INTRODUCTION:

FIGHTING FOR THE DRIVER'S SEAT ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

The flow of international capital and the privatization of telephone systems advances around the globe are part of the continuing paving of the information superhighway, a trend of the nineties which, according to Dave Newman, a technician for NYNEX, actually started in the mideighties with the historic break up of AT&T and subsequent deregulation and commodification of the industry. Newman, a CWA member from Local 1101 was a keynote speaker at the Second International Telecommunications Workers Conference. He noted, however, that this industrial reorganization is shaping up in a two sided spiral with higher profits for shareholders and fewer jobs for workers. Despite record profits by the telecommunication giants in recent years, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost or compromised.

These compelling arguments prompted over three dozen union activists from the telecommunications industry to get together in the U.S.Mexico border City of Tijuana the last weekend of October to discuss organizing strategies in hopes to at least circumvent the industry's agenda from a North American labor union perspective.

Mireya Scarone from Hermosillo, Sonora and member of Mexican Union STRM, said that education and organizing among union members and consumers is key in order to counteract the corporate advances, "This is pretty much like the promises of the nuclear age", said Scarone speaking of the information age, "if we don't harness it, it could mean disaster for many, instead of wonderland 2000." Presently, STRM and CWA are wielding an organizing drive in MaxiSwitch in Sonora, northern Mexico, one of the few, but consistent growing number of, Mexico/U.S. union organizing projects.

The conference participants agreed on an international approach to organizing starting at their home base. One of the first projects was to support the current U.S. information campaign by members of ASTTEL in their struggle against the privatization of the telephone system in El Salvador.

Participants were people from nine different unions and four organizations; TWU, CEP, IBEW, and ACT&UW from Canada; CWA and IBEW from the United States; STRM, SINATIMTEL and SINDETEL from Mexico; SUD from France; Labor Notes/TIE, TECSCHANGE and CISPES from the United States, and CILAS from Mexico.

The conference was coordinated by Labor Notes/TIE for the purpose of facilitating interaction and, most important, discussion by activists on these pressing issues. "The fact that I attended the first (TIE) conference in 94, enabled me to survive the reengineering push at SaskTel" says Gorden Young from Canadian Communications, Energy and Paper Workers union (CEP). "So, I know how important this information is for my other colleagues, too."

BACKGROUND:

The first TIE Telecommunications conference was held in Oaxtepec, Mexico in 1994 where sixty people from Canada, the United States, Mexico and El Salvador shared their concerns as workers in the same industry and in many cases from the same companies.

The idea of the second TIE telecommunication workers' conference was first of all, to follow up with the resolutions and goals which came out of the first conference. This basic framework included mainly to keep the international organization alive, evaluate the achievements from the first experience, follow up on some of the original goals, and reevaluate the issues from a more timely perspective.

The planning of the second event took into consideration that two years had already passed and that it was important to reconvene soon even if not a large number of people would participate. There was also the notion that a smaller group would allow for a better quality of participation.

PLANNING:

Direct contact via phone and email with telecom activists from the three countries provided a number of issues to be incorporated in the agenda and a subsequent number of contacts and resources to design the program.

In Mexico, CILAS as an organization, was instrumental in organizing the Mexican participation. In the US. and Canada a group of individuals were identified as the coordinating committee which guided the process until its completion. All these people were key in each of the three countries helping with the promotion and recruitment as well as with the design of the project.

RECRUITMENT:

Promotion and recruitment was done through Labor Notes and other alternative media; mail outs and subsequent phoning to participants of the first conference; Labor NotesCWA subscribers; ABC, a group of activists within CWA and the Canadian Alliance of Telecommunications Unions. Promotion and recruitment also took place at the 1996 CWA constitutional convention in Detroit. Towards the end of the recruiting phase, almost 60 people were listed as participants, including members of the coordinating committee, and staff. However, in the end only 43 people attended.

As the demographics show, the international union community was well represented; there was a good gender balance and although there was a good number of Latina/os, there was only one African American; but perhaps the most significant figure is the large number of newcomers to the conference which made the majority of participants. Union representation came generally from Local elected officers, mostly stewards, board members and presidents, as well as some staffers. As far as industry or trade, the majority of the participants were technicians, others included service, sales representatives and telephone operators.

DEMOGRAPHICS:

TOTAL 43 18 women 25 men

30 first timers, 9 second timers; 12 facilitators, 27 participants, 2 staff, 2 translators.

15 MEXICO (10 first timers); 2 translators, 2 facilitators,

10 participants.

19 UNITED STATES (13 first timers); 2 coord. staff, 17 participants

8 CANADA (6 first timers); 3 facilitators, 5 participants.

1 FRANCE (first time); one participant

NORTH MEETS SOUTH:

The place chosen for the second conference was Tijuana, Mexico. One reason was the identification of local resources to help facilitate the coordination of the event and also the idea of holding an event in the US/Mexico border to witness first hand the effects of the "integration of the economies" of North America.

The program had five main components; an update report from each country and four issues to be discussed restructuring of the industry, new technology/reengineering, and safety and health for the purpose of modeling organizing campaigns. The extracurricular component included a social gathering with members of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras and a tour of the Tijuana maquila sector.

The team of facilitators reflected the trinational community and a variety of unions. In line with TIE tradition, the facilitators came from the community of activists with the exception of German Sanchez Daza, a researcher in the field of economics from the Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico and Dr. Luis Felipe Sanchez Lopez, a CILAS educator in issues of Health and Safety.

The last part of the conference was a combination of the drafting of resolutions and the Conference Closure, allowing an opportunity for participants and facilitators to combine acquired information with ideas for organizing projects.

National Reports

Canada Ann Newman, CEP Local 50, President

I work for Bell Canada, which is the parent company of Bell Northern, the Research and Development of Bell Telecommunications in Canada. A majority of jobs at Northern have moved south of the border to Right to Work states such as Georgia, resulting in massive layoffs at Northern in Canada.

In Ontario, after having a Social Democratic government, the voters have elected a right wing reactionary government headed by Mike Harris and his TORY Party. The government is reeking havoc on the citizens of Ontario by cutting social programs and by launching an all out attack on working people. However, because of some of the unpopular policies implemented by the Social Democratic Party, a government that was supposed to be worker friendly, there is a split in the trade union movement in Canada.

Canadian unions are no longer united in the way they should be, in order to promote solidarity amongst their membership. It is felt by many of the rank and file that we are paying the price for this split. There appears to be division between the private sector and the public sector unions. This gives an overall feeling of a lack of solidarity amongst workers at a time when we need to be united.

However, a positive aspect that has come out of all attacks being placed on workers by an unfriendly TORY government, is the realization that labour can no longer work in isolation. In order to fight an unfriendly government, we need the support of all the citizens of Ontario. Hence, a great deal of emphasis is being placed on forming coalitions with various community groups.

There is a feeling that the leadership does not share information with the rank and file and a strong feeling that the leadership is out of touch with what's going on in the Locals.

It is very difficult at this time for the Local leadership to fulfill its role and effectively represent its membership in these hard times. A lot of unions are involved in various TEAM programs. This means that in a lot of cases, Locals are being run by management and as a result, our membership does not have a true picture of what is really happening in their Locals or why Local executives sometimes make decisions that the members do not always agree with.

WHAT'S HAPPENING AT BELL CANADA

In May 1995, Bell Canada, announced that they were downsizing by 10,000 workers, due to surplus. This goal was to be reached by the end of 1997.

They announced that they had implemented a Business Transformation Team to get to where they wanted to be at the end of 1997. The 10,000 workers would be made up of management and nonmanagement. In order to qualify for the package, a person should had signed by September 30 deadline or their package would be reduced by 50%. However, in operator Services, the workers were told to sign by August 30, 1995.

Around the same time Bell announced the closure of 37 Operator Services offices in Ontario and Quebec. This was after the deadline had passed to sign for the separation package. A large number of Operators signed the separation to leave the company in 1997 hoping they would be safe until that time. However, with the announcement of the closure of 37 offices, tremendous pressure was put on the Operators to depart by December 31, 1995. The company threat was that if they did not leave by this date, they would go on a reserve list and their package might not be approved for 1997.

In October of 1995, the union CEP and Bell entered bargaining. In December, Bell announced that it had a surplus of 1,300 technicians. The employer informed the union that it was contracting out its installation and repair services. It stated that it was no longer making a profit on this service. They had the nerve to make this statement after the company went to the CRTC, the government regulatory body, to gain permission to charge $91.00 per hour for this service. After pricing themselves out of the market, they wanted to dump the workers along with the work.

The union approached a labour solidarity fund located in Quebec and worked out a deal to purchase the company installation and repair department.

This was after the September 30, date that would enable workers to get 100% of the separation package offered. There is a lot of animosity amongst the senior employees, who did not sign up for the package. Especially when they see less senior workers taking the package and transferring to the NEWCO, Entourage and earning a wage of $17.00 an hour or more.

There are lots of problems with the NEWCO. Bell is still using contractors. There is no clear demarcation line and some times you have three people showing up for the same job. Bell, Entourage and an outside contractor. Consumers in some cases are refusing to let Entourage in. They think they are scabs.

The employer informed the union in April, 1996 that they are planning to outsource Directory Assistance. In fact, the company they are looking at contracting out to is EXCEL, located in Arizona.

When I attended the first TIE conference two years ago, my Local had 700 members, since, it has been reduced to 370 members. This is down from 1,600 in 1980.

There are major Safety and Health problems in the Local. The majority of the health problems are RSI related. To properly address these issues, there is a real need for a change in job design.

As a Local, we have begun to work with women's groups and community groups. For instance, in June there was a TREK across Canada. The group started in Vancouver, BC, in May and ended the march in June in Ottawa.

At this time, in Ontario, the Operators are involved in the "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" campaign. On August 20, the Operators took to the street to publicly protest Bell Canada's practices, and the way they are treating their employees. We developed a leaflet, put the president's phone number on leaflet, encouraged the public to write letters and dial "0" and asked to be connected directly to the president. The response has been tremendous. There is a lot of support from the public. People want these jobs to stay in Canada. To date we have over 10,000 signatures on petitions. We are continuing to collect signatures.

I want to wrap up on a really up beat positive note. Today, hopefully Toronto is at a standstill. This is in protest to the Harris government cut backs. There will be no public transit and hopefully all public offices will be closed. Hopefully there will be 250,000 people taking part in the march. We hope this will eventually evolve into a one day General Strike. Perhaps one day we can ignore borders and have a general strike of workers regardless of where we live.

B. United States Madelyn Elder, CWA Local 7901

For the past three years, I've been SecretaryTreasurer of my local in Portland. We represent workers at US West. In the U.S., the years 1994 to 1996 have been marked by mergers, competition, and layoffs.

In 1994, most companies were in the midst of reengineering. Thousands of telephone workers were given the boot or moved to a totally unfamiliar job or city. Centralized systems were decentralized and viceversa. Operator centers were moved out of town and state. The result was poor service quality.

In the larger world, the demand for telephone lines rises. Portland has economic growth which leads to increased population. Rural areas are becoming citified. There's been total mismanagement. You are seeing increased use of temporary workers, deskilling, and increased demand. Wealthier neighborhoods get served before poor ones. Large business gets fiber optics; small business has to wait days just to get phones. The CEO of US West claimed to have "forgot" the details of a deal with Times Warner.

I can tell you however that the results have been first off, unemployment. This leads laid off workers to seek jobs at nonunion contractors who are then contracted by the company. The dislocated worker center is busier now than when it opened a year ago. The union has negotiated good benefits for laidoff workers, but unemployed workers have run out of severance pay.

A second effect has been overtime for those still on payroll. This means 10 to 12hour days, 60hour weeks are typical. This had a devastating effect on families.

Third, there's been speed up, production is measured, goals are raised to impossible heights. At AT&T, goals are raised when workers approach them. A suit was won regarding people getting back pay at AT&T who had worked extra hours without getting paid at the overtime rate. Supervisors' goal is to have 25% on a disciplinary plan: three strikes and you're out. First, there's a warning/discussion, second, there's a written warning and discussion and a third offense leads to dismissal.

Fourth, safety has become the lowest priority. Workers suffer from fatigue, too much pressure to perform, the desire to "go home finally." There's been a record number of accidents. Whiz kids replace managers. All they know is how to discipline and how to push workers to the maximum.

Fifth, competition has had a negative impact on solidarity among workers, there's no time to talk to each other.

The CWA has been involved in national legislative activities siding with regional Bell companies to favor fair competition and it has also backed any democrat regardless of labor vote, NAFTA, affirmative action, or welfare reform.

Second, regarding quality circles, joint committees, etc., the CWA still participates, despite layoffs, speed up and disciplinary zealotry. If this is the work place of the future, I'm going to fight it, not argue over what color to paint it. Management holds the power and withholds the information. The union is helpless and hopeless budding heads against managers smiling that they feel our pain.

Third, the union adopted an organizing resolution at the 1996 Convention. This specifies that 10% of the budget will go for organizing. The national will spend 10% of its budget on organizing and encourages each local to do the same. Each local is to hire one local rep to organize the unorganized after working 60 hours a week. However, there is no direction from the national. They say, "Do what you want." District 7 has one fulltime organizer for 14 states. A few locals do have their own organizers. The Portland local is hiring an organizer to put together an organizing structure and begin external organizing.

The chaotic nature of the reform may work. There are not enough bureaucrats in the west to smother the more militant and creative types. The key is if information is the future of work, shouldn't we be in there organizing? We need to scream loudly to get the support of the national office. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of the staff are political appointees who hob nob with management and have forgotten what it's like to actually work for a living under the contract they negotiate. There is an old guard mentality. Barbara Sterling, the Secretary/Treasurer of the CWA ran against the Sweeny/Trumka slate.

The companies need us more than we need them. They need highlyskilled workers so that we can actually get phone service to people. At US West, phone service happens because we know someone who owes us a favor. If we went through the actual system, no one would get phone service. All management has is a Master degree in business and stock options.

CWA can be democratic and its members have a militant streak in them when aroused. Pressure can be put on the national to walk the talk. There has emerged a caucus of "Activists for a Better CWA." The caucus has called for direct referendum election of top officers, formation of a labor party, and moving elections to a year after contract negotiations. There is a minority caucus. Sometimes it rises to the occasion, despite coaptation. Who gets laid off? Women and people of color. The company rehired 150 people only 5 are women, 5 people of color. We need communityworker coalitions to save universal service and oppose corporate deregulation.

We did succeed in promoting regional hearings, protesting bad service, which led to the hiring of 150 technicians. There needs to be militant action to any announcement of layoffs, closure, and contractingout, with outreach to all other locals for support. It did happen in the VirginiaD.C. area. Workers took the street. We need to make the union part of the community coalition. We need to organize the unorganized. We need worker coops, worker centers, outreach to minimum wage workers and subcontractors, crossborder organizing and awareness.

The CWA has participated in the American Institute for Fair Labor Development (AIFLD), which was sponsored by the CIA and always support "non communist" unions against indigenous unions. This has to end.

The world is smaller and it's full of possibilities.

C. Mexico Rosario Ortiz, Secretaría de Trabajo, STRM

By government design, AT&T, MCI, and Sprint are entering in alliance with Mexican capital and it will probably have an important economic impact. First, the competition is being introduced in different cities at different times. In Monterrey, Indetel enters and in a week there's a decline of 3,000 longdistance calls. Next month, Guadalajara enters into competition. Querétaro, one month later and in November 1997, Mexico City.

There has been very strong competition for skilled telephone workers. 50 of the virtual network of technicians asked and received better salaries at other companies, but without guaranteed positions. Construction and line workers however, do not have the economic benefits that we have and they are organized in rat unions. This is the form in which competition has been introduced. The results are not yet visible, but we feel we are being cheated. For the last two years our union leadership has lobbied to create a national industrial union, but the CTM of Fidel Velázquez has fought against it, given that both the CTM and the STRM have contracts in the industry. The other unions are also competing strongly.

Internally, STRM has gone through an eight year change process in the leadership. This change has had an impact on the policies of the union as well as on the union as a whole. Due to pressures by management initiatives, the union structure has become more dynamic and open to different points of view.

We have been involved in a very intense process of reengineering in the last two years. That has been the focus of our attention. The union has seen the need to grow in order to be able to keep up and to have a new vision that may create alternatives to save jobs. Employment uncertainty has brought fear to people and they feel disempowered and hopeless. The projected loss of 6,000 positions due to competition, has made people willing to accept concessions. The workload is much more intense.

This situation is heightened by reengineering. There are transfers in all areas of employment, as the results of reengineering create new areas of work. The company is merging operator and clerical work, we have service centers or areas of attention to clients which focus on business customers; technicians are also being affected. Management policy is to give preference to clients with large incomes.

We encourage worker involvement in union activities to redesign job positions. One needs to ask what is public telephone service; Instead of universal service, current policy favors those of higher incomes, such as the industrial zones, the great financial consortiums.

The training we get is selective; The company also provides only the necessary training, thus the level of skill of the workers has declined.

Another issue is the new labor culture. What is the culture that we want? Management's proposal is that we buy into the company's plans. What we have to do is to create our own agenda, and form conditions favorable to workers.

How does one restructure the union in a way that members can participate more in discussions? There is no participation from workers on union proposals, which is something we are trying to change. And above all, we are trying to preserve job positions. The labor culture needs not be management culture, but rather the union can create its own labor culture.

Right now, we're facing many transfers from administrative posts, warehousing, and auto repair. Some 1,000 workers have been transferred to outside plants. Regarding parallel seniority scales, these transfers generate conflict between seniority rights and labor flexibility. The union faces the same dilemma with schedules, shifts, work material, training. It is fundamental that seniority be respected. We thought inplant workers were not going to be touched, but they too, have been moved.

Reengineering has affected jobs. It is hard for us to keep up. When the company introduces a proposal we don't go into negotiations with clear proposals of our own and this affects us a lot.

We have been successful in working with the research personnel, despite our union weaknesses. In some areas, we have been able to seize from management an important source of strength, but have not succeeded in all areas.

We know that we are in the midst of a reengineering process which affect positions and job losses. And we have not reached the end. How it ends depends on how the union responds, but unfortunately, I'm pessimistic. The problem of reengineering has not been adequately confronted. What happens depends on whether the workers are ready or not.

Management has imposed its agenda in a series of courses entitled "Introduction to Change." It gives one a complete loss of perspective. The worker is no longer important, but rather the worker is depersonalized in order to better attend to the client. It is a contradictory process. However, there is not a complete acceptance of all these management concepts. Workers do not believe in them completely.

D. FRANCE _ Francine Bavay, SUD

I am member of the SUD, which stands for Solidarite, Unite Democratique. We became a separate independent group in 1989. In France, there are 4 union confederations. We were part of the CFDT but were thrown out because the union opposed the coordination of workers from all four federations during strikes and mobilization. We believe in focusing our work amongst the rank and file. We have three primary goals 1) clarity in the organization, 2) worker empowerment through organization, and 3) unity amongst unions and in action.

In France, there is a problem of competition between unions and union confederations. The unionization rate is lower than in the U.S. France Telecom is 15% unionized. Nationally, there is 8% unionization. However, those who are in the union are union activists. France Telecom has stock in Telmex and Sprint. Part of a strategic alliance. We need both regional and international solidarity.

Regarding deregulation and privatization, the situation in Western Europe is similar to North America. Deregulation was first exported from the U.S. to the European Community in 1987, in 1990, they aimed at the telephone service, in 1996, the telephone industry was opened to competition and privatization.

The union argued that privatization was unnecessary. The goal of privatization was not competition but to fire people. We struggled against privatization for 20 years. During the last 3 years, we've given it up, we lost the struggle, but it was not a total loss. Workers will keep state employee benefits. The early retirement plan aims at getting 20% of the work force out of the job.

The French government introduced a plan to reduce unemployment by hiring young people. But they're using temporary work contracts, lower wages, no protection. The December 1995 strike was fought against changes to the retirement plan. The government wanted to increase the number of years of service required from 37.5 years to 40 years. Because of the strike last year, we kept the 37.5 hours.

In France Telecom, there has been a drive to reengineer the company into 5 subgroups, including residential telephone, companies, networks, and resources. Consumers have been the main victims of reengineering. The idea of universal service was to help consumers who had more difficulties. In France, there was the idea of solidarity among all consumers. Now, there are higher rates; this is a struggle we have lost.

SESSION I:

Industry Restructuring

A. Dave Newman, CWA, Local 1101

TRENDS IN THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE U.S. TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY

Hola compañeros y compañeras. Hello brothers and sisters. I bring you solidarity greetings from my fellow activists in CWA Local 1101 in New York City.

When I attended the last trinational meeting of telecommunications unionists in Oaxtepec two and a half years ago, I was working for NYNEX. Not long before that, I was working for New York Telephone, a subsidiary of NYNEX. Before that, I was working for New York Telephone, a subsidiary of AT&T. By this time next year, if I am lucky enough to still have a job, I will be working for Bell Atlantic. And by this time next year, some of you, particularly if you work in Mexico, may be working for Bell Atlantic too. In any event, in the near future, many of us in telephone, regardless of who our current employers are and regardless of what country we work in, will be working for some component of some restructured, multinational telecommunications corporation. Furthermore, it is likely that many of us will be working for the same corporations, and that those corporations will be U.S.based.

Only 15 years ago, when I worked for a subsidiary of AT&T, virtually all of the world's major telecommunications networks were either stateowned or stateregulated monopolies. Today, they have been or are being privatized or deregulated in what has been called "perhaps the largest liquidation of public property in the history of capitalism."1

The new information industry, which is really telecommunications redefined to include the computer and mass media sectors, constitutes the largest and most rapidly expanding segment of the global economy. Three of the 4 largest companies in the world and 13 of the largest 50 companies in the world are telecommunications companies. It is quite possible that in the near future only 3 or 4 of the larger multinational companies, through ownership or association, will control most of the others.2 Most of the larger telecommunications multinationals are based in the U.S., and virtually all the rest have significant business operations there. The telecommunications market, the laws, and the regulatory structure in the U.S. to a large degree determine the direction taken by the telecommunications industry worldwide.

What does all this mean for us as telephone workers? As union activists? What does it mean for consumers and the general public? What changes have occurred in the domestic and international operations of the telephone corporations? In the regulatory structure? In the quality of telephone service?

TELECOMMUNICATIONS "REFORM"

Before the first breakup of AT&T in 1984, the Bell System was a privatelyowned, governmentregulated monopoly. Regulatory agencies and the law allowed the phone companies to make decent, and virtually guaranteed, rates of return. In return, they were legally obligated to provide universal service, ie, to enable anyone to have telephone service at his/her residence at a reasonable cost. This was generally achieved by setting the rates for long distance services and for business equipment rentals above their actual costs and by using resulting revenue surpluses to reduce the price of basic residential service. As these crosssubsidies were eliminated with divestiture, residential rates rose by over 60% between 1982 and 1992, while long distance rates fell by 40% and long distance traffic doubled.3 The primary beneficiaries of rate and regulatory reform in the 1980s were the large corporations that are the major users of the long distance network.

The 1984 AT&T divestiture was fueled by the convergence, through digitalization and broadband, of voice, data, text, and video transmission. With technological barriers to new markets removed, the various corporate players, chiefly AT&T, were largely able to rewrite the regulatory structure. As a result, the long distance market was opened to competition and restrictions were loosened on new business ventures by AT&T and the Baby Bells. At the same time, state rate structures embodying guaranteed but capped rates of return were gradually replaced by incentive plans that limited rate increases but removed all restrictions on profits in essence, rewarding a company for automating and for reducing its workforce.

The enactment of the Telecommunications Reform Act this year is the most recent step in this process. This misnamed piece of legislation essentially deregulates virtually the entire spectrum of telecommunications services and makes a theoretically selfregulating free market, rather than public policy, the determining factor for the future direction of the socalled information superhighway. With little substantive or public debate, and certainly with no discussion of the effects of "reform" on employment in the industry, the future of telecommunications in the U.S. has been turned over directly to the major corporate players. The newlyconverged industry local and long distance telephone, cable TV, entertainment, broadcasting, publishing, and computing together have approximately 2 million workers and $300 to $500 billion in annual revenues.4,5 As the industry has been transformed, the rate of unionization has fallen, from between 80 and 90% in telephone 15 years ago to 80% in local telephone, 30% in long distance, 10% in broadcasting, 5% in cable TV, and less than 1% in cellular and wireless.6 Thus, convergence is resulting in a drastic downward pressure on labor costs in the suddenly small unionized sectors.

DOMESTIC ACTIVITY

In the U.S., we have a fourtiered telephone service market: local calls, toll calls (within Local Access and Transport Areas [LATAs] but beyond the local calling area), long distance (between states or between LATAs), and cellular and wireless. Competition in the long distance market was opened with the original breakup of AT&T in 1984, although the resulting regional Bells were prohibited from entering the long distance market at that time. The toll call market has since been opened piece by piece to all comers, as has cellular and wireless. The Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 completes the process by incrementally permitting the entry of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) into the long distance market while completely opening the local calling market and further deregulating cable TV, the broadcast media, and the newspaper industry.

The $70 billion domestic long distance market is still dominated by the big 3 AT&T, MCI, and Sprint which together process 90% of the calls.7 AT&T alone still handles 60% of long distance traffic.8 However, due to deregulation, there are currently over 500 carriers that resell the services of the big 3. The end result has been the creation of a long distance infrastructure with significant overcapacity, duplication of services, and what one analyst calls "triplication of long distance network facilities."9 The newly competitive market also drives the long distance companies to invest heavily in advertising, which cost them over $1 billion in 1994.10 The big 3 long distance carriers have branched out into cellular and wireless and are poised to compete in the local call market. AT&T, for example, purchased the biggest cellular company in the U.S., McCaw Cellular, for $12.6 billion, instantly making itself the largest player in the cellular market and positioning itself to roll out advanced wireless services should wireless phones begin to replace hardwired. At the same time, hedging its bets, AT&T is aggressively entering the local call market, renting network facilities and capacity from the RBOCs.

Although the newly restructured and deregulated market has switched the focus of most RBOCs to long distance, providing basic local service continues to be their primary revenue source, bringing in $40 and 90 billion a year. Access charges paid by long distance vendors for use of local networks brings in another $19 billion annually, while the toll market accounts for another $10 billion. However, unregulated business ventures already account for 20% of RBOC revenues and continue to rise.11,12

Thus, the regional Bells are transforming themselves from selfperceived public service utilities into aggressive, marketdriven, profithungry competitive business organizations. For example, immediately following enactment of the Telecommunications Reform Act, U.S. West announced its planned acquisition of Continental Cablevision in a $10.8 billion deal, positioning U.S West to enter a variety of local call markets by utilizing Continental's (and Time Warner's from a previous deal) 16.2 million home cable TV lines in cities such as Boston and Atlanta, as well as to become a major player in the cable TV industry.13 SBC Communications (formerly Southwestern Bell) is acquiring Pacific Telesis. SBC's strategy has been to concentrate on the cellular market and it now has 3.2 million cellular subscribers, the most of any Baby Bell, in many nationwide markets, including Boston, Chicago, and Washington D.C.14 NYNEX, in the process of being taken over by Bell Atlantic, has become the first RBOC to carry long distance traffic out of its region.15

While this corporate freeforall of takeovers, mergers, and joint ventures has brought record profits, it has not resulted in higher productivity. In the predivestiture years of 1950 through 1983, productivity growth in telecommunications led that of all service industries, averaging 6% or better per year. Since the breakup, it has dropped to less than 4% per year, due to downsizing and to overcapacity generated by multiple players.16

IMPACT ON SERVICE QUALITY

As the telecommunications giants speed us boldly down the information superhighway into the twentyfirst century, they are concentrating their investments in network facilities and fiber optic cabling in the corporate business centers and welltodo suburbs that have the greatest potential for immediate profit. With the universal service mandate eliminated from public policy, there exists the real danger of the development of a twotiered telecommunications society and a retreat from the high point of 94%, nearuniversal coverage. The poorer urban areas and the more remote rural communities continue to be served by deteriorating copper outside plant with little prospect of upgrade in the near future. According to CWA, 6 million American families still have no regular phone service. Twenty percent of U.S. customers still have rotary phones, which means they cannot use enhanced digital services.17

In New York City, with the most advanced telecommunications system in the world, more than 200,000 families have no telephones, and in some poorer neighborhoods, as many as 20% of the residents have no phone.18 Service quality is declining across the board. Customer repeat troubles tabulated by the Federal Communications Commission have soared, as have complaints to local regulatory agencies. Earlier this year, NYNEX was fined $50 million by the state Public Service Commission for failure to meet service level commitments.19

As the telecommunications corporations seek out new ventures and new markets, the Internet beckons both for the potential to expand telephone usage and as a new market in its own right. However, market research data show that most Internet users utilize the Web to access public service materials such as health or government information or news, while only a small minority desires movies on demand or interactive shopping.20 Nevertheless, the commercialization of the Web proceeds apace, the epitome of the conflict between the potential for greater public access to information and the corporate yearning to own and control it.

GLOBALIZATION

Of course the reason all of us are here at this conference is that everything I have mentioned is occurring in the context of the globalization of the telecommunications industry. Telephone companies in the U.S. and elsewhere are transforming themselves into aggressive multinational corporations competing in a world market. Each of the big 3 long distance carriers is enmeshed in joint international ventures with other carriers. MCI is partnered with British Telecom, which bought a 20% stake in MCI for $4.3 billion. Their joint operations are valued at $33 billion. France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom together own 20% of Sprint and their combined ventures are worth $69 billion. AT&T has its World Partners Network, valued at $67 billion, in which 10 European and Asian telecommunications companies will market AT&T services. The trend is towards global production and distribution of information by only a handful of multinational corporations, which Ken Peres, Research Director of CWA District One, calls the Information Globalopolies.21,22 Here in Mexico, Bell Atlantic has so far spent over $1 billion buying into the cellular market through part ownership of Grupo Iusacell, one of the largest U.S. investments in Mexico since NAFTA. Its goal is the establishment of a Mexicowide service using regular hardwired telephones connected to a radio transmission network instead of to cables. 23 And these are just a few examples.

However, while we are talking of globalization, high tech, enhanced services, information superhighway, etc., let's try to keep it in perspective half of the people on this planet reportedly have never made a phone call.

CORPORATE STRUCTURE AND MANAGEMENT

The RBOCs have followed AT&T's lead in organizational restructuring, centralizing strategic decisionmaking at a higher corporate level and consolidating offices, personnel, and functions from the state entities to the regional corporate level. Simultaneously, the numbers of lower and middle level management have been reduced, while those remaining have been "empowered" through decentralization to allow increased discretionary control over their local "turfs," from which they are expected to compete against other turf managers within the same corporate organization. Responsibilities of bottomlevel managers, in turn, are frequently shifted to the nonmanagement workforce, often through selfmanaged teams, sometimes by default.

CORPORATE LABOR STRATEGY

In the U.S. there is an expression "road kill" which refers to animals killed by cars. Telephone workers are beginning to talk of "road kill on the information superhighway." For anyone who doesn't get it, that's us. Shrinking the permanent, or core, workforce, particularly the unionized workforce, has become a primary goal. In the first decade after divestiture, employment in the U.S. telecom industry declined by 10%. In 1983, there were 965,000 telephone workers; in 1992, 872,000.24 By and large, the jobs that were lost were union jobs. Between 1984 and 1994, AT&T eliminated 127,000 jobs, a 33% overall cut which dropped its level of unionization to just 60%. In just the eight months between August 1993 and March 1994, GTE and the RBOCs announced job cuts totaling 75,000. 25,26 Between 1992 and January of this year, telecommunications companies announced 190,000 job cuts.27 At the same time, they are shifting work to nonregulated, nonunion business ventures.

As the companies downsize, they make extensive use of a disposable workforce outside contractors, consultants, retirees, temps. CWArepresented NYNEX service reps in Boston who earn $19 an hour plus full benefits work side by side with temporary reps making $8, with no pension or job security. As NYNEX eliminates almost 17,000 jobs through buyouts and attrition, it backfills many of those slots with temporary workers hired through agencies, which typically charge NYNEX $10 or so per hour and then pay their workers eight.28 In some cases, contract workers are actually former telephone workers, doing the same work but at lower pay and on a temporary basis.29

According to AT&T's Vice President for Human Resources, "People need to look at themselves as selfemployed, as vendors who come to this company to sell their skills... We have to promote the whole concept of the workforce being contingent, though most of the contingent workers are inside our walls." He said he is aiming for a society that is "jobless but not work less."30

The telecoms are not just utilizing but creating a new technology, the express purpose of which is to destroy jobs. Bellcore's stated goal is "end to end automation" and a "selfdiagnosing, selfhealing network," one which requires no human input from the time a subscriber originates a request for service until the service is operative.31 Whether this goal can be realized remains to be seen.

I will not go into the accompanying deskilling, forced transfers, and elimination of promotion opportunities, but I must mention the increased use of jointness, qualityofworklife programs, and common interest forums. Particularly insidious is the ideology of partnership in competition, which fosters acceptance of the notion of competition driven by lowering labor costs.

CONCLUSION

The very place where society has been promised new jobs, new skills, and new opportunities the information superhighway is the place where we are seeing the greatest job loss. As David Noble observes, the very workers who are building the new information superstructure are among the first to go. At the very time when technology seems to offer such great potential for expanding communications and for democratizing access to information, the fundamental questions of how telecommunications should be structured, for what purposes, and for whose benefit, have effectively been removed from the social agenda. These questions must shape our discussions at this conference, and solidarity and concrete action must shape our response.

B. Germán Sánchez Daza; Economics professor, Universidad Autonoma de Puebla.

COMPETITION IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS

1) The competitive global framework

Without a doubt, telecommunications have become one of the most important markets in the world, due to their high profitability as much as for their long term development potential; becoming one of the strategic points for competitiveness among countries and the advance of the internationalization of the capital [globalization]- for the following reasons:

they are the base for the transmission of information; modern telecommunications mean the transmission of voice, image, texts and data; they have become the freeway by which the strategies and decisions of the multinational companies are conveyed, which are the base of the economic globalization; their innovative capacity, telecommunications by being part of the microelectronic revolution are a clear illustration of the technological convergence, to the point of being the prime focus of most important scientific and technological research in laboratories worldwide an example is ATT in United States and the CNET of France and have a strong impact in the economy; increasing economic importance in terms of investment and production, telecommunication has a much higher rate of economic growth than the average, for the OCDE their rate of investment grew from 1.82% to 2.4% between 1980 and 1994; in addition to its high marketability, hence attracting huge capital income (OCDE 1995); it serves as the medium that tie diverse social services: health, education, social communications, etc. (NTIA, 1991).

Telecommunication in the nineties is displayed as a sector totally novel, because in the previous decade a wide process of restructuring that even today continues. This process was guided by a deep technologic change and a dynamic and complex demand.

During those years, in several developed and underdeveloped countries, were carried out processes of modernization technological, deregulation, privatization of the public companies, labor and organizational flexibility, that they transformed the sector totally, thus we find that the characteristics telecommunications have in a good number of countries, they are:

* a very wide competitive structure, depending as much on the

segment of the market as on the applied policies, stretching from the existence of a duopoly until that of a wide competitive structure;

* predominance of the economies of scale and scope, conserving in second place those of scale; in other words, the case is now to

tend to a segmented demand through the flexibility and diversity of the services, instead of depending in one alone;

* fixed prices based on its costs; seeking for a flexibility in these and in particular in the labor cost;

* internationalization of their companies, the former public operators become private global companies, in particular

the companies operators of the developed countries become

big multinational conglomerate with global strategies;

* drastic reduction of the state participation to the basic regulation. (Sanchez, 1992). We should say that their development has been based on the advance of the microelectronic and the information technology, carrying out an accelerated process of innovative technology in all and each one of the parts of the infrastructure as much as the telecommunication services. This innovative capacity has been translated into the generation of a tendency that consists of the technological convergence with diverse branches of production, hence, its analogy to the technology of the information to telecommunication, computation and information. Convergence technological and the global infrastructure from the information. Thus, one of the concepts used in the last years is that of "Information Superhighway of the information," which refers to the new path through which globalized capitalism will be transmitted and the hegemony of the developed countries.

It is of such importance to the contemporary economy that from an American point of view, it is proposed as "the transcontinental railroad that turned the United States in a world economic power in the XIX century, this infrastructure of the information has the potential of placing the economy of States at the head of the rest of the world in the XXI Century." (Arnst, 1996).

This is how the government of United States in 1995 launches the proposal for a world plan for the creation of the "Global Information Infrastructure" (Gore, 1995), in which five basic principles are contemplated:

1) stimulate the investment of the private sector,

2) promotion of the competition,

3) leave access opened to the networks for all the suppliers of

information and users,

4) create a flexible regulatory frame that could permit the fast market and technological change and last,

5) assure the universal service.

These principles express the tendency put forth for the so called global infrastructure of the information (GII), in one hand it is recognized the growing economic weight of the technology of the information and thus, a growing investment is required, that is highly profitable, for which the participation of the private sector is promoted, second, should be carried under a competitive structure in order to guarantee the technological innovation, competitive prices and quality of the services, restrict the action of the State to the flexible regulation that allows the assurance of the functioning of the market and, last, that the GII be able to serve all the users and for all the services.

As we can see, the proposal of the American government goes according to the contemporary policies of privatization and deregulation. The theory behind it, is that the efficiency and

profitability is guaranteed by the safe functioning of the

market; however, a point of discussion is the social and economic repercussions of such, at a world level and for each country.

The proposal that the American government has been developing, is the idea of promoting the GII from the perspective of a open market, global, and where the capitals more efficient and productive are at the head of the construction and administration of the "freeways of the information." However, the GII comes to deepen the sharp competition that exists in the areas of computation, telecommunication, information, diversion;

the mergers and acquisitions, the alliances and agreements of

cooperation, etc., They are frequent relations between capitals,

trying to assure a piece of the "virtual pie"; the vertical integration, is another strategy, putting together production, programming and distribution of the information.

In order to give us an idea of this GII, we see that the revenues from some of the convergent sectors in the GII telephonic, television via cable, cinematography, newspapers add a total of 98 billions per year (CWA, 1994) other sources estimate that the total of the convergent sectors could earn as much as a trillion dollars by the year 2000 (Arnst, 1996).

Globalization and inequality:

However, telecommunications present a double aspect. On one hand

we have a huge dynamism and capacity, but on the other, its great market concentration. The growth of the market of telecommunication goes along with a great concentration in a few countries, so much in terms of revenue of the sector as in the availability of basic services. Thus, 15% of the world population has 70% of the lines of telecommunication, and 85% of the revenues come from twentyfour industrialized countries, that represent 16% of the population. The International Union of Telecommunication considers that this will cause by the end of the century a disparity of information posing a great challenge: How realistic is it propose a world economy of information when the majority of the population does not have direct access to basic telephone service (UIT, 1995).

In this context, we find some indicators that point to the development of the telecommunication in these developed countries by 1994:

* lines for each 100 inhabitants: Canada 59.2, United States

57.4, France 53. 6, United Kingdom 49.4, Japan 46.8, Germany 45.7 and Italy 41.8.

* digital line: France 86%, Canada 80%, United Kingdom 75%,

Japan 72%, United States 66%, Italy 57% and Germany 37%,

* cellular subscribers for each 100 inhabitants: United States 6.2, Canada 4.8, United Kingdom 3.8, Germany 2.2, Italy 2.1, Japan 1.7 and France 1%.

* connections to the digital network of integrated services per each thousand: Germany inhabitants report 3.71, France 1.93, Japan 1.91, United Kingdom 0.69, United States 0.34, Italy 0.5 and Canada 0.05. (UIT, 1995).

This reveals the data which points to the fact that big regions of the developing countries have a penetration of lines ten or twenty times under the average of the capitalist hegemonic countries.

As far the rest, it is clear that those who can control the production and distribution of the information, will be those that are capable of dominating the global market. Hence, we find that the big operator companies of the world are established in the developed passes, concentrating the larger number of lines and most revenue: Japanese (1), American (11), Europeans (5), underdeveloped countries (2) and Australian (1), which does not alone mean the domain of the market. Another characteristics we find is that those national operators have become big multinational companies, that have taken advantage of the markets of telecommunication of the countries in development in order to enlarge their profits. We must remember that in the decade of the nineties, privatization of public operators peaks in Latin American, asian and African countries. Companies are acquired through capitals of CNTE, France Telecom, Baby Bell, Motorola, Italtel, etc.; those countries sell their telephone assets in order to get out of debt with the financial international capital and carry out processes of deregulation in order to attract multinational capital in order to modernize their systems of telecommunication and improve their account status, all this under the neoliberal justification of efficiency and competitiveness and the promise and that the market will provide revenue (Cowhey, 1994). As an example, we can cite some Latin American cases where the multinational capital is present in the several segments of the telecommunication: Argentina with interventions of CNTE, STET and France Telecom, in Bolivia and Paraguay investments of Millions are placed, in Chile, CNTE presence is evident, in Venezuela we find GTE, CNTE, ATT. .and the list can become endless (Wellenius, 1994).

What is clear is that the process of reformation, deregulation and privatization is not yet finished. Case most evident is that of the EEC (European Economic Community ), where there is a great diversity of ownership and management. The tendency, however, is towards the opening and the privatization of the different segments of telecommunications.

On the other hand, we see that the globalization of the telecommunications market comes about also by taking advantage of the conformation of economic blocs. Thus, there is a process in which the companies that make up one bloc try not only to secure their market share, but also to invade other blocs.

Nevertheless, there are still differences in regards with the opening of markets. There are variations in cultural preferences and regulating institutions or systems. These differences create conditions so that companies join together to break into another market or in order to take over a segment through technological innovation. It is for this reason that we see a constant trend of merging among diverse telecommunications companies. Obviously, it is the multinationals who play the leading role in this process.

The way the multinationals go about taking over the market is through a strategic, global concept based on technological innovation, managerial flexibility and above all labor flexibility. An indepth analysis of this strategy would be the substance of another, major document. For right now, we shall focus only in the study of the North America market, where there is being structured one of the world's regional economic blocs, with the predominance of U.S. funds.

Before I present the experiences of the three countries that make up this bloc, l would like to add one element that l consider fundamental: multinational corporations achieve world dominance not only because they have the capital resources, but also because they have concentrated great capacities that enable them to stay on top of the wave of technological innovation. Thus, insofar as direct investment, multinationals appropriate themselves of a substantial part of the capital surplus generated in underdeveloped countries, via profit sharing and interests. Also, multinationals absorb another portion of the value generated in telecommunications through the sale of technology and equipment.

This process repeats itself, and the underdeveloped nations are unable to keep up with technological innovation because their capital resources are `insufficient' so as to keep in step with the tempo set by multinational, global capitalism. In the degree that this process unfolds, the multinational corporations reinforce their dominance and turn themselves into a mechanism that transfers resources from the poor to the rich countries and generates profound inequalities, as we have said before.

Let us now move on to see the case of telecommunications in the North American bloc so that, later on, we can reflect on what that experience has meant for us.

2. Telecommunications in Canada: deregulation, market opening, unemployment and transnationalization.

In Canada, service is provided by diverse companies in the different provinces. The main name is Bell Canada, with its subsidiary Northern Telecom. These companies furnish Canada its domestic telecommunication; international service is provided by Teleglobe Canada, and Telesat Canada handles the satellite traffic.

Up until 1991 regulation would vary from one province to another. Only three companies were under common federal control through CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission). In 1991 the government empowered CRTC to regulate all long distance service (Farrell, 1991).

The companies that make up the list are those that can provide local and long distance phone service. Their cable operation is restricted, and as to services such as data transmission, cellular & mobile, etc., they can provide them, but under competition with other companies under the scheme laid out by the liberalization process promoted by the big users and the Conservative administration. In 1979 CNCP was allowed entrance to the private networks. Commercial users were permitted to hook up with the public network in 1982 and also in that year, CRTC ordered the phone companies to allow the connection with the cellular companies (Mosco, 1991).

This market segment starts developing in 1985. By 1991 there were already 610,000 subscribers. The two national companies were Rogers Catel and Cellnet Canada, made up by the provincial cellular subsidiaries.

The deregulation of the long distance market was a topic of debate at the beginning of the decade. By January 1992, the market was opened and Unitel was admitted. The following year, CRTC was empowered to protect the users' interests, overseeing and regulating competition. It was to have federal authority over provinciallevel decisions. Foreign capital was allowed in. Up to 20% for operators of basic services; as for other services, it could be unlimited (TWV, 19935).

In 1994 a new revision of the pertaining legislation is carried out (shniad, 1995a). These are some of the actions taken: An annual increase of two Canadian dollars of the monthly rental fee is established for three years; an increase of the local rates and a lowering of the long distance fees; removal of control over companies' profits: now, any cost reduction goes directly to profits whereas before it was mediated by the government and could result in user's benefit. Also, the local services market was opened to all sorts of suppliers, including cable television companies. All telecommunications companies can provide all types of services. Along with this deregulation process, privatization was also carried out with Teleglobe Canada in 1987 and Telesat in 1994. The provincial government of Alberta also sold 60% of the regional company.

As for as internationalization, we see that the companies that have moved in that direction are Bell Canada, Telesat and Teleglobe. However, multinational foreign capital plays a bigger role in Canada. In 1993 ATT bought 20% into Unitel's capital. MCI acquired 20% of Bell Canada. This year, ATT has bought part of Unitel's debt, changing its name to "ATT Canada". Furthermore, there is Baby Bell money in other segments such as mobile, cellular telecommunications.

There have been consequences of the processes we have been describing. In the first place, we find that employment levels have been decreasing: 113,000 in 1983 to 97,000 in 1992. This is clearly seen in Graphic number 3 (RTT, 1993). The 1995 regulations reinforce the tendency; in February of that year Unitel lets go one fourth of its work force. Bell Canada notifies its decision to terminate 10 thousand workers.

During the 1980's the Canadian telecommunications business underwent its most intense period of modernization. There were job changes as well as modifications in job requirements and classifications. Now, in the 1990's, the stress is on work organization, on topics such as Quality Circles, for example.

In the specific case of British Columbia there was implemented, from 1990 to 1992, a reorganization project. For two years there were negotiations with the union (TWV). Management tried to push the project without negotiating, moving employees around. Towards the end of 1994 the reorganization is not functioning; some managers are fired. BCT had to go back to the concept of multifunctionality, reduced its equipment and acknowledged the failure of its reorganization (Shniad 1995b). There are two last consequences here that are important and on which Canadian unions have put special emphasis.

The first one is that, after signing NAFTA, Canadian telecommunications authorities have been forced to modify their regulatory framework both in terms of deregulation as in opening of markets. This has brought about a tariff increment and, in some cases, a drop in service quality. For this, authorities have called for the formation of a common front with Union people to stop this process.

The second consequence is that the opening represents a transnationalization of services; foreign capital is playing a bigger role in telecommunications; besides, it is a threat to employment for in different occasions U.S. companies have tried to sell services intranationally a matter still being debated today. For all this, different authors and unions claim that the control over this sector has been lost (Shniad, 1992).

3. Telecommunications in the United States: Development of Global Corporate Strategies.

The telecommunications market in the U.S. until January of this year has been structured according to the so called deregulation, implemented since January 1, 1984. Until then, ATT had the monopoly on practically all services and it was also equipment producer. However, on October 7, 1981, the US. Senate voted for deregulation and in January of 1982 the Justice Department and ATT reached an agreement. ATT would break down its 22 exploitation companies and a new grouping would be made with seven regional companies: Baby Bell, Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Nynex, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell and US West. There would be retained only Bell Laboratories (research a technological development labs), Western Electric (producer of equipment) and the exploitation of long distance services (Baugchum, 1989). For ATT, all this meant getting rid of two thirds of its assets but only one third of its earnings.

Baby Bell companies were authorized to render local and intraregional services but were not permitted to provide voice and data storage, data processing and retrieval, video text services, email and long distance; they were not allowed to produce equipment either. This structuring was rejected from the start, both by ATT and by Baby Bell. It would be only until January of this year when these restrictions were lifted and a total market opening went into effect. So we have that, up until this year, the local services market was controlled by Baby Bell plus one more company that emerged as the result of the merging of CTE with Contel. The long distance services market had been opened since 1972; however, by 1984, ATT was clearly the leading force with a 90% share of all operations. MCI had 4.5%, Sprint 2.7% and the rest, 2.6%. By 1992 the percentages were, respectively, 59.8%, 16.4%, 9.5% and 14.3% (CWA, 1991 and FCC, 1993).

In regards with other services, the competition is also concentrated along the most profitable segments. For example, in the case of mobile, cellular services, at the beginning of the 1990's nine companies were in control of 79% of the market. Eight of these outfits were the ones mentioned before as providers of local service. In this way, the socalled 'opening' to the competition became a struggle among a handful of oligopolistic companies striding swiftly towards their internationalization. Thus, the fight is on not only over the U.S. market but internationally; the big companies have developed penetration strategies on a global scale. For instance, by early 1995 Baby Bell had obtained licenses to operate in more than 20 countries, specializing in the latest added value services, cellular, directories and network management (Sánchez, 1995).

On the other hand, the long distance companies promoted a series of coinvestments and mergers in order to establish global networks. Such is the case of the alliance of British Telecom and MCI, Stentor, to penetrate the Canadian market; or, those of ATT which has entered different agreements to break into equipment markets in Europe. As an outcome of all this, American companies rank now among the major operators in the telecommunications of the world. Two more items would appear on scene and thus widen the battle field: the development of GII and the new Telecommunications Law. In regards with GII, we can observe that in the last two years alliances between Baby Bell and long distance operators with cable, entertainment and newspapers have been on the increase. As for the Telecommunications Law, the situation now is that there is an interest to penetrate the segments that were once vetoed for both types of companies. Now they are offering a combination of local and long distance service, interactive and information tv; however, it would seem Baby Bell is placed in a more difficult situation for it has only 71% of digital lines, whereas long distance companies are 100% digital. Furthermore, it will take Baby Bell a longer time to be ready for long distance than it will take the long distance companies to be ready for local services (Elstrom, 1996).

Yet, steps have been taken. The following fusions or mergers have been announced: ATT and sprint, to provide local service. Southwestern Bell and Pacific Telesis which, together, carry 21 million dollars of business and have 30 million lines. Bell Atlantic and Nynex; they have 26 million customers and are planning to cut down 3 thousand jobs. In this perspective we can see ATT's restructuring of last year, whose objective was focusing on services (El Financiero, 1996). Nevertheless, globalization and diversification are only one part of the picture of the total business strategy. Kenneth Peres summarizes it as an attack on both consumers and workers. (Peres, 1994).

Let us now take a brief look at three elements: tariffs, employment and changes in the work processes. In regards with tariffs, since the 1984 deregulation, there has been a trend towards raising the cost of local services and lowering the long distance ones. Also, we find that in the first years of deregulation, the index of local services is higher than the index of consumer prices (CWA, 1991 and FCC, 1993).

This has an important consequence. Deregulation brings about a conceptual change about the service: instead of being a social means of communication one phone line in every home it is now seen under the profit angle; socialoriented cost transfers are no longer possible. This obviously affects the lowerincome sectors and benefits the big companies. Moreover, restructuring has had quite negative repercussions in the U.S. employment level. 205,200 jobs lost between 1981 and 1993. The Baby Bell companies dismissed 83,135 persons form 1984 to 1992 and between 1984 and 1992, ATT shrank from 385,000 to 257,800 employees.

This process is still on. According to its restructuring plan, ATT is considering cutting off another 40 thousand jobs. Retirement has been offered to 7,400 managers; 4,000 workers will go as part of the package of subsidiaries to be sold and 30 thousand employees will be discharged directly. Likewise, the merger of Bell Atlantic and Nynex means the trimming of close to 3 thousand jobs. Clearly, job security is no longer. ATT Director, Robert Allen: "Employment used to be a lifelong commitment between both parts, the employee and the company; however, our people must realize that this contract, the implicit promise of job security in exchange for hard work and loyalty, does not exist any more" (voces, 1996)

Another form of facing competition has been the encouragement of deunionization and the hiring of more nonunion workers.

For example, Baby Bell cut down 158,281 jobs between 1984 and 1992 in their Union plants or places of work. During same period, they opened 74,985 nonUnion jobs in their subsidiaries (CWA, 1995).

Companies see unions as a cost item, and hence their strategies. In the name of cost reduction, efficiency and competition, they have implemented the following practices: dequalification, automatization, consolidation, forced transfers, category changes, quality programs, new universal categories, reengineering of processes, forced degradations, forced stoppages. Again, Peres concludes: "Technological change cannot be seen as a thing in itself. It is part of a wide process, the result of specific decisions. Essentially, technological change in telecommunications represents the total corporate struggle for the control of both the market and the work post." (Peres, 1994).

4. Telecommunications in Mexico: stable and growing employment; flexibility and transnationalization.

The Mexican telecommunications restructuring began in the early 1980's with the introduction of technological change, which came to modify work conditions, job qualifications, the makeup of the work force, etc. However, it was until 1989 when the modifications in the processes and work posts were formalized. Thus we have, at least three core changes: common agreement, deregulation and privatization.

The breakingoff processes. In regards with the common agreements, they took place in 1989 and can be summarized as follows:

1) 57 department agreements are turned into 31 job specialties. 2) From a previous 247 job categories, we have now 134 work posts. 3) The tasks assigned to each work post are very general and they include ambiguous concepts, such as the term "inherent". 4) Mobility is established at the different work centers and/or localities. 5) Workers in higher categories must now do the work of lesser categories. 6) There is now included a legend that states that secondary activities derived from primary ones shall be carried out. 7) Lesser categories shall "assist" higher ones.

Ever since those years there was talk about a new service philosophy. The formation of Quality Circles was proposed, without much success. The "Agreement on Quality, Productivity and Training" was signed in 1991 and thereafter Tel Mex's efforts have focused on raising productivity through agreements with the union. At first, lack of expertise was reflected in the 1992 General Program of Incentives to Quality and Productivity. However, things would be improving with the active participation of the workers. Incentives as well as collective and individual goals were implemented by work centers, specialties, companies' general goals, etc (Sánchez, 1993).

We propose that the 1989 Common Agreement laid out the basis to move on to modify the work posts as well as the existing labor structure. The agreement also fostered the integration of the workers within the perspective of competition and productivity. The key element in all this, however, is the breaking off of the existing labor regulations and the establishing of new ones, under the perspective of competition.

In regards with telecommunications, Mexico's Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) issued, in October 1990, the Ley de vías generales de comunicación, which contained all the proposals tending to the deregulation of the communications sector as well as the introduction of competition in the rendering of services. It also reflects the shift from a universal service concept (one telephone in every home) to a concept of profit. This legislation was preceded by a restructuring of the secretariat (SCT) and by the creation of Telecom (source: SCT, 1990a). In fact, the first steps are taken so that SCT becomes an Office that coordinates the functioning of the market through concessions to private parties, functions of normalization, competition promotion and research. The Mexican government reserves the right to render telegraphic service, as well as the rights to establish, operate and control satellite communications. The rest of the services can be subject to concessions or permits.

The services object of concessions are the basic ones: local, radiocommunication and long distance via ground networks. On all these, the government reserves the right to promote competition. Local service is open since 1990 and long distance will be opened in 1996. The services object of permits will be classified as follows: added value, local complementary networks; radioelectric stations and private networks. The grantees of these permits cannot carry long distance signals between third parties but those who have obtained concessions of public networks are authorized to render added value services.

As regards with tariffs, crossed subsidies between services object of concessions are vetoed. Its tariffs will be authorized by the Secretariat (SCT). The tariffs of services object of permits will be free of control. Likewise, companies who have obtained concessions pledge themselves to provide minimum basic service with at least one public phone station in the small towns or villages.

Three months later the concession title that Tel Mex held since 1976 is modified to bring it up to date. These modifications include the following pledges by Tel Mex: Yearly 12% expansion of service from 1990 to 1994; linking up with telecommunications all population centers with 500 inhabitants (at least with one public phone station); setting up pay phones to reach level of 2 for each one thousand inhabitants by 1994; reduce the waiting time for new hookups; raise the quality of service to international levels (source: SCT 1990b).

Besides, Tel Mex could ask for authorization to render the services of mobile, radiotelephonic communications; added value; distribution of TV signals; manufacturing of telecommunications equipment and computation and electronics through subsidiaries. Also, Tel Mex could offer basic services and commercialize all kinds of terminal equipment.

As for tariffs, the elimination of crossed subsidies is ratified. A basic package of services is created. Its prices would rise according to the National Consumer Price Index. However, from 1997 on, there should be a decrease on tariffs according to a productivity factor.

On the other hand, in September 1989, President Salinas announces that Tel Mex would be privatized. During all the time it was under official control, he said, the State did not have enough resources to finance its expansion. From 1989 to 1994, 10 thousand million dollars would be required to modernize the system (Excelsior, 1989). The presidential resolution included six conditions for its implementation:

1) Guarantee that the State maintains control over the country's telecommunications.

2) Radical improvement of the telephone service to the public.

3) Guarantee the workers' rights.

4) Expansion of service: yearly growth, 12%; installing 4 million new lines from 1990 to 1994, raise phone line density from 5 to 10 lines for each 100 inhabitants a 10 thousand million dollars investment. This would be financed 70% with internal resources.

5) Carry out scientific and technological research.

6) Remain under Mexican majority control; foreign investment accepted up to 49% of capital. Profits would depend on productivity.

In 1990 the sale is completed, corporate structure remaining as follows:

5.2% of stock, Grupo Carso, headed by Carlos Slim, stockholder in more than 15 companies.

5.2% of stock, Mexican partners, among which are: Angel Lozada, Bernardo Quintana, Rómulo O'Farril, Beatriz and Jorge Alemán, Manuel Espinoza Yglesias, Carlos Abedrop Dávila, Antonio Chedraui.

5.0% stock, France Cable a Radio, subsidiary of France Telecom.

5.0% stock, Southwestern Bell Co.

According to information provided by the new management, there is a "natural" division in the organization: Carso will specialize in legal, social and real estate matters. Southwestern Bell will see to the commercial aspect, mobile systems and the issuing of directories. France Cable a Radio will focus on modernizing the network and will take care of the satellite operations.

Given the new structure, this group would have the control of management, with only 20.4% of the social capital, even though some of the other stockholders acquired "L" stocks, as it was the case with France Cable. Furthermore, the Carso Group has tried to maintain its position as majority Mexican group. By 1995 it had 8.4% of "AA" stocks and is aiming for 12% of those shares. Thus, multinational capital, together with bib Mexican financiers, is once again in possession of Mexico's telecommunications (Sánchez, 1993). As we can see, technological modernization, deregulation, privatization, labor flexibility, are the processes that allow the development of a new telecommunications sector whose main axis is the market, the upsurge of competition and the establishing of efficiency, profits and productivity criteria.

The 1995 Telecommunications Law ratifies these concepts and states, also, that satellite services can be object of concessions. Tariffs can be fixed freely after registering with the SCT. Foreign investors can participate with up to 49% of capital in the companies (SCT, 1995 and Mejía, 1995).

A very active competition... for the profitable, big user markets. We can observe that in Radiocommunications the struggle has increased substantially in the last few years; it is mostly middlesize outfits that are fighting over regional markets, which are in turn controlled by one or two companies.

Nevertheless, the most dynamic segments remain the long distance ones, as well as added value (which is furnished via local and long distance infrastructure) and cellular systems. As for local services, it is worth noting that although they were opened to competition in 1990, it wasn't until 1996 that the first concession was granted, the reason being the large initial investment required and the low return rates at the beginning. However, new technologies may make this segment more dynamic in the near future.

Concerning cellular, mobile service, we find that at the beginning, in 1990, eight concessions were granted to companies that had a combination of local, regional, national and multinational capital. Actually, the competition by 1995 was centered around two companies: Iusacell (26%) and Telcel (57% of market share). The remainder of the market was disputed among the rest. Competition has ranged from advertising wars to tariff reductions; also, they have used low impact unions and a large portion of nonunionized personnel.

There has been a big debate over the opening of long distance services. First came the authorization of concessions and then the interconnection points and costs. What we want to stress here is that, again, this competition is oligopolistic and there is a basic interventionism of foreign capital.

Point in fact is to recall how Alestra was formed. In the first place, it emerges as the alliance between Alfa and ATT with 51% and 49%, respectively, of social capital. Later, Unicom is absorbed. The new distribution is like this: Alfa 24.6%; Bancomer 24.4%; ATT 22%; GTE 14.5%; Telefonica Internacional 14.5%.

Shaped in this way, we can see which is the new capital structure in telecommunications: The Mexican financiers are interested in not losing their part of the profits in the new infrastructure of information. However, they lack the necessary technology; therefore, the alliances with multinational corporations which are interested in active participation even as minor partners, for they will complete their share investing in other segments and other countries. For example, ATT has now four entities: Networks Systems, Global Information Solutions, ATT (Maquiladora or inbond plant) and the new merger.

Alestra will offer the following services: national and international long distance, leasing and subleasing of installed capacity, card services, commuted 800,900; virtual network, personalized number, access to international communications networks, package transmission, private lines and frame relay. Alestra started doing business in the following cities: Mexico City, Mexicali, Matamoros, Zacatecas, León, Cuernavaca, Monterrey, Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, Aguascalientes, Celaya, Pachuca, Guadalajara, , Nuevo Laredo, Saltillo, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Puebla, Tijuana, Reynosa, Torreón, Cd. Victoria, Toluca, Reynosa and Morelia ( El Financiero, 1996).

The other competitors are planning to participate in practically all the same segments and cities with corporate structures of alliance between national and multinational capital. Thus we have a situation of specialize services which are requested by the great oligopolistic corporations. This demand is spread out throughout the more important Mexican cities and population centers. What we have here is a dispute to take over Tel Mex's big clients, in a market considered to be worth between 10 and 12 million dollars. Northern makes the following breakdown of the total pie as follows:

Mexican Telecommunications Market for year 2000:

Services 20 thousand million dollars for infrastructure.

Equipment 6 thousand 500 million dollars.

Jobs

230 thousand lines for each 100 inhabitants

As it can be observed, in the specific case of long distance it is considered feasible for only four or five companies to stay on and hold their ground. Some projections estimate Tel Mex will lose out 35% of its long distance earnings. The alliances established with MCI and ATT appear as the strongest ones. They pose the bigger threat to Tel Mex in the fight for the market's control. Again, the competition problem is taken care of via cost reduction; particularly; technology, management and, of course, labor. So far, what we can say about the new companies that are positioning themselves is that they try to hire qualified, young people that belong to corporate unions, the socalled "sindicatos blancos" that is, managementcontrolled unions. In no case has the old union, the Sindicato de Telefonistas (STRM), obtained a contract.

We consider these strategies will be reflected in their labor costs, which will be much lower. On the other hand, Tel Mex itself has been preparing for all this. Among other actions, it is undertaking the following ones (Tel Mex, 1996):

* technological modernization: 87.6% of lines are digital; optic fiber national network; automatization of financial a administrative services; setting up of a network for data transmission and package commutation.

* administrative restructuring: more flexibility, better service for the big users.

* consolidation of alliance with Sprint; plans to operate not only in Mexico but also within USA Also, closer ties with international network Global One.

We must keep in mind that since Tel Mex went private, a number of changes have occurred in its financial structure. In the first place, as to the origin of revenues, these are modified. There is now an increase in the income from local services, and a decrease in the earnings form long distance, specially in the case of international service. This is an outcome both of tariff modification and the setting of world criteria about charging according to cost. Another aspect is that, since 1992, the participation of new services show an increment. This is in function of the diversification of the added value services.

We can observe that salaries levels diminished in the first years. Nevertheless, profits went up from 1991 to 1993. The last year, however, breaks the tendency due to the crisis that without any doubt our country is going through. Yet, the determining elements for the new competitive structure will be labor costs. Thus, once again, in April of the current year, Tel Mex negotiates a new collective contract, based on the experience it had with the medicine of productivity and its dealings with unions. In a direct style, Tel Mex's CEO stated: "The most important achievement in this contract is the flexibility that from now on, we shall have in labor relations; more flexibility to carry out functions among different specialties and more flexibility to execute tasks of lesser categories... it was agreed to extend the retirement age, recognizing thus that the experience and commitment of its people are one of Tel Mex's major assets. This flexibility, coupled with the new productivity program, must result in a more productive and competitive corporation that will finally bring its human resources up to the same level it now has in its technology" (Chico Pardo, 1996).

Raising productivity is the central axis of management's strategy to increase profits. This year there has been a revision of the productivity concepts, placing greater emphasis on the importance of the "customers" with the idea, it is said, of giving more and better service. However, this also means more dedication and more effort on the part of the workers. Thus, the competitive efficiency and the profitability are achieved through labor cost reduction, increments in the work load, more participation of the workers in the company's objectives, lower salary benefits and, eventually, personnel reductions. So far, Tel Mex's union has been able to hold the staff cuts, but the question is until when?

Although there hasn't been an official reduction, it is clear that they have increased the number of nonunion workers. This can be a first step in a larger strategy. Therefore, Tel Mex workers have clear in their mind that it is necessary to search for new ways of bargaining so that they can keep the present employment level.

Finally, it is worth nothing that another of Tel Mex's strategies has been centering the focus on the big clients, the ones that generate the higher profits. These clients are the "premier" customers; they are looked after by Telecorp and their needs are fulfilled "custommade" style, as expressed by one of Tel Mex's corporate directors (Sotomayor, 1996).

We would like to point out one more consequence of this neoliberal approach in Mexican telecommunications. With the application of these measures, the polarization in the rendering of basic services tends to grow. The current tariff rates make it impossible for the majority of Mexicans to afford a telephone at home. Maybe Tel Mex is considering for them the possibility of a pay phone interspersed in the poor neighborhoods or remote rural villages. In this sense, we can see how since 1989 the price index for telecommunications is higher than the Consumer Price Index. This ratifies the tariff structure that makes for higher costs for local service. We can also note that, since 1995, Tel Mex has experienced a drastic slump in its growth. This is due not only to the crisis, but also to the fact that the potential customer base with purchasing power is constantly getting smaller. Whereas Mexico City has 24.6 lines per 100 inhabitants, Chiapas has only 2.2 lines a tenfold difference.

5. One perspective of globalization: multinational competition, polarization and labor sacrifice.

As we have seen, globalization in telecommunications means the shaping of a global infrastructure of information and a converging of technology. The foundations have been: deregulation, opening of markets and, first of all, labor flexibility.

We see that the global corporate strategy is the form in which multinational companies reap the benefits of technological advancement and take over their countries' markets and advance internationally. Also, they use this strategy to maintain and reproduce this state of things.

From the workers' perspective, the inset of global competition has meant a lowering of the employment levels, higher work loads and a weakening of union power. We also have to keep in mind that now efforts are being made to impose standards and parameters of productivity and quality where there are deep dissimilarities in the social, economic and cultural aspects. For that, it is the big, multinational corporations that with capital and know how, reap the wealth generated in telecommunications. They are the ones that have the power to impose their will.

We thus find that in the configuration of the North America market, one thing was very clear: the idea was to open up international borders so that the big American multinationals could apply their strategies throughout the entire region (Industrial Outlook, 1993).

However, the Mexican and Canadian governments chose the possibility of jumping in immediately and reap juicy benefits instead of the possibility of generating peopleoriented policies.

The lack of symmetry is substantial. Whereas the U.S. has 1.8 inhabitants per line and Canada 1.7, Mexico has 15.3 inhabitants per line. The innovation capacity of capital is nonexistent in Mexico; selective in Canada and very large in USA. And yet, the elements they are trying to make equal are profitability (return rate on investment) and productivity... and they are achieving it, but, at the expense of the workers and of a very strong market segmentation, tilted heavily towards the big users. All this reinforces even more so a reproduction model with a high degree of polarity.

Challenges for the workers have been spelled out in different ways. Number one, gear up a resistance of the same caliber as capital; that is to create a multinational resistance strategy. A strategy that embraces the defense of telecommunications as a universal service, and the emergence of a different growth policy.

Translated into English from the Spanish

Original by: Jesús Sepúlveda Sagaón.

Monterrey/II/97 3586705 / 3592292

SESSION II: Health and Safety

A. Jerry Morris, CWA, local 9000, Los Angeles

This issue provides some light at the end of the tunnel. You can use safety and health as a component of organizing, both internal and external organizing. In the work place, there are three main health andsafety issues: stress, toxics, and RSI, which is really a series of cumulative trauma illnesses. Stress is builtin to jobs. RSI is easier to address. We started a "train the trainer" program" to train workers to train others workers about ergonomics. We trained 9 people over 4 days. With normal grievances, 5% of the workers are 90% of the work. Healthandsafety gives the union an opportunity to interact with members on a daily, positive basis. We work on work place rearranging. In southern California, the goal is for every local to have an individual plan and let the people know the union is doing this. At PacBell, we have had little success. We have a joint Health & Safety committee, but with little progress. At GTE, we have been more successful. The GTE Megacenter gives people six months training, but no training in how to use ergonomics furniture. We trained the stewards. In the work place stewards train the workers on company time. Injuries lowered. A word of warning: injuries go up at first because people recognize their injuries.

In the latest negotiations with Pac Bell, not one bargaining issue was health & safety. Healthandsafety is something everyone knows about. One has to remember: "There are no problems. There are opportunities." One union negotiating item can be that every new employee receive four hours of training, provided by the union, on company time.

B. Dr. Felipe Sánchez, CILAS, Mexico

Traditionally, work place health has been solely as safety, or in the best of cases, as hygiene and safety. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), however, in reality, work place health is not solely the absence of sickness but physical, social, and psychological wellbeing. A change in working conditions is bound to have health repercussions. There are 7,000 work place illnesses that have been identified. These include ergonomic, psychological, biological and mechanical maladies.

The union has to be involved in the analysis of risk factors in order to be able to confront them. In Mexico, we do not have regulation regarding ergonomic or psychosocial maladies. There are no standards. There is a lag with respect to international norms. There is a need to standardize these norms.

With respect to work place safety, there are 500,000 accidents per year in Mexico. There needs to be recognition of occupational illnesses. There are others that aren't specifically occupational, but which do affect the work, such as dust or noise. These are obvious. But there are others, such as the lack of a fixed schedule, which leads to absenteeism. There are also costs for failing to invest in health and safety to cover complete disability, permanent or partial disabilities.

There has been a reform the Mexican social security laws in affecting 350,000 people unable to work.

The most basic thing is to have information in order that we can evaluate and at the same time we need to take into account all the risk factors, not only physical or chemical, but also psychosocial which is going to become more important.

III. New Technology and Reengineering

A. Gordon Young, CEP, Local 4, Saskatchewan

Reengineering in Saskatchewan has been the subject of much media attention: national radio interviews, an article in The Globe and Mail (October 25, 1996). Why has it captured the media's focus?

1) It's the first time that reengineering went through a process where it was documented. There was a hired person to evaluate the project stepby step.

2) A very large number of people who participated in the project became ill, some of them so severely that they may never work again. Some are still being treated for posttraumatic stress injury.

We lived and breathed this project for two years which actually started in the late eighties, when our union then, Communication Workers of Canada, introduced a policy called Work place Reorganization. There were bitter debates, nationally and in Saskatchewan. At times, we thought the union was coming apart. Probably the most important piece: we had to have this debate. Even though the debate was very contentious, it identified in our minds very clearly what was at stake.

The decision was made to introduce a policy on the bargaining table to work jointly with the company. The company introduced the matter as a small project on service orders. This is not unusual. The company indicated to the union that it would be sixtoeight weeks long. They asked for union participation. So I commuted from Moose Jaw to Regina for a sixtoeight week project to work on service orders.

I very quickly realized that this was not shortterm service order project, but it was a fullblown reengineering program with consultants brought from the United States to manage this.

I belonged to a team which was known as a crossfunctional team. Some people would call it a dysfunctional team. It was a joint union/management team with people from various departments and different levels of management. The Vice President of Finance was on the team. There was also a steering committee in place. Ron Carson of CEP District 3] was on the steering committee, along with some members of the bargaining team.

When I got to the head office in Regina, they had us in a room with windows papered over. There was no access. We were told we had to leave our stripes at the door. That was to indicate that in some way we would be equal in this room.

We had consultants come in, in a very strange vendor relationship. These consultants managed the entire project. We knew from the beginning that something was not right. They came in and talked about union involvement at the highest level.

We had a decision to make. Do we walk away from this right now, knowing they had these American consultants? Do we participate and try to gain as much knowledge as we can? Do we participate and see if we can either kill it or make it work? We decided that it was better to participate to try to control it, so we could protect our members.

The consultant group was called Symmetrics. They're from Boston, Massachusetts. I'm sure they go by other names depending on where they work. We knew they had worked in the insurance industry and telephone industry in the United States, but we could never find any information on these people.

They were going to reengineer the entire company. These consultants were a group of MBA grads from Harvard. They had been at SaskTel for 12 months prior to our knowing they were here, doing what they call a "flyby." They got access to every part of the company. They had the company president's card.

They got to come in: determine scope, what they're going to do, when and how they're going to do it and we would write the check. They got paid lots.

The union was not involved in choosing the consultant, or the scope of what we work on. The consultants never brought us a plan, never told us the plan. They told us information on a needtoknow basis. They taggedteamed us.

We worked very long hours. We'd work through dinners, coffee breaks. They did whatever they could to segregate us from other workers. We found out later they'd call this "the greenhouse effect."

They work on a very high return on investment. As we all know, ROI is a shortterm management tool. A way to raise ROI is reduce labor costs. This was strictly going to be a downsizing, to slashandburn program.

They had us do a lot of meaningless work, just pushed us, pushed us to do this work. They had us input data into spreadsheets. They'd call this project: Symmetrees. In a very humiliating way, they'd chastise us for not imputing the data in the proper way. They were going to do stair charts: white space, black space, think "out of the box," blue sky. It was really quite incredible.

The team dynamics or the crossfunctional team, was originally placed on teams with managers. We were not equal in numbers, nor in power. Even though they told us we could leave our stripes at the door, we all know for you to take on an opposing view with your manager at the table is not easy unless you're very strong. This teams received no prior training, no prior introduction to the project, no documentation, no long view at all. It was all daybyday, what you need to know.

We were not told up front about the long working hours we would have to put in. Some of the people on our team still had to their normal work. This was true of both managers and union employees. A particular manager, who is now very sick, was working on the program; they gave us another project and she still had to manage another group even in the evening.

We were told in the group that we were not to be concerned about the decisions we made. You had to dream and think and not be concerned about the decisions we make. That's other people's job.

They attempted to get us out of Regina, Saskatchewan and to Boston, Massachusetts. It took a lot to fight that. It took us a while, but both union and management learned these people were very vicious. They did not have the telephone company's interest in mind nor its employees. Within our team, we started to communicate at night between union and management about what these guys were doing with us. We knew we had to survive this without the damage being done.

What we did early on, as a team, is we actually kicked the consultants out of the room. It was very dangerous for the managers when they took the workers' view. We set terms of reference that we would work by. We forced the CEO to sign it. The company, however, never lived up to the terms of reference.

We went through a very long process of trying to gain control. It took us 18 months to get them out and put together a process under which the union would properly participate.

That was the second stage. We instituted equality on the committees in both numbers and power, a fulltime union person, paid by the company, to look after the healthandsafety of the workers on a daytoday basis and to communicate to the national union and members. When we gained this control, the roadblocks came up. The project folded when the union said, "We won't participate any more." But that has not stopped reengineering at SaskTel. It just takes on different names.

People may argue that we failed. Some of us might argue that we succeeded in preventing mass layoffs. We will never become involved in reengineering again. Do you ever need a name to work with your employer? We do it every day.

This project has left us with some very sick people. Certainly, many bitter people. We have a worse relationship between the union and the company. I don't think we can chalk this up as a very positive experience for us. Though some paid a high price, we probably saved a lot of anguish for people.

B. Ron Carlson, CEP Western Region Administrator, Canada

In Canada we have ten provinces and two territories, within those provinces we have a variety of telephone suppliers. They vary from large American based Telephone Company Bell and GTE of British Colombia to the newly formed privatized company TelUS in Alberta to two publicly owned companies in the Province of Seskachwan and Manitoba to a large Canadian company Bell Canada in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec. And we have Maritime T&T in the Province of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland Telephone in Newfoundland, and Newbrunsewick telephone in Newbrunsewick, and in Prince Edward Island there is a subsidiary of MT&T.

Bell Canada controls pretty much everything from Ontario east. Bell owns controlling shares in New Brunswick Tel and Maritime Tel & Tel. In Alberta, there is Telstra. There are two publiclyowned telephone companies. BC Tel is 50.1% owned by GET. These phone companies cooperate in longdistance service provision through what used to be called TransCanada Telephone Systems, but which is now Stentor. In 1994, long distance competition was introduced. Today, there is open competition in all provinces, except Saskatchewan, where there is "controlled competition" according to a previouslyagreed moratorium, which is effective until 1998.

Telephone companies follow the same or similar strategies as in the United States. There is industry reorganization, new technology, company restructuring with a focus in cost cutting. Though connected, these are each distinct items. Everywhere you see "downsizing," "rightsizing," early retirements. This can be seen at Bell Canada by the loss of 10,000 jobs, Telstra reduced its work force by 5,000. At Manitoba Tel and SaskTel, the goal is to reduce the work force by 25%. At BC Tel and in eastern Canada, there have been similar reductions, though no layoffs. BC Tel is growing in population; thus, there is some growth.

Companies are outsourcing, contractingout, shifting work to armslength subsidiaries. They are centralizing operator services, test centers, switching centers. Some of the change is technologydriven, but some of it is organizationallydriven. There is the exiting of a number of markets, including inside wiring, terminal equipment, phone centers, and even the possible exiting of operator service work.

The advance of software technology has led to switching data changes. Privatization of the business has prioritized needs to varying levels of service, depending on where the customer lives and the availability of service. Telephone companies are organizing their structures to have most multimedia activity through armslength subsidiaries. An example is the merging of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX in the US.

Stentor is more resourcebased and focuses on specific activities, such as research and development. AT&T is now also involved, as it effectively controls Unitel despite only having 25% of its stock. Unitel is seeking to expand its activities via cable companies and expansion of the local loop. The World Trade Organization may bring about more changes. Foreign ownership is currently restricted to 33%, but that could be relaxed, or even abandoned. This could result in buyouts of Canadian companies by large US. telcos or even precipitate some consolidation of the telcos in Canada.

$15 billion in new investment is expected. But where will the investment happen? And where will the jobs be? All indications are they will be in nonunion telephone company/cable company joint ventures and armslength subsidiaries, which are difficult to organize.

Organizationally, telephone companies are dividing up by divisions or department. This does three things:

1) Makes each division accountable to itself in terms of profit.

2) Creates an incentive to drive down costs, such as employee wages.

3) Gives the company the option to apply expenses to whichever department best suits the company when dealing with the CRTC regulatory agency.

In the field of new technology, there are also a number of developments, especially the following:

1) New wireless services: These include PCS (Personal Communications Services), directtohome cable, and voice, datatransmission services. The telephone companies' aim here is to be fullservice providers of both cable and telephone interactive services.

2) Some Canadian companies are buying American technology or are entering into agreements to adapt readymade technology. For instance, Bell Canada bought MCI's lockkey "enhanced billing program." or forming alliances with different companies such as NTM, an interactive media player in the US.

3) There is the BEACON initiative, a forerunner to the information highway in Canada. This is no longer at the top of the agenda. New switching technology makes copper wire viable for years to come. Services are being transferred to Stentor to coordinate and operate. The fiber network is run by telephone companies throughout the country. Most provinces have their own fiber networks. In Saskatchewan, they are currently installing a third round of fiber. Some of the new technology introduced in Canada is the ultra high speed switching technology and ATM (asynchronous transmission mode) switching technology. This allows you to simultaneously route voice and data at millions of bits per second, as well as the fiberoptics, the broad band and narrow band, wide band networks and digital transmissions.

The restructuring of the companies is coming about due to new technology, mergers, outsourcing, conversions,downsizing, trade agreements and the spreading of privatization. In Canada the last company to be privatized was in Alberta about five years ago. Manitoba is currently facing privatization. In Saskatchewan, there is discussion about SaskTel becoming a private company. This causes stress, uncertainty, tension, wondering whether companies really know what they're doing. Employers are not moving simply in one direction. Rather, they're spreading their risk as thin as possible by adopting several options. At times, they compete against themselves.

On employee issues, employers take much greater risks, take greater changes, and make greater changes through programs such as TQM, OWL, CQI, teams and other joint union/management ventures. Unions end up having to clean up the mess the company creates. Reengineering is one of these risks. The guru of reengineering, 34 years later, wrote a book condemning reengineering. Reengineering is not dying, but it's taken on new kinds of formats and new wording, such as "divestiture and restructuring", "business transformation" or "maximization 2000."

To respond, unions are going to have to fight to set conditions of services to keep the employment they have in Canada. Unions in Canada have been together for last 23 years working together on this issue. This involves the 1) setting the level of service in Canada to maintain it, and 2) maintaining our jobs by keeping them from being contracted out and take these recommendations to our regulatory agency.

IV. Organizing

A.- Virginia RodriguezJones, CWA Western Region, Organizing Coordinator

It's not easy to organize. The CWA is probably the largest communication union in the world. But the July 14, 1994, closing of Conexión Familiar at Sprint is the worst example of how an employer will fight unionization.

Regarding organizing, the CWA took the following steps at its last convention.

1) The CWA increased the organizing budget from $2.5 million to $8 million, which is 10% of the union's budget.

2) It was agreed to place greater emphasis on organizer development: both from within ranks and from outside.

3) It was resolved that locals were to be encouraged to sign up into a national organizing network, focusing special attention to the locals in the network.

4) Training is to be given special emphasis, both with materials and schools.

5) There are to be regular reviews so as to learn from experience. Annual organizing retreat to look back, analyze successes and failures, make plans for the year ahead, especially in context of what is taking place in the industry, both nationally and locally.

Regarding the CWA's organizing approach, it's becoming more and more difficult to organize in the private sector. Between 1965 and 1968, on average 7,534 certification elections were held each year, 300,000 workers each year. The election win rate was 59%. By 1990, union elections declined to 3,623. The win rate was 44.5%, meaning only 79,814 new members.

Organizing is most effective when you:

1) Build a strong effective organizing committee.

2) Do 1on1 systematic action throughout.

3) Prepare the work force for the antiunion drive.

4) Do bottomup, aggressive organizing. Act like a union from the beginning and prepare workers beyond the election for bargaining.

The telecommunications industry is the hardest to organize: cable TV, wireless phone service, new subsidiaries, computers, MCI and Sprint. The idea is to try to inoculate the worker from what the employer will do and have preparation for bargaining before the election.

In wireless, there has been success where neutrality agreements exists. It's hard to organize because the wages are low and there's high turnover.

The long distance competitors that have formed since deregulation, we've gotten to the point of cardsigning. MCI shut its Michigan center down after card signing. Sprint is a second example.

We have to organize at every single service center and every single operator center. With La Conexión Familiar, these were Latino workers. They were there in San Francisco, California, right behind local 9410. They sold long distance service. It was a well hidden secret that La Conexión Familiar was part of Sprint. It wasn't more than a few months before they made contact with the local. There was rampant favoritism. The conditions were such that they had no drinking water.

The first contact was made in February; in April, we had cards out. On June 1, we petitioned. They were paid $7 an hour. But that was all you could expect to get.

After we petitioned, the company started the rumor that the company would shut down. The workers held very firm. There was an election scheduled for July 24th. The company called them together one week before the election and told them they 'd be shutting the place down.

This was devastating. It affected not only the 197 workers of the bargaining unit, but all 235. We did not expect it. We didn't believe the company Sprint would do such a thing, especially since part of the company was unionized. They had local phone service organized.

We then mounted a legal campaign and an outreach campaign to try to pressure them to reopen the work place. This company closed down because of the union and not economic conditions. The NLRB ruled in our favor. To get that enforced, the NLRB had to go to the Courts and the Court ruled against the Board. We contacted the telecommunications unions in France and Germany where Spring was trying to form alliances. They were very helpful. We were able to get a lot of support for the Latino workers. The workers had expectations that this would have a better ending. In the end, the place remains shut down. The workers remain to this day without this work. The moral of this story is that we went into this drive expecting to win it. In the face of this, the company chose to take the extreme measure of shutting this down.

The STRM became aware of this. They did file charges with the NAO under the NAFTA side agreement. Filing charges on the side agreement is a good tactic; the workers' story comes out and the NAO has to make a determination. The hearing was in February. There has been no decision forthcoming from the NAO. The good thing that came out of this is there was another round of bad publicity. But it's frustrating. That's the recourse that there's available. But it doesn't have any teeth. Maybe that will come out of this.

Given the difficulties, the CWA is trying new approaches to organizing. These include:

_ Seeking neutrality cardcounts through bargaining

_ Do coordinated national campaigns (examples: Sprint, NCR [AT&T])

_ Develop links with international unions (examples: Northern Telecom, La Conexión Familiar)

_ STRM example: Crossorganizing training led to assistance. Similar tactics have been used in port drivers organizing and the MaxiSwitch drive.

What else? We've tried to work more in coalitions, such as the Jobs with Justice campaign in Seattle. In Cleveland cable, we fought for workers' rights boards. In cable, we have also sought to encourage community mobilization to support bargaining rights.

There is a new approach to organizing by the AFLCIO. The question is no longer whether to organize; it's now a matter of knowing how to do so. Without the ability to organize, as telecommunications workers we are looking at something that is unstoppable. That's the question. How do we do this? This is a key problem we face as communication workers: how to deal with companies that are nonunion.

B. José Luis Jimenez STRM, Mexico

The main organizational challenges that we face are questions of an external nature, but this above all forces internal changes. In our recently held union convention, a national telecommunications strategy was established, with state participation, but also union participation. In this project, one has to protect universal service (the necessity of service for all popular classes). There needs to be a clear regulatory framework. The only business that is regulated is Telmex. The other businesses do not have even a single service requirement.

Another aspect that is fundamental is to create the conditions for assimilation of technology. Many developed countries spend 79% of the budget on research & development. In Mexico, it's only 3%. We favor the position that while Telmex will no longer be a monopoly that it should remain an industry leader. Clearly, we will wear the company badge, but only if our employment is preserved. As well, we are putting forth the idea that all decisions regarding reengineering be approved by the union and the workers.

Regarding our policy of alliances at the union level, we have been active in the MaxiSwitch and La Conexión Familiar campaigns. There has been a strong campaign against Sprint. Our union has developed a broad policy of alliances with the CWA, the CEP, and most recently with Costa Rica. We hope to develop international alliances vis a vis transnational enterprises for a code of conduct that will be respected.

In Mexico, the most important union organization is the Labor Congress (Congreso de Trabajo or CT). In the CT, a deep crisis has developed. The CT does not even satisfy the interests of official ("corporatist") labor. This results in a loss of influence for CT, but a loss of power for workers. One group of unions, among them the STRM; the SME (electricians' union); SNTE (the teachers' union), which is the largest union in Latin America and a number of other organizations. The STRM in 1990 founded the Fesebes (Federation of Unions in Goods and Services' Businesses), an organization that began to group together unions which are not in agreement with government policy.

Parting from the privatization wave of the government, they now have proposed to privatize Social Security. The main institution of the Social Security system is the IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute). A strong opposition movement against the privatization movement created a new organization, the Union Forum. Beginning with 3 unions, the Forum now brings together 26 unions, including streetcar workers, pilots (ASPA), workers at the DINA truck company, university workers, the federation of workers in the state of Mexico [adjacent to Mexico City], Notimex [official news agency] workers, Volkswagen workers, IMSS workers, electricians (SME), STRM, workers at the UNAM (STUNAM), workers at the University of Nuevo León [another state of Mexico which includes the city of Monterrey]. The Union Forum is an important organization that challenges the structure that we call "union cronyism" [charrismo sindical].

We are also pursuing the unionization of workers throughout the telecommunications industry. The tradition of unionism in Mexico includes such things as ghost contracts [contratos fantasmas] and rat unions [sindicatos blancos]. The decision has been made to fight to ensure that workers in competing telecommunications companies have real unions. If possible, we'd prefer that they affiliate with the STRM, that is the idea.

This is the focus of our new struggle, an issue that addresses the interests of the telephone workers _ the need to fight for union representation. If we fail to get representation for these workers, at least we need to form alliances with their unions. The idea is to create a national union. But we haven't been able to do it. We have to begin to discuss this more. AT&T is coming to Mexico and it will have to establish a collective agreement.

C. Alf Madsen, TWU Business Representative, Vancouver BC, Canada

After listening to the situation faced by the workers in the maquiladoras, I'm almost ashamed to say we have problems. We've been in our own little world in Canada. And now the real world has come.

Unlike my brothers from Saskatchewan, we don't have cold winters. We have warm, wet ones. We don't do stories. We do theories.

Reengineering. Restructuring. Quality circles. My favorite, absolute favorite, is "empowerment."

My theory: every two years, they take all of the top management consultants to meet for a week and then they come home and go to the biggest suckers in the world: the CEOs. They go to each CEO, one by one, and say, "We're going to make you the most successful CEO of the world. They collect $56 million and go back to the island.

This year, they went to the island, and came back with a new message. Guess what? The new message is that downsizing isn't working.

Deregulation is the same thing as job loss. So in the mid1980s, we came up with a plan. It is based on the following formula: companies want money, unions wants job, and governments want votes. So we got to use the fact that workers vote to put pressure on the government.

One of our biggest problems is membership apathy. We have to reorganize the organized to make this strategy work. Recently, the CRTC allowed convergence, which allows telephone companies to enter into cable and cable companies into the telephone business. Put everyone on a levelplaying field and let them kill themselves. We are fortunate in Canada in that we have one or two major cable operators and they're unionized.

The CRTC decision excepted BC Tel. These are our future jobs. This is our emerging market. The CRTC made this decision because of Canadian culture. BC Tel is 50.1% owned by GTE. We can't allow an American company to compete.

We got into a program. It was based on the idea that we want jobs and the federal government's platform is job creation. Rogers, the cable company in BC, added "negative option" billing, in which the customer had to specifically opt out of added services or pay more on his or her cable bill. Rogers became a hated word in BC.

We said that if BC Tel cannot compete in small communities, BC Tel will pull back. This got the local communities to support us. By the end of the campaign, BC Tel would take 60% at least of Roger's customers. We put out newspaper adds and had literally thousands of responses.

It came down to the Minister of the Heritage Department which was blocking a reversal of the decision. We went to Ottawa. I said, "I don't know one American citizen who's ever worked for BC Tel. They're all Canadian citizens. They're all from British Columbia." The bureaucrat's response was, "That's an amazing statistic."

Our message was "Someone is taking something from you." You organize people to help you. It's been very successful. Letterwriting, town council meetings, radio ads. You use this to get what you want, it really works. Through this type of action, we held off deregulation for 8 or 9 years. We didn't stop it, but we sure prevented a lot of pain during those 8 or 9 years. We have organized all the unions across Canada with a simple goal: To stop the pain.

Recently, we had a joint meeting with CEOs across Canada. We told them we can be their strongest allies or their strongest enemies. We intend to be the qualityofservice police. We are pursuing our own agenda, which will benefit them, us, and society as a whole. This adherence to a social strategy has gained us a new level of respect. The good news is that the drive to downsize appears to be on its way out. Profitable companies cannot be allowed to profit by castingoff workers and reducing service.

What do the CEOs see in this plan? Telephone companies in Canada must cooperate with unions or they will be swallowed up by the "Pacmen" of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint. In British Columbia, Sprint is the biggest competitor to BC Tel. There are 10 Sprint jobs in British Columbia. And AT&T is sitting, just waiting. The only thing holding them up are the foreign ownership laws. Already, they own about a third of Unitel. So there needs to be a social contract established across Canada before changes in foreign ownership rules come out.

Our motto has got to be: "If it moves, organize it." That's what it's about. To win, to win for your members and you use every lever you've got.

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS AND GENERAL DISCUSSION

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INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING

The general discussion after the presentations by Newman & Sánchez Daza revolved around the impact restructuring is having on workers and their unions, as the telcos are making record profits and workers are losing jobs in a parallel proportion.

A logic difficult to relate to from the workers' perspective.

It was observed that there are two points to understand; the competition for market share of investment dollars and the sale of stock shares. From 1982 to 1992 for instance, revenues grew more rapidly than investment, The amount of dollars invested has now more than doubled, but the amount of profit has more than

tripled. On the other hand, the number of workers is falling, not only in telecommunications but in the economy as a whole.

In telecommunications, in manufacturing, in services, the number of jobs is declining. Furthermore, the unemployment rates of the United States are much greater than in the sixties and are not expected to return to earlier levels. And when telcos shed workers, they shed the unionized workers. AT&T, NCR for instance they shed unionized workers and kept the others.

In summation, the driving force of capitalism is not profit alone, but the rate of profit. They keep trying to drive up the rate of profit.

The other thing to understand is how technology has an impact on business practices. It is possible now to have directory assistance reach from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. At the same time AT&T now wants to provide Velcro badges. For instance, when the customer requests AT&T, but AT&T has no lines, AT&T rents the line from the local company, serviced by local company reps, who temporarily put on an AT&T badge.

However, according to Juliett Schorr in "The Overworked American", the productivity increase since the 1950s is so much, that the workweek should be much lower. We should be working less instead, and stay all employed with such higher productivity rates. This is one solution which has been proposed in Europe.

In Mexico for instance, there are 47,000 unionized workers in the STRM, but the company claims there is a surplus of personnel as high as 9,800. Fortunately, the STRM has a policy to prevent layoffs at least until 1997. However, Telmex is trying to use competition as a means of getting workers to increase their productivity and act in accord with what the company wants. Observers claim that Telmex will lose business unless it interconnects with AT&T. Workers pointed out that mergers never create jobs. One example is Time Warner, who took on $17billion in debt to buy Turner. Now, there is a wave of fear through the whole corporation, where workers are rushing to organize now.

HEALTH AND SAFETY

The discussion generated by the presentations by Morris and Sanchez focused mostly on stress as a health related issue in the work place: Historically, in the U.S., a key to the development of occupational health and safety law was the 1911 Triangle Shirt factory fire where nearly 100 people died.

In the 1980s, in Japan, the stress was increased to its peak. Stress is part of this stage of capitalism. It comes from the competition: First, at the immediate level of the business, there is competition among the workers Stress is designed by employers to separate workers this can be avoided; and, second, the relationship with the business brings heavy workloads, etc. The latter requires tactics of confrontation and resistance.

A second kind of stress is social: In this regard, capital is in the lead at the international level. Furthermore, in the United States and the European Union, social security is under attack.

There is a need for a working class political program.

In the United States, the corporate drive is to say that stress does not exist. It is hardtoimpossible to collect on stress. In Mexico too, it has been difficult to secure financing for occupationalrelated maladies. Also, in the Unites States, the tracking of injuries is done by industry, not job function. Hence, in the telephone industry, incidence is low because it's underreported.

In Canada, National Health Care added harassment as a health and safety problem. However, those who are mostly affected are women and people of color. Comparatively, nothing's done in the United States, until it occurs to the white man.

Another problem is violence in the work place, where workers get frustrated and commit suicide or turn against coworkers. For instance, a customer attacks an installation and repair person.

It should be noted that about 5% of stress is workeronworker, 95% is outside person on worker.

We need to make clear to the employer that we just come to work here, we don't come to die. By the same token, if the system is broke, the customer won't get service. Workers should let the system fail under its own weight.

What CEP in Canada did regarding stress and RSI was to get the company to do a health audit. We created a Human Factors Committee. Made a business case for it. Ergonomics is key to changing the job design. At NYNEX, cable volt inspection (for toxics, explosive gas, etc.) had not been done in a number of years. The district has a good healthandsafety program, but not the local. We sought to make the company understand that they have to do it for their own selfinterest or else.

One problem was that the company healthandsafety representative is not given a sufficient budget. Unofficially, the rep. worked with the union. The strategy worked. We got a program controlled by the union. The stewards make the inspection program work. You have to get your grip on the problem where you can get it.

US West has the best healthandsafety program in the U.S. But it only got that way through confrontation.

New Technology and Reengineering

During the presentation of New Technology and Reengineering, Young and Carlson used an interactive format allowing the participants to make recommendations for a union strategy plan.

In the end, a total of 18 recommendations were listed as a result of the group discussion:

In response to a question regarding the impact reengineering has had on the STRM in Mexico it was commented that the application of reengineering has implied the restructuring of the business at a national level.

The decision making has occurred in central management and 7 regions were created that function autonomously. They include three geographic regions, one that focuses on long distance, one that focuses on overall corporate decisions.

Up until now, management has agreed that there will not be layoffs. The work conditions are changing, though. Gradually, because of the opening of competition and internally too, there is a marked change because of reengineering.

Operator services were modernized through the installation of digital technology. There were a great many who had to transfer to outside plants or clerical positions. They managed to ensure that these people were not laid off.

Right now, they are completing a detailed analysis of the work place. 4,000 administrative workers are going to be transferred to be under the direction of the same areas where they presently work.

1 Education

At US West, we had Canadian workers from AGT, BC Tel, Edmonton Tel technicians working on site.

SaskTel workers can be voluntarily subcontracted for international work. There are a few in the US. and a few in Mexico, 8 in Africa, 4 in the Philippines. About a dozen worked on the Chunnel project.

The TWU has a similar agreement to the CEP in Saskatchewan, but it is not yet formalized.

Pac Bell has approved BCTel workers coming down. It won't begin until early 1997. The project got the San Francisco local's support.

The Bell Canada people at USWest aren't union; they are people who took the voluntary separation agreement.

In Manitoba and Alberta, it works like BCTel. They're union. We have people in the U.S., China, Caribbean, and Mexico.

It's the same as BCtel. We have members in the US. and Bermuda. Only surplus people at contract rates.

2 Union Agenda Up front

I was president on a committee for nine months. We were able to save 1,000 jobs across 14 states because we participated. But it meant that 1 of our 2 fulltime officers in the local wasn't available to service members.

The key is to have your own agenda up front: universal service, quality of service, jobs, etc.

At Nynex, reengineering has been entirely unilateral. Reengineering has affected, or will affect, everyone. There are no exceptions. Unions should do the reengineering ourselves. We need to redesign our own jobs and make them bargaining points.

A key to the union's approach has to be to have an equal role in determining job design and "competitiveness" within the rights and rules of the collective agreement.

3 Preempt Bargaining

At PacBell in 1981, they didn't lay people off. They moved people around. At one of the garages, people refused to drive. They held a strike vote. The next day, we negotiated a no layoff clause. Now people are upset when there isn't a surplus, because they want a buyout.

At AT&T, workers have become so desensitized. The people want to get their separation payment. It's been so long and people are so used to it. It's, "I want to go now." We have almost a split depending on your years of service.

4 Structure Union/Management Relations

we have a situation that is quite critical in Mexico, there is the intent of the union leadership and management to establish an alliance to face the competition. This has accelerated even more the process of reengineering, which leads one to ask, "What will happen once competition begins?" It's going to be a contradictory reality for us.

This unionmanagement alliance brings us problems. Not only the normal anguish, but there is an additional ideological component. They say, "One has to wear the company badge [hay que poner la camiseta], that one has to assume the challenges put forth by management, in order to preserve jobs.

In Europe, cooperation takes a whole different limelight.

5 Collective Bargaining Agreement

The company said the program was not meant to eliminate employees. My job is to protect the membership the best I can, not to make the business better. What we did do was negotiate a no layoff clause. In 1992, we negotiated a no layoff clause in the collective bargaining agreement. In 1994, the contract expired. Through their process reengineering, the company determined there were many surplus employees. A month ago, we ended an 8week strike to protect our people. The company agreed to "no permanent layoffs."

Question: How many of the findings of the group are now in the contract?

Answer: No. It's all dead at the end, the union ultimately took over control and had our agenda running for six months. We were fixing things, we were making the jobs better, we were protecting the jobs. That's when they started putting up the roadblocks.

6 More Militant Education

One thing we have to do is become more militant about what's going on. The company's agenda is bucks, not to create jobs. I realize that our members are asked to participate and a lot of them want to participate. We need to ensure they are secure in that participation, in terms of benefits and conditions of employment. Reengineering means the elimination of jobs, the degradation of jobs. We're saying there's a price to doing that.

7 No involvement in Running Business

Question: What did CEP do during the 18months the reengineering program was in force?

Answer: Yes, we actually went through the mapping process. It was smoke and mirrors. They were playing mental gymnastics with us.

In the STRM, we have a training course. Some union members are very uncritical of management. The ideological force of the business is quite strong with respect to this reengineering. We were going to try to revert the methodology in order to apply it to the problems that we have within the union. But from what we could see, while some groups of workers had a critical attitude, others were accepting everything. In these work places, work schedules simply were not honored. You could be working from 9 to 8. Even at 5 or 6 o'clock at night you could be working. They were leaving until 8 o'clock.

It didn't work this way with more critical union members. We said, "We'll see you tomorrow." The most uncritical, however, remained at work. They aren't taking into account the human factor that in reality exists within any business. In applying reengineering, one must consider the workerbusiness dynamics instead of relying only on cold data.

The union completely agrees that these costs must be borne, even when the substance of these changes attacks the very existence of the union, which to us seems quite backward. It is very difficult to change the union leadership's position. In our section, we have tried to build a plan, above all with respect to technological change. We have begun to pull together a program. We are inviting our union brothers and sisters to join this. This is the most we have been able to do, given that the union had agreed to follow the program.

8 No Union Label/Agenda

9 Seek Alternatives

You have to stay in there. You do need alternatives. Some are oldfashioned ones. The company said the payphone division should be sold off. If the company is supposed to do things in the best interests of the business, they shouldn't be doing this. When we got a rumor, we asked for a temporary restraining order. The act of walking into federal Court made it a bigger story. To the man who was running the division, we argued that it was a breach of the public trust. The judge is looking at the evidence. Meanwhile, it stalls the company's business plan.

10 Stock/Leverage

You need to know where you want to end up. Unions enter into programs with a defensive posture. The key problem is that companies earn record profits and record returnoninvestment. We need to be more offensive, rather than defensive. We need to identify where we can make gains: higher pay, job descriptions, shorter work week, etc.

Another key thing is to understand that amount of resources the union would have to put out to deal with this. Unions work in confrontational mode. This is a completely different way of working and thinking. You better have that done up front. The amount of time and energy to prevent them from going down a rat hole _ it's a lot.

At SW Bell, many of our members are stockholders. If we combine all of our stock and send somebody to the meeting, we can achieve things. Let's hit them where it hurts.

11 Community Involvement

Our brothers and sisters at Pac Bell in San Diego put up a picket. As well as hitting the stockholders, we need to get our communities involved. Now through their protest action, the workers managed to keep the San Diego office open and they have had some success in Orange and LA counties as well. If we get the community involved and let them know what their power is, I'm sure we'd get some support.

12 Control Training Programs

There are two processes that STRM worker members face: the control over work and the loss of employment. The responsibility of retraining has generated fear with respect to changes in the business. We have to go, as Dave Newman sets forth, giving responses to the changes that management imposes. We can't not sit waiting. We have to be studying them systematically so that we can avoid being controlled. We workers have to accept the risk of giving a response.

Another important aspect is the ideological. In 1990, a contract was established whose administrative and labor relations changes totally transformed the dynamic. The ideological campaign was very strong. The role of the union has been reduced. It has been reducing the participation of workers in union life. The problem is the need to create confidence towards the union in a situation where the loss of employment is almost inevitable.

Although we have an agreement which says there will be no layoffs, this does not mean that we may not have to soon negotiate early retirement agreements. We feel that our union brothers and sisters are very fearful and paralyzed. It is very important to create policies that confront the changes that the industry faces.

Maybe one step we can take is to take control of training for our membership.

13 No Damage Control Mode

Reengineering is not working at Ameritech. I'll give two examples. There is the assumed response, more commonly known as the front room and back room. They merge marketing and technical people in commercial service. They spent millions of dollars to move people physically. It lasted 18 months. It's going back to where we started.

The other one was the realignment of the business into what they call "business units." They did the first part of it which was to realign the technicians, customer service people along the lines of the size of the customers. For two years they did this and it's not working. We went from having the best service record in the US. for speed and quality of service to now having customers wait a week for service, which is unheard of. The company has paid millions in fines. Last week, they announced they're going to redesign the jobs. Off the record, what they're doing is going back to the old system. In the meantime, the customer suffers.

You're right, we need to be there with job security. We damn well better have a strategy. We must think strategically. There is no employee involvement language in our contract, once we set our agenda and used their language against them. We need to say, "These are our union values. We'll do this stuff, but we want something in return." We mirror their behaviors and they no longer want to do anything with us. The company walked away. Now they're doing reengineering. We are not involved, but our members know we are willing and the company won't play ball along union values.

One thing we need to oppose is the consolidation of centers.

14 Communication with Membership

The other piece of this are things like process mapping. Our own members can deskill their own jobs. It can not only be used to say that someone isn't needed, it can also be used to build scab handbooks, so the boss can bring anybody in. The other thing is you'll see the results of process mapping at the bargaining table.

15 Strong Union People

You need to have your best and strongest people involved. You need to have people who understand collective bargaining thoroughly. You need people who understand how the company works. You need people who understand union principles and who aren't going to budge. I can't overestimate how much they push you to bend your principles. If you don't have your strongest, best people in the committee, you're in trouble.

We have two union members on the Board of Directors. We need to have a committee equal in members and decisionmaking authority. We needed to have a crossfunctional team. And then we needed to have everybody involved and people had to be accountable.

16 Structure

At SaskTel, there are two worker representatives, one male and one female. Elections are every other year. The positions are twoyears, with overlapping terms so that one person is always experienced.

Question: Were the six committee members the same the whole time? Answer: There were shifts. Gord was involved the entire two years.

17 Extensive Training/Before Union

We should go through the tools you might need. One is to be sure to have a policy or agree not to have a policy regarding participation. And you should have a debate on that.

The "what ifs" become very critical. We were prepared for this. The debate allowed us to set out the absolute principles that we won't give an inch on. The IBEW local in Saskatchewan got killed on this because they didn't have that debate.

There were six union members, you need to prepare the union members of the committee.

18 Share Information on Consultants

Another thing is regarding tours, you need to find a way to talk to people in the work place regarding the program. Is it really working?

Tours ought to be paid for by the employer. But it's important to do regardless. People on the teams need training about how to work with managers and communicate to the union.

Regarding consultants, I think these people are very dangerous people. They had no understanding of Canadian culture. They had no understanding of Saskatchewan culture. They had no understanding of a union culture. Nor did they care. They had a kickass mentality. If anyone goes in their way, you got your ass kicked.

In the US, we need to have a union database on consultants. We all keep making the same mistakes and trade unionists know. We need to share more information and names.

Consultants will stay as long as they can. That's how they get their money. The Symmetric group charged $1,000 a day plus expenses and a trip home every weekend to Boston.

It would be nice if we could identify unionfriendly consultants. We all need to find a way to collect information on good consultants, such as Jerry Tucker of New Directions.

Health and safety is very important. It's an understatement to say reengineering is very stressful. You need to monitor this and you need to communicate to the local, the national union, and the membership.

Another issue is things to avoid. Some of the pitfalls of reengineering include poor team members, coaptation, lack of communication, hidden agendas by the company, a lack of commitment by management, and antiunion consultants.

We close with two questions: "Will you become involved in reengineering and will you participate? Do you see any value to participating in reengineering?

Does reengineering work? My response to this is, "For whom?" It's easy to step back and laugh at the company. It's kind of a joke in a way. But it's not a joke. The companies make a lot of money over it, by downsizing. They gain control over the work process. And that's what reengineering's goal is.

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Organizing

After hearing the presentations by RodriguezJones, Madsen and Jimenez, conference participants compared some of the characteristics and activities between unions in different countries.

It was discussed for instance that prior to 1950, there were two separate telephone companies in Mexico. El Sindicato de Telefonistas de la Republica Mexicana (STRM), was formed by the merger of the Ericson workers' union with that of Mexicana workers and in 1976, Francisco Hernández Juárez became Secretary General (president) of the union as a result of a movement that paralyzed telephone service throughout the nation.

The reason organizing in Mexico is different from the other two North American countries is because unions are organized differently in Mexico. In Mexico for instance, union membership is obligatory. This means that you don't have to work as hard for member support, and to that extent, STRM does not allocate a specific amount of its budget to an organizing program so the organizing efforts and initiatives rest on a number of union activists.

On the other hand, the decision of which union gets to represent the workers is basically a decision that is made by the government. This provides a great opportunity for corruption. Thus, to get your union recognized, requires a very hard struggle.

Union recognition is granted by the government throughout the country. However, in order to gain official recognition, the union has to demonstrate that it has the majority of workers on its side. Otherwise often there is a preagreement between the owner and a specific union since the law says that when a new business is established, it has to establish a collective bargaining agreement. This practice however, sometimes leads to "Ghost" contracts which only guarantee what Federal Labor Law demands from the employer and sometimes not even that. These type of contracts create working conditions which are very low regarding health and safety and salary.

Despite the corruption, one has to keep in mind that unions in Mexico are born originally out of worker struggle and that although the government has been able to coopt the leadership to a certain point, not all Mexican labor history consists of the selling of protection contracts.

The new developing conditions require that we come to understand the U.S. and Canadian experience. This opens an opportunity to change some of the union culture where they have to become more representative unions. Each time, we get closer. We need to, for survival's sake.

It was also observed that many of the same things occur in the United States and Mexico, especially fear.

In the United States, it was observed that there is a new AFLCIO, but there are still old problems. One of the issues that came up was the Associate Members program for the purpose of bringing in nonunion people.

Accordingly, this program was developed by the AFLCIO and gives out credit cards in the union to people who are members at large and can only pay a nominal fee of $1$3 a month in order to access a packet of benefits that are available only for unions

It is reported to be a gateway to try to bring in workers who you've targeted but can't organize yet.

One of the criticisms that came up was that the company that administers the Associate Membership program had just contracted with Household Credit Services, a very large nonunion outfit. Reportedly, they got a $30 million contract, between $15 and $30 million on a $3 billion volume of business. The fee structure is much more favorable than the Union Bank of New York.

You have to ask how the unionprivilege company would give its business to a nonunion company.

CONCLUSION

The last part of the conference was a combination of the Organizing Workshop and the Conference Closure allowing an opportunity for conferees and facilitators to combine acquired information with ideas for organizing.

Some of the participants' recommendations for improvement in future conferences included more structure, more time, cultural preamble, sessions in community involvement and privatization. In general, people were very enthusiastic about the program and materials presented. Following is a list of resolutions sorted out as longterm, shortterm projects based on feasibility or imminent need.

Conference Resolutions

Shortterm:

1) Prepare for 1997 Labor Notes conference

2) Support Mexican worker struggles; write letter in support of maquiladora workers at Mattel (MABAMEX)

3) Hook up traveling workers with unions in Mexico

4) Redesign reengineering course and go on the road

5) Establish international committee to work out agenda at next meeting

6) Support ASTTEL in El Salvador and the ASTTEL tour being organized in the United States

7) Develop greater coordination through a committee of interested participants

8) Hermosillo, STRM to hold one such regional event focused on the concerns of rankandfile workers

9) International conference calls every 3 months

10) Germán Sánchez to do research

11) Dave Newman to set up email service

Longterm:

1) Develop strategies for international organizing

2) Foster workerunion officer relationships

3) Develop reengineering document: need to advertise the bad effects of reengineering

4) Educate consumers

5) Community outreach: develop labor/community coalitions on universal service, quality of service, stopping the worst effects of deregulation and privatization

6) Develop positive agenda for universal affordable service

7) Hold regular regional meetings (e.g., Mexico/southern, US

northern US and Canada)

8) Bring rankandfile people to bargaining; engage in small acts of solidarity (i.e., make it clear to management that unions are working together)

9) New Mexico to do translation

10) Organize cable

TIE RECOMMENDATIONS

PROGRAM FOLLOW UP:

The list of conference resolutions reflects organizing projects that in one way or another address the expectations of the majority of the conference participants and their organizations' interests.

A quick glance through the list depicts international solidarity work, internal/externalhome base organizing and networking.

This list of proposed activities will not go far however, unless there is a follow up program to facilitate its implementation. TIE/NA offers in this case, the organizational framework to assist the community of activists to turn this list into working projects.

There should be an effective follow up program to this set of resolutions incorporating the following actions from the TIE/NA office:

-to facilitate Workshop proposal development from the committee for Labor Notes Conference.

-to participate in Email conversation group

-to reach out for people who do not have access to electronic mail by using regular mail or fax.

-to structure the coalition by encouraging participants of both conferences in current information exchanges.

-to sort out resolutions by order of need or feasibility.

-to develop a research/action plan based on the contacts in the union and research communities.

-to coordinate an international conference call

-to pick volunteers to prepare for the next conference

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