Canada signs key international bargaining and organising treaty

On 14 June 2017 Canada ratified ILO Convention 98, the key international treaty promoting collective bargaining and the right to organise.

“ After 60 years, Canada has ratified ILO Convention 98. Canada now recognises why strong unions matter in creating a fair and inclusive country. We thank all those who have been fighting for this moment ” Larry Brown, President of the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE).

The Convention calls for: ● protection against acts of anti-union discrimination ● protection for unions against interference by employers ● machinery to develop and promote collective bargaining Convention 98 has now been ratified by 165 countries, including Canada

www.nupge.ca INTERNATIONAL Volume 25 Issue 3 2018 union Contents

Editorial 2

Work Will Not Disappear. 3 rights So We Should Make It Better JIM STANFORD Journal of the International Centre for Trade Union Rights ● Centro Internacional para los Derechos Sindicales More Robots, Fewer Rights: 5 ● Labour Trends in Electronics Manufacturing Centre International pour les Droits Syndicaux KAN MATSUZAKI

Editor Ciaran Cross When Algorithms Hire and Fire 6 DR CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH Editorial Board David Bacon, Lance Compa, Reynaud Daniels, Two Perspectives on Platform Work 8 John Hendy QC, Carolyn Jones (Chair), Eric Lee, SEBASTIEN FLAIS and MICHAEL “SIX” SILBERMAN Pascal Lokiec, Sindhu Menon, Jill Murray, Rory O’Neill, John Odah, Tom Sibley, Rita Olivia Tambunan, Worthless Promises in Silicon Valley 10 DAVID BACON Charles Woolfson Death by Overwork: 12 Legal Editor President Beyond Industry 4.0 in Japan Professor Keith Ewing John Hendy QC KIYOHIKO OKA

Vice Presidents The Future Will Be Made of Copper… 13 Jamshid Ahmadi, Kurshid Ahmad, Jan Buelens, CIARAN CROSS Anita Chan, Ericson Crivelli, Fathi El-Fadl, Professor Keith Ewing, Avalon Kent, Esther Lynch, ICTUR in Action: Interventions 14 Lortns Naglehus, Yoshikazu Odagawa, Jeffrey Sack QC, Argentina, China, Colombia, eSwatini, Iran, Jitendra Sharma, Surya Tjandra, Ozlem Yildirim Italy, Philippines, Spain, UK, Zimbabwe

The Lure of the Quick Technological Fix: 16 ICTUR International Blockchain and the Case of Cobalt E [email protected] W www.ictur.org GLEN MPUFANE and BRIAN KOHLER

Director Daniel Blackburn FIM-CISL vs. Industry 4.0 18 GIANNI ALIOTI Researcher Ciaran Cross The Future of Work is Ours 20 MARC HOLLIN Subscriptions Four issues: £25 Work and Technology: 22 Student and Trade Union Perceptions in Portugal ISSN 1018-5909 HERMES AUGUSTO COSTA

Digital Solidarity or Complacent Clicktivism? 24 ERIC LEE

Worldwide 26

Focus 28 Continued from pages 11 and 13

25/3 | International Union Rights | 1 EDITORIAL

Editorial:

In the 1770s, a chess-playing automaton known as under the sun will be automated: workers in the ‘Mechanical Turk’ began touring Europe and factories and call centres, lawyers, civil servants and Ciaran Cross, North America, winning matches and the awe of poets too. As tensions between labour and spectators. Te deception, revealed afer decades of technology become increasingly difcult to ignore, Editor speculation, could not have been simpler: there was even the 19th Century Luddites – once reductively a man hiding inside the machine. Without any trace maligned as machine-breaking technophobes – have of irony, in 2005 Amazon adopted the name enjoyed a minor resurgence. Mechanical Turk for its new crowdsourcing Contributors to this issue of IUR weigh up these platform. On the website, workers (or ‘Turkers’) bid challenges in diferent ways. Perspectives from to perform an array of ‘Human Intelligence Tasks’ diferent regions and sectors lead to diferent for as little as one US cent in remuneration. Te prognoses. Tere is a shared awareness of the need company’s brazen adoption of a name synonymous to critically question deterministic approaches to with the obscuring of the human at work beneath technological development, as well as any further the facade of a machine says quite a lot about the weakening of workers’ collective power. predicament of labour in a world on the precipice of Technological development is steered by human ever-deeper integration with artifcial intelligence, choices. An overarching concern is therefore how automation and digital capitalism. organised labour is able to shif the parameters of Coinciding with the ILO’s centenary initiative on debate to put technology and (in)equality in the the Future of Work, there has been a proliferation of spotlight. As Jim Stanford notes here, it does not concepts attempting to predict the impacts of seem likely that technological progress will make advances in new and sophisticated ‘smart’ work disappear. Rather it is workers’ labour that is technologies. Buzzwords like ‘Industry 4.0’ (frst being rendered increasingly invisible. Te developed by German policymakers), the ‘fourth Mechanical Turk could hardly be a better metaphor. industrial revolution’, or the ‘Internet of Tings It is little wonder then that organised workers (IoT)’ refer to a range of industrial applications of across the globe are increasingly turning to digital cyber-physical systems, digital, algorithmic and communication – ofen tipped as the cyber-silver advanced automation technologies, with the lining of hyper-globalisation – to make their struggles potential to connect data and processes that are more visible and build global networks of solidarity. highly complex and geographically remote. But as LabourStart’s Eric Lee warns, competing for Apocalyptic predictions for the labour market digital attention in an increasingly swamped global abound. According to some accounts, every job network of information is no substitute for organised workers acting collectively. And as new forms of algorithmic management emerge, workers also need to be diligent about their data privacy. No one is keener to sell us a quick technological fx Next issue of IUR than big-tech and electronics companies themselves – Articles between 850 and 1800 words should be sent by email ([email protected]) and who perhaps stand to proft most from the ‘fourth accompanied by a photograph and short biographical note of the author. Please send by industrial revolution’. Whether the ‘fx’ is an online 20 November 2018' if they are to be considered for publication in the next issue of IUR. campaign or ‘block-chain provenance’, a multi-million dollar industry that claims to solve the issue of supply Subscriptions: Print only £25 (individual rate), Print and electronic £75 chain certifcation, these digital technologies raise a (individual or institutional), Electronic only £55 (individual or institutional). number of questions about the control of information. Affiliations: (includes print and electronic access, and more, see www.ictur.org) And if we look at the sectors upon which ‘Industry 4.0’ Individual £50, Branch / local union £75 (includes 3 subscriptions), is being built (big-tech, electronics manufacturing, and National (contact ICTUR for details). mineral extraction) we fnd a catalogue of labour Name/Organisation abuses and anti-union practices. Taking the hype Address around Industry 4.0’s all-encompassing vision of the future at face value, it would seem like the optimal moment to bring such issues in these sectors frmly Email into the spotlight. If we are asked to believe that ‘smart’ Payment on invoice / Payment enclosed technologies will improve our future conditions of For discounted rates please contact IUR’s Editor Daniel Blackburn on [email protected]. work, the fact that conditions of systemic barbarity All subscription services are available via our website: www.ictur.org/affiliation.htm prevail in the production of many of these

Subscribe to IUR / Affiliate ICTUR technologies leaves some room for doubt. 2 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Work Will Not Disappear. So We Should Make It Better

Workers everywhere worry about the future of their Tese twin disruptions – changing technology and jobs. Afer all, for the vast majority, income from changing working relationships – have led some paid employment (in one form or another) is the observers to conclude that work, broadly defned, can dominant means to provide for the necessities of life. no longer be the fnancial and social foundation of Te availability, stability, and earning potential of households and society. People will need to fnd other The barrier to paid work are essential to our well-being. ways to support themselves, and/or fall back on better treatment Te world of work is being transformed by income supports delivered by the state (perhaps technology: machines and computers can perform through a guaranteed annual income). Tis vision of a is not technology, ever-more complex tasks (including those involving workless future can be described positively (as a world but the imbalance judgment and learning), reigniting age-old fears that in which humans have ample leisure time to pursue a of power in workers will be replaced by machines. Of course, range of interests) or negatively (as a dystopia in which workers have worried about machines taking their wealth becomes concentrated amongst a narrow modern jobs since the dawn of capitalism. In historical property-owning elite, while most people huddle at economies experience, technological change by itself does not the margins seeking a way to survive). Both scenarios produce long-lasting unemployment: unemployment assume that paid work is diminishing in importance. certainly does exist, but usually for other reasons Tis assumption is misplaced. (like failed macroeconomic policies). But technological change certainly causes dislocation Robots or no robots, work is here to stay and hardship for certain groups of workers – and the Tere are enduring features of paid work that resulting costs are much worse if afected workers ensure it will remain the cornerstone of the don’t get alternative job opportunities, mobility economy, and the major pillar of fnancial well-being assistance, and retraining. for most households. Te question is not whether or Tere is nothing inevitable about how technology not work will somehow ‘disappear’: it can’t. Te is developed, applied, and managed; the impacts of question is how society will choose to treat, protect, technology depend entirely on choices made and compensate the work that will remain essential regarding its design, implementation, and to its economic and social progress. management. At present, most of those decisions are In the realm of digital platforms and ‘gigs’, for made unilaterally by the owners and top managers example, paid work is still very clearly the driving of private businesses, who have free rein (in most force of production and growth. Modern digital countries) to choose what technologies are businesses rely on paid workers to produce their implemented, to what ends, and who bears the ultimate output. But those frms have developed resulting costs and benefts. Perhaps we should be clever systems to minimise or evade the risks, costs less concerned with technology, and more with the and obligations traditionally faced by employers unbalanced decision-making structure within which (minimum wages, notice of dismissal, pension and JIM STANFORD technology is presently governed. health benefts, etc.). Contrary to the popular is Economist and Moreover, technology is not the only force assumption that digital platforms are the ‘cutting Director of the Centre transforming the world of work. Te organisational edge’ of business innovation, their work practices are for Future Work in and social context of work is also in major fux. centuries old: including piece-work compensation, Sydney, Australia. He worked previously Indeed, changes in work organisation and on-demand work scheduling, and labour hire as economist for employment relations are having a more immediate systems that have been around as long as capitalism. Canadian union Unifor, impact on workers than the much-hyped advent of In previous decades, limits were imposed on some of and is the author of robots and artifcial intelligence. A permanent, full- these work practices: through ambitious labour Economics for Everyone time, paid job with accompanying benefts (like job regulations, full-employment macroeconomic (London: Pluto, 2015) security, paid time of, and pension and health policies, and collective bargaining. Te more recent programs) is no longer normal practice in most resurgence of insecure work has not been driven by labour markets – and is a utopian dream for most technology, but by the deliberate relaxation of those young workers. In its place, precarious work in many former constraints on employers. We can easily forms (including temporary, part-time, casual, imagine better ways of compensating and protecting irregular, and nominally independent or self- gig workers: starting by applying traditional employed positions) is the new normal. In the protections (minimum wage, pension entitlements), extreme, precarious work is now organised through just as in other paid positions. Te barrier to better ‘gigs’: on-demand, piece-work tasks allocated and treatment is not technology, but the imbalance of compensated through faceless digital platforms. power in modern economies. 25/3 | International Union Rights | 3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

The advent of new forms of robotics, artificial Determining the future of work intelligence, and other innovations will never Te benefts of technological change for workers eliminate work in a general sense. They could could be enhanced, and negative efects reduced, substantially increase the productivity (and quality) through sensible, pragmatic measures – of output. But robots and computers do not fall implemented at various levels of the labour market. from the sky: they are produced by human labour, Some obvious opportunities include: and continue to require inputs of labour at all stages (including design, engineering, manufacture, ■ Strong rights to information, notice, and input, so operation, and maintenance). Automation always that workers are aware of technological changes involves replacing direct labour (at the final stage planned for their workplaces, and can prepare of production) with indirect labour (producing well in advance. various inputs and intermediate goods used in ■ Rights to negotiate adjustment measures, production, including machinery). But even in protections, and work practices relevant to new The future of highly automated processes, human labour is technologies as part of normal dialogue with work depends on essential to all production. employers. If productivity surges thanks to new technology ■ Limits on the use of electronic systems of choices we make (and there is no evidence that this is occurring), employee surveillance, monitoring, and about how then society will face important choices about how discipline. technology is to capture and distribute the resulting gains. ■ Strong commitment from employers to ‘internal Higher productivity can support higher real mobility’, including redeployment of workers developed, incomes and hence higher material consumption; afected by technological change. applied, and alternatively, it can facilitate less work. (Labour ■ Strong public support for ‘external mobility’, for managed. movements have traditionally demanded a bit of afected workers who cannot fnd alternative both: higher real incomes and less working time.) positions within their current workplaces. Tis ‘Technological Of course, ‘less work’ can have positive or negative should include strong income protections, determinism’ effects: attained through equitable reductions in training, and relocation assistance. must be normal working hours for all workers, or through ■ Larger and more efective investments by both concentrated (and painful) reductions in work time governments and employers in lifelong learning, energetically for particular groups of workers (namely, skills development, and vocational pathways for rejected unemployed or underemployed workers). Once new and re-entering workers. again, the outcome is not pre-ordained or ■ It is much easier for workers to adjust to technologically-driven. It depends on the choices technological change when alternative job we make as a society. opportunities are amply available, and hence a So far, however, that discussion is mostly commitment to full-employment macroeconomic hypothetical: despite all the hype, there is no policy by governments is critical. evidence that workers are generally being replaced ■ Work in human and caring services will account by a new wave of computers, robots, and intelligent for more jobs in the future, due to growing machines. To the contrary, capital investment in demand and because these jobs are less amenable the business sector has been very weak in most to automation. Governments should make the developed economies since the global financial most of this trend by investing in expanded these crisis. In fact, the average capital-labour ratio in services. several advanced economies (including the US, the UK, Japan, and even Germany) has been declining Tere is no doubt that work has a future. Te since 2010 – indicating that the average worker economy cannot function without productive uses less equipment and technology in their work, human labour: it is the only force capable of adding not more. This is partly because hyper-competitive value to the resources we harvest (hopefully labour markets still find new ways to employ low- sustainably) from nature. Every society must decide cost labour in menial, degrading, and poorly-paid how work will be organised, how workers will be positions – despite the productive potential of treated and compensated, how innovation will be technology. Consider, for example, the large directed and new technologies implemented. None numbers of new jobs in low-productivity private of those decisions are pre-ordained; the false sense services like retail, hospitality, and personal of ‘technological determinism’ infecting many services. Curiously, it seems that investment in new debates about the future of work must be technology is too weak (not too strong). This opens energetically rejected. Decisions which are made the door to a deeper critique of modern economic ultimately refect who gets to make them: will the management: instead of worrying that technology future of work be determined solely by the interests will take our jobs, we should demand more control of private investors and employers, or through a of the investment process, aiming to elicit more more participatory and democratic process? investment, and the power to direct that A positive future for work is certainly possible, but investment for better economic, social and only if we elevate the goal of decent, secure work to environmental outcomes. the top of the policy agenda – and empower workers to play a full role in the resulting social decisions. 4 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

More Robots, Fewer Rights: Labour Trends in Electronics Manufacturing

Te electronics industry is one of the largest industrial manufacturing workers are lower than China. At the sectors in the global economy. As society becomes moment, the monthly wage of USD $500 seems to increasingly digitally connected and ‘smarter’, the be the turning point at which an electronics factory sector continues to boom alongside Industry 4.0, moves to the lower wage countries or introduces which is now having a massive impact on workers and new technologies replacing the workers in In the trade union rights. In Europe and Japan, it has been manufacturing process. electronics sector, estimated that the Industry 4.0 could modify the jobs Te world’s top fve highest earning ICT of million workers (possibly up to 54 percent of jobs) electronics MNCs (Apple, Samsung Electronics, multinationals in the coming years. New technology, such as Foxconn, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard) originate from either turn to digitalisation of production with the Internet of Tings countries that have not ratifed the core ILO automation or (IoT), 3D printing, Virtual/Augmented reality, Big Conventions on freedom of association (No.87) and Data, Cobots (robots designed to cooperate with the right to collective bargaining (No.98). Tese shift production – human beings) are developing and penetrating MNCs also operate and/or outsource labour to lower wage workplaces faster than unions imagination. intensive production processes to suppliers located costs. The in countries where these rights are not respected The Big Two: Foxconn and Samsung such as in South East Asian countries and India. question is Foxconn, Apple supplier and one of the world’s Absent trade union rights, these companies enjoy ultimately who largest electronics manufacturers, had almost 1.3 making proft for the beneft of their top pays for, and who million workers in 2014. Ten the company management, who are ranked among the richest announced that in-house developed robots called people in the world. benefits from, ‘Fox-bots’ would replace 30 percent of workers at a transition to their production lines. Today, the company employs We must fight back! Industry 4.0? 800,000 workers. More than the company’s Te tide of Industry 4.0 will soon hit factories in expectation, 40 percent of workers has been rapidly these low-wage countries as the cost of new replaced with Fox-bots. Te robot costs USD technology keeps going down. When that happens, $25,000 and could replace up to four workers who the workers who have no union or low union earn USD $24,000 a year (a standard worker’s density will not be able to negotiate with either annual wage is USD $6,000 at the Foxconn management or government to protect their Chongqing factory in China, in 2014). employment, or to get access to skills and training Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics has become the for adapting to new technology. Without that biggest foreign direct investor in Vietnam. By taking capacity, these workers will just lose their jobs or be advantage of the lower manufacturing costs and forced into an even more precarious working Vietnamese government’s preferential treatment, the conditions at a lower cost than robots. We must company built the world’s largest smart phone seriously ask ourselves, ‘what are 500,000 ex- factories there (manufacturing 50 percent of all Foxconn workers doing now?’ Samsung smart phones) and employs more than Industry 4.0 is reducing the existing 100,000 workers who account for one third of all manufacturing jobs of union members and Samsung workers worldwide. Te standard wage for increasing the number of unorganised white-collar KAN MATSUZAKI is Director of an assembly worker at the factories is USD $250 a jobs (such as IT designer, programmer, cloud ICT, Electrical month (in 2018), half that of the previously worker). It is weakening the workers’ capacity to and Electronics, mentioned Foxconn worker in China. Te number bargain collectively. Shipbuilding and of workers continues to increase at the factories. Te question is ultimately who pays for, and who Shipbreaking at Foxconn’s and Samsung Electronics’ diferent benefts from, a transition to Industry 4.0? Workers Industriall Global Union approaches clearly illustrate the current trends in the and trade unions need to be part of the decision electronics industry. China, once the world’s making process when the fates of millions of electronics production hub, is now losing out to workers are being decided upon. Tis means that South East Asia and India. Multinational international workers’ solidarity is more important corporations (MNCs) are shifing production to than ever. Unions must fght back by organising and countries such as Tailand, Indonesia, Philippines, fostering strong negotiation power among the and Vietnam, and India, where wages for workers to secure a sustainable future.

25/3 | International Union Rights | 5 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

When Algorithms Hire and Fire

Take a second and consider whether you would you Workers across the world have very few, if any, have your job, if an algorithm had been in charge of legal rights to demand insight and infuence over the hiring you? Tink about your fnancial records, your use of their personal data. We know of the existence health fle, your friends on social media. Are you a of so-called data-brokers, frms that make a living Will you not get a member of a trade union? Do you own a Fitbit? out of buying and selling data. We know that job because you What are your shopping habits and what do you do companies are mining workers of their data. Do they are a union in your spare time? And then ask, how would all of then sell it? And if so, to whom? Who at the end of this afect your work life? Would you get hired, fred, the day gets to know what your health fle says, or member, or have disciplined or promoted? how productive an algorithm or a company thinks particular friends, What seems like a bizarre question is in fact one you are? How is this data – which is apparently or have personal that we all need to think about and react to. easily accessible to anyone who can aford to pay – ‘Management-by-algorithm’ is spreading, and more being used by companies to manage workers? characteristics and more data from many diferent sources is used that the algorithm in HR processes. Critically, across the world, bar to a Surveillance, manipulation has been told certain extent in Europe, there are very few and algorithmic control regulations in place that protect the misuse of Whilst our eyes have been slightly opened by the to reject? workers’ personal data in and by companies. Trade revelations of how data was used to target and unions must fll this regulatory gap and put workers’ manipulate voters such as in the US election and the data rights on the agenda to hold management and Brexit result, politicians and experts aford very little governments accountable and responsible. attention to how data is used, and potentially misused, in relation to work. Tere is a sharp rise in What’s all this about data? the use of algorithms, data and artifcial intelligence Te recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica (AI) in human resources and productivity planning. scandal all too clearly showed the value of (personal) Companies are popping up that ofer AI solutions to data. Its importance for advertising, profling and cut costs on dealing with people. From autonomous marketing is so high that it is brought and sold for an sorting of job applicants and applications, to the use unknown fgure every year. In 2014, the value of data of extensive data to measure productivity, to fows was estimated to be 2.8 trillion USD1. Now put employee mood testing, to ways to automatically that dazzling fgure in relation to the fact that three fnd out what motivates you, and much more… years later in 2017, the World Economic Forum Whilst some of this can have positive effects, the estimated2 that 90 percent of all data at that time had risks to workers’ privacy and the risk of us being been produced since 2015. We can only imagine judged against a digital norm are plentiful. Will what the value of current data fows really is. you not get promoted because of your health file? We are leaving a data trail behind us all the time. Will you not get a job because you are a union From our social media profles, our likes and posts, to member, or have particular friends, or have customer service phone calls, visits to the doctor, use personal characteristics that the algorithm has been of our GPS or cash withdrawals from the bank. We told to reject? willingly give away our names and email addresses Tis might all sound hypothetical, but when we log on to free Wi-Fi hotspots in cafes, unfortunately it is not. In UNI Global Union we are airports or train stations and we more or less have already seeing how these autonomous systems are become so accustomed to ‘free’ digital services that we having a detrimental efect on workers. Especially DR CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH almost get irritated when a mobile app costs a dollar. those in non-unionised workplaces, where there are is Director of Platform Te thing is, nothing is free. What we have been doing no check-and-balances in the form of organised & Agency Workers, and still are doing, is freely and ofentimes willingly labour, and no means to reach agreements to rectify Digitalisation and Trade giving away our location, habits, activities and misconduct. for UNI Global Union opinions. In other words, we are paying with our data. In one such case, bank employees in a customer But who is actually buying, reading, analysing service centre are subject to a system that measures and selling this data? Te short answer is we don’t the customers’ and workers’ tone of voice and mood. know, and we even can’t know. Insiders UNI has It then advises the workers on what to say, sale and spoken to estimate that the big tech companies - do and monitors them for succeeding in doing the Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsof and ‘right’ thing. For these non-unionised workers, the Alibaba - own more than 70 percent of the world’s system has been catastrophic. Appraisal was linked combined data. Tis concentration of what is such a to performance, but the system failed to recognise valuable asset is putting these companies into an female voices as well as male voices, and down- unacceptable position of economic, digital, social scored ethnic minority accents relative to white men. and even political power. Even though the workers could go through the 6 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 recordings with management, mistakes were seldom ■ have a right to object and question data rectifed. All of this was adding to the digital processing. footprint of the individual worker and not only harming them in that current job, but potentially In addition, companies should commit to the data- also making it harder for them to fnd another job. minimalisation principle, and importantly to being Tere are plenty of other examples: one company transparent and accountable in their data usage. Tis equipped all workers with a FitBit in a contest to latter point is important and remarkably absent in the become a healthy company, but subsequently used EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. the GPS data to caution an overweight worker, who apparently didn’t move much in his spare time, of Ethical AI becoming a liability to the company. Tere are Te term Artifcial Intelligence covers here all warehouse workers whose every hand and arm automated/semi-automated systems, including movement is tracked for their efciency in packing algorithmic decision-making. Here our principles goods, homecare workers who are cautioned if they cover key issues such as transparency, responsibility spend too much time with a client, workers who get and control. Firstly, we must demand that autonomous fred for no other reason than ‘the algorithm said systems are traceable, meaning that the data sets used we should’3. in the algorithm can be identifed. All too ofen, you will hear data experts say that it is not possible to The union response unpack the algorithm. Tis is totally unacceptable. There can be little doubt that unions must act Imagine what it implies: that neither management nor now. We need to organise, organise and organise. workers can demand to know on what basis (data) an We need to build alliances with like-minded others algorithmic outcome has been built on. Tis in turn and demand a share of the data wealth, and we could lead to a situation where management, either must fill these regulatory gaps and demand deliberately or unintentionally, subordinate their workers’ data rights. This should be done on all control and responsibility to an algorithm with all of levels: from collective agreements to national and the risks and dangers this poses to not only workers international legislation and conventions. We but society at large. We must never reach the situation should mobilise the ILO, the UN’s Human Rights where management can simply shrug their shoulders We cannot risk Council, national governments, the social partners and say, ‘the algorithm told me fre you, but I don’t that people are and companies themselves. know why’. Humans must at all times be in control UNI Global Union is working on these issues over the system, not the other way around. Nor must prevented from across the world. We are discussing how we, the we ever give in to the notion that autonomous system working or unions, can tap into the signifcance of datasets and (robots, algorithms) can be made liable. Robots are thriving in the beneft from the insights they can ofer. We are things; they are commodities and must never be raising our voices against the monopolisation of data attributed legal responsibility. labour market ownership and asking whether data should be made due to an Urgency of Now a commons. A public good that can be accessed by algorithm that us all. One thing is to protect our fundamental Tere is a defnite urgency of now. Unions across rights, the other is to take that one step further and the world must address these fundamental issues. We nobody claims demand a collective ownership of data. Both are simply cannot rely on others to do so. Digital to control equally important. technologies are developing at great speed, and our We have also written two key documents, ethical demands to them must be clear. We cannot namely, the Top Ten Principles of Workers’ Data risk that people are prevented from working or Privacy and Protection4 and the Top Ten Principles thriving in the labour market due to an algorithm that of Ethical AI5. Te documents are interrelated and nobody claims to control, and nobody can rectify. list the essential demands we must put in place to UNI Global Union believes that a collective avoid a future where workers are subjected to ownership of data, ethical AI and workers’ data algorithmic decision-making that is beyond human rights are the key issues for unions. We must control and insight. commit management as well as governments to take responsibility. Only by doing so can we ensure a Workers’ Data Rights digital world of work that is empowering, inclusive Tese principles cover the essential issues of right and open to all. of access, infuence and consultation. In essence, they stipulate that workers must: 1See https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mc kinsey/our-insights/digital-globalization-the-new-era-of-global-flows ■ be informed prior to data processing, 2See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/the-value-of-data 3O’Neil, Cathy. ■ have a right of explanation in connection with Weapons of math destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy (New York: Crown algorithmic decision-making, ■ Publishing Group, 2016) have a right to data portability (i.e. workers must 4Available here in multiple languages: http://www.thefutureworld be allowed to take their data with them when ofwork.org/docs/10-principles-for-workers-data-rights-and-privacy leaving a company), and 5Available here in multiple languages: http://www.thefutureworld ofwork.org/docs/10-principles-for-ethical-artificial-intelligence 25/3 | International Union Rights | 7 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Two Perspectives on Platform Work

Recognition comes from Earlier this year, we also secured our frst trade members, not courts union recognition agreement in the ‘gig economy’ SEBASTIEN FLAIS with couriers for Te Doctor’s Laboratory (TDL). Te common trend across the so-called ‘gig In our case against Deliveroo, however, things Workers in the economy’ is a denial of rights, even when court went diferently. IWGB argued before the CAC that ‘gig economy’ are judgements deem the practices unlawful. In the Deliveroo workers were entitled to a bargaining unit space of a few years, the Independent Workers in Camden and Kentish Town (London), which fighting to secure Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has managed to would entail ‘worker’ status. Deliveroo’s lawyers both status as achieve results with our Couriers and Logistics successfully argued that their workers were ‘workers’ and branch through a member-led combination of independent contractors because of the workers’ strategic litigation and campaigns. When we frst ‘right to substitute’. In other words, the worker may their accordant formed the Branch, workers told us stories about a be signed in to their Deliveroo account and accept an rights. Local sector where companies were constantly taking order, but someone else could perform the delivery. couriers were advantage of their workers. Tis exploitation was not Te CAC nevertheless wondered, ‘why would the limited to apps. We have taken on some app-based question of substitution ever arise?’ Deliveroo’s winning those employers, such as Deliveroo, but most courier contract ofered large amount of fexibility, such as battles before companies operate in a more traditional fashion, being able to stop an order during the delivery. app-based using radios to allocate orders. To us, the answer is clear: employers are placing Tese companies claimed they were running their bogus clauses in contracts so they don’t have to employers came own businesses and classed their couriers as provide basic employment rights. Tey are in a to town independent contractors. Tey argued this was disproportionate position of power and thus well necessary to provide couriers with fexibility, which placed to deceive their workforce when it comes to SEBASTIEN FLAIS the workers valued. But the couriers did not get to employment status. As it stands, the High Court has is Central Union set their own rates of pay, had to wear uniforms and given the IWGB permission to appeal the decision, Co-ordinator for the were fearful of not accepting jobs. Tey appreciated based on Article 11 of the European Convention on Independent Workers Union of Great Britain the fexibility, but they were defnitely a part of Human Rights. (IWGB) and has been someone else’s business. Clearly unions cannot only rely on the courts involved with the union We took out four cases against CitySprint, Excel, because there is no victory guarantee. But a lack of since 2015 Ecourier and Addison Lee to the Employment recognition is not the end for unions operating in Tribunal. We argued their couriers were ‘limb (b) the gig economy – it is a call to creativity. We began workers’, or ‘workers’ for short1. ‘Workers’ sit organising Deliveroo workers in Brighton when they between employees, who have full employment protested a lack of orders and demanded a rights, and independent contractors, who have no recruitment freeze. Within a week, Deliveroo employment rights; they are self-employed but are enacted a recruitment freeze. Indeed, before we had also entitled to some rights, including minimum won a single case for the couriers, we secured a 25 wage, holiday pay, trade union rights and percent pay rise across four of the biggest courier protections against discrimination. Te UK Supreme companies in the UK with a living wage campaign. Court has drawn a distinction between the self- We cycled with our couriers from client to client, employed running their own business and the self- protesting with mini-occupations in their receptions employed working for someone else’s2. Te Court or just outside. Te courier companies claimed their 1 ‘Limb (b) worker’ has also declared that in determining the nature of clients did not want to pay more for services, so they refers to the definition the employment relationship, judges must consider could not enact a pay rise. Some were happy to pay in the second the incredible asymmetric bargaining power that the more for services if the result was a courier lifed paragraph (or limb) of company has over workers. Simply looking at the above poverty wages. Section 230(3), contract is not enough, otherwise ‘armies of lawyers Te future of unions, with or without recognition, Employment Rights will simply place substitution clauses, or clauses lies in how alert they are to the needs of their Act 1996 denying any obligation to accept or provide work in members. It’s only by acting on members’ demands 2 Clyde & Co LLP & employment contracts, as a matter of form, even that we have continued tackling the ‘gig economy’, Anor v Bates van where such terms do not begin to refect the real with an ongoing case against private hire companies, [2014] Winklehof 3 UKSC 32 relationship’ . In 2017, employment tribunals such as Uber. Unions need to be more concerned 3 Autoclenz Limited v declared that the companies were unlawfully with recognition from members than employers, as Belcher & Ors. [2011] denying couriers rights in three of the cases, with even without trade union recognition the old mantra UKSC 41 Ecourier admitting liability as part of a settlement. is true – the workers united will never be defeated. 8 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Governing ‘crowd-work’ 10 Right to explanation for non-payment MICHAEL ‘SIX’ SILBERMAN 11 Right to contest non-payment and request review In recent years, trade unionists, platforms, policy from platform operator makers, and researchers have debated how to 12 Right to further contest non-payment; right to regulate digital labour platforms. Some policy mediation makers have proposed European legislation; unions 13 Right to ‘redo’ rejected (i.e., nonpaid) work have made progress organising workers and 14 Right to relevant client information establishing dialogue with platform operators; and 15 Right to accurate, fair, transparent, ft for purpose many meetings, workshops, and conferences have evaluation, rating, and qualifcation been held. Artifcial intelligence (AI) is the ‘hot 16 Right to comprehensive work history topic’ this year, but it turns out that the ‘training 17 Rights regarding potentially psychologically data’ used to ‘teach’ AI systems how to tell, say, a dog harmful tasks (e.g. review of social media for from a mufn is produced by human ‘crowd- pornography or violent content): workers’ all over the world. a Right to receive clear information, prior to How much A consensus seems to be emerging in Europe accepting a task, that a task may be harder will it be about platforms for ‘in person’ services such as psychologically harmful, and why; and transportation, delivery, and domestic work. Mostly, b Right to receive qualifed psychological to establish courts and policy makers seem to agree, these support and counselling services at the cost of labour standards workers should be classifed as employees. the client and/or platform afer having when the only Establishing worker rights in platforms for online completed such tasks ‘crowd-work’ may be a harder question. We know 18 Right to organise and negotiate collective physical how hard it is to govern ‘global supply chains’. How agreements infrastructure much harder will it be when the only physical 19 Right to discuss pay, work processes, clients, needed for infrastructure needed for the work is a computer tasks, and working conditions (i.e., restriction of and an internet connection? nondisclosure agreements) the work is a Online platform work may end up governed by a 20 Right to participate in platform governance computer and patchwork of national and international law, according to national labour law an internet collective agreements, standards, and voluntary ‘codes of conduct’. Some online platform workers How will these rights be established? Platform connection? may be granted rights by laws that are ‘about’ other workers classifed as employees are entitled to topics. In the EU, the General Data Protection minimum wage. But for most this looks unlikely, Regulation (GDPR) may provide platform workers including in the EU. As long as a signifcant number important procedural rights such as the right to are classifed as self employed, ‘voluntary’ client transfer their work histories between platforms or wage pledges could be worth exploring. Many contest inappropriate ratings. But the technically and procedural rights above could be seen as rights legally ‘mobile’ nature of platforms for online work regarding the accuracy of personal data. In the EU creates a world of possibilities for regulatory evasion context, some of these could be provided already by for platform operators and clients. Global strategies GDPR. For ‘truly’ self-employed workers, the for establishing and safeguarding workers’ rights are proposed Regulation on Promoting Fairness and needed. What rights should these workers have, even Transparency for Business Users of Online MICHAEL ‘SIX’ if they are ‘self-employed’? Intermediation Services could also be relevant. Tere SILBERMAN is some legal uncertainty around the right of self- works in the Crowdsourcing Project 1 Right to minimum wage in the worker’s location employed platform workers to negotiate collective at IG Metall (since (if there is no minimum wage, the wage provided agreements with platforms or clients. Policy action 2015) and helps by relevant collective agreement; if there is no might be needed, or at least clarifcation of existing operate Turkopticon, relevant collective agreement, a living wage) law. And we have to organise: workers must know an independent client 2 Right to explanation for declined account what rights they have; and clients, platforms, and reputation system used by workers on application policy makers must be ‘encouraged’ to establish and Mechanical Turk, 3 Right to protection from arbitrary account safeguard these rights. Amazon’s suspension, closure, or deletion In the context of online, globally mobile platform crowdsourcing 4 Right to advance notifcation and explanation of work, there may be no ‘silver bullet’ for establishing platform account suspension, closure, or deletion worker rights. But platform workers are not (since 2008) 5 Right to clarify or correct alleged violation of ‘impossible to reach’, ‘somewhere in the cloud’, as platform terms of service one despairing trade unionist lamented in 2016. 6 Right to contest account suspension, closure, or Neither are clients or platforms. We have a menu of deletion; right to mediation options for governing this new global labour 7 Right to prompt pay-out of funds in the event of market. We should explore all our options. As the account suspension, closure, or deletion novelist Ann Leckie wrote: ‘No real endings, no 8 Right to complete work history in the event of fnal perfect happiness, no irredeemable despair. account suspension, closure, or deletion Meetings, yes... In the end it’s only ever been one 9Right to information regarding non-payment step, and then the next’. conditions; protection from arbitrary non-payment 25/3 | International Union Rights | 9 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Worthless Promises in Silicon Valley

Today Silicon Valley remains the fortress of the union that could have organised it, had it retained its country’s most anti-union industry. High tech strength and members won in the 1930s, was industry dominates every aspect of life. Its voice is severely damaged. In the rest of the labour largely unchallenged on public policy, because the movement, support for workers organising unions in In the valley’s workers who have created the valley’s fabulous the expanding plants virtually disappeared. remaining wealth have no voice of their own. Corpora¬tions From the beginning of the electronics industry in like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and National the late 1960s, high tech workers faced an industry- factories, labour Semiconductor told their workers and communities wide anti-union policy. “Remaining non-union is contractors have for years that healthy bottom lines would guarantee essential for survival for most of our companies… become the rising living standards and secure jobs. Economists Te great hope for our nation is to avoid those deep, still paint a picture of the industry as a massive deep divisions between workers and management”, formal employers, industrial engine fuelling economic growth, said Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel Corp. Te relieving the big benefting workers and communities alike. expanding electronics plants were laboratories for brands of any Te promises are worthless. Today many giants of developing personnel-management techniques for industry own no factories at all, having sold them to maintaining ‘a union-free environment’. Some of responsibility for contract manufacturers who build computers and those techniques, like the team-concept method for the workers who make chips in locations from China to Hungary. In controlling workers on the plant foor, were later make the the factories that remain in the valley, labour used to weaken unions in other industries, from contractors like Manpower have become the formal auto manufacturing to steelmaking. products bearing employers, relieving the big brands of any A co-inventor of the transistor and founder of an their labels responsibility for the workers who make the products early Silicon Valley laboratory, William Shockley, bearing their labels. While living standards rise for a espoused theories of the genetic inferiority of privileged elite at the top of the workforce, they’ve African-Americans. As Shockley, Noyce and others dropped for thousands of workers on the production guided development in the Valley, they instituted line. Tens of thousands of workers have been policies that efectively segregated its workforce. In dropped of the lines entirely, as production was electronics plants women were the overwhelming moved out of the valley to other states and countries. majority, while the engineering and management staf Apple Corp. has cash reserves in excess of $1 consisted overwhelmingly of men. Immigrants from billion, while San Jose voters are told that there is no Asian and Latin American countries were drawn to money to pay for the pensions of workers who’ve the Valley’s production lines. Engineering and spent their lives in public service. Te productivity management jobs went to white employees. African- of industry in the valley went up in the 2000s by 42 American workers were frozen out almost entirely. percent. But at the same time, average annual Starting in the early 1970s, workers began to form employment went down 16 percent. Te upper organising committees afliated to the UE in plants income stratum of the valley benefted from this belonging to National Semiconductor, Siltec, productivity growth, but there was no corresponding Fairchild, Siliconix, Semimetals, and others. Most of DAVID BACON growth in jobs. Between 2000 and 2010 the number these were semiconductor manufacturing plants, or is a journalist and of households with incomes under $10,000 more factories that supplied raw materials to those plants. photographer in San Francisco. He is a than doubled, from 11,556 to 26,310. “It was very hard organising a union in those plants, member of the But despite obstacles, for its entire history Silicon because the feeling of pow¬erlessness among the Editorial Board Valley has been as much a cauldron of resistance and workers was so difcult to overcome... It seems of International new strategies for labour and community organising obvious that there has to be a long term efort and Union Rights as it has been for the production of fabulous wealth. commitment, with a movement among workers in the industry as a whole, and in the communities in which High-tech builds its anti-union they live”, said Amy Newell, who helped start a rank- model and workers respond and-fle organising committee at Siliconix, and later Te anti-communist hysteria of the late 1940s and headed the AFL-CIO’s Central Labor Council in ‘50s bred a fratricidal struggle in the US labour Monterey County, just south of Silicon Valley. movement. Tis led to the expulsion of the union By the early 1980’s, the UE Electronics Organizing founded to organise workers in the electrical Committee had grown to over 500 workers. Romie industry—the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Manan, who organised Filipino immigrant workers Workers of America (UE). While the new high-tech on the production lines at National Semiconductor, industry was growing in the Santa Clara Valley, the remembers that the union published 5000 copies a 10 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 month of a newsletter, Te Union Voice, in three services to large companies, from janitorial and languages—English, Spanish and Tagalog. Workers foodservices to the assembly of circuit boards, handed it out in front of their own plants, or in front employed more workers every year. of other plants if they were afraid to make their union Workers losing jobs in the semiconductor plants sympathies known to their co-workers. Committee made as much as $11-14/hour for operators, even in members challenged the companies and won cost-of- the early 1990s when the minimum wage hovered living raises, held public hearings on racism and just above $4/hour. Companies provided medical frings in the plants, and campaigned to expose the insurance, sick leave, vacations and other benefts. dangers of working with numerous toxic chemicals— By contrast, because contractors compete to win all without a formal union contract. Eventually the orders by cutting their prices, and workers’ wages, to semiconductor manufacturers, especially National the lowest level possible, contract assemblers and Semiconductor, fred many of the leading union non-union janitors got close to the minimum wage, activists, and the committee gradually dispersed as its had no medical insurance, and ofen no benefts at members sought work wherever they could fnd it. all. Te decline in living standards made the service Alliances Te main strategic question, which the committee and sweatshop economy in Silicon Valley the between workers, sought to answer, remains unresolved. In large subsequent focus for workers’ organising activity. electronics manufacturing plants, union-minded In Fall 1990 more than 130 janitors joined Service unions and workers have long been a minority. Teir organisation Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 communities has to be active on the plant foor to win over the during an organising drive at Shine Maintenance have helped to majority of workers by fghting around the basic Co., a contractor hired by Apple Computer Corp. to conditions that afect them. But it has to be able to clean its huge Silicon Valley headquarters. When offset the power help its members survive in an extreme anti-union Shine became aware that its workers had organised, exercised by climate. In high tech, huge corporations insulate it suddenly told them they had to present employers, but themselves from their production workforce so well verifcation of their legal immigration status in order that outside pressure has little efect on them. Most to keep their jobs. Shine’s actions ignited a yearlong unity is needed to unions have simply abandoned the idea of helping campaign, which culminated in a contract for Apple win the right for workers in those plants to organise at all, saying that janitors in 1992. workers to they are ‘unorganisable’. Using the same strategy, SEIU went on to win a Despite its lack of success in organising contract for janitors at Hewlett-Packard Corp., an organise permanent unions, the UE Electronics Organizing even larger group than those at Apple. Te effectively in the Committee was a nexus of activity from which other momentum created in those campaigns convinced plants organisations developed. Te Santa Clara Committee other non-union janitorial contractors to actively on Occupational Safety and Health (SCCOSH), seek agreements with Local 1877. In September originally founded in the late 1970s, fought 1992, electronics assembly workers at Versatronex successfully for the elimination of such carcinogenic Corp. used a similar strategy to organise against the chemicals as trichloroethylene, and for the right of sweatshop conditions prevalent in contract assembly workers to know of toxic hazards in the workplace. factories. Te starting wage at the plant was $4.25 SCCOSH sponsored the formation of the Injured per hour, the minimum wage at the time. Tere was Workers Group, which organised workers sufering no medical insurance. from chemically induced industrial illness. In 1982 the UE committee tried to mobilise Contracting out manufacturing and opposition to the industry’s policy of moving global competition production out of Silicon Valley. In 1983 the plants Contract assembly provides a number of benefts employed 102,200 workers; they employed only 73,700 for large manufacturers. Contractors compete to win people ten years later. While the number of engineers orders by cutting their prices, and workers’ wages, to and managers increased slightly, job losses fell much the lowest level possible. Today the contract more heavily on operators and technicians. “What this assembly system, then in its infancy, has come to really meant”, said Romie Manan, “was that Filipino dominate high tech industry. Corporations like workers in particular lost their jobs by the thousands, Hewlett-Packard and Apple have no factories at all. more than any other national group”. Manan lost his Teir entire production is carried out by contract job as National closed its last mass production wafer manufacturers in plants around the world. fabrication line in the Valley in 1994. Tactics like those used at Apple, USM and Versatronex have been at the cutting edge of the Employers turn to contractors, labour movement’s search for new ways to organise. unions to new tactics Tey rely on alliances between workers, unions and In 1993 Intel built a new $1 billion plant in Rio communities to ofset the power exercised by Rancho, New Mexico, instead of California, because employers. Ofen they use organising tactics based New Mexico ofered $1 billion to help fnance on direct action by workers and supporters, like civil construction. Lower wages were another disobedience, rather than a high-pressure election determining factor. In Silicon Valley, the more campaign that companies frequently win. As permanent jobs in the large manufacturing plants began disappearing. But contractors who provided ... continued on Page 28 ... 25/3 | International Union Rights | 11 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Death by Overwork: Beyond Industry 4.0 in Japan

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted a eight-hour day and forty-hour week described in the policy package called the ‘Work Style Reform’, in existing Japanese labour law. Under the new law, no association with a ‘Society 5.0 Strategy’, collaborating matter how long workers’ work, no overtime pay is with the CEO of the Hitachi group, Hiroaki paid to them. Te law will allow a maximum of 100 Under Japan’s Nakanishi, who was appointed President of the Japan hours overtime per month. Tis is well over the ‘Society 5.0’ Business Federation (JBF) in May 2018. Society 5.0 is Ministry of Labour’s guidelines of 80 hours a month, defned as the ffh formation of society (afer above which is the de facto standard to recognise a strategy, overtime Hunting, Agrarian, Industrial and Information stages death from overtime for ofcial OSH accident will be unpaid of society). Te concept is hard to comprehend, as recognition. In addition to unions, the association of and legally JBF President Nakanishi admitted, as it should be families bereaved by karoshi requested a meeting recognised as a system that consists of combining with Prime Minister Abe. However, Abe refused to capped at a cyber space and physical space. meet them. maximum 100 Te Society 5.0 strategy mentions the hours per month. development of automated driving systems using Work Everywhere, All the Time artifcial intelligence, referring to Toyota by name. Even the legal 100-hour cap on overtime will not But Research and Akiyo Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, says now is the time apply to certain designated jobs, such as Research Development for a great transformation in the century of the and Development (R&D) workers. Te rights and workers are electric vehicle and automated driving system or working conditions of R&D workers are now at connected system. He emphasises that his company stake. For them, there is no overtime limit. excluded from not only competes with auto rivals, but also with IT Te Japanese auto industry’s need for R&D this cap companies like Google, Apple or Amazon. workers is greatly increasing. Toyota now largely accepts applications for work on production Overtime Crisis: Karoshi technology or next generation battery development. Te average annual working hours of Japanese Toyota implemented a so-called ‘Free Time and workers is around 1900 hours - 600 hours more than Location’ (FTL) Innovation last December, which is in Germany, according to OECD data (excluding regarded as a pre-emptive measure for the ‘Work part-time workers). Te Japanese word karoshi, Style Reform’. It aims to lif any limitation on place death from overwork, is now included in the Oxford or time to work. A ‘section chief class’ worker may English Dictionary. Te Ministry of Health, Welfare work 80 hours overtime per month, or 540 hours a and Labour ofcially recognise approximately 200 year. For undertaking 45 hours overtime a month, KIYOHIKO OKA cases a year as karoshi, which are entitled to be they are supposed to be paid by 50 percent more. is an independent compensated through an ofcial scheme. Te Tis means workers should compete with others on labour journalist and a number seems to have been stable over the years. the assumption of overtime work. Toyota’s existing member of Japan Te case of one young University of Tokyo discretion work system lets workers decide when to Institute of Labor Movement. He graduate killed by overwork at Dentsu, one of Japan’s sign-in and out and to manage their work schedule, previously worked at most powerful advertising frms, shocked Japanese based on a baseline of a nine-hour workday. Most Hitachi Ltd., and then society. Matsuri Takahashi jumped from the workers who used the discretion system have now at a newspaper company apartment and killed herself on 24 moved to FTL system (2037 workers by April 2018). company December 2015. She wrote on Twitter: ‘It is 4am Six cases of karoshi have been ofcially recognised now. My body is shivering, may be dying. It is so far at Toyota, including the case of a chief impossible to work anymore, too tired’. Her work engineer of Toyota Camry. He died a day before his record showed 130 hours and 99 hours overtime business trip to Detroit, during the 2016 New Year respectively in the two previous months. holiday. Toyota Motor Worker’s Union made an Te Abe administration’s ‘Work Style Reform’, ofcial statement of their commitment to eliminate submitted to Parliament early this year, ostensibly karoshi. In Aichi Prefecture where Toyota’s global aims to address excessive working hours in Japan. It HQ is located, Toyota Action Committee including introduces the so-called Highly Professional Work Aichi Prefectural Federation of Trade Unions is Translation by System and is backed by Japanese business, but campaigning against the proposed zero-overtime Keisuke Fuse, opposed by labour confederations like Japanese pay scheme and the law adopted this year, in Director of Trade Union Confederation (JTUC RENGO) and solidarity with workers of Toyota. Tey are International Zenroren. A new law will be implemented from campaigning for an overtime limit of 45 hours a Afairs, Zenroren April 2019, which unions have labelled the ‘Zero month and 360 hours a year, as well as a guaranteed Overtime Pay Act’. It destroys the principle of an 11 hours rest between periods of work. 12 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

The Future Will Be Made of Copper…

Mobile devices, sensors, screens, chips, and robots… Discussions about ‘Industry 4.0’ could do well to do not fall out of the sky. Much of the debate on heed the examples of the frst industrial revolution. labour and Industry 4.0 has centred on the application Industry 4.0 is deeply rooted in that revolution: the of new technologies across the labour market. digital genealogy of machine code can be traced Somewhat less attention is paid to the production of back to the Jacquard loom. Technology was central these technologies – and still less their dependence on to Britain’s rapid industrialisation, and to the rise of the extraction of certain raw materials. cotton in textile production, replacing wool due to Te electronics sector is increasingly linked to the advantages of newly mechanised cotton highly exploitative working conditions and processing. By the middle of the 19th Century, practices, and signifcant risks of modern slavery in cotton represented one tenth of all British capital its supply chains. One recent report describes forced investment and accounted for almost one half of labour as the ‘backbone’ of global electronics British exports. A quarter of the British population Demand for raw manufacturing1. In respect of its raw material inputs, was dependent on the cotton trade for their companies appear more or less indiferent to where livelihoods4. Tis relatively arbitrary technological cotton during the and how these are sourced. In 2016, the Australian advance also contributed signifcantly to the first industrial Behind the Barcode project ranked ffy-six economic ascendency of the United States. Te revolution served electronics companies ‘on the strength of their ‘prototype machine industry’ massively increased labour rights management systems to mitigate the the demand for raw cotton from planters in the to intensify risk of forced labour, child labour and exploitation Caribbean and the Americas. Imports to Britain plantation in the supply chain’2. One table in the report grew eightfold between 1780 and 1800. Mechanised slavery. What do illustrates these companies’ scores at the point of spinning therefore created ‘rising demand for raw raw material extraction: it is block red. Universally, cotton resulting in the extension of the slave the raw-material the companies failed on questions of traceability, plantation system’5. demands of monitoring and labour standards. Not one company Questions about labour rights and Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 could guarantee a living wage, not one had a child should require us to think about how diferent labour policy, no collective bargaining agreement workers’ rights are diferently impacted, including in herald for labour was recorded, and none reported that they based the electronics supply chain. In the frst industrial conditions in the sourcing decisions on supplier labour conditions. Of revolution, technology had variable impacts on extractive the ffy-six, only one company achieves a ‘partial’ existing labour practices. Te introduction of tick, for having at least a pilot labour grievance weaving machines into British textile factories dealt industry? mechanism in operation in the extraction part of its a deathblow to the guild system of skilled craf supply line. workers and the economic relations that went with it. On the cotton plantations however, the late The Raw Materials of a Revolution eighteenth century invention of the cotton gin Te mass expansion of technologies heralded reduced the labour required to remove seeds, but under the title ‘Industry 4.0’ will clearly require a this efciency gain only provoked a massive massive growth in mineral extraction. It is little expansion of US cotton planting and with it the surprise that the extraction needed for these intensifcation – rather than any reduction – of slave technologies will take place in the Global South. labour. And for its importers, the use of slave labour According to some estimates, by 2035 demand on cotton plantations in the ‘New World’ provoked for rare earths will increase three-fold, for lithium as much concern over the stability of cotton supplies fourfold3. Cobalt demand will rise to more than as it did over the morality of the economy it helped CIARAN CROSS twenty times its current rate, and copper more than establish. is ICTUR’s Researcher forty-times. Others predict that global copper demand may grow by over 300% until 2050. Te Spinning a New Yarn? massive growth in industrial demand for the raw What impacts on social and environmental materials that new technologies will require is conditions will a 300% increase in the demand for bound to have social and environmental costs. Does copper produce in copper-exporting states? Labour Industry 4.0 simply spell a new ‘resource curse’ for unrest in Chile’s copper sector regularly rocks the countries rich in these raw materials? What impact business pages of the international press. Te world’s will the growth in demand have on labour largest copper producer, Chile represents one third conditions already prevailing in the supply chains of these goods? ... continued on Page 28 ... 25/3 | International Union Rights | 13 ICTUR IN ACTION | INTERVENTIONS

beaten by security guards and Reserva (ASTRAZONACAL), an police officers, arrested and briefly affiliate of the union federation, Argentina detained. Workers and students Federación Nacional Sindical Iran On 21 August, over 3000 began a demonstration outside Unitaria Agropecuaria ■ Some 60 striking steelworkers workers of the Astilleros’ Rio the Yanziling Police Station and (FENSUAGRO), as well as of the workers at the Iran National Santiago Shipyard held a over the next weeks, protestors political movement, “Marcha Steel Industrial Group (INSIG) in demonstration to protest the were arrested en masse on Patriótica”, and the Proceso de Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province, suspension of their collective several occasions. At the time of Unidad Popular del were arrested and detained on agreement and the threat of the writing, it is understood that some Suroccidente (Pupsoc). 11 and 12 June, during a shipyard’s closure. The workers fourteen are still in detention, ■ Four teacher trade unionists protest over unpaid salaries took their protest to the office of charged with disorderly behaviour were murdered earlier this year and social security the governor María Eugenia and trespass. A number of in May: Holman Mamián contributions. Strikers were Vidal, whom they accuse of workers were sacked for their Mamián, in Cauca; Evelia beaten during the arrests; some manipulating local media to union activities. Atencia Pérez and Hernando were seriously injured, but smear their union - the Manjarrez Escudero, in La denied medical attention; and Asociación Trabajadores del ICTUR wrote to the government to Guajira; Delmayro Reyes one was tortured with a taser Estado (ATE) Ensenada. Police secure the immediate release of González, in Valle del Cauca. gun while in custody. It is claimed that a small number of all of those arrested in relation to understood that most of the protestors outside the governor’s the union organising campaign, to ICTUR wrote to urge the workers were released on bail office engaged in vandalism, but drop the charges against them, Colombian authorities to on 13 June, but six were kept in their response was severely and to comply with China’s immediately implement measures detention. disproportionate. Protestors were obligations to respect and promote to ensure the fundamental human ■ On 4 August, the Iranian Islamic attacked with tear gas, water the principles of freedom of rights of trade unionists, human Revolutionary Court sentenced cannons and rubber bullets, five association and assembly and the rights defenders and community Mohammad Habibi - a member of them were arrested and effective recognition of the right to leaders and to take prompt and of the board of directors of the fifteen were injured. One collective bargaining. effective action against armed Iranian Teachers’ Trade protestor was reportedly run over paramilitary groups and any other Association of Tehran (ITTA- by a police car and many parties responsible for these Tehran) - to receive punishment peaceful demonstrators reported egregious crimes. of 74 lashes and ten and a half that they were victims of police Colombia years in prison. Habibi is also violence. Violence against trade unionists, banned from travel or any social human rights defenders and and political activities for a ICTUR wrote to remind the community leaders in Colombia eSwatini further two years. Habibi was government of its obligations has escalated alarmingly, in spite (Swaziland) arrested on 20 May, at a under the ILO’s fundamental of a peace process intended to On 29 June, police attacked a peaceful gathering organised by Conventions to protect and uphold bring an end to the country’s workers’ demonstration the ITTA-Tehran. the right to freedom of assembly. long history of conflict. organised by the Trade Union The Committee on Freedom of Colombia’s Human Rights Congress of Swaziland ICTUR wrote to call on the Association has held that any use Ombudsman recorded over 300 (TUCOSWA), leaving four government to promptly give effect of force should be limited to cases such murders between 1 TUCOSWA members with serious to the recommendations of the ILO of genuine necessity and grave January 2016 and 30 June injuries. Protestors intended to supervisory bodies, to drop the situations where law and order is 2018. Reports of endemic lethal deliver a petition to the Deputy charges against all trade unionists seriously threatened. violence, intimidation and death Prime Minister’s office to protest unjustly targeted for their trade threats against trade unionists the violations of the rights of union activities, overturn their demand to be urgently sugarcane workers, and to convictions, and ensure their swift addressed by the government. demand a number of labour law release from detention as well as China reforms. Police deployed water their access to remedy for In July, around thirty workers at ■ Robert Emiro Jaraba Arroyo, a cannon, rubber bullets, stun violations of their rights. the Shenzhen Jasic Technology leader of the Sintramineros grenades, tear gas and batons to Corporation were arrested and miners’ union in Cerro Matoso, attack the demonstrators. One detained, alongside students and was assassinated on 17 July in TUCOSWA member was arrested activists supporting the workers’ Caucasia, Antioquia. and later released. Italy campaign to organise a union at ■ Luis Eduardo Dague was found Soumayla Sacko, an active the electronics manufacturer. dead on 16 July in Caloto, ICTUR wrote to call on the member of the Unione Sindacale Workers began organising a new Cauca. His body showed signs government to undertake all di Base (USB) trade union, was union in May, and by July, some of torture. Dague was a necessary measures to ensure shot dead on 2 June 2018 near ninety employees had signed up, community leader and active that it complies with eSwatini’s to San Calogero, Calabria. A but in the meantime the company member of the Association of obligations under international law, Malian agricultural worker, set up its own union. On July 12, Workers Pro-Constitution Zonas and to protect the fundamental Sacko was murdered while two of the organisers - Liu de Reserva Campesina de freedoms of workers to join and collecting discarded materials for Penghua and Mi Jiuping - were Caloto - Asociación pro form unions and take action in use in the construction in the prevented from returning to work, Constitución de Zonas de defence of their interests. tendopoli, the tent city in which

14 | International Union Rights | 25/3 ICTUR IN ACTION | INTERVENTIONS migrant workers are forced to (primarily agricultural workers). Freedom of Association’s raised ICTUR wrote to the British live. The incident follows the Other cases include: further concerns about the government to express deep violent killing in Piacenza in investigations into extrajudicial concern at the growing September 2016 of Abd Elsalam ■ On 22 February, Marklen Maojo killings of three trade union leaders international profile of fascist and Ahmed Eldanf, another active Maga, a trade union organiser of in 2013 (Antonio “Dodong” far-right nationalist movements member of the USB, while on a the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Petalcorin, Emilio Rivera and Kagi throughout Europe, and to demand picket line outside a GLS plant. was abducted by plainclothes Alimudin Lucman) and requested action is taken to improve the The Prosecutor’s office classified police. He is still in detention and that the government “take protection of those active in the that incident as a ‘traffic faces murder charges, which are measures, if necessary of legislative labour movement against physical accident’ and no further believed to be politically nature, to ensure that crimes of violence and intimidation. investigation was undertaken. motivated. Last year, President such serious nature are Duterte labelled the KMU investigated... so as to identify, bring The circumstances of Sacko’s (alongside other organisations) a to trial and convict the perpetrators death shine a light on the ‘communist front’. so as to prevent the repetition of Zimbabwe appalling working and living ■ In June and July striking such acts.” (Case No 3185, Report On 1 August, demonstrations conditions endured by migrant workers at the NutriAsia plant in No 383, October 2017 - Complaint were held in Harare to protest agricultural workers in the region. Marilao, Bulacan were violently date: 05-FEB-16). the results of the national The abusive conditions faced by dispersed by police and security election. Military and security migrant workers in Italy, in forces. Workers are forces fired on protestors, killing particular in Italy’s agricultural campaigning for regularisation six of them and leaving dozens sector, have come to the attention as employees and for their right Spain injured. During this violence, a of the ILO’s Committee of Experts to form a union. Earlier this On 17 July, police in riot gear slow-moving Zimbabwe National on the Application of Conventions year, the Department of Labor armed with batons attacked and Army (ZNA) truck fired shots at and Recommendations (CEACR) and Employment issued a seriously injured workers while the third floor office of the for several years. The CEACR has compliance order directing they participated in peaceful Zimbabwe Congress of Trade urged Italy to develop a national NutriAsia to regularise over 900 picket at Amazon’s logistics Unions (ZCTU), smashing its policy designed to promote and to of its employees, but the centre in San Fernando de windows. The ZCTU’s security guarantee the trade union rights company has not complied. Henares, Madrid. Over 1200 officer, Joseph Chuma, and its of migrant workers, pursuant to Attacks by police and security workers went on a 3-day strike legal advisor, Zakeyo Mtimtema, its obligations under Article 10 of forces on the peaceful picket over wages and working both narrowly escaped being hit the Migrant Workers led to mass arrests and severe conditions. Three protestors by the bullets, and were injured (Supplementary Provisions) injuries. were injured in the incident, one by the breaking glass. Convention No. 143 (1975). A ■ On 30 July, Jessielou of whom was left with a broken May 2018 report by the Italian Cadungog, a vice president of jaw, and several workers were ICTUR wrote to urge the NGO, Medici per i Diritti Umani the Trade Union Congress of the arrested but later released. government to initiate a prompt (MEDU, Doctors for Human Rights) Philippines (TUCP) and long- and independent investigation into described working conditions in term labour leader, survived an ICTUR wrote to the government to this attack and to ensure adequate the agricultural sector in Calabria assassination attempt in Cebu. demand that it initiate a thorough protection for the safety and as ‘severely exploitative’. ICTUR In self-defence, Cadungog’s and prompt enquiry into the police security of trade unionists. wrote to the Italian authorities to driver and bodyguard shot and actions. The use of force against Potentially lethal violence meted demand that they comply with the killed one of the assailants, who workers is an egregious violation out against trade unionists recommendations of the CEACR, was later revealed to be a of the principles of freedom of constitutes an egregious violation take appropriate action to protect policeman. The Philippine association, enshrined in the ILO of trade union rights. The ILO’s the rights of trade unions and National Police in Cebu claimed 87 and 98, as well as Article 11 of Committee on Freedom of their members, and open the incident was a legitimate the European Convention on Association has expressly stated investigations into the deaths of police operation and opened an Human Rights. that attacks against trade union Soumayla Sacko and of Abd investigation against Cadungog premises and property ‘constitute Elsalam Ahmed Eldanf. and Macaslang for the serious interference with trade policeman’s murder. The union rights’, and that ‘criminal possible collusion of the Cebu UK activities of this nature create a police in attempted murder of On 4 August, a group of twelve climate of fear which is extremely Philippines Cadungog raises grave masked far-right protestors prejudicial to the exercise of trade The last two years have been concerns about the attacked the Bookmarks union activities’ (ILO Digest, marked by an alarming administration of justice. bookshop in London – the official paras. 46, 59, 184, 191). deterioration of trade union bookseller of the Trades Union rights in the Philippines. A recent ICTUR wrote to urge the Congress. The incident follows report of the Center for Trade government to comply with its an attack on 15 July against Union and Human Rights obligations under international law trade unionists belonging to the (CTUHR) records a catalogue of and in particular under the National Union of Rail, Maritime egregious rights violations fundamental ILO Conventions, all of and Transport Workers (RMT) by including the extra-judicial which the Philippines has ratified. right-wing nationalist thugs, also killings of 28 trade unionists Last year, the ILO’s Committee on in central London.

25/3 | International Union Rights | 15 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

The Lure of the Technological Quick Fix: Blockchain and the Case of Cobalt

We live in a time where new technologies seem to Congolese mine workers at these operations are in promise new solutions to old problems. One total disregard of the laws of the country and example of digitalisation that is very in fashion right collective bargaining arrangements. Te testimonies now is blockchain technology. Blockchains are the of around 80 workers represented by the union, ofer New technologies subject of a lot of media hype: promising everything clear proof of the abuse and violation of their labour have greatly from the protection of privacy to its fnal rights and human rights, extending beyond the mine destruction, from a new intrusion of artifcially operations into their homes, families, communities increased global intelligent machines to the salvation of humanity. and the surrounding environment’. demand for As discussed in Industriall’s research paper, Te A traceable and verifable digital record of cobalt cobalt from the Challenge of Industry 4.0 and the Demand for New from its origin in mines in the DRC through to its Answers, mining falls into the ‘low’ immediate installation in the battery of a Tesla would, DRC, where impact category of Industry 4.0. However blockchain proponents argue, enable anyone to know exactly abuse of technology ranks high among pathways proposed to when and in which mine – and potentially even by fundamental address and tackle labour abuses and other which miners – the particular cobalt in a particular unsustainable practices in mineral supply chains. battery was produced. Tis could provide assurance labour rights is a that environmental and social abuses, such as child ‘daily experience’ What is a Blockchain? labour, or abuse of trade union rights – were not for mine workers Fundamentally, blockchain is an information used in the production of the cobalt, or if they were, security strategy. It provides a diferent level of enable tracing and tackling the abuses for remedy security than, say, defending a database at the or punishment. Access to remedy is fundamental, perimeter of the computer it resides on. Blockchain and represents the litmus test for blockchain security is at the level of specifc records or blocks of technology’s utility in bridging the divide between data, structured in what are called ‘linked lists’. Each abuse and remedy. item on each list has identifying data and a pointer to the previous item and/or the next item. Each new Technological Limitations block of data must authenticate itself at particular It is worth remembering that even though we use nodes by some kind of proof, for example terms like ‘blockchain’, in reality there is no abstract performing a mathematical operation on the current entity called a blockchain, it is just a network of block, in order to be added to the chain. Tis proof physical computers, owned by a variety of people, must be difcult to falsify but easy to verify, to using an agreed-upon authentication protocol. discourage spammers and hackers. Where are these physical computers, and what are Tis creates a data chain where one can be their characteristics? Are they vulnerable to failure reasonably certain that each item was added in or compromise? chronological order and not manipulated. It works Te application of blockchain to the cobalt supply fairly well with Bitcoin, for example. It is this chain raises the problem of capacity. It can be property that makes blockchain seem attractive for assumed that most small-scale producers, particularly the task of verifying the cobalt supply chain. so-called artisanal miners, will not have the resources or capacity to participate as a node in the chain. GLEN MPUFANE Cobalt mining and the DRC is the Director of Artisanal mining, even though it is legal in the DRC Mining and Diamond, New technologies such as smartphones and and forms a large part of the country’s mining Gems, Ornament, and electric vehicles require batteries, and have greatly landscape, presents a huge challenge for the supply Jewellery Production increased global demand for cobalt, a rare metal. It chain of cobalt. Te industry is forced to sell through at Industriall is estimated that over 60 percent of the world’s bigger operators, creating new opportunities for cobalt resources are to be found in the Democratic corruption and questionable input data. Technology Republic of Congo (DRC). Industriall general does not ensure trust in the human sense. secretary Valter Sanches recently described the Tere are geopolitical boundaries within the working conditions at some multinational mining internet, therefore public blockchains may be companies’ operations in the DRC as ‘appalling and difcult to implement in some regions, as could disturbing’. In a letter to DRC President Kabila afer possibly be the case with the Democratic Republic of a fact-fnding mission to Glencore’s DRC mines, Congo. Furthermore, there are developing countries Sanches wrote that the global union was ‘saddened to whom rich countries or multinational and outraged’ to discover ‘the daily experience of corporations will try to sell specifc implementations abuse and violation of fundamental labour rights of of data infrastructure. Tis may lock a developing 16 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 country into one standard that is incompatible with sustainability are not so neat and tidy. Social others. Intercommunication and standardisation scientists, human rights lawyers, and ecologists are between potentially thousands of actors in diferent not typically experts in the technology. Tis gap regions in a value chain may be a problem. would need to be bridged. Immutability is one of the words frequently used to describe blockchain, and it is this characteristic Is Blockchain a Credible Solution? that makes it suitable for cryptocurrencies. However, Blockchain is a technology. Te problems in the it remains vulnerable to fraudulent or misidentifed cobalt supply chain are social, cultural, data, particularly at the beginning of the chain. Given environmental, political and economic. We must the lengths that some employers have gone to avoid always be wary of unintended and unforeseen or falsify social audits, and the resources that some consequences, for example an explosion in energy corporate and government actors have to undermine consumption to support the blockchain, or the any system that restricts their behaviour, it would be confounding of certifcation with truth, or naive to assume that this will never be attempted. corruption. If evidence of human rights abuses arise The utility of It all comes down to ensuring the integrity of not afer the initiation of a blockchain, will its blockchains to just the technology, but also the data that is input in immutability become a liability rather than an asset? to the technology. Te current players in the DRC Much of present knowledge of blockchains arises record labour cobalt mining industry do not, at least for now, from cryptocurrencies. In contrast, performance in rights violations inspire confdence towards ensuring that integrity. the social dimension of sustainability is notoriously depends not With the emergence of the supply chain difcult to evaluate. Typically, the data will be sustainability standards, could blockchain qualitative rather than quantitative, and to a degree just on the technology be the bridge between abuse/violation subjective rather than objective. Tis does not make technology, but and remedy? Tat possibility will remain only these social indicators less important than economic also on the data aspirational unless this technology can be fully or environmental ones that are easier to measure adapted to the non-mathematical characteristics of and track. However, the attempt to apply blockchain that is input. We sustainability’s social dimension – and the quality of to this problem is to try to apply a solution worked should be careful input data is assured. Blockchain technology does out for an easily quantifable item – a unit of not to confound not alter the principle of ‘garbage in; garbage out’. currency – to a social problem. Tere are at least two concerns here. One is the assumption that certification Unintended Consequences something that has social value can be assigned a with truth Te traceability and verifability of blockchain value that everyone would agree on. Tis is rarely, if raises concerns about personal privacy. Granted, ever, the case. Furthermore, even if we pretend that privacy is not an objective of its application to a we are only assigning a numeric rating with no value chain such as cobalt. However, it could be implied fnancial value, it becomes a ‘hard’ number problematic if someone identifed in the chain were that falsely suggests a degree of scientifc certainty. to invoke the EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ legislation, Te conditions of production of a particular for example. Removing one piece of data could commodity can only be established by audit. Tere is potentially damage the entire chain. Businesses, too, an entire industry of people and organisations have privacy concerns. How will these be addressed? specialising in social and environmental auditing, Is the proposal for a public blockchain, or a private some connected to the traditional fnancial auditing one? If the former, who will set the rules and houses, many independent of them. Blockchain will standards that govern it, and can they be enforced on not change that. It is the output of such audits that a network of independently controlled nodes? If the will become part of the digital signature of a latter, who would own it? Tere are at present particular lot of cadmium, an electronic tag on that diferent proprietary systems. Who will own the data? lot. Unfortunately, it will prove easier to verify the Suppose that a particular lot of cobalt is identifed authenticity of the tag, than the real-world conditions as having child labour in its production and/or under which the commodity was produced. violations of the rights of workers, what then? Will In the case of cobalt, managing the value-chain blockchain help law enforcement? Will the cobalt data could also be accomplished with a database, or BRIAN KOHLER itself be forever tainted, or will it be used a distributed ledger, without blockchain. One is Industriall’s nonetheless? A complication is that the metal can be question to ask is, what value does a blockchain add Health, Safety and melted and added to any other, becoming physically that these other approaches lack? Are blockchains Sustainability Director and chemically untraceable at that point – the best solution to the problem of verifying emphasising the importance of chain-of-custody behaviour in the cobalt value chain? Although there (the ‘paper trail’) in sustainability reporting. is promise in the use of protocols such as blockchain Te proposal to use blockchain technology to to verify or certify the value chain for cobalt, we trace a problematic raw material like cobalt should be cautious. It may not add very much emphasises the difculty that those most expert in beneft versus other, less complicated technologies. blockchain are data specialists, computer scientists, Finally, we should not confuse issues of traceability and cryptographers. Cryptocurrencies can be viewed or certifability with those dimensions of as products of pure mathematics. However, the sustainability that will remain complex and difcult environmental and especially social dimensions of to quantify. 25/3 | International Union Rights | 17 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

FIM-CISL vs. Industry 4.0

Historically, the FIM-CISL union (Italian people’s self-fulflment within the experience of work, Metalworkers Federation) has always been open to thanks to a special focus on workers’ participation technological and organisational changes. So too and knowledge. with Industry 4.0, our union has adopted an Te expectation that Industry 4.0 could achieve FIM-CISL has optimistic perspective, regarding both the possibility some goals inherent to FIM-CISL’s traditional vision actively engaged of reviving the manufacturing industry even in high- and mission, clearly has the merit of promoting wage countries, and the chance for people to be FIM-CISL to actively engage on the topic, rather with the topic of emancipated themselves in the experience of work. than reducing it to fear of technological Industry 4.0, in Coming from a family of fshermen and sailors I advancement. On the other hand however, this the hope that it remember a typical expression, which explains very might cloud FIM-CISL’s judgement on certain well our way of facing innovation: ‘If we cannot stop occasions. If not accompanied by a constant, critical can achieve the wind with our hands, it is better to learn to sail in analysis of the situation in companies and territories, some goals the wind’. For this reason the FIM-CISL is very it might draw FIM-CISL and its ideals away from inherent to FIM- proactive on issues of automation and digitalisation workers and their concrete experiences. in production. Te metalworking sector in Italy is A crucial challenge for FIM-CISL, especially in the CISL’s traditional one of those sectors potentially most impacted by light of non-encouraging membership rates, appears vision and Industry 4.0. to be that of bridging the gap between the union’s mission, but the Te frst initiatives of the FIM-CISL (in the form ideal perspectives of the future of work and workers’ of events and a thematic booklet) were carried out actual needs and interests: an efort though already union must by the union even before the launch of the National initiated in the latest round of contractual renewals. It remain critical Industry 4.0 plan by the Italian Ministry of seems urgent for FIM-CISL to keep on converting and in touch Economic Development. Tis fact demonstrates that their ambitious objectives in Industry 4.0, once clearly the interest of the FIM-CISL in Industry 4.0 is not defned and communicated, into more concrete driven by the content of specifc governmental practices of collective bargaining and workers’ measures; but by the attention the union has paid to representation: union organisational structure and the issue since the frst half of the 2010s, and that of union capacities need to be renovated and made researchers, experts and managers, with whom FIM- consistent with union purposes in a changed scenario, CISL has relationships. Te approach adopted by in order not to lose internal legitimacy. FIM-CISL in relation to Industry 4.0, and in general about technological and organisational innovation, Collective Bargaining for ‘Individual is one of willingness to anticipate change so as to rights to professional training’ make it sustainable for all. Te dialogue with some Among the results achieved in this proactive Italian experts and researchers has informed this commitment from FIM-CISL is the inclusion of an approach, as well as considerations we take from ‘individual right to professional training’ in the encouraging experiences of other workers, such as in national collective bargaining agreement (CBA) Germany and Scandinavian countries. signed in November 2016. GIANNI ALIOTI Importantly, this is a conceptualisation of Industry Tat is an absolute novelty in the world of labour is Head of the 4.0 as a phenomenon that can still be shaped while relations in Italy. Te social partners (companies and International Office of the Federazione potentially bringing benefts to companies and unions) have become aware of the strategic Italiana Metalmeccanici workers in terms of fattening of hierarchies, importance of the continuous updating of workers’ union (FIM CISL, disappearance of repetitive and routine work and professional skills, in the light of the digital Italian Metalworkers growth in cognitive skills. Tis ultimately emphasises revolution that is rapidly and radically transforming Federation) the relevance of some aspects that are traditionally of the world of work. Te continuous updating of skills prime concern to FIM-CISL – namely, employee is a factor of competitiveness for the company, a participation in decision-making processes; factor of employability and greater professional decentralised collective bargaining, conceived as power of the worker in the labour market. closer to companies and territories, thus potentially Te CBA includes a ‘right to education’ providing more capable to address companies’ and workers’ for 250 hours paid over the three-year CBA period specifc problems; worker skills’ development, and so (2017-2019) for literacy courses, fulflment of on. Industry 4.0 hence has come to be perceived by educational obligation, Italian courses for foreigners FIM-CISL ofcials as an enabler not only of Italian and 150 hours paid for professional, technical, high frms’ territorial competitiveness, but also of FIM- school diplomas and university and master’s degrees. CISL’s own desire for a human-centred society and It includes ‘leave for training’ providing for eleven 18 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 months (maximum but divisible) unpaid leave in will produce ‘Guidelines’ on the skills and activities order to complete educational obligation or to of the workers’ representative 4.0 and share it with obtain qualifcations at school and university levels. partners who will translate the Guidelines from Moreover it includes a new specifc chapter on English into their national languages (Italian, ‘continuing education’, which provides 24 hours of Swedish and Spanish). Finally, in May/June 2019 a training, to be carried out over the three-year fnal meeting will be held at the Industriall Europe period. Te company has the task of identifying and headquarters to present the results of the project and planning the training courses in working hours on plan the dissemination phase. Te representatives of some priorities, among them the development of the EC and the European federations of the digital and organisational skills, fundamental to manufacturing companies will also take part in the Industry 4.0. Te individual worker, if not involved meeting. by his company in training initiatives, can exercise this right to 24 hours of training, choosing Unions must re-invent independently training opportunities available in the themselves at all levels Unions must region or on online platforms. Te company, in this It is the FIM-CISL’s view that, faced with the reinvent case, must contribute to the cost of training for a challenges of Industry 4.0 and the digital revolution, maximum of €300 per worker. unions must reinvent themselves - both in terms of themselves. At For the frst time in the history of industrial organisation and collective agreements - at all levels: national level, relations in Italy, with the new national collective workplace, local, national and global. collective agreement the concept of active worker participation At the workplace level, unions must promote was introduced and of self-determination of one’s opportunities for professional qualifcation and bargaining needs own professional development. organise the direct employee participation, thus to include next adding value to frm performance while protecting generation rights Smart Unions and Workers’ workers’ interests. Tis means developing collective Representatives 4.0 bargaining at company-level on issues such as workers’ – the right to Beyond collective bargaining, FIM-CISL has since training, work organisation, health and safety, etc. training, the right 2015 maintained initiatives in the feld of research, At the local level, unions must assist workers to disconnect, communication, training, and lobbying. Tese have throughout their job shifs and the other major achieved concrete outputs (i.e. books, green and changes that occur through their lives. Tis means privacy by design, white papers, events, projects, etc.). developing (sectorial and multi-sectorial) collective information and Since the beginning of 2018, FIM-CISL is bargaining at local level on welfare, income consultation coordinating a project - co-funded by the European protection, active labour market policies and school- Commission - on the relationship between the to-work transition, social dialogue/multi-stakeholder development of Industry 4.0 and unions. ‘SUNI – cooperation on technological and social innovation. Smart Unions for New Industry’ is developed jointly At the national level, unions must organise and with several research institutes, universities and other represent new types of workers, as well as provide industrial unions.1 Te main objective of this project is scope for new types of membership and to strike a to strengthen the capacity of the unions to face the balance between efciency (economic objectives), challenges arising from the digitalisation of equity (fair and just treatment of workers) and voice production, thus creating the conditions for the spread (workers’ involvement in shaping their work of Industry 4.0, and contributing to the reconversion environment) under the umbrella of sustainability as and innovation of factories to be more competitive. an overarching principle. Tis means developing Te frst phase of the project focused on (sectorial and multi-sectorial) collective bargaining coordinated research work in Germany, Italy, Spain at national level on next generation rights (right to and Sweden, culminating in the publication of four training, right to disconnect, privacy by design, national reports and a comparative report on information and consultation) and social dialogue / Industry 4.0 and unions in these four countries. Te multi-stakeholder cooperation on technological and project is now developing with the planning of a social innovation (universalisation of welfare common (one week) training path shared between provisions and income protection, active labour all the partners, which will be carried out by FIM- market policies and training). CISL, FICA-UGT (Spain) and IF Metall (Sweden) in At the global level, unions must protect and 1 RUB – Ruhr- their respective countries. Te course is involving advance workers’ conditions and rights along the Universität Bochum, 15-20 unionists and/or worker representatives of whole global value chains to guarantee a responsible Germany; ADAPT Modena, Italy; each country. Afer sharing/discussion by the re-shoring of manufacturing activities. Tis means LTU – Luleå Tekniska partners on the results of the training course in the developing the Global Union Networks in the Universitet, Sweden; diferent countries, they will undertake a study-visit multinational companies; ensuring that UDIMA – Universidad to Germany to look at the competences and tasks of transnational collective bargaining on labour a Distancia de Madrid, the ‘workers’ representative 4.0’. Te Associazione standards is respected including among Spain; IF Metall per gli studi Internazionali e Comparati sul Diritto subcontractors; and building up international Sweden; FICA-UGT del Lavoro e sulle Relazioni Industriali (ADAPT, cooperation between unions over practices of Spain; IG Metall Association for International and Comparative representation and workers’ empowerment, as well Germany; Industriall Studies on Labour Rights and Industrial Relations) as global ‘name and shame’ campaigns. Europe. 25/3 | International Union Rights | 19 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

The Future of Work is Ours

Unifor recently held a one-day conference on eliminating jobs, automation and artifcial intelligence Automation, New Technology and the Future of will replace some tasks, requiring workers to adjust How do we Work. As part of this event, the union released a their level of skills and knowledge used in the develop a discussion paper called The Future of Work is Ours: workplace. In terms of the Canadian context, four Confronting risks and seizing opportunities of separate think tanks estimated the share of tasks worker-led technological change. With 315,000 members across susceptible to automation in Canada as ranging program allowing the country in almost every sector of the economy, between 35 percent and 47 percent. Tis is across all us to get the best Unifor is Canada’s largest private-sector union. Te sectors of our economy. union’s response to technological change is very much of technological a work in progress, and the conference and discussion Understanding the Impacts change while paper serve as a starting point in this process. Te Part of the challenge we identifed was how to avoiding the fundamental question at hand: how do we develop a create an analysis that allows our members to engage worker-led program allowing us to get the best of in a meaningful way. We created a framework that worst? technological change while avoiding the worst? identifes six general areas of impact – both positive We know that working people in Canada and and negative – to make this issue more digestible. around the world have been experiencing the Te frst, and probably most obvious, impact is negative impacts of technological change, and are job loss or displacement, and job estrangement. Job feeling threatened and afraid for their own futures. loss or displacement is what most of us think of At the same time, we have seen incredible when we consider tech change at work – ‘I was fred opportunities for new and better jobs, union growth, from work and replaced by a robot’. But as we’ve and advancements in workplace health and safety seen, the situation is more complex, and ofen less due to technological change. Our responsibility as dire, than that. Less obvious is what we’ve called job workers and as a union is to take control of this estrangement, where a worker’s role in her conversation and move from a position of fear and workplace changes due to technological change, defence to a position of power and action. leaving her feeling alienated from her work, where Making the transition means frst understanding her skill and knowledge are no longer valued. the problem, and a portion of our discussion paper Te second major category of impact is changes in and day-long conference focused on deepening our work organisation and required skills. Tese are understanding of exactly what we’re talking about impacts that many of us have experienced already. when we discuss technological change at work. Of We’ve probably all heard about, and perhaps even course, our members know that technological change participated in ‘up-skilling’, when workers displaced by is nothing new. We have always experienced the technological change upgrade their skills to fll new efects of technological change, from the invention of roles that complement and support new technologies. the printing press, to the Industrial Revolution, to the But the fip-side to up-skilling is ‘de-skilling’, which is invention of the modern computer. But what is new the slow erosion of skill requirements and experience is the speed of that change. In just a generation, we’ve due to increasing automation. seen the invention of the internet and artifcial Te third category of impact is productivity, which intelligence, so-called ‘big data’ and the advent of we frame in the context of productivity versus mass surveillance, and the widespread use of workload. We’ve all been told that technological MARC HOLLIN advanced robotics and other automation. change, and especially automation, is meant to improve is a researcher with A furry of negative headlines have made wild productivity, and therefore profts for our employers. Unifor, Canada’s largest claims about the coming ‘robot apocalypse’, where However, workers can experience this increase in private-sector union millions of jobs would be replaced by automation. productivity as an increase in workload, despite the However, more recently we have seen a more nuanced claims of improved efciency through automation. analysis emerge. Tis revised analysis focuses on the Unifor members across many sectors have diference between a task and a job. A task is a experienced the same thing – there are fewer discrete segment of work done as part of a worker’s workers doing more work. Even in some sectors duties of employment, while a job is a bundle of tasks where workers struggle to get enough hours to get assigned to a worker who performs those tasks and by, when workers do work, they’re doing more work exchanges their labour for pay. A recent report from than ever before. But, undertaken diferently, McKinsey Global Institute estimates that fewer than 5 automation could also free up workers to fll more percent of existing occupations are candidates for full technical/support roles, interact with automation. Frequently, rather than completely customers/clients more, or even work shorter weeks. 20 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Through collective Te fourth category of impact is surveillance, and laws and regulations are in place to protect working bargaining we specifcally increased surveillance. We’re all seeing people from the adverse efects of technological increased surveillance at work, whether it’s digital change, while still embracing the need to be can ensure cameras in all corners of the workplace, GPS competitive and innovative in the global economy. workers’ have trackers in work vehicles or digital devices, gas We know that new technologies, and especially so- rights to mileage trackers, and so on. At issue is the balance called ‘disruptive’ technologies like Airbnb or Uber between an employer’s desire to monitor its exist in – and because of – regulatory ‘grey areas’. participate employees, and a worker’s right to privacy, even in Our governments must address these legislative and actively in the the workplace. And of course, there’s the issue of regulatory grey areas, and we must be prepared to help implementation data security: there are important questions about them to do so, by reaching out to elected ofcials, how all this data is gathered, stored, secured, and sharing our experience and knowledge, and presenting of new safely destroyed when no longer useful. efective policy options. Rules and regulations have technology and to Te ffh category of impact is in health and been established over the years to protect residents, negotiate the safety. Tis is one category where technological workers and consumers. We must encourage our change has ofered numerous benefts to working elected ofcials to establish a level playing feld for terms as they people. Increasing automation means more workers existing and new technologies, one that doesn’t related to transitioning from physical labour-intensive jobs diminish hard-won protections for everyone. technological towards less physical work. Technological change We can’t forget that any solutions to technological has sometimes led to safer workplaces, but we will change in the workplace must advocate for good change face new challenges. Workers in both physically and jobs, decent work and an equitable future. non-physically intensive industries may face Immigrants, women, people of colour, and people increased psychosocial loads, increased pace of with disabilities are already lef behind in Canada’s work, and other as-yet unanticipated threats to labour market, and technological change can ofen personal health and safety on the job. make this marginalisation worse. But periods of And fnally, the sixth category of impact is intense economic upheaval and labour market changes in pay and employment security. As is true transition ofen create opportunities for huge leaps in every jurisdiction, an increasing share of workers forward in social and worker justice. Any strategy to in Canada experience involuntary part-time work, address and embrace technological change in our temporary and contract work, hours that vary week workplaces must emphasise the fght for good jobs, to week, misclassifed self-employment, and working decent work, and especially, equity. multiple jobs to make ends meet. At the end of our discussion paper, we suggest Technological change is driving work to become several simple next steps Unifor will undertake. increasingly unbundled – and so we see the rise of We’re in the process of developing basic educational the so-called ‘gig economy’. What we’re seeing is that and training modules to make sure our rank-and-fle worker expectations around jobs have declined from members and local union leaders have the tools to a life-long career, to contract work and even micro- assess and anticipate the potential for technological tasks. Tis is especially true for young workers and change in their workplaces. We’re going to develop freelance workers. sector-specifc strategies to address technological change at work, in an acknowledgement that tech Developing Solutions change impacts us in vastly diferent ways from One of the most obvious ways we can address sector to sector. We’re also developing a suite of technological change in our workplaces is through public policy initiatives that we can take to all levels the collective bargaining process. As our members of government, to advocate for the laws and will attest, Unifor has already been doing this for regulations we need to protect our quality of life at years. Our union has bargained provisions in our work, at home, and in our communities. collective agreements to ensure workers have the Te only way to build a just and equitable right to participate actively in the implementation of response to technological change at work – new technology and to negotiate the terms as they especially for immigrants, women, people of colour, related to technological change. indigenous peoples, and people with disabilities – is Te fundamental principle underlying this if workers stand up together and lead the way. We approach is that workers deserve to have early notice can’t rely on our employers, corporations, or even of upcoming technological changes, the right to governments, to respond to tech change in a way participate in and beneft from new opportunities, that includes us, our needs or our rights. If we don’t and the right to negotiate new language arising from make our voices heard, we will not be able to play a those changes. role in shaping the economy of the future. Te And then, of course, there’s also the critical role of labour movement is well positioned to be the voice government regulation. All levels of government for workers as we fght together to make sure that must continue to play a role in making sure the right the future of work really is ours. 25/3 | International Union Rights | 21 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Work and Technology: Student and Union Perceptions in Portugal

When expressed in terms of technology, the ■ Governments should examine and act on gender question of the ‘future of work’ points to several inequalities created by the incorporation of new possibilities, and multiple uncertainties. Based on technologies into labour markets and channel the Portuguese context, this article highlights the those technologies to reduce gender pay gaps; The debate perspectives of university students (who are, afer all, ■ Social partners should defne limits concerning around work and the main protagonists of future work) and the the type and number of machines that might perceptions of trade union representatives. directly replace jobs; technology ■ Public investment should be reinforced in the produces mixed A trail-blazing simulation in the academy creation of technological incubators of the feelings for both During the academic year of 2016/2017, the solidarity economy in universities, communities University of Coimbra undertook a simulation of the and social organisations. students and International Labour Conference (ILC) – the frst time trade unionists, in a European university1. Te event was inspired by Trade union representatives’ although the the Future of Work report of the 104th Session of the perceptions ILC2. Te initiative mobilised 300 undergraduate, One of the aims of a project at the Centre for former appear master and PhD students in economics, sociology, Social Studies of the University of Coimbra – more receptive to management, international relations, law, etc. – who, entitled ‘Rebuilding trade union power in the age of the opportunities in accordance with the tripartite structure of the ILO, austerity: three sectors under review’ – is to capture were tasked to act as representatives of governments, the importance attributed to ‘digital trade unionism’ technology employers or workers. in the metallurgical, transport and opens up One of the debates highlighted by the simulation telecommunications sectors. Tis is an especially was the impact of technological changes on work timely challenge in a trade union movement still and employment. Some of the topics underpinning very much characterised by ‘old’ practices: this debate were: the role of industries of the future; predominance of men (both at the top and base of types of digital work; implications of productive the union hierarchy); low staf turnover; excessive automation for working lives; individualisation proximity to political parties; qualifcation defcit of processes in the management of working hours and trade union staf; relatively low unionisation rate; non-working time; technological unemployment; timid focus on cyber-activism of social networks, requirements with regard to new skills; tensions etc. Confronted with the challenge of innovation, between traditional service activities and trade union representatives in these three sectors technological platforms (e.g. taxi drivers vs. Uber). expressed a mixture of optimism and pessimism. A set of proposals on the future of work emerged from these discussions: Between a modest optimism… Some trade union ofcials recognised the merits ■ Companies and governments should implement a of the digital age, in particular the following aspects: HERMES co-fnancing programme enabling workers to AUGUSTO COSTA beneft from the necessary training (without ■ Te Internet helps organisations communicate is sociologist professor redundancies) in the event of changes due to the quickly and cheaply to a broader audience and to at the Faculty of Economics and operationalisation or introduction of new create digital archives of materials developed by researcher at the technologies; workers’ organisations around the world; Centre for Social ■ Government and company policies should ■ Unions’ mobilisation eforts have become more Studies, University of maximise investment in research and visible through the capacity to transmit Coimbra, Portugal development to optimise the potential of new information in real time, such as denouncing technologies as promoters of social welfare and workers’ rights violations, sending out calls for job creation; action, or raising awareness of workers’ issues; ■ Enhanced coordination between universities and ■ In the era of Industry 4.0, workers may gain more the needs of the labour market should be autonomy and perform more interesting and less established (adjusting teaching practices and arduous jobs; programme contents to real needs, reinforcing the ■ Tere is a greater fexibility and reconciliation technological component of educational between employment and family life; institutions or maximising vocational training to ■ “A good website solves the issue of membership provide future workers with more technical decline, as well as the format and level of skills); communication” (interview with former trade 22 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

unionist from Sindicato dos Trabalhadores e technology was present at the academic simulation, Aviação, SITAVA - airport and aviation workers’ it became more evident in trade union discussions. union; January 2018). It appears that the opportunities for work brought ■ “It is easier for people to seek clarifcations on about by technology are more widely accepted labour issues or any other issue through among students at the academy than among trade Facebook” (interview with the vice-president of unionists. But the motto ‘the Internet belongs to Sindicato Nacional do Pessoal de Voo da Aviação everyone’ (the title of Eric Lee’s seminal book) is Civil, SNPVAC - national trade union for civil more valid than ever and can be used as an aviation workers; January 2018). instrument for collective struggle4. Te challenge is convincing workers and trade unions that it can also … and a realistic pessimism be a way to achieve practical results. Despite this willingness to engage in online Despite the defensive perceptions of Portuguese activities, trade union leaders are sceptical with trade unions, several conditions (if accomplished) regards to the efectiveness of digital methods. Tere could turn the future of work into a future of (well- The ‘virtual’ are many other challenges: digital illiteracy; the founded) hope. Some principles that may help guide unionist is still far democracy defcit in the workplace, which limits that vision are: workers’ access to the Internet; language barriers; behind the ‘real’ and competition for attention in an increasingly ■ Te Internet and all online social networks unionist. Internet data-driven environment. should not be embraced as a mere technical tool, union campaigns Specifcally regarding Facebook, there is much but also as an ethical principle towards more mistrust, because it “anyone can create an democracy at work; are increasing anonymous profle and spread a rumour. It is ■ One-time online engagement is no longer across the globe, preferable to communicate through the mailing list sufcient to get a message across. It has become but very little is as a way to ensure that we know who is the person necessary to continuously create and curate on the other side!” (interview with trade union content that is tailored to the specifc audiences known about representative from Sindicato dos Técnicos de that trade unions intend to reach5; inequality of Manutenção de Aeronaves, SITEMA - union of ■ Traditional trade unions need a more daring access, or aircraf maintenance technicians; June 2018). Te attitude, for example, by combining their national secretary of a trade union for strategies with those of the trade unions outcomes communications and media professionals (Sindicato interested in defending the interests of the Democrático dos Trabalhadores dos Correios, platform workers6; Telecomunicações, Media e Serviços, SINDETELCO) ■ Trade union representatives need to incorporate afrmed that: “If I see a person post a question, I cognitive capacities that motivate them to use send them an invitation to talk personally. I don’t like technology as an element of valuing work, rather to stay behind the computer screen!” (interview; than simply a source of feared job destruction; February 2018). Similarly, the Portuguese general ■ It is crucial to intensify online membership secretary of the European Transport Workers’ applications, social media pages, blogs, videos Federation emphasised that: “the Internet, blogs, and petitions; WhatsApp and all that cannot substitute for physical ■ Te fulflment of the proposals developed in the involvement with workers, for working together with aforementioned ILC simulation would provide an them to learn about their issues. Even Nordic unions impetus for trade unionism to approach the come tell us in our meetings that they are learning a future of work in Industry 4.0 with a more lasting new way of working, which is being close to the optimism. workers, meeting them outside the workplace” (interview; January 2018). 1Costa, Hermes A. (2017). ‘Debating the future of work: a trail- Te pragmatism of the previous statements blazing simulation of an ILO International Labour Conference at the indicates that, in spite of the Internet consisting of an University of Coimbra’, Transfer – European Review of Labour and 23 (4), 503-507. unavoidable tool for union recruitment and Research, 2 Ryder, Guy (2015), The future of work – centenary initiative (Report mobilisation strategies, the ‘virtual’ unionist is still far of the Director-General, Report I / International Labour Conference, behind the ‘real’ unionist. Even if numbers of trade 104th Session). Geneva: International Labour Office. unions using the web to communicate are increasing 3 Rego, R.; Alves, Paulo M.; Naumann, R.; Silva, J. (2014), A across the globe, it would be useful to conduct an typology of trade union websites with evidence from Portugal and Internet census to measure the extent of access by Britain, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 20 (2) 185-195 trade unionists, since there are important diferences 4Lee, Eric (2000), The Internet belongs to every one. Available at: between countries, sectors and trade unions, as well http://www.labourstart.org/icann/ericleebook.shtml as diferent frequencies of Internet use3. Moreover, it 5 Carneiro, Bia S. (2018), Trade unions and Facebook: The need to would be useful to determine the weight of online improve dialogue and expand networks. ETUI Policy Brief 5. mobilisation in achieving concrete gains for workers. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute 6 Vandaele, K. (2018), Will trade unions survive in the platform Futures of hope economy? Emerging patterns of platform workers’ collective voice and representation in Europe. Working Paper 2018/05. Brussels: If the (unavoidable) mixture of feelings European Trade Union Institute. stimulated by the debate around work and 25/3 | International Union Rights | 23 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0

Digital Solidarity or Complacent Clicktivism?

Trade unions have been using information But when we send out a message to our 130,000 technology to promote global solidarity for more email subscribers, we get a food. than three decades. When I began researching and Tis simple point is still not widely understood in Nearly 7000 writing about this in the early 1990s, I found an unions. Ofen when we ask a union to give publicity people supported already existing community of activists who had to a campaign – even to a campaign which they been using email and other online tools for years. In requested – what we get is a posting on Facebook the Turkish fact, by the early 1990s, they had already held a and Twitter which has little demonstrable efect on TÜMTIS union couple of international conferences to discuss what the campaign. campaign. The had been done and where to go next. Why is this the case? I think it’s because we treat So we’ve learned a lot, and we have decades of our email inboxes diferently from how we treat our company caved experience behind us. We’ve learned about some Facebook news feeds or Twitter feeds. If a message in to the union’s tools that work very well, and others that don’t. comes into my inbox, it’s something I need to read, demands. But the LabourStart has been a laboratory of sorts, where or act on, or delete. Tis is absolutely not the case we’ve tried out many of the new technologies. with Twitter or Facebook; I can happily not visit workers on the social networks for days and no one necessarily picket line have What works, and what doesn’t expects me to be responding to their posts. to be given full Let me start by giving a couple of examples of Te other tool that still works very well is the things that did not work out very well. website. Tough we live in an age of smartphones credit for their One was called ‘Second Life’ – an immersive, 3-D and apps, the reality is that websites remain victory online environment which was all the rage a few incredibly powerful tools. Just ask Amazon. years back. Some unions decided that this ‘virtual So we have found that the most potent world’ was the next big thing and didn’t want to be combination for global solidarity campaigns is to use lef behind. Something called ‘Union Island’ was a website combined with large email lists – and created to much fanfare. I tried to be supportive, and backed up by social networks. And this ofen works. signed up to use ‘Second Life’ only to discover that I Let me give a very recent example. couldn’t fgure out how to equip my online avatar with clothing. As a result, my unclothed character Credit where credit’s due stood neck-deep in the sea surrounding ‘Union Afer a successful organising drive at DHL Island’ cheering on those few who had managed to Express, the Turkish Motor Vehicle and Transport get ashore with their clothes on. ‘Union Island’ Workers’ Union (TÜMTIS) fled for trade union quickly disappeared under the virtual waves and has recognition. Despite TÜMTIS organising the not been heard of since. required number of workers under the Turkish When Facebook took of, many of us realised some labour laws, DHL refused to talk to the union. of its limitations – more on this in a moment – and TÜMTIS members were on the picket line for a full thought it would be better to build a social network year, from 17 July 2017. Eleven months into their owned and controlled by unions. Tus UnionBook struggle, they approached LabourStart through their was born. Using a platform that replicated much of global union federation, the London-based ERIC LEE Facebook’s functionality, it struggled to get even 5000 International Transport Workers Federation (ITF). is the founding editor of LabourStart, the trade unionists to sign up. Te problem was a Teir campaign was launched on LabourStart on news and campaigning chicken-and-egg one: without vast numbers of trade 8 June 2018. It was translated by volunteers into 14 platform of the unionists there, the network was useless. It limped diferent languages. 6,769 people sent of messages international trade along for several years until it was fnally shut down. supporting the workers. By 23 July, just 45 days afer union movement So, what does work? It turns out that two of the the campaign went live, the company had caved in older technologies, which have been in use for a to the union demands. As the company and union quarter century or more, remain potent tools for put it in a joint press release with the ITF, ‘DHL trade unions. Turkey and Tümtis have agreed to start negotiations One is email. As we have repeatedly learned, there on a collective labour agreement ... both parties is nothing more efective than a mass mailing in have met for frst, informal talks over the last weeks. order to promote an online campaign. We see this all In these talks, which were also attended by the ITF, the time whenever we launch a new campaign on Tümtis and DHL both expressed their willingness to LabourStart. If we share it with our tens of thousands enter into a trustful and sustainable relationship’. of followers on social networks (Facebook, Twitter Some campaigning organisations would have and LinkedIn) we’ll get a small trickle of responses. promptly announced that it was their efort which 24 | International Union Rights | 25/3 FOCUS | INDUSTRY 4.0 made the diference, and used this as an excuse to send declining number of bumblebees in England, I’m not out a fundraising appeal. LabourStart, which works as sure I need to be reminded of that fact every day. Or part of the trade union movement, has to behave that a progressive candidate running in a primary according to a diferent standard. In a message which election in New York needs a donation from me, and we sent out announcing the victory, we wrote: ‘Te apparently needs that donation every single day. main reason for this [victory] is, of course, the determination and courage of those union members in No substitute for mobilisation Turkey. Te support given by the ITF and its afliate We need to remember that putting those online unions around the world was also hugely signifcant’. tools aside, our strength as a labour movement is in We also thanked those who supported the online our numbers. Our campaigns succeed or fail based campaign, but we put things in perspective. Teir on whether we can mobilise our own members. support ‘certainly played a role in the last few weeks as In a recent campaign we were given by a union, it we aimed to convince the company to fnally come to seemed as if the union was simply outsourcing the the negotiating table’. But the workers in Turkey, on the campaign to LabourStart. We managed to get over What works is picket line, had to be given full credit for their victory. 6,700 people from around the world to support the not this or that union’s campaign. But when analysed those results, Online overkill? it became clear that only one in six supporters came technology. Possibly the biggest mistake we’re seeing today in from the country concerned. And only 16 – out of Unions win how trade unions use the net for global solidarity 6,700 – were members of the union which had asked campaigns when work is the over-reliance on social networks and for the campaign. And that’s a union which claims Facebook in particular. Let’s be clear about the over 100,000 members. they mobilise diference between Facebook and tools like the web It’s a campaign that is unlikely to achieve its goal their members and email. Te web and email are standards. Anyone for that very reason. What works is not this or that with a web browser like Firefox or Chrome on their technology, though some (like email) are better than computers or phones can access a web page. Any others (Facebook). What really matters is whether email client, like Outlook, can send and receive unions are prepared to reach out to their own email. Te web is a public space, not a private, members and encourage them to take the few walled garden. Facebook on the other hand is like seconds needed to sign up to support a campaign. the old, 1990s version of online communities before Our members are our greatest strength. We win the Internet arrived on the site. It’s like Compuserve campaigns when we mobilise them. or America Online. It’s not an open standard, but a privately-owned, proft-making business. And Facebook will not be around forever. Its growth among young people has ground to a halt as other, more popular social networks take its place. Stands for Facebook itself grew out of the collapse of another hugely popular network, MySpace, which has now efectively disappeared. Solidarity But even before Facebook enters its decline (which may already have begun) it can behave as it wants and no one has a right to challenge it. We’ve www.uniglobalunion.org seen cases of unions creating platforms on Facebook to criticise companies, and then these being taken Over 60 million jobs have been lost since the beginning of down by Facebook at the request of the company. the financial crisis in 2008. With the addition of new labour Today, with tremendous pressure being put on market entrants over the next five years, 280 million more Facebook to deal with the problem of ‘fake news’ jobs need to be created by 2019. Half the world’s workforce and attempts to infuence elections, we may see are employed in precarious work and one and three jobs pay much more of this kind of thing. less than $1.25 per day. To just maintain the status quo And of course on Facebook, unlike the web or 1.8 billion jobs must be created by 2030. email, where are our archives? How easy is it for a We are seeing levels of inequality in income distribution union to look up what it did in a campaign, what back to the scale of the 1920s. We are living through a worked and what didn’t? As we outsource our boom period but only for the one percent. collective memory to this private company, we give up an invaluable asset. There is a word missing in the world of tomorrow debate – But it’s not only Facebook which is the problem. ‘solidarity’. UNI Global Union and its 20 million members Even the tools that work – email and the web – are stands for solidarity in action. facing challenges. Ten or twenty years ago, an online campaign was relatively rare and would excite Join with us: www.uniglobalunion.org activists. Today, our inboxes are full of appeals from a very wide range of organisations and campaigns. It’s UNI global union, 8-10 Av. Reverdil, hard to support them all, and one grows tired of the 1260 NYON, Switzerland repetitive messages. Much as I care about the 25/3 | International Union Rights | 25 WORLDWIDE

Belarus workers has a privileged status, and October. Representatives of the 19.7 As reported previously in IUR 24.3, two that their collective rights to take million transport workers from ITF officials of the Radio and Electronics action are superfluous. The unions for affiliates will meet at the global Industry Workers Union (REPAM) have educational workers (GEW, union’s 44th summit, which takes been on trial for alleged tax offences, Gewerkschaft Erziehung und places every four years. following raids last year on the offices Wissenschaft), service sector workers of REPAM and the Belarusian (ver.di) and the national confederation Just Transition? Independent Trade Union (BNP). On 24 (DGB, Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund) The renewable energy sector is central August 2018, REPAM chairman have long argued that rights to to the effective transition to a low Henadz Fiadynich and chief collective bargaining and to strike are carbon economic, and essential to accountant Ihar Komlik were each fundamental human rights, and that tackling global climate change. sentenced to four years’ suspended the ban is inconsistent with ILO norms However, a number of labour and imprisonment, a ban on holding senior and the jurisprudence of the European human rights concerns about the wide positions for five years, and fines of Court of Human Rights. According to sector have been raised in a new over USD $23,000 plus the costs of ILO standards, such restrictions should report from the Business and Human the trial. Fiadynich and Komlik believed only apply to public servants Rights Resource Centre, Renewable they were targeted for their trade exercising authority in the name of the Energy Risking Rights & Returns. union activities and in particular in state. The federation for civil servants According to their analysis of 59 solar, retaliation for their involvement in (dbb – beamtenbund und tarifunion) bioenergy and geothermal companies, 2017 protests against a Presidential welcomed the judgement, stating that almost half have no basic policies in Decree targeting the unemployed the right to strike for Beamte would place to protect communities and (labelled ‘social parasites’). lead to the erosion of the particular workers. Responding to the case, ITUC General conditions laid down in law for Secretary Sharan Burrow said, ‘this is workers in the civil service. Some 54 percent of companies have

world a blatant anti-union case, with no policies in place on anti- foundation in the rule of law’. ILO Mcdonald’s discrimination, around 40 percent Partnership have policies on child labour, forced European ‘ILO’s corporate partnerships put global labour and modern slavery, but only 36 Trade Union Institute standards at risk’. That is how the percent have a policy on collective The ETUI has published a number of International Union of Food and Allied bargaining and freedom of association. new policy briefs relevant to Workers (IUF) responded to the Only 5 of the companies fulfilled the discussions on digital technology and announcement in August that four basic human rights criteria used union mobilisation: The untapped international fast-food chain in the assessment. With regard to possibilities of YouTube as a trade McDonald’s has partnered with the ILO labour rights, the report notes union tool, Trade unions and Facebook: for its Global Initiative on Decent Jobs particular concerns about the the need to improve dialogue and for Youth. The IUF and ITUC have asked production of bioenergy (derived from expand networks, and The power of for ‘an urgent meeting with the ILO sugarcane, oil palm, beets, and corn) social media as a labour campaigning Director General’ to discuss the and the risks of forced labour and tool: lessons from OUR Walmart and decision. The company’s own website child labour. The report concludes with the Fight for 15. Alongside these, there states: ‘we don’t currently work with recommendations for companies, is a new Working Paper, entitled Will any specific trade union because we investors and governments to better trade unions survive in the platform have a number of internal methods that regulate the renewable energy sector economy? Emerging patterns of we use to speak to our employees all to ensure that the energy transition is platform workers’ collective voice and the time’. Ian Hodson, President of the underpinned by principles of fairness representation in Europe. All UK’s Bakers Food and Allied Workers and justice. It is available to download publications are available to download Union (BFAWU) – which supported a here: www.business-humanrights.org from www.etui.org. strike by Mcdonald’s workers earlier this year over low wages, zero hours Mexico Germany strike ban contracts and union-busting – Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, a member of On 12 June, Germany’s Constitutional expressed disappointment at the move Industriall’s Executive Committee and Court upheld a strike ban for Beamte – and urged the ILO to ‘withdraw from the general secretary of the Mexican a particular class of civil servants who endorsing McDonald’s as a reputable Union of Miners and Metalworkers’ enjoy special constitutional status. partner – and to scrutinise all other Union, Los Mineros, has returned to Among them are some 600,000 corporations signing up to this pledge’. Mexico after a twelve-year exile, to teachers. The court case was brought Nestle signed up to the ILO youth take up the position of senator in the by several teachers who had received initiative last year. new government of President-elect disciplinary fines in recent years for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Gómez participating in strikes. The International Transport fled Mexico in 2006 after receiving justification for the ban – which is Workers’ Federation death threats and being removed as rooted in eighteenth century policy to (ITF) Congress leader of the union by the government, promote professionalism and loyalty in The ITF’s 2018 Congress will take in retaliation for his outspoken the civil service – is that this class of place in Singapore from 14 to 20 criticism of their handling of the

26 | International Union Rights | 25/3 WORLDWIDE disaster at Grupo México’s Pasta de merchandise is the body of human – include ‘all internationally recognised Conchos coal mine, where 65 trapped beings, mainly women’. The human rights, including workers’ and miners were left for dead. Despite Comisiones Obreras union (CCOO) trade union rights, as defined by being in exile, rank and file members raised concerns over human international labour standards, of Los Mineros repeatedly trafficking, as well as issues of health, including the right to strike and take unanimously re-elected him to union exploitation, mistreatment and cross-border industrial action’ and office. Gómez was sworn in at the end equality of opportunity, while applies to all business enterprises of August. On 20 September, the recognising that the right to organise – provide for parent company-based Mexican Senate decided to ratify ILO is a fundamental right contained in extraterritorial regulation in order to Convention 98 on the Right to the 1978 Spanish Constitution. ensure access to effective judicial Organise and Collective Bargaining. Debates as to whether prostitution recourse for victims of human rights The US is now the only country in the should be considered ‘work’ have long violations Americas region not to have ratified proven controversial for unions. Way – prohibit transnational corporations the Convention. back in 2005, IUR dedicated a special should from infringing on the human issue to the subject of sex workers rights of others and obliges them to Slavery and Electronics organising (IUR 12.4). address adverse human rights The Australian Walk Free Foundation impacts with which they are involved has published its annual Global Slavery UK - Blacklisting – oblige states to adopt regulatory Index. Based on data for eighteen of The London Metropolitan police measures that require businesses to G20 states, the latest report classifies admitted in March this year that its adopt and apply human rights due- ‘laptops, computers & mobile phones’ undercover Special Branch officers had diligence policies and procedures set as the number one category of imports spied on trade unionists and supplied out in the UNGPs at high risk of being produced under information to The Consulting – establish an international monitoring conditions of modern slavery. This Association (TCA), a blacklisting firm mechanism which collaborates with category of electronics products – the run by over forty major construction the ILO supervisory mechanisms on material basis for ‘Industry 4.0’ – firms. In 2009 a list was found during a labour issues. represents over half the value of all at- raid on the TCA premises, naming over risk products imported into the G20 3000 workers and detailing their The position is available to read in full (some USD $200 billion of a total political and trade union activities. on the ETUC’s website: www.etuc.org $350 billion of goods). The report is Some of those named had been refused available to download from work for decades as a result. US – Prison strike www.globalslaveryindex.org. The union Unite negotiated a £10m Prisoners in the US participated in a compensation settlement with 19-day strike in August and Spain construction firms in 2016. Trade September to demand an ‘immediate The Spanish government’s unionists have long campaigned to end to prison slavery’. They further announcement of its intention to reveal any police collusion, which was protested conditions and racial revoke the registration of a union of confirmed this year following a discrimination, and called for the sex workers, La Organización de complaint from the Blacklist Support restoration of the voting rights of Trabajadoras Sexuales (OTRAS), has Group to the Independent Police convicts and ex-convicts, and the re-ignited a national debate about Complaints Commission. A BBC report repeal of a federal law that prevents prostitution, exploitation and the in June further revealed that the prisoners from raising grievances. fundamental rights of workers to identities of workers spied on by the organise. The OTRAS union became police are contained in the report of a The Incarcerated Workers Organising the first such union to be officially confidential police inquiry, but the Met Committee reports that strike action recognised by the Labour Ministry in has refused to share the report with took place in sixteen states. Unlike August. The Labour Minister quickly victims. A former Special Branch officer previous strike action organised in vowed to overturn OTRAS’ registration. turned whistleblower told the BBC that 2016, this year the prisoners have Presently sex work is tolerated but not hundreds – maybe even thousands – of garnered widespread media coverage.

regulated and the new socialist Prime workers had been spied on by police. Under the US constitution, slavery and wide Minister Pedro Sánchez has further involuntary servitude are prohibited, committed to abolish prostitution. A UN Binding Treaty except ‘as punishment for crime self avowed feminist who describes In June, the Executive Committee of whereof the party shall have been duly the March 2018 feminist strike as a the European Trade Union convicted’. With US prisons watershed moment in the country’s Confederation adopted a position on representing over 20 percent of the history, Sánchez has put in place a 65 the development of a United Nations global prison population, compulsory percent female cabinet. Treaty on Transnational Corporations. prison labour has grown into a multi- The ETUC emphasised the need for the million dollar industry, and a majority Spain’s major unions entered the fray, EU to engage fully with the of states have legalised the with the Unión General de intergovernmental working group contracting of prison labour to private Trabajadores (UGT) expressing its negotiating the draft treaty. In corporations. In some states, such as strong opposition to any legalisation particular, the ETUC has demanded Louisiana, inmates may receive just 4 world of ‘a business formula in which the that the treaty: cents an hour in remuneration.

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workers organised around conditions they faced on workers to organise efectively in the plants the job, they learned to deal with issues of themselves. immigration, discrimination in the schools, police In the heyday of the UE Electronics Organizing misconduct, and other aspects of daily life in Committee, the National Semiconductor plant had immigrant communities. almost ten thousand workers, working directly for Electronics manufacturers have been forced over the company. By the time Romie Manan was laid of, the years to permit outside contract services, like employment had fallen to 7000. Over half worked janitorial services and in-plant construction, to be for temporary employment agencies, including performed by union contractors. Nevertheless, the almost all production workers. Manpower, the temp industry has drawn a line between outside services agency, had an ofce on the plant foor. According to and the assembly contractors who are part of the Mike Garcia, then president of SEIU Local 1877, industry’s basic production process. In one section, “high technology manufacturing doesn’t create high- unions can be grudgingly recognised; in the other, wage, high-skill jobs. It patterns itself afer the they will not be. Workers, communities and unions service sector. Contractors in manufacturing need a higher level of unity to win the right for compete over who can drives wages and benefts the lowest”.

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of the world’s supply of the commodity. Copper fred a subcontracted flmmaker afer he made a accounts for 60 percent of Chile’s exports and 12 rudimentary inquiry into the poor working percent of its GDP. State-owned copper company conditions and marginalisation of Google’s book- Codelco’s strategic economic importance is scanners (predominantly people of colour) relative to underlined by the fact that 10 percent of its export Google’s white-collar workers8. US tech entrepreneur revenue is automatically allocated to Chile’s military Jerry Kaplan has pithily claimed that ‘automation is budget, a practice dating back to the 19th Century. blind to the colour of your collar’9. On the cusp of a In August this year, when workers at the Codelco’s fourth industrial revolution which is just as second largest mine went on strike, one of the union embroiled in the practices of slavery as the frst, one leaders subsequently received a written threat – might counter that Industry 4.0 does not however attached to the rock thrown at his car6. In 2015, appear to be blind to the colour of your skin. Nelson Quichillao López, a contract worker at another Codelco mine, was shot dead by police 1 A. Ramchandani, Forced Labor Is the Backbone of the World’s during a strike. Electronics Industry, The Atlantic. 28 June 2018. Available from: Building a highly advanced technological https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/06/malaysia- forced-labor-electronics/563873/ infrastructure for the global economy that is deeply 2 THE TRUTH BEHIND THE BARCODE: Electronics Industry Trends (9 reliant on supplies of certain metals and rare February 2016). Available here: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ minerals is certain to further politicise the rights of electronics-industry-trends-report-australia.pdf such workers in the extractive sector to organise, 3 Data cited in PowerShift, The Dark Side of Digitalization: Will collectively bargain and to strike. Industry 1.0 was Industry 4.0 Create New Raw Materials Demands? (November haunted by the dread of slave insurrection at the 2017) Available from: https://power-shift.de/wp-content/uploads/ source of its raw inputs. For trade unionists at the 2017/11/PowerShift-Industry-4.0.pdf ‘other end’ of the Industry 4.0 telescope, debates 4 S. Beckert, Empire of Cotton, The Atlantic. 12 Dec 2014. Available about the desirability of technological innovation in from: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/ their workplaces should not be divorced from the empire-of-cotton/383660 labour conditions that prevail in the production of 5 B. Waites, Europe and the Third World: From Colonisation to (Macmillan, 1999) p 51-2 such technologies. Decolonisation c- 1500–1998 6 See Industriall, Copper workers face threats in Chile. 3 Sep 2018. Similarly, these dynamics should prompt us to Available at: http://www.industriall-union.org/copper-workers-face think about how racism and global inequality shape -threats-in-chile the impacts that technological ‘progress’ has on 7 On the Vegas campaign of the Culinary Union and Bartenders workers’ rights, across the international economy. In Union (affiliated to Unite Here), see S. M. Daniels, When We Talk the US this summer, Las Vegas hospitality workers About Automation, We Also Need To Talk About Race. Huffington went on strike to demand certain stipulations in Post, 22 June 2018. Available here: https://www.huffington their collective agreements on automation – and in post.com/entry/automation-race_us_5b20eb7ae4b0adfb826f9f48 so doing, made explicit that automation 8 A. N. Wilson, Workers Leaving the Googleplex (film). Available at: disproportionately threatens the jobs of black, ethnic www.andrewnormanwilson.com/WorkersGoogleplex.html minority and migrant workers7. In 2008, Google 9 J. Kaplan, Humans Need Not Apply. (Yale University Press, 2015)

28 | International Union Rights | 25/3 Education International

Promoting quality education for all and defending human and trade union rights in our unions, in our schools and in our societies

EI is the global union federation representing 30 million teachers and education workers in 171 countries and territories around the world. To learn more, please visit: www.ei-ie.org

Uniting Food, Farm Public and Hotel Workers Services Worldwide International www.iuf.org PSI is a global trade union federation representing 20 million working women and men who deliver vital public services in more than 150 countries.

PSI works with our members and allies to campaign for social and economic justice, and efficient, accessible public services around the world. We believe these services play a vital role in supporting families, creating healthy communities, and building strong, equitable democracies. author details Our priorities include global campaigns for water, Building global solidarity energy and health services. PSI promotes gender equality, workers’ rights, trade union capacity- International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, building, equity and diversity. PSI is Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ also active in trade and development debates. Associations 8 Rampe du Pont-Rouge, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy, Switzerland PSI welcomes the opportunity to work co-operatively Tel: + 41 22 793 22 33 Fax: + 41 22 793 22 38 Email: [email protected] with those who share these concerns. General Secretary: Sue Longley President: Mark Lauritsen Visit our website www.world-psi.org

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