New forms of work and employment
and the core
principle of subordination
Value Flow in Network Company
Larry Haiven
Saint Mary’s University
Old subordination
• value created mostly at factory
• Formal, then real subordination
• Subordination “Dependency”
• Production is centre of value creation (not
consumption, distribution)
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 2
Changes in value creation
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Change of locus
Less standardized work arrangements
Informatization
Immaterial labour
Intellectual property
Production less dominant; other moments more
Unravelling of vertical firm; move to networks
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 3
Change of locus
• Dramatic decentralization
• Less in factory; more outside (social factory)
• Boundaryless workplace; boundaryless careers (Stone
From Widgets to Digits)
– “A career which unfolds unconstrained by clear boundaries around job
activities, by fixed sequences of such activities, or by attachment to one
organization. It is a career that does not depend on traditional notions of
advancement within a single hierarchical org…It includes an employee who
moves frequently across the borders of different firms, such as a Silicon Valley
technician, or a professional whose career draws its validation and
marketability from professional and extra-organizational networks.”
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 4
Less standardized work arrangements
• Move away from permanent, full-time, full-year
employment
• Move to part-time, temporary, casual employment
• Move to contracting to self-employed
• In last year 65% of new jobs in Canada temporary
contracts or self-employment
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 5
“Informatization” of value creation
• In developed countries, rapid move away from
domination of industrial & goods production
• Toward:
– Convenience; taste; access; experience; time & lifestyle
management; filtering; decision-making; organizing;
leisure management; intangibles; communities of interest;
relationships; intimacy
• Rifkin The Age of Access
– “When virtually every aspect of our being becomes a paid-for activity, human
life itself becomes the ultimate commercial product, and the commercial sphere
becomes the final arbiter of our personal and collective existence”
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 6
Informatization (2)
• Two models of move to postindustrial services (Hardt
& Negri Empire)
– Rapid decline in industrial jobs to rapid rise in service
sector, esp managing capital (US, UK, Canada)
– Info-industrial
• Industrial employment declines less rapidly
• Informatization closely integrated to existing industrial production
(Japan & Germany)
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 7
“Immaterial labour”
• Hardt & Negri Empire; Multitude
• line between goods & services vanishes
•
“Interactive and cybernetic machines become a new prosthesis integrated into our
bodies and minds and a lens through which to redefine our bodies and minds
themselves. The anthropology of cyberspace is really a recognition of the new
human condition.”
• Three types
– Manufacturing redefined as service
– Analytical & symbolic tasks
• Creative & intelligent manipulation (symbolic analysts)
• Routine symbolic tasks
– Production and manipulation of affect; human contact;
labour in bodily mode
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 8
Intellectual property
• More individuals able to produce on their own
• E.g. music, filmmaking
– Technology allows personal production & reproduction
• Key elements still missing
–
–
–
–
–
Capital for startup
Livelihood
Input costs
Career management
Distribution of outputs
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 9
Intellectual property (2)
• Like quicksilver
– Technology makes it easier to produce; but harder to hold
and capture value
• 2 problems:
– Value flows to those with power, organization and access
– New technology allows leakage of valorization potential
(piracy)
• Creators of intellectual property constant struggle to
capture value of i.p.
– Or at least conscious & positive “giving it away”
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 10
Production less dominant; others
moments more
• Consumption patterns more important in valorizing
surplus value
• “…capital is driven to successively wider and deeper dimensions of control
– toward the creation of a social factory. Marx had written of capital’s
tendency to “subsume” not only the workplace but also society as a whole
into its processes. Extending this analysis Tronti…argued that capital’s
growing resort to state intervention and technocratic control had created a
situation where “the entire society now functions as a moment of
production.”
• Growing gap so chasing refinement & distinction
among wealthier
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 11
Other moments….
• Production & reproduction of labour power more
important
– Deepening crisis of labour power
• Internationalization of division of labour
• Underdevelopment of development; development of
underdevelopment
• Despite rises in productivity; earnings stall or drop
• “Crisis state”
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 12
Unravelling of vertical firm into networks
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 13
Networks (2)
• Compared to old hierarchical firm, networks look
deceivingly egalitarian
• Flow of value to power
• Castells Materials for exploratory theory of the
network:
– “Value in the production process depends essentially on the position occupied
by each specific labor or each specific firm in the value chain. The rule is
individualization of the relationship between capital and labor….
– “critical cleavage within labor becomes the one between networked labor
and switched-off labor, which ultimately becomes non-labor.
– “second, fundamental cleavage, between self-programmable labor and
generic labor. For self-programmable labor, its individual interest is better
served by enhancing its role in performing the goals of the network…While for
generic labor, its strategy is survival: the key issue becomes not be be degraded
to the realm of discarded or devalued labor, either by automation, or
globalization, or both.”
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 14
Value flow in network
• Less upward to top of hierarchical organization
• More inward to key nodes
– Control access to inputs and access to markets
– Best able to capture intellectual property value
– Like a gravity drawing wealth
• From single dependency to multitudinous
dependencies
• Dependency influences flow of value
• Interests of network members sometimes coincide,
sometimes clash
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 15
Taxi drivers
Other
Taxi drivers
Municipal
Regulators
Dispatch
Companies
Provincial
Regulators
Automobile
Commercial
inputs
Other accessories
Gasoline
Parts & repairs
Customers
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 16
Musicians
Other
musicians
Schools
Impresarios/purchasers
Government
agencies
Managers
Distributors
Automobile
Commercial
inputs
Other musicians
Equipment
Record
Labels
Intellectual Property
Capture Agencies
Subordination - CRIMT
Instruments
Fans
& fashion
Larry Haiven
Booking
agents
Slide 17
Intellectual Property Capture Agencies
• Mechanical royalty: from sale of
manufactured and distributed
phonorecord
• Synchronization royalty: when
song is in commercials, TV
shows or films (requires a
licence)
• Performance royalty: whenever
the song is aired on radio, TV, in
bars, restaurants, malls, over the
telephone while you’re waiting
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Cdn Musical
Reproduction
Rights Agency –
MCRRA – funded by
commission of proceeds of
licenses issued
Society of Composers,
Authors and Music
Publishers of
Canada – SOCAN; &
similar agencies in the US
& Europe
Slide 18
Film & video artisans
Assistant
Location
Manager
Assistant
Accountant
Chief
Accountant
Bookkeeper
Picture Editor
Location
Manager
Supervising
Picture Editor
Assistant
Production
Manager
Production
Manager
Unit
Manager
Producer
Sound
Editor
1st
Assistant
Director
Production
Designer
2nd Assistant
Director
Art Director
Director
3rd Assistant
Director
Trainee Assistant
Director
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
1st Assistant
Picture Editor
2nd Assistant
Picture Editor
Set
Designer
2nd Asst
Art Director
1st Asst
Art Director
Slide 19
Collectivities of labour
• Wagnerist model based on old hierarchical structure
• Enmeshed in network webs, workers must and do
form own collectivities
• Unions only one type of collectivity
• Others e.g.
–
–
–
–
–
Cooperatives
Professional societies
Intellectual property capture agencies
Ethnic, gender, religious, cultural associations
Consumer organizations
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 20
Unions need to….(and/or)
• Realize changes transforming value creation
• Increase scope of what they do for members
– Beyond workplace – citizens, consumers, neighbours,
identities, self-employment
– Help capture intellectual property rights
• Increase scope of membership to those outside
standard workplaces & employment
– To non-standard-employed
– Even to self-employed
• Work with unions of non-standard work
arrangements
• Work/contend with other interest associations
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 21
Stone From Widgets to Digits
• A new craft unionism
– Organize high tech workforce on basis of common skills
– Offer services “employers” not willing to offer
• Story of NABET vs. IATSE
– NABET followed rigid, Wagnerist model as film & video industry
moving away from it
» Firm-centred, stable employment, collective terms
» Bypassed by tricks & technology
– IATSE
» More fluid operation
» Represented members as insider conractors
» “Embedded contract bargaining”
» Encouraged mutual self-help
• Geographically-based citizen unionism
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 22
Network unionism
• Personal service contracts
• Fight for status of artist legislation
• Framework agreement – contract only union labour;
establish minimum or “scale”
• Provide boilerplate contracts & advice
• Trust funds from industry agreeements
• Hiring hall
• Gig-based benefits (pension, insurance)
• Member-paid benefits (insurance, discounts)
• Cross-border issues
• Professional development & assistance
• Public policy advocacy
Subordination - CRIMT
Larry Haiven
Slide 23