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What Will We Do?: The Destruction of

Occupational Identities in the Knowledge-Based Economy :: Monthly Review

Ursula Huws

Wh at Will We Do ?: Th e Destr uction of Occupatio nal Iden tities in th e Kn owledg e-BasedEconomy

Ursula Huws is pro fessor of international labor studies at the Work ing Lives ResearchInstitute at London Metropol itan University and is director of th e research co nsultancy

Analytica. She is th e auth or ofThe Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World(Mon thly Review Press , 2003).

Faced with the difficulty of placin g a stran ger, the most common opening gambit is toask , What do you do? Except perhaps in a few small hunter-gatherer tribes, a person soccupation is on e of the most impor tant delineators o f social identity. In manyEuro pean cultures this is refl ected in family names. People cal led Sch midt, Smith,Herrero, or Lefebvre, for instance, had an cestor s who were iron workers. Wainwrig htsand Wag ners ar e descended from wagon makers, and so on with the Mull ers (Mill ers),Boulan g ers (Bakers), Guerr eros (s oldiers), and al l th e myriad Potters, Butchers,Carters, Coopers, Carpenters, Fishers, Shepherds, and Cook s whos e names can be

found in any North American pho ne book.Th e pheno meno n is by no means unique to cultures of Euro pean o rig in. In South Asiath e division of l abor evolved to become so embedded in o ther s ocial structures th atoccupational identity was somethin g you were bor n into. In th e wor ds of SudheerBirodk ar , occupational specialisation was the essence of the sub-division of the twolower Varnas (castes) of th e Vaishyas an d Shudras into the various Jatis (occupationalsub-castes).Infr ing ement of caste rules of vocation could lead to expulsion; thus aChamar (sh oe maker) h ad to r emain a Chamar al l h is life. If he tried to become a Kumar(potter) o r Darji (tailor) h e was in dang er of being expelled from the Chamar cas te andobviously under th e caste rules he would not be admitted into any other caste in spite ofhis h aving the kno wledge of an y other vocation.1

Such discrete craft-based occupation al identities began to break down under th e impactof automation and the intr oduction of the factor y system. Inherent in capitalistrelations of pr oduction, according to Marxian theory, is the general tendency to reduce

workers to an undifferentiated mas s, who can easily replace each oth era workingclass or pro letariat. There is a direct relation sh ip between the degree of skil l required toperform any given task and th e scarcity of that sk ill an d the ability of the wor kers whopossess it to neg otiate with emplo yers (or , in th e case of the self-employed, withcustomers) for hig h wag es and decent work ing conditions. It is thus in th e interests ofcapital to have a working class whose skill s ar e as g eneric and substitutable as pos sible.

Workers who have only g eneric skil ls are ch eap to empl oy and can be g ot r id of if they

beco me tr oublesome because substitutes can easily be found.

For s ocialists, occupational identity (constructed as it general ly is ar ound thepossession of par ticular skill s, knowledge, or experience) thus presents so mething of aconundr um. On the on e hand, it forms a basic or gan izational building block ; on the
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other it is a barrier to the development of broader cl ass con sciousness. Traditionall ymost (though n ot all) o rg anizations of work ers have gr own up around specificoccupational identities in g ro uping s which ar e simultan eously incl usive, in the sensethat th ey generate strong internal sol idarities, and exclusive, in the sense th at they relyfor their effectiveness on s tron g boundar ies and restrictions o n entr y to the g roup.

Some of the mechanisms for l imiting entry to the occupation, such as appr enticeships,can be traced back to precapitalist for ms of org anization, such as g uilds, who semembers were often oblig ed to take oath s to pr eserve the secrets of th e trade inelabor ate initiation r ituals an d to eng ag e in o ther practices which con sol idated the

bonds between members but excluded outsiders. Even much newer occupatio n-basedg roupings often exhibit stron g social h omogeneity in th eir membersh ip, giving ag endered and ethn ic char acter to who is admitted and who excluded. Th is gives them adivisive character in relation to working people as a lar g er class.

However, through their stron g org anization an d ability to r esist being pushed ar oundby th e employers, such groups may pl ay a pr ogressive r ole in win ning hig her wages orimpro ved conditions fo r so me segments of the work for ce or , more bro adly, they maylead campaign s fo r pr otective legislation or welfar e provisions which benefit thepopulation in g eneral. This h as especiall y been the case in countries, such as G ermany,

where social -demo cr atic po litical parties have taken th e lead in developing sector-based, r ath er th an occupatio n-based co llective bargain ing.

Alth ough th e wel fare states th at developed dur ing th e postSeco nd World War per iodin advanced capitalist countr ies took distinctive for ms, al l o f them undo ubtedly owemany of their achievements to the efforts of workers or ganizations th at were stron genough to compel employers to share some of the pro ductivity gains of masspro duction. As a result, emplo yers and states agr eed to a kind of compro mise in whichthey lessened their antag onism to workers or ganizations an d labor al lowed employersto manag e wor kplaces without cons tant thr eat of disruption.2 Workers organ izationsdid differ in different countries; they were either explicitly occupation -based, as in the

craft-based trade unions that were prevalent in the United King dom, or based in moreg eneral trade union s l ed by labor elites with stron g occupational identities.3 It should

be noted, however , that this same per iod was also ch aracter ized by labor mar kets whichwere str ong ly seg mented by g ender and ethnicity, as wel l as bein g fr actured a long man yother dimension s.

Skill do es not just have a double-edged char acter for labor; it has an equally ambiguousmeaning for capital. The innovation pro cess which fo rms the necessar y motor ofchan ge fo r capitalist development is deeply contradictor y in its need for s kill . Before atask can be automated, it is necessar y to draw on th e expertise and experience ofsomeone who kn ows exactly ho w to do it to anatomize every step in the pro cess and

work out h ow it can be standardized and h ow a machine can be pr og rammed to repeatthese steps. Once expropr iated, the kn owledg e and experience (or craft) of theseworkers can be dispen sed with , an d cheaper, less-skil led workers can be substituted tooperate the new machines.

But the need for s kil ls does not stop there. Human kno wledge, ing enuity, and creativityare absol utely essential to invent and design new products and pro cesses, customizethem for new purpo ses, communicate and provide content for a wide ran ge of productsand services that keep the wheels of capital ism turn ing , and care for , educate, info rm,distract, and entertain the population . Some of th ese function s ar e themselves subjectedto pro cesses whereby the kno wledge of the wor kers is expropr iated and incorpo rated

into co mputer programs or databases so th at the tasks can be carried out by fewer, orless- skilled, work ers. Here, for instan ce, we could include the kn owledg e of specialistsworking on technical -support h elp desks who are en co urag ed to put th e answers tofrequently-as ked questions o nto databases that can be accessed by mor e junior fr on tlinestaff, or the k no wledge o f university professor s who are ask ed to convert their lecturesinto con tent fo r e-learn ing courses. But as o ne task becomes r outinized and deskilled,
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a n ew coh ort o f knowledge workers is r equired to devise the next stage in thecommodification process.4

Arg uments about wh eth er th e developmen t o f an ever more technolog ical ly compl excapitalism results in deskill ing or reskill ing are therefore beside the point. The natureof inno vation is such that both pro cesses h appen simultaneously: each n ewdevelopment in the technical division o f labor entails a n ew spl it between h ead andhands. In o rder to r outinize the jobs of on e gro up of work ers, ano ther, g enerallysmaller, g ro up with so me sort o f overview of the process is necessary. As wor kers r esistor adapt to chang e and or ganize to protect their interests, new occupations ar econ tinuously being for med and ol der ones re-for med. Just as occupational identitiescan be said to be both exclusionary and in clusive, they can als o be said to be in acontinuous pr ocess of cons truction and deconstruction. Employers h ave to balancetheir interest in cheapening the value of l abor with their need to ensure that there is arenewable supply of well-educated and creative work ers with fr esh n ew ideas. In somesituations, they also want to retain pr oprietary contr ol o ver sk ills an d knowledge thatg ive them a competitive edge over rival companies.

It can be arg ued that traditional Marxian th eory underestimates the impor tance of sk illin sh aping the ways in which labor mark ets function . The reality that h as evolved is

con siderably mor e complex than th e class ic picture of a polarization of so ciety betweena bourg eoisiethat owns the means of production, control s the circulation of g oodsand capital, and dictates the functioning of th e stateand an ever-more h omogeno uspro letarian mass, whos e members can be kept in lin e by the kn owledg e that any worker

who demands too much can be repl aced by someone el se from th e r eserve army of theunemployed who can do th e same work more ch eaply or more compliantly. On thecontrary, the evolution o f an ever-more co mplex technical division o f l abor h as cr eateda con stantly chan ging demand fo r an extremely diverse rang e of skill s, many of whichare specific to particular stag es of industrial develo pment, particular sectors,pro prietory pro cesses, pro ducts, or even specific companies.

However, despite this multiplication of tasks in a division o f l abor which is increasing lydispersed both con tractuall y and g eogr aphicall y, the concept of th e reserve army is stilla relevant on e that helps us make sense of many recent developments in labor mark ets,in th is era in which the labor-employer-state compromise (sometimes described as theFordist deal) h as either col laps ed or is under severe strain. But in order to tease outthese understan ding s, we need a mor e differentiated idea of the ro le played byoccupational identities and sk ill in the functioning of l abor markets. We also n eed toloo k more closely at the role played by the state in pro viding g eneric skills to a

workfo rce which is required to fill niches in an incr easingly co mpl ex and turbulenteconomy and th e role these generic skills play in eroding occupational boundaries andundermining the power of or ganized labor.

A startin g po int for th is an alysis is th e idea of a labor mar ket itself. There are of coursemany ways in which the very concept of a market in labor is questionable. Th ere is anextreme asymmetry between th e char acteristics of l abor and th ose of capital which makethe trade in labor quite different fro m trade in oth er goo ds and services. The human

body, the basic unit which is offered on a labor mar ket, h as finite l imits in ter ms o f itsstrength, endurance, and ag ility, as well as in th e number of co ns ecutive hours it cankeep going, which ar e different in char acter fr om the employing companys resources,

which can be stretched as far as th e l imits of its access to capital and r aw materials.Labor is no t physicall y mobile in th e way that capital is, and, in th is era of fr ee trade

when capital can cr oss natio nal border s at will , labor is str ong ly constr ained in its

ability to tap into oppo rtunities in o ther co untries. It is often easier fo r your body partsto cros s a n ational fron tier after you are dead than it is for you as a l iving person toenter that country lega ll y to seek work.

Labor markets ar e also distorted by many oth er factors including monopol ies an dmonopson ies (a s ing le buyer o f labor power), cartels, various forms of al liance among
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businesses or labor, state inter ventio n, an d o th er co nstr aints on th e availabil ity of timeor mobility (such as th e need to carr y out unpaid reproductive wor k) which reinfor ceg endered and racial divisions in the workforce. A mark et in which certain jobs are on lyavailable to men, or to white people, or to people of a certain religion , canno t by anymeans be characterized as a free market. The most importan t factor of al l, however, inlimiting access to jobs and pr eventing the development of pure competition in themarket may be emplo yers needs for wor kers with specific skil ls in a hig hl y complexand increasing ly glo baltechnical division of labor.

One of the most impor tant attempts to retheor ize labor markets was Peter Doeringerand Michael Piores gr oundbreaking book,Internal Labor Markets and Manpower

Analysis (Lexing ton Books, 1971), in which th ey develo ped the idea ofduallabor markets.In this model, jobs fall rough ly into two categor ies: those in primary or intern allabor markets an d thos e in secondar y or extern al labor markets. Internal labormarkets, they argued, are ins ulated from external mark et forces by intern al r ule systems.Employers who need particular skill s, tuned to their own s pecific working practices, areprepared to offer inducements to keep loyal work ers, including hig her wag es, pensions,ho lidays, and a rang e of other fr ing e benefits. Internal markets, they went on to say, aretypically hig hl y structured and h ierar chical, with intern al advancement paths, relyingheavily on firm-specific kno wledge. In these intern al mark ets, emplo yers ar e prepar edto invest substantially in in- company training in or der to achieve high levels ofpro ductivity. In other words, the levels o f wages and conditions ar e different from tho se

which would pertain in a pure external mar ket. Entr y points into th ese in ter nal labormarkets ar e har d to squeeze thro ugh, but once inside wor kers enjoy a number o f

benefits . In seco ndary or exter nal labor mar kets th e unspo ken deal between capital an dlabor is very different: emplo yers do n ot make a lo ng -term commitment to the

workfo rce but ar e prepar ed to accept l ower levels of co mmitment and productivity fromworkers whom th ey feel fr ee to lay off at wil l . Typical workers in in ter nal labor mar ketsat the end of the 1960s when Doering er and Piore were writing would h ave been civilservants, or emplo yees of lar g e companies such as IBM or General Motors; typical

workers in exter nal labor mar kets would h ave been janito rs or waiters, or self-empl oyed

people who offered their s kill s to a ran ge of different customers.

It soon became clear that th is dual model was too simple to explain th e complexity ofwag e differ entia ls acr oss whole diver se economies. Doering er and Piores insig hts wereelaborated by other an alysts, to develop models o f multiple or segmentedlabormarkets.6 Th e concept of segmented labor markets recog nizes that there may benumerous different labor markets in which wages an d con ditions are sh aped by aninterpl ay of factor s including national education s ystems, industrial s tructures, culturaltraditions, labor protection legisla tion, and the ways in which workers ar e org anized.

In retrospect, we can s ee that the intern al l abor mark ets descr ibed by Doering er and

Piore an d their foll owers were not absolute and unch ang ing features of th e econo miclands cape. Rather , we may perceive them as specific to a certain phase of capitalism,namely, the period of postwar compro mise. Altho ugh th e death o f this period is o ftenpro claimed, we canno t be certain th at elements o f it will no t con tinue to be useful oreven n ecessar y for capitalism in th e future. However, it is reaso nable to con clude that itis past its heyday. In order to understand ho w and why it has col lapsed it is perhapsuseful to lo ok in a little more detail at ho w it functioned in its g olden era.

First, it is necessary to emphasize that the special deal struck by capital with its essentialcore workers inside large organizations only functioned effectively because it did notcover al l work ers. Altho ug h th ere were historical moments when labor aristocracies

used their power to win bro ad gains for much lar g er portions o f the work ing class, thelucky insiders were kept aware of their privileged status an d, on the whol e, kept in or derby th e knowledge th at l ife out th ere in th e seco ndary labor mar ket could be harsh.Patterns of inclusion and exclusion were often r einfo rced by ethn ic and g enderdifferences. Second, it is impor tant to remember that the pos twar model was notuniversal , but took different forms in different co untries, sh aped by their particular


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industrial structures an d h istories, including the specific ways that workersor ganizations h ad evolved. In G ermany, for instan ce, a stro ng social-democraticmovement push ed for sector-level coll ective barg ainin g agreements which meant thatthe insider deal was extended to all workers in a particular sector, rather than just tocertain o ccupational g roups (as was common where craft-based union s were stron g, forinstance in Britain) or in certain companies (as was the case where company-level

bargain ing was do minan t). David Coates has pr ovided us with an exten sive analysis ofthe economy-wide implications o f such differences which have pro duced distinctive

types of welfare systems, pattern s of in vestment, degrees and types of g overnmentintervention, and particular training and qualification systems which are in turnreflected in the ways occupations are defined.6 Various types of insider deal are alsocomplemented by specific types of outsider deal , and this in turn means that th ecol lapse of the postwar co mpromise takes a unique form in each countr y.

In or der to try to model so me of th ese differences, I use a diagram adapted fro mRosemary Cro mpton (see below) to integr ate dual labor mark et theory with gender andclass theory.7 I have found this diagr am useful for an alyzing th e differences betweenlabor mark ets in different countries, and particular ly for examining ho w they chan ge intimes of rapid structural and technolo g ical chan ge, such as the one we are livingthro ugh righ t now. This diagr am takes intern al an d extern al l abor mark ets as twoextremes, sho wn here on the righ t and the left of the diagram (allo wing for thepossibility that there may be oth er intermediate types of labor mark et segments placedsomewhere between these extremes). It then adds ano ther dimension , that of skil l,sho wn here on the top and bottom of th e diagram. It sho uld in principle be possible toplot an y kind of paid work somewhere in r elation to these two axes. For ins tance ahig hl y paid executive of a larg e company or a senior civil servant would be somewherenear th e top on the righ t-hand side, near cor ner B. But a hig hl y paid freelanceaccountant working for a number of different clients, altho ug h still near th e top interms of skill level, would be over to th e left near corn er A. Down at the bottom on therig ht-h and side, near cor ner D, would be a new recruit or an apprentice at the bottom ofthe occupational ladder in a l arg e stable institution (e.g ., a train ee mail so rter). Over on

the bottom left, near cor ner C, would be a seasonal fr uit-picker or a part-time,tempor ary burger-fl ipper. Again , there are many intermediate skill po sitions .

In a country like Germany,with its co rpo ratistpolitics, historicall ystrong internal labormarkets, considerableemployer investment intraining and tightly-defined occupational

demarcations , and awel fare system closelylinked to emplo yer-basedplan s, we would expect ahigh pro portion of the

working po pul ation to beg rouped towards therigh t-hand side of thisdiag ram. A typical career tra jectory would be to star t down in corn er D and work o nes

way up toward B, by taking th e tr ain ing co urses pr ovided by th e employer and followingthe internal company rules.

In a more liberal labor market, such as th at of th e United States or th e UnitedKing dom, the char acteristic pattern would place a much h igh er pro portion of the

working po pul ation over on th e left-hand s ide of the diagramworking co ntin gentl y asself-employed individuals, or as temporary or part-time workers with little long-term

job secur ity and few chan ces fo r pr omotio n with in th e firm or tr aining beyond the
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permutations, do not add up to stable occupational identities. In fact, they imply a wor ldin which there ar e no l imits, in the sense of this is what I do; but this is what I dont doas part o f my job, where each job descr iption is in finitely elastic and there is never apoint at which the wor ker can s it back and think, At last, Im trained. I have arecog nized occupation . Now I can relax and just g et on with the job. But there iscon vincin g evidence that we have no w entered a ph ase of g lo bal capitalism where, justlike the need for universal literacy in the nin eteenth century, there is no w a universalneed for new generic attitudes an d abilities. And, just as in th e nineteenth century, state

ag encies have leaped to the assistance of th e employers to pr ovide them. On ly this timeit isnt within national borders, or competing empires, but on a g lo bal scale.

It is never easy to disentangle capitalisms need to expand in order to fin d new mark etsfro m its need to tap in to new sources o f labor. Indeed, the two are intimatelyinterconn ected. However it is har d to deny that the curr ent educational po licies ofsupran ational bodies like the Worl d Bank and th e European Union , as well as tho se ofthe individual n ations that are recipients of th eir aid, have, if not as an explicit aim, atleast the effect of creating a g lobal r eserve army of knowledge wor kers. In the process,any market advantag es held by tho se who previously had more or l ess exclusive accessto this k no wledge ar e destroyed.

At a national level , th ese attempts take different forms in different developed co untr ies.For instance in Austria, in keeping with th e corpor atist model, the g overn ment has setup arbeitsstiftungen, labor foundations, which provide training for unemployed peoplein clo se cooperation with local employers. In o ne study by Hans Georg Zilian, in thedistrict of Leoben, it was found that 38 percent of the trainees ended their spell o funemplo yment by returning to th eir former emplo yers . Zil ian co ncl uded that thesefoundations act as h olding tanks for the employers, where work ers can be retrained atthe taxpayers expens e until they are needed again.8 In relation to our diag ram, suchactivity can be seen as taking pl ace near th e D cor ner , with th e state col luding withemplo yers to co-r egulate entry to what, tho ug h h eavily eroded, could still be reg ardedas an intern al labor mark et. In less r egulated econo mies, training may be mor e likely to

be car ried out at the expense and initiative of th e in dividual , an d it can be co nceptualizedas taking place over on the left-han d side of the diagr am, among the casualized work ers

who mak e up the AC axis. In some cases th e subsidy fr om th e state to th e employer maybe less direct th an simply payin g fo r th e tr ain ing. Regar dl ess of th e precise role of thestate, there is in g eneral more and mor e emphasis in job advertisements as well as intraining courses on the need for e-skill s and digital literacy. Acro ss th e Euro peanUnion, the Euro pean Co mputer Driving Licens e (ECDL) certifies that its owner h asacquired basic computer sk ill s.

At an inter natio nal level , aid to developing co untr ies fo r educatio n is incr easinglyexplicitly related to the development of a g lo bal kn owledg e-based econo my. The

World Bank, fo r instance, l inks its aid cl osely to what it calls K4D, knowledge fordevelopment, in pr og rams that link educational refor m with the extension oftelecommunications networks, encouraging entrepreneurship, and an efficientinn ovation system of firms, research centers , universities (and) con sultants.9 The aidpro grams of the Euro pean Union have similar o bjectives, for in stan ce the EUs 2001pol icy statementStrengthening Cooperation with Third Countries10 states that th e aim ofits education pol icy isto impro ve human reso urces management an d to make the EU apowerful actor in education , train ing and R&D in a competitive wor ld econ omy.11

Such prog rams often explicitly demand a dismantling of national qualification systemsand links to international courses and curr icula, incl uding th e fran chising of courses

run by universities an d coll eges in do no r countries, the compulso ry teaching of Eng lishin primary schoo ls, and, sometimes, a second European lan guage in s econdary scho ols ,as well as the now familiar emphasis on e-skill s, digital literacy, emplo yability, andentrepreneursh ip. Multinational companies are al so active in establishing g lobal s killstandar ds, for ins tance by providing certification courses in the use of propr ietarysoftware, like Micros oft or SAP, or don ating har dware or telecommunications to
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scho ols and co lleg es to familiarize students with their pro ducts.

In the EU, under a series o f eEurope Action Plans, vario us tar g ets for achievingg eneral levels o f co mputer science attainment, alon g side other kno wledge societyindicators , such as l evels of Intern et access an d usage of e-commerce, were set for th eten new member s tates that joined the EU in 2005, as well as for Romania, Bulgaria, andTurkey, which are still waiting in th e queue to join. The n ew member s tates in Centraland Eastern Europe, incl uding Hung ary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slo venia, Slo vakia,Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, are alr eady taking on the rol e of a cheap back office forthe r est of th e EU.12 The third countries referred to in th is pol icy document con stitutean o uter ring of countr ies beyond th ese: Albania, Bosn ia and Herzeg ovina, Croatia, theFederal Republic o f Yug osl avia, the For mer Yug osl av Republic o f Macedonia, Armenia,

Azerbaijan , Bel ar us, G eorg ia, Kazakhistan, Kyrg yzstan, Moldo va, th e Russ ianFederation, Tajikistan , Turk menistan , Ukr aine, Uzbekistan , Mon gol ia, Alg eria, Eg ypt,Israel, Jordan , Lebanon . Moro cco, Syria, Tunisia, and Palestine.

As th ese programs are rolled out, th e popul atio ns of these co untr ies can incr easin gly beset along side those of established offsh or ing destinations s uch as India, thePhilippines, or Barbados fo r th e Eng lish- speaking world, Tunisia, Moro cco, orMartinique for French speakers, or th e Dominican Republic, Mexico, or Co lo mbia for

Spanish -speakers in the gl obal race to the bottom for info rmation wor kers. With high -capacity telecommunications infrastr ucture in place, and work ers who speak th e g loballan guages and can use the incr easingl y standar d gl obal software packag es, it will bepossible to switch work s eamlessly fro m work er to work er and place to place in theprocess which is increasingl y known as g lobal so urcing a complicated mixing andmatching of task s fro m a number o f different lo cations in specific configurations to suita particular business cl ient.

It is often assumed by wor kers in the developed econ omies that the point o f movingwork offshore is to el imin ate th e jobs back home. But this is to miss th e po int. Thepurpos e of a reserve army is n ot to take over all the work but to act as a disciplinary

for ce. Th e actual n umber of jobs being relo cated overseas is tiny compared with th eno rmal churn in national l abor markets. National employers still n eed skill ed

workers in th eir home ter rito ry, near to where th eir cl ien ts are based, and mo st arereluctant to offsh or e their more sensitive core research an d development wor k. And inany case, many of the sectors in which o ffsho ring is taking place, such as call centers,are still expanding . Companies also , of course, need a ho me mark et for th eir go ods,something which would no t exist if there were mass unemplo yment there. Th e U.S.mark et is still many times larg er than , for instance, that in Ch ina or India.

Wh ile not denyin g th e real misery caused by th e unempl oyment wh ich is cer tain ly takingplace, it is nevertheless impor tant to remember th at the most po werful effect of

offs ho ring is no t to eliminate jobs in th e United States or in Europe, it is to ch eapenthem. If workers kn ow that the skill s they have are also h eld by hundreds of th ousandsof o ther people aro und th e worl d, then it is very difficult to o rg anize on the basis oftheir unique occupational identities. And if they are aware that it would be perfectlyfeasible, technol og ically speaking , to move their jobs offsh ore, then this creates apotent disincentive to ask for improvements in wag es and conditions or to r efuse to takeon extra tas ks . Just the possibility that the job mightmove is eno ugh to destro y theirsecurity and work ers barg aining po wer. While their employers still n eed creativity andkn owledge and, often, high ly specialized skills, these are less and less likely to be found

within fixed and stable occupatio nal identities.

In the destruction of th ese identities, are we witnessin g the final death o f the postwarhig h-wage, hig h-con sumption deal and with it the end of job security? Or are we simplyliving thr ough yet ano ther twist in th e develo pment of capitalism? Will we see a col laps eof o rg anized labor into protectionism and r acism, or will workers ing enuity and abilityto adapt and respond to new chal leng es lead to the development of new forms ofor ganizing acros s national fron tiers? And, when in the future people ask us, What do


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you do? what wil l we r epl y?

Notes

1. http://www.hindubooks.org/sudheer_birodkar/hindu_history/castejati-varna.html, May 27, 2005.

2. Gsta Esping-Anderson, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge:Polity Press , 1990).

3. I am indebted to Markus Promberg er (e-mail cor respo ndence, May 31, 2005) forpointing out the h istorical importan ce of occupational ly defined elites in theGerman trade union movement.

4. For a more detailed explication of th e commodification pro cess see Ursula Huws,The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World(New Yor k: Mon thl yReview Press, 2003).

5. Jill Rubery & Fran k Wilkinson ,Labour Market Structure, Industrial Organisationand Low Pay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

6. David Co ates,Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the Modern Era(Cambridge: Pol ity Press, 2000).

7. Adapted fro m Rosemary Cro mpton & Kay San derso n, Gendered Jobs and SocialChange (Lon don : Unwin Hyman, 1990).

8. Hans G eorg Zil ian, Welfare and emplo yment flexibility within th e new labourmarket, paper pr esented at Labour and Welfare in Euro pe in the Infor mationEcon omy: Is there a dan ger of digital divide? Work sh op, LAW Project, March 1,2005, Brussels.

9. http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2005/index.htm

10. I am indebted to Yigit Karg in for bring ing this to my attention.

11.

http://euro pa.eu.int/scadpl us/leg/en/ch a/c11053.htm12. Ursula Huws, Jr g Fl ecker, & Simone Dahlmann, Outsourcing of ICT and Related

Services in the EU, European Monitoring Centre for Chan g e, European Foundationfor the Impro vement o f Living and Wor king Con ditions, Dublin , December, 2004.
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