The Telecommunications Industry: Questions of State, Politics and Labour

Abstract

U. Huws, S. Podro, E. Gunnarsson, T. Weijers, K. Arvanitaki and V. Trova (1996). Teleworking and Gender, University of Sussex, Brighton: Insititute for Employment Studies, Report 317, paper £22.00, 78 pp.U. Huws, with S. Podro, E. Gunnarsson, T. Weijers, K. Arvanitaki and V. Trova (1997). Teleworking: Guidelines for Good Practice, University of Sussex, Brighton: Insititute for Employment Studies, Report 329, paper £20.00, 37 pp.H. Katz (ed.) (1997). Telecommunications: Restructuring Work and Employment Relations Worldwide, Ithaca and London: ILR Press (Cornell University Press), $49.95, 401 pp.The telecommunications industry has undergone massive change over the last two decades, raising questions about ownership, state intervention, technological change and future patterns of work. Historically, telecommunications companies have been part of the service sector, usually state-owned, and a highly regulated part of the modernising project of the twentieth century. However, beginning in the late 1970s with the elaboration of the neo-liberal political project, telecommunications companies became the object of government attention. They were subject to state re-regulation, as the industry internationalised, and patterns of work organisation began to change. As a consequence of this process of change, it is no longer clear where the boundaries of the industry lie, as telephony and related services become part of a broad-based computing, inform-ation and telecommunications industry (CIT). At the end of the twentieth century, CIT symbolises the advent of the service and consumer society, replacing the emblematic place of the automobile industry in mass production society.