundaryless workplace boundaryless careers
    (Stone From Widgets to Digits)
  • A career which unfolds unconstrained by clear
    boundaries around job activities, by fixed
    sequences of such activities, or by attachment to
    one organization. It is a career that does not
    depend on traditional notions of advancement
    within a single hierarchical orgIt includes an
    employee who moves frequently across the borders
    of different firms, such as a Silicon Valley
    technician, or a professional whose career draws
    its validation and marketability from
    professional and extra-organizational networks.

5
Less standardized work arrangements
  • Move away from permanent, full-time, full-year
    employment
  • Move to part-time, temporary, casual employment
  • Move to contracting to self-employed
  • In last year 65 of new jobs in Canada temporary
    contracts or self-employment

6
Informatization of value creation
  • In developed countries, rapid move away from
    domination of industrial goods production
  • Toward
  • Convenience taste access experience time
    lifestyle management filtering decision-making
    organizing leisure management intangibles
    communities of interest relationships intimacy
  • Rifkin The Age of Access
  • When virtually every aspect of our being becomes
    a paid-for activity, human life itself becomes
    the ultimate commercial product, and the
    commercial sphere becomes the final arbiter of
    our personal and collective existence

7
Informatization (2)
  • Two models of move to postindustrial services
    (Hardt Negri Empire)
  • Rapid decline in industrial jobs to rapid rise in
    service sector, esp managing capital (US, UK,
    Canada)
  • Info-industrial
  • Industrial employment declines less rapidly
  • Informatization closely integrated to existing
    industrial production (Japan Germany)

8
Immaterial labour
  • Hardt Negri Empire Multitude
  • line between goods services vanishes
  • Interactive and cybernetic machines become a new
    prosthesis integrated into our bodies and minds
    and a lens through which to redefine our bodies
    and minds themselves. The anthropology of
    cyberspace is really a recognition of the new
    human condition.
  • Three types
  • Manufacturing redefined as service
  • Analytical symbolic tasks
  • Creative intelligent manipulation (symbolic
    analysts)
  • Routine symbolic tasks
  • Production and manipulation of affect human
    contact labour in bodily mode

9
Intellectual property
  • More individuals able to produce on their own
  • E.g. music, filmmaking
  • Technology allows personal production
    reproduction
  • Key elements still missing
  • Capital for startup
  • Livelihood
  • Input costs
  • Career management
  • Distribution of outputs

10
Intellectual property (2)
  • Like quicksilver
  • Technology makes it easier to produce but harder
    to hold and capture value
  • 2 problems
  • Value flows to those with power, organization and
    access
  • New technology allows leakage of valorization
    potential (piracy)
  • Creators of intellectual property constant
    struggle to capture value of i.p.
  • Or at least conscious positive giving it away

11
Production less dominant others moments more
  • Consumption patterns more important in valorizing
    surplus value
  • capital is driven to successively wider and
    deeper dimensions of control toward the
    creation of a social factory. Marx had written
    of capitals tendency to subsume not only the
    workplace but also society as a whole into its
    processes. Extending this analysis Trontiargued
    that capitals growing resort to state
    intervention and technocratic control had created
    a situation where the entire society now
    functions as a moment of production.
  • Growing gap so chasing refinement distinction
    among wealthier

12
Other moments.
  • Production reproduction of labour power more
    important
  • Deepening crisis of labour power
  • Internationalization of division of labour
  • Underdevelopment of development development of
    underdevelopment
  • Despite rises in productivity earnings stall or
    drop
  • Crisis state

13
Unravelling of vertical firm into networks
14
Networks (2)
  • Compared to old hierarchical firm, networks look
    deceivingly egalitarian
  • Flow of value to power
  • Castells Materials for exploratory theory of the
    network
  • Value in the production process depends
    essentially on the position occupied by each
    specific labor or each specific firm in the value
    chain. The rule is individualization of the
    relationship between capital and labor.
  • critical cleavage within labor becomes the one
    between networked labor and switched-off labor,
    which ultimately becomes non-labor.
  • second, fundamental cleavage, between
    self-programmable labor and generic labor. For
    self-programmable labor, its individual interest
    is better served by enhancing its role in
    performing the goals of the networkWhile for
    generic labor, its strategy is survival the key
    issue becomes not be be degraded to the realm of
    discarded or devalued labor, either by
    automation, or globalization, or both.

15
Value flow in network
  • Less upward to top of hierarchical organization
  • More inward to key nodes
  • Control access to inputs and access to markets
  • Best able to capture intellectual property value
  • Like a gravity drawing wealth
  • From single dependency to multitudinous
    dependencies
  • Dependency influences flow of value
  • Interests of network members sometimes coincide,
    sometimes clash

16
Taxi drivers
Other Taxi drivers
Municipal Regulators
Dispatch Companies
Provincial Regulators
Automobile
Commercial inputs
Other accessories
Gasoline
Parts repairs
Customers
17
Musicians
Other musicians
Impresarios/purchasers
Government agencies
Schools
Managers
Distributors
Automobile
Commercial inputs
Equipment
Record Labels
Instruments
Fans fashion
Booking agents
Intellectual Property Capture Agencies
18
Intellectual Property Capture Agencies
  • Mechanical royalty from sale of manufactured and
    distributed phonorecord

Cdn Musical Reproduction Rights Agency MCRRA
funded by commission of proceeds of licenses
issued
  • Synchronization royalty when song is in
    commercials, TV shows or films (requires a
    licence)

Society of Composers, Authors and Music
Publishers of Canada SOCAN similar agencies
in the US Europe
  • Performance royalty whenever the song is aired
    on radio, TV, in bars, restaurants, malls, over
    the telephone while youre waiting

19
Film video artisans
Assistant Location Manager
Assistant Accountant
Chief Accountant
Bookkeeper
Picture Editor
Location Manager
Supervising Picture Editor
Assistant Production Manager
1st Assistant Picture Editor
Production Manager
2nd Assistant Picture Editor
Producer
Sound Editor
1st Assistant Director
Unit Manager
Set Designer
Production Designer
2nd Assistant Director
Art Director
Director
2nd Asst Art Director
3rd Assistant Director
1st Asst Art Director
Trainee Assistant Director
20
Collectivities of labour
  • Wagnerist model based on old hierarchical
    structure
  • Enmeshed in network webs, workers must and do
    form own collectivities
  • Unions only one type of collectivity
  • Others e.g.
  • Cooperatives
  • Professional societies
  • Intellectual property capture agencies
  • Ethnic, gender, religious, cultural associations
  • Consumer organizations

21
Unions need to.(and/or)
  • Realize changes transforming value creation
  • Increase scope of what they do for members
  • Beyond workplace citizens, consumers,
    neighbours, identities, self-employment
  • Help capture intellectual property rights
  • Increase scope of membership to those outside
    standard workplaces employment
  • To non-standard-employed
  • Even to self-employed
  • Work with unions of non-standard work
    arrangements
  • Work/contend with other interest associations

22
Stone From Widgets to Digits
  • A new craft unionism
  • Organize high tech workforce on basis of common
    skills
  • Offer services employers not willing to offer
  • Story of NABET vs. IATSE
  • NABET followed rigid, Wagnerist model as film
    video industry moving away from it
  • Firm-centred, stable employment, collective terms
  • Bypassed by tricks technology
  • IATSE
  • More fluid operation
  • Represented members as insider conractors
  • Embedded contract bargaining
  • Encouraged mutual self-help
  • Geographically-based citizen unionism

23
Network unionism
  • Personal service contracts
  • Fight for status of artist legislation
  • Framework agreement contract only union labour
    establish minimum or scale
  • Provide boilerplate contracts advice
  • Trust funds from industry agreeements
  • Hiring hall
  • Gig-based benefits (pension, insurance)
  • Member-paid benefits (insurance, discounts)
  • Cross-border issues
  • Professional development assistance
  • Public policy advocacy
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