In My Opinion: Disposable Job Growth in the Information Industry

Since 1989, over half the Fortune 500 companies have slashed their payrolls, with more than 20 million people losing their jobs permanently, according to a study by the Twentieth Century Fund. (All 500 companies predicted they will downsize over the next five years, the study found.)

What happens to these people? To a large degree, they shift reluctantly into a growing class of what economists call "nonstandard" or "contingent" jobs - temporary, part-time, on-call, self-employed.

Fully 30 percent of American workers have these nonstandard arrangements - about 14 percent part-time and 16 percent in some form of temporary or independent contractor status.

While some people enjoy the flexibility of nonstandard employment, many would prefer good permanent, full-time jobs that invariably pay better wages and provide benefit packages.

It's well documented that at least half of the part-timers really want full-time jobs. And in the case of temp workers, often they aren't temporary at all, but rather are on the short end of a two-tier employment scheme. We find our union fighting this form of exploitation more and more often.

For instance, a major problem in our current negotiations at Disney/ABC is the TV network's demand to increase the number of "daily hires," which is a euphemism for technicians who frequently work every day of the week, every week of the year but receive benefits inferior to those of the regular workforce.

A big issue in this year's Bell Atlantic strike was the company's plan to use so-called agency "temp" workers to staff a permanent customer center, doing the work of union service reps. That scheme was dropped.

In the newspaper industry, TNG-CWA frequently is confronted with demands to increase the use of freelance-written material in the paper, such as in current talks at the Hilo, Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

(A "freelance" journalist often is someone who'd like a full-time job on the newspaper but instead is called a stringer and paid by the story.)

And when it comes to temp agencies, they aren't just providing secretaries and manual laborers anymore, but some of the most highly educated and skilled employees in the country.

Thousands of computer programmers, technical writers and computer hardware specialists working at Microsoft, Boeing and other high-tech firms in the Seattle area come from some 50 employment agencies (see story, page 9). They'll work 50 to 60 hours a week, for weeks and months at a time on a particular project, but without the pay, benefits and stock options of the "career" employees working right beside them.

As one of the founders of CWA's new affiliate, WashTech, explains: "You come into Microsoft and interview with a guy. He wants to hire you, so he sends you to a temporary agency. They hire you and send you back." Apparently, this is among Bill Gates' stratagems for amassing a personal fortune of $60 billion.

Incredibly, with this labor pool of some 10,000 high-tech specialists in these Seattle temp agencies, the industry successfully lobbied Congress and the Clinton administration to change immigration laws to expand the flow of "guest" workers, claiming there's a shortage of U.S. technology workers. (President Clinton did win a concession from congressional leaders that high-tech companies must pay the prevailing wage to these foreign workers, although standards of enforcement are not clear.)

Clearly, throughout the emerging information industry - from high-tech, to journalism, broadcasting and telecommunications - major employers are systematically trying to marginalize, rather than create, future jobs.

It's not a new strategy. In the needle trades and other fields it is often done through "piece work," in effect creating a workforce of independent contractors who are dependent upon the employer for their livelihoods, but are never given a measure of job security or a stake in the company.

From the sweatshops of the garment industry at the turn of this century to the high-skilled, high-tech information industry today, some things never change - things like corporate greed, and the need for labor unions.